On the matter of great books you have not read or even heard about, and one such book in particular, “The Leopard” by Prince Giuseppe Di Lampedusa.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. I am, have been, and always will be a book man; a man, that is, whose life has been enriched in every way by books. These books have been my joy, my obsession, always the source of bliss. And no wonder.  For in my own special corner with book in hand and my imagination, I have learned something of the utmost significance. Books can take you anywhere. With them you can be anyone… achieve anything…  experience everything. … This is what a book can do and what books for the last 65 years have done for me.
Books… the necessary and irreplaceable tools for education… boon companions and dearest friends for life, the solace of our older age, and where we look to assuage our grief when a loved one passes. Books offer us everything… for books are about everything… about everyone… about everywhere.
The only drawback to books… is that there are so many, so brilliant, so moving, so epochal, so packed with fact and incident that we time-challenged humans don’t have even a tiny fraction of the hours we need to know them, read them, think on them, and use them to improve the person we are and wish always to ameliorate. Books are always present, reminding us with their full assistance, how much better we can be… if only we open the cover and allow the words and pages that follow to take us to the superior place that is theirs to give to each of us.
Had we but world enough and time (Andrew Marvell, 1681)…
… but you see, that is the eternal challenge, for we do not… and this, then, becomes the particular puzzle of all our lives. How to know of, find, and find the time to read what must be read… the greatest books by our greatest masters; for as one grows older and older still, one discovers that time is too short to read anything else. That is why when people do me the honor to ask what books have influenced me, I am ever ready with the contents of my library to advise them. And so I take this opportunity to tell you about “The Leopard”, a masterpiece that was in 1957 so despised by Italian publishers that some said it would never be printed, was not worth printing… thereby breaking the heart of its author, Prince Di Lampedusa whose manners were so refined that he did not excoriate and rebuke the purblind publishers who thereby missed a work of high genius. It is this great book by an undoubted master that I tell you about this day.
But before I tell this tale, I wish to commend to you the incidental music to accompany this piece. It is the “valzerone e quadriglia” by that composer of cinematic magic, Nino Rota (1911-1979). Go now to any search engine and play it at once, for if “The Leopard” could possibly be improved upon, it would be by Rota and his mesmeric dance rhythms.  A novel about the Italy you know nothing about.
You cannot understand this book unless you know that its author was a bona fide principe, prince of ancient lineage and generations of hubris, condescension and perfect manners. He would not have liked you… why should he?… but you’d never know how exquisite his insults until long after he’d made his graceful exit from your unwanted company, the mark of a true aristocrat, a nonpareil who kills but never maims — unless he intends to.
But, and this too is crucial to understanding this book, this principe was not a prince of Italy, but a prince from Palermo, in Sicily, an island which had been since ships could sail the highly desirable target of one monarch after another, Dei gratia all.
As a result, there was a plenitude of titles on Sicily; grandiose, exalted, the residue of one temporary regime after another. Every noble knew how every title in the kingdom had been procured, by blood, valor… bedroom services or outright purchase. Thus the same title could mean wildly different things, of one order going up, while another was descending. Every nobleman and most especially his milady knew every nuance and secret. And so reputations wilted and died, scandals commenced and scandals reported behind delicate fans which at once enabled them to show their artistry and delicate wrists to best advantage while obscuring expressions which might well reveal too much.
This was a world the prince of Lampedusa knew well, every flutter of a fan, every patent of nobility finagled, every tittle of gossip, enjoyed, examined, twisted to best advantage. This is the arcane world, now as distant as the moon, that his excellency brought to life in “The Leopard”.
“Nothing much happens. They just talk.”
In doing my research for this article, I came across the line above, sentiments posted online by a reader puzzled by this book. This is understandable, for unlike our action packed books and films, “The Leopard” moves at a very different pace… the pace of real life in the 1860s when the old verities of Sicilian life were giving way before the insistent realities of Italian unification.
