Louis Roney: Xanadu if you Khan

My b.w. and I went to Tallahassee for two days last week to complete a project started some years ago by our dear friend, the late U.S. Sen. Paula Hawkins. I returned with the highest award for an artist: induction into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. My souvenir is a 30-pound statue with my name on it. Nobody as yet has been able to tell me what the statue is, or represents, but I am open to suggestions.

Obamacare

At this writing the matter of Obamacare is still indeterminate and awaiting a Supreme Court decision. If our left-leaning court