"An Easter Anecdote"

 Today is Good Friday, or Holy Friday as it is called in many places, and Sunday will be Easter. I wish you the best for this holiday, as we celebrate Christianity’s most important day. (The photo is one I took from the internet.)

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“An Easter Anecdote”

April 3, 2026

 

“Let all the flowers wake to life;

Let all the songsters sing;

Let everything that lives on earth

Become a joyous thing.”

                                                                                                “Easter” c.1870, Fannie Isabelle Sherrick (c.1840 - ?)

 

While the United States is a religiously pluralistic nation – with the right of free exercise of one’s religious beliefs guaranteed by the 1^st Amendment of the Constitution – we are, still, predominantly a Christian nation. And Easter is Christianity’s most important holiday. On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, redemption, and the promise of eternal life.

 

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But it is also a day we associate with rabbits and Easter egg hunts. Rabbits, with their high reproduction rates, symbolize fertility. And eggs – unless boiled, fried or poached – are indicative of new life. German folklore provides a connection. The Ostern Hase (Easter Hare) was a mythical creature that judged whether children were good or bad. Tradition has it that the Easter Hare gave colorful eggs to the former.  

 

Most of us have childhood memories of Easter, of warm spring days, church services and Easter egg hunts. The latter was a fixture in my young life. Growing up on a small farm, with artist parents, we were outside every day. Easter came when the damp earth smelt sweet and trees began to bud. Snowdrops and daffodils, if not out, were about to enter stage left. Forsythia shrubs were not far behind.

 

Our family attended the Unitarian Church in Peterborough, New Hampshire. My mother generally gave us a nickel or dime to place in the collection basket. Once, the youngest, George, reached into the basket and grabbed a handful of coins, which promptly fell on the floor. Us older children then spent the next ten or fifteen minutes scouring the floor, picking up coins and replacing them, while the minister droned on. Following Easter service we adjourned for the highlight of the day – the Easter egg hunt. My mother had hidden eggs in a field that abutted the front yard. It was a field usually occupied by goats. 

 

Neighbors and friends would come. And as we were a large family – nine children when my parents had completed their spawning duties – there was a crowd. Eggs were abundant, for our Rhode Island Reds had been busy laying in a supply. Prizes were awarded for the most eggs and for the individual who discovered the “golden” egg. One time that sticks in my mind was when my father thought he had lost my sister Jenny. She had been born in 1948 and was about a year-and-a-half old. He became angry when we all laughed instead of searching for her. Finally, my mother, through tears of laughter, told him she was on his shoulder. He did not find the incident funny.

 

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While such memories are rewarding, we should not forget the real reason we celebrate Easter – the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Earth’s rebirth as spring surges ahead.

"In college, I drove a school bus"

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Gerard Baker had a beautifully expressed, memorable and oh-so-true line: “...relative extremism in pursuit of persuasion is all the rage...” Political extremism has been enhanced by media extremism.

 

However, onto a lighter theme, for life goes on; this essay has nothing to do with spring or April Fools’ Day, but celebrates grandchildren and memories. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“In College, I Drove A School Bus”

April 1, 2026

 

“Now I drive the school bus.”

                                                                                                              Otto Mann, school bus driver

                                                                                                              The Simpsons

 

In 2009 my youngest grandson, George, attended Christ Church Nursery School in Greenwich, Connecticut. A highlight was Grandparents Day, a way to celebrate the bond between students and their grandparents. On the day we attended each child was asked to introduce their grandparents. When it came George’s turn he was excited to introduce me as a school bus driver. I could not have been happier, knowing that he had listened to stories of my youth.

 

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George was correct. While I had spent the previous forty-two years as a stockbroker, I did drive a school bus between September 1963 and January 1965.

 

In high school and in my first two years of college I was an indifferent student, a cynic with no goals. My grandmother had paid my tuition at Williston Academy and at the University of New Hampshire. After two years I dropped out. I spent the summer working at Canada’s Falconbridge Nickel Mine, and later as a lab technician at the Metal Hydrides Corporation in Beverly, MA. Then, by a stroke of good fortune, on New Year’s Eve, I met the girl who would become my wife, and my life began to turn around. My cynicism dropped, and I had a goal, convincing Caroline (and her parents) that I would make a responsible husband.

 

I enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves to fulfill my military obligation and then returned to college for the spring term of 1963. However, given my past academic record, my grandmother would not pay my tuition; so I was on my own. While taking classes, I worked a number of jobs, making sandwiches and writing a sports column for the Dover Daily Democrat. That summer, while also continuing my studies, I secured a job driving a school bus for the city of Dover, NH. I kept the other jobs, but driving the school bus became my most consistent source of income. In April 1964, Caroline and I married, and I continued my school bus-driving duties.

 

Transporting students, I came to know the children, and we had fun, so long as they behaved and stayed seated. However, one episode remains fixed in my memory. It was a winter morning after a snowfall, which narrowed streets with cars parked on either side. I stopped at the top of a hill. The street went down to where a right or left turn could be made, but my route went up the other side. I sat for a minute or two, calculating whether there was room for the bus to navigate between cars that lined the street on the hill beyond. The children were in no doubt that the attempt should be made. After a few  minutes, I agreed.

 

The bus picked up speed going down, knowing it would be needed to crest the hill opposite. With children cheering, “You can do it! You can do it!” down we went and up the other side. Like taking a camel through the eye of a needle there could not have been more than an inch or two to spare on either side! We made it. 

 

I am grateful to George for his introduction of me that day. It brought back memories.