You see, the unified Italy you know and which you may assume has existed for centuries is in fact a new reality. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy had been broken up into smaller states. And these states spent their time intriguing against each other, gaining an acre here, losing a city there. It gave generations of princes and their privy counselors something to do during the delicious days of la dolce far niente. It was this ancient system that the princes reigning in Turin, the House of Savoy, were determined  to end… reigning instead over one nation, their patrimony.
It is towards the end of this opera-bouffe revolution that Lampedusa begins his tale, a tale based on the life of his paternal great-grandfather, a grandee of Sicily who saw everything changing, changing, changing to the detriment of the beautiful life he loved but could no longer afford.
And so “The Leopard”, Prince Fabrizio Salina, finds himself doing something he abhors but knows is absolutely necessary… allowing his beloved nephew, Prince Tancredi Falcorieri, to marry beneath himself… to the most attractive young lady of the district, Angelica Sedara, who is socially ambitious, endlessly calculating… and rich.
Thus while they live, think, intrigue, eat, dance and make love, the House of Savoy changes everything for everyone… Thus is the reader rebuked who thinks that nothing is happening, for in fact an entire world and everyone, everything in it changes forever right before your eyes…
… a riveting story told in language so beautiful, so poignant, so epigrammatic and apt one is forced to reread line after line so as not to miss a single limpid word. It is for this that “The Leopard” is a work of genius and the prince of Lampedusa occupies at last his just place in the literary pantheon.
April, 1993.
I read “The Leopard” in the spring of 1993; I know because I entered the date on the title page. I’ve been reading it again lately, and will come back again, perhaps only to read a page, or even a single paragraph, before my life is over. Classics are like that… drawing us back, insinuating themselves into our lives in ways lesser creations cannot hope to duplicate.
Now, therefore, go to any search engine, find Nino Rota’s valzerone written for Visconti’s 1963 grand film recreation of the leopard’s doomed world, open the book, turn the music on and commence reading from the first line,
“Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. The daily recital of the Rosary was over…” but your pleasure has just begun.

Thoughts on assisted living, aging, Dad, and guilt.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Here is the most important four-letter word in the entire English language: home. It conjures up and is connected to every element of the well-lived life: spouse, family, peace, comfort, security. Nothing can match its importance, nothing can duplicate its significance. Nothing is more powerful than our memories of home and their enduring pull, always tugging at our heart strings. Home and its rhythms, its well remembered aspects, its secrets, its traditions, its confidences, its ways so well known and carefully maintained… these have a power over us that never fails, never pales, never wavers, never diminishes, and are always clear, fresh, joyful, unforgettable, bittersweet, haunting, the sweetest memories of our entire life.
This is an article on the moment that comes to each of us… when this home, our very special, irreplaceable place, must be given up because its proprietors can no longer maintain it, now needing particular care themselves. This is an article about a moment poignant, sad, dreadful, irrevocable. It is about the people who take this step first, our parents… then about their children, us, who will trod the difficult road, too, but not yet… and what they must do today, a day of emotional turmoil, distress, a day for which all preparation is inadequate.
For this article I have selected the song “My Old Kentucky Home” (1852) by America’s first great composer, Stephen Foster. It is one of the most wistful, longing songs of our country… and whenever one hears it one thinks, and tearful too, of one’s own home, now gone, far away, never to be replaced, always to be remembered, the more so as the destination you are now going to can never be a home like the one left behind. Go now to any search engine. Find and play it at once. It is the perfect accompaniment to this article.
The call.
The call we all fear, cannot bear thinking about, but must think about — comes the day our aging parents first consider assisted living, whether outwardly calm and willing, or fighting the hopeless battle to avoid this fate, roiled by turbulent emotions deep within, so clearly visible without.
Assisted living.
