Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Nostalgia

  • When we walk the quiet lanes of nostalgia, is there a beauty, and a certain peace, in the mastery of memory light and shadow so well captured by the artistic realism of Robert Addison?
  • Is Addison’s fascination with old buildings ours too?
  • Do the old buildings have a character and experience that somehow, like looking into ponds, help us measure the depth of our own nature?
  • Is today’s Third Degree not meant then for the young and restless but those with a longer view tempered by the vicissitudes of life?
  • Can nostalgia be expansive beyond the longings of the past, be reassuring and even forward looking?
  • What triggers such thoughts, the search for memories, meaning and, yes, direction?
  • Does last week’s marking of our 60th wedding anniversary occasion, and temper, thinking and memories?
  • Spacious, for our family of four, till measured years later, did the growing up in the grandfather built, southside Chicago, unairconditioned, home of 793 square feet, with its one tiny bathroom, seem wonderful, somehow, palatial?
  • Did uncle’s family upstairs fare any better while sharing the kid friendly, unfinished basement with coal, then oil fired, boiler, wood shop, dark room, washing machine (no dryer, we hung out) plus nook and cranny space perfect for hide and seek along with a cluttered attic sporting an old push pedal organ from the church? Indelible?
  • Summer of ’63, did new Lieutenant and striking, blond wife, check out that first rental home in Laredo, Texas?
  • Advertised as a four roomer with swimming pool, 40 bucks a month, did the dirt floors, wax papered windows , almost workable john and the green crusted, cattle dipping vat (dubbed pool) pass inspection? Just the first of many NOWAYGI moments? Ah, nostalgia and laughter?
  • Is the blur of old homes, attendant to duty stations, all over America and Europe joined by a lost connection rue of neighbors and friends as years roll on?
  • Does the little,1927 original, lake cottage in pure Michigan loom large as a lifetime family, mooring point?
  • Looking out on the Rock River, does our 100-year-old Rockford home provide vista for a continuing, comfortable nostalgia marking more than 22 years here….and counting?
  • As endurance remains singular to us, and to you, will memory and meaning of places and what went on there not be lost in the wind but continue because we will it so and know the promise of tomorrow?
  • Nostalgia, then, always expansive, aided by the light and shadows of living and purpose?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.