"A Good Education Has Never Been More Important"

The photo is one I found on the internet, which I thought pertinent to the subject of this essay.

It is never fun watching markets dissolve, but I still believe that Israel and the U.S., in confronting Iran, have done the right thing, especially as we have been joined by most of the Arab states. With their continued work on an atomic weapon and with missiles capable of hitting Diego Garcia 2500 miles away, that means Iran could as easily hit Vienna or Athens. They do represent a threat to world peace. They need to be stopped.

 

This essay represents something I have been thinking of for some time.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Good Education Has Never Been More Important”

March 28, 2026

 

“The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977)

                                                                                                                Former Chancellor & President, University of Chicago

 

There is an old Chinese proverb that is appropriate in this age of AI, increased dependency on government, wokeism, and at a time when education needs a re-boot: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” While we all are dependent on others, especially for love and companionship, a free individual is not one dependent on the state except in the case of dire and exceptional need. Reason and soundness must replace foolish ignorance.

 

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It is not simply artificial intelligence that makes our age unique and so badly in need of the ability to reason logically and to think independently, it is also the fact that extremism has kidnapped our politics, and that ignorance and foolishness have laid waste to common sense and made our cultural heritage something to shun rather than to celebrate. 

 

If Mark Ziuckerberg needs a robotic assistant, what about us? Do we need some piece of machinery to remind us to send flowers on Mother’s Day, book lunch on Tuesday, and reply to this morning’s e-mails? That might simplify our lives, but are not personal connection and human empathy important? How much of our personal lives do we want to lay off on a piece of software that might be hackable? Will our AI assistant, to get in our good graces, heap false praise on what we have done or are about to do? Or will it provide the analytic criticism needed to improve our performance? Efficiency without empathy does not necessarily lead to a happy life. Will we lose our ability to sense emotion and to think critically if we rely on artificial intelligence? These are questions best considered when one has read widely.

 

Without a classical liberal arts education that includes biology, we are at risk of accepting as fact that men can be woman (or vice versa) if they so choose – that one’s sex is not a matter of science but of choice. Consider who benefits from such allegations. It is not only certain male athletes, but clinics willing to perform gender-affirming surgeries. Skepticism is a bi-product of a good education. Remember how Paul Ehrlich amassed a fortune, stating as fact that millions would die because of a planet unable to feed its population. In the years since 1968, when The Population Bomb was published (and which sold over two million copies in its first three years), the world population has more than doubled, while the percent of the population suffering from hunger has declined. Millions of people accepted his conclusions without questioning.

 

And think of climate wars. It was in elementary school that we were first taught of how Earth had warmed and cooled over the millennia – from the Tyrannosaurus Rex during the Cretaceous Period to the Wooly Mammoth during the Pleistocene Epoch. That is not to say we can ignore our environment or changes in climate. The Earth does not sit still, and man has a responsibility to all forms of life and to the planet he lives on. Yet we are scolded by supercilious tree-huggers if we drive a gas-powered vehicle, use more than a gallon of water to flush the toilet, or fail to re-cycle the plastic yogurt cover. Personally, I am conscious of the environment and I re-cycle, but I don’t like to be scolded by a bigot who scoots off in his private jet, or on their 200-foot yacht. A good education teaches one to differentiate between a policy based on facts and prescriptions based on ideologies.

 

Political extremism has become ubiquitous. In both parties, extremists control the message. A few minutes spent listening to a speech by President Trump or a response by Senator Chuck Schumer reminds one of the lament that starts Rudyard Kipling’s Ballad: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The one exception to this polarization appears to be the Supreme Court – the only adult branch of government. Thus far in the 2025-26 term, which began in October 2025, the Court has released 20 opinions, five of which were 9-0 decisions. If Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas can agree 25% of the time, why can’t Congress?

 

Over the long-term extremism never succeeds – there are simply not enough extremists. But we also know from Iran that extremists in government can persevere for many years. Forty-seven years of rule by fanatic mullahs have caused millions to suffer and tens-of-thousands to die. It is the study of history that provides perspective. In a recent issue of The Spectator – in an article titled “Those Who Believe in Liberalism Must Now Fight For It” – Adrian Wooldridge wrote: “The best resource we have in preventing a return to the 1930s is the memory of the 1930s.” The best way to understand the present is to read of the past.

 

None of us can predict the future. Change is coming, but that has always been true. The best way to deal with the world we face is with a good education – whether its change wrought by AI, dealing with (sometimes well-intentioned but always misplaced) wokeism, or political extremism. Sadly our public schools, especially those in inner cities, are governed by unions more interested in growing membership than in the students they are supposed to educate, and too many of our universities, with costs having risen about three times the rate of inflation over the past fifty years, are more focused on diversity than on excellence. 

 

A good education is a life-long pursuit, and it is the encouragement of that, as Mr. Hutchins is quoted in the epigraph, which should be the job of schools, universities and parents. We should never stop learning. An educated individual understands the risks of open borders, as well as the primacy of legal immigration. She or he realizes and perils of mercantilism and socialism, while recognizing the advantages of capitalism. They know the differences between equality and equity, and between diversity and assimilation. Years ago Sy Syms developed his iconic marketing slogan: “An educated consumer is our best customer.” An educated electorate is the best defense of democracy.

 

My argument in favor of education is not because I believe a university degree will assure a higher paying job. It may or may not. It is because I believe a liberal arts education will make one a more informed citizen, one better able to navigate disruption caused by technology or anything else, to make sense of polarized political views, and to appreciate our history, our form of government, and our cultural heritage.