The words “assisted living” are two of the most frightening and disturbing in our language. It is easy to see why. Assisted living is mostly the province of the retired, the ill, the aging, geriatric survivors of better times. As such it is a venue to be put off and avoided whenever possible, for as long as possible; as much so as if each assisted living facility had posted at its front door this immemorial admonition from Dante’s “Inferno”: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
Such institutions are perceived as the final way station before cosmic extinction; the place one enters unhappy, angry, misunderstood, and which one leaves dead; the place for the irremediably old, those who are past it, marginal, unconsidered, beyond the care and concern of anyone other than those paid to care and be concerned; lonely people of the Eleanor Rigby variety.
All of life…
Assisted living, with its implied inadequacies and dependence, is always and often indignantly compared to the joy of independent living, where you do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, in just the way you want; in other words the kind of living each of us desires, insists upon, and does everything possible to maintain. Assisted living, of course, is widely perceived as the antithesis of the desired independent living.
But this is wrong.
ALL living is assisted living. For unless you are rabidly antisocial and determined to remain that way, alone, isolated, happy and contented in your aloneness, you are assisted — every single day — by people whose aim is to make you reasonably happy, reasonably content, and reasonably comfortable. Thus, in truth, when one moves from living regarded as independent to living regarded as assisted, one is evolving from one kind of care to another kind of care; one is tweaking circumstances the better to ensure the maximum continuation of your desired life style. One is not undergoing metamorphosis, but comparative and necessary improvement.
Sadly, most people undergoing this process are unable to see this, or at least to state it to guilt-ridden relatives who are thus distressed by the painful thought that Aunt Martha is being cast off rather than moved to an appropriate level of care, concern, and consideration. Most assisted living facilities these days resemble college campuses or resorts; they know the grief, anger, recriminations and distress which new residents bring and work hard to create an atmosphere that is at once attractive, even beautiful; livable, practical, and serene, factors which soothe the guilt of those recommending assisted living to those near and dear but are often dismissed as inadequate or unimportant by those being recommended into the facility.
Receiving the intelligence.
Twice in my life, so far, have I been a participant to greater or lesser degree, in conversations surrounding the movement of one near and beloved to assisted living. The first such conversations involved my mother; the second set involved my father. These conversations could hardly have been less similar — or more instructive about the principals involved and affected.
My mother, student of Dylan Thomas that she was, did not, nor could not, go gentle into this good night. She raged, raged against what she was sure was the dying of the light. Despite weakening health and the myriad of problems stemming therefrom my mother fought hard, strenuously, vociferously, painfully against the notion of “incarceration” in an assisted living facility, thereby branded as penal institution, not comfortable necessity. Her transition from living deemed independent to living deemed assisted was therefore protracted, painful, packed with imprecations, denigrations, accusations, maledictions which made Emile Zola’s famous declaration “J’accuse” look sniveling.
My father handled the matter entirely different… and I suspect this was partly because he will have with him his wife Ellie; to be alone at life’s end is painful; to be partnered with a loved mate lessons the pain while increasing the means to combat and to live with it.
Sad, wistful, practical, accepting.
When my father called yesterday to inform me that he and Ellie had made arrangements to share their dwindling, most precious days together in assisted living, I felt a lump in my throat. He extolled the grounds, their private apartment, the food, the friendly residents… but whether he believed all this as stated or was just trying out what would become the stock reason or their move, I cannot say… for I was reflecting on a few words that he had said.
Entering the dining room where they would find their daily meals, he was surprised to find it peopled with the old, feeble, and infirm. Could this be he at 86, Ellie at 87? Or had some mistake occurred? She, knowing how difficult it had to be for him to transform his independent life to one “assisted”, took his hand and reassured him that no mistake was made; they were in the right place, which he would soon know, if he did not know already. And thus these proud, fiercely independent souls, more used to assisting others than being assisted, move into the next phase of their lives, together, facts faced, practical decisions made, gently, calmly, with love and care. And I admired my father so, not merely as son to father, but as man to man. For he faced the difficult, the fearful, the unpalatable, with grace, quietude, reserve, with good judgement, good humor, and a good wife, well stocked and ready for the journey ahead… which they will travel similarly and with kindness, above all with kindless and the help of those glad to assist them, and with kindness too.
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Of earmuffs, sissies, bone-chilling cold, and warm ears; thanks to young inventor Chester Greenwood.

Author’s program note. Winter. What a revoltin’ development this is. I often wonder on days so ridiculously cold like this one is why the Puritans stayed here after arriving and sampling the depths of a Massachusetts winter. I suppose it had something to do with their land grants and, of course, their pertinacious natures and obstinacy. For they were of the variety of folks who say they’ll do a thing and then — do it, never mind that their friends and fellow Pilgrims are dropping like flies all around them.
I often think of such folks on days like this, in winters like this. Excuse me if I get too intimate too fast, but I wonder, yes and for long periods of time, too, for I like to be thorough in my cogitations and day dreams, I wonder… about the socks those Puritans wore, what undergarments and undies they fashioned, how they made vests and sweaters… scarves and hats, each and every item needed… and especially the focus of today’s ruminations, how they kept their godly ears from freezing and falling off, tangible victory tokens for Winter itself, who likes you to remember who is boss around these parts once the December solstice occurs.
Theocracies, autocracies, aristocracies, ideas on this and that, may all come and go but one fact of human history remains constant and insistent: if you live in a frigid climate, your ears will get plenty cold… and must be taken care of right away, whatever your other priorities for the day.
Meet the patron saint of warm ears…. Chester Greenwood.
For just such days, Chester Greenwood and his first epochal invention were born. And today we sing his praises…. while capering amidst snow and ice. Because of Master Greenwood we are safe and warm, ready for anything.
Because Chester Greenwood, whom I guarantee you never heard of until just this moment, is the man who invented earmuffs… and he hailed not so very far from where I’m writing you today, in Farmington in the State of Maine, where laconic residents know the answer to this ancient question, “Cold enough for you?” And then laugh their thin, silent laugh, the one that keeps their human heat within, not cast profligate like into the too brusque air. Mainers are like that, and we like them just that way, especially young Chester and his ear-saving invention.
Just 15.
Like everybody else in Farmington, Chester’s young ears got cold and turned all the colors of distress, first chalky white, then beet red, and finally the deep blue that signifies danger for the continued use, indeed existence of the ears he rightly prized and cherished. And being a practical lad, and caring, too, for the ears of his family and friends, he did what all folks of inventive disposition do… he began to dream up a solution, and fast, for his ears were big and therefore even colder than most.
As every true inventor knows, the solution to a pending problem — that “eureka!” moment — can occur anytime, anywhere. And you must always be ready when it happens. For that industrious young Greenwood boy it occurred one day when he was out having fun — or trying to –at Abbot Pond where he was breaking in a new pair of skates.
This was a very big deal for him, because he came from a poor family (as most Mainers did) with six kids… and new skates were like gold, for all that they had to be shared. Greenwood was anxious to try out those babies… but the wind whipping off the pond was just too much, even for this hardy lad. He raced home to his “Gram”, found in her proper place in the farmhouse kitchen and asked her to see what she could come up with to cover his ears. It was the kind of practical question every real Grammie expects, is glad to get, and can always do something about.
Chester didn’t just stand and watch as his Grammie worked; that was not his way, and so they worked together. Chester supplied the idea and the materials; Gram, proud of her inventive grandson, supplied the artistry and experience of her nimble fingers, and so they got on like a house afire.
Chester wanted beaver fur on the outside, black velvet on the inside to shield his ears. Wool would never do; too itchy.
Once the materials had been selected and approved, it was time to fashion the device that kept them secure and in place. To solve this problem, they chose a soft wire known as farm wire, a precursor of bailing wire. Some later accounts say the resulting device was then attached to a cap.
So readied for the elements, Chester returned to the pond where, with the warmest ears in the county, he astonished his shivering buddies with the joyous dexterity of unremitting youth.
Soon, this 15 year old whiz kid was in the business of crafting earmuffs for old and young alike; for Mainers know a good deal when they see it. And as Chester worked… he, like every inventor before him, made adjustments, improvements, corrections, never satisfied, always in pursuit of the perfect muff, which he called Greenwood’s ear protectors and which, like Henry Ford’s auto, you could have in any color so long as it was black.
In due course, in 1873, and just 18 mind, he was awarded U.S. patent number 188,292 thereby launching a business which kept 20 or so of his neighbors in Farmington gainfully employed for nearly 60 years. At its height in 1936, he produced some 400,000 muffs a year, doing well while doing good… which is or at least should be the objective of every inventor and entrepreneur.
Greenwood, by now a celebrity in the State of Maine and beyond, died in 1937, aged 79. He had lead the most beneficial of lives, finding needs and filling them, the time honored path to usefulness and wealth. Amongst his 130 patents are such devices as improvements on the spark plug; a decoy mouse trap called the Mechanical Cat; his own shock absorber, a hook for pulling doughnuts from boiling oil, the Rubberless Rubber Band, and the Greenwood Tempered Steel Rake.
But of all his many worthy and practical ideas, I still prefer his first achievement, those earmuffs in beaver and black velvet, for you see like Chester, and such great celebrities as Clark Gable, I have big ears, too; so big that in the Alphabet Poll in my high school year book, my ears were photographed after my discerning classmates had voted mine the most notable, and so they were. Delicious.
And thus, with ears like Greenwood’s, I had Greenwood’s problem; that is until I discovered Greenwood’s solution in a pair of Greenwood’s muffs, in black, of course. They were a statement, that I was a practical boy myself, always desirous of keeping these pristine ears in fine working order. Besides, I don’t mind tellling you, I looked killing in mine, arresting, handsome, cute to boot. Not like Christopher Ninnis, that wag, who made derisory comments about sissies in earmuffs, keeping his in a box. But then… look how he turned out.
Note: In 1977, Maine declared December 21st “Chester Greenwood Day” to honor the king of warm ears whilst the City of Farmington, Maine kept employed by Greenwood’s genius, throws him an annual birthday bash, complete with parade where police cruisers are decorated as giant earmuffs. It’s the first Saturday in December. He deserves it, all of it, don’t you think?
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‘Darling, I am growing old, silver threads among the gold.’ Telltale signs you’re an old coot.

Author’s program note! Do you know the great Irish tenor John McCormack? If not, your grandmother surely did. “I tell you Mary Louise, he has the voice of an angel, an angel…” One of the multitude of songs he popularized and made his own was the famous tune “Silver threads among the gold”. You couldn’t listen without a tear or two dropping gently on your lap… no matter who you were or what your situation. There was that in the singer and his song that made even the most stoic lachrymose.
And so I have selected for the occasional music to this article, “Silver threads among the gold”, perhaps the most popular ballad of the period starting with its copyright in 1873 right into the 1920s. The all affecting lyrics are by Eben E. Rexford, music by Hart Pease Danks. You’ll find it in any search engine. Go now; find it; listen more than once and sniffle… because this music, these lyrics, this article are all about….. you….. the you getting older and stranger by the day…. you old coot, you.
Pity the poor coot.
I want you to know — and coot lovers worldwide demand that I tell you — the coot is an honorable, hard working, entirely meritorious fowl. It is a medium-sized water bird in good standing, well known and up-to-date in its membership in the rail family Rallidae. They constitute, and proudly too, the genus Fulica with eye-catching predominantly black plumage. They are common in South America, Europe, and North America, too.
Now hear this: they vigorously oppose the appropriation of their good name to describe eccentric or crotchety persons and are herewith filing a declaration and grievance with the United Nations. They aver and make clear: there is nothing wrong with coots in general, and old coots must be venerated, never, never derided and made the object of ridicule and derision. However some more insightful coots realize the only bad publicity is no publicity… and so these progressive birds use the expression themselves with glee and impunity.
Are you an old coot?
Consider the case of my honorable father and his telephone answering machine. Over time, this once pristine and useful device has deteriorated. First the machine lost about one in ten calls; then about one quarter of the calls went unrecorded… until now the number of lost calls and messages is hovering at a perfect 100%. It is just about impossible to leave a message for him.
When told of this situation, as he now constantly is, he says “I know. Other people tell me that.” And each and every one of these folks wishing for immediate connection with my venerable sire says the same thing: “You need a new answering machine.” But my father has a firm response based on his current age (86), likely check-out date, and a gnawing belief he will not get his full and complete money’s worth out of any new answering machine… and so the matter rests from day to day… his standing as an old coot now entirely secure and certain. What’s more, if he was to get as a gift, for Christmas say or his next birthday, a telephone answering machine, he probably could not be induced even to take it out of the box, for, after all, he didn’t really need it; his current machine, despite its foibles and idiosyncrasies is still working, never mind that it only performs its necessary function at the most intermittent of occasions.
Out of range.
The same is true with Dad’s O*Keefe and Merritt range. It’s, 25, maybe 30, years old, or even more. And whilst it is no doubt a fine company producing a fine product, this particular product has seen better days; to the extent that it cooks the food he likes hot and just so only about half way. And this, as one may well imagine, irritates the old fellow. But because he is not just an old fellow but an old coot, he is not about to let that range go; after all it still cooks about half his food reasonably well.
And so, instead of calling the Sears appliance center or other venue offering stoves at fetching prices, he called….. O*Keefe and Merritt to see if they had the part that was defective on his unit. The representative he ultimately connected with laughed aloud when he gave her the part number, “Honey, we haven’t produced that part for over 25 years.” And that should have been that… trip to oven store at once… new machine to be installed next Thursday.
But old coots don’t think that way…. no indeed.
All but useless… still good enough for coots.
If there’s a penny’s worth of value left in any object, no matter that that object can not do the job you need done, a coot, any coot, will die rather than lose that value. That’s why dear old Dad, not only did not get a new range, but told the flip wench that he would keep looking for the part until he found it. Then he called a couple of repair places to see if they could help; they couldn’t. This continued until he had the bright idea of going to Ebay, and there the matter rests because he doesn’t know how to use Ebay and daren’t ask me because he already knows what I’ll say and getting rid of the friggin’ stove is just the beginning.
I’d make him chuck the toaster that doesn’t quite toast… “but I only got it 15 years ago, and it should be good for another 5,000 pieces at least…”
The typewriter he hasn’t used, not to type a single letter or address label in a couple of decades at least… “but it’s an Olivetti, top of the line”… Then the punch line, “They discontinued this model years ago, and you can’t get ribbons anymore.” Of course.
Even the bromo seltzer in the medicine cabinet… that he picked up for “Just a penny, I tell you” at the estate sale of my great grandmother, the sale held when I was just 13 or 14 or so; (I’m 64 now). Then, in 1959, it was already over 20 years old. But she’d say when people told her to get rid of it, she’d say with horror, “Why, what an idea, Lura Marshall”… and then these unanswerable words: “You never know”… and these unanswerable words were rendered with the hauteur of a queen… or at the very least of someone who knew a great, dark, secret, like maybe it was a poison reserved for her Satanic rites. But it was worse, far worse than that.
Now I know what that secret is.
You see, that bottle of bromo seltzer arrived the other day, compliments of my father who decided he needed the space, but absolutely couldn’t throw this away. Why, it was owned by his own grandmother.
When I opened that box, I knew; I knew not only I wouldn’t… I couldn’t throw it away.
And so I came to know.. and now I tell you the secret, that .. becoming an old coot is a matter of heredity, genetics, not choice, which makes me a Young Coot.
Thus I called Poor Old Dad (it took over a dozen attempts to reach him on his wonky answering machine) and promised I’ll find him that part if it takes a year, or more; he’s right, that range is far too valuable to discard, and new ones cost the earth.
You don’t have to have silver threads among the gold to know that, although I most surely do. Why if I find that part, and I shall, that range has at least 20 good years left…. Dad says he’s leaving it to me…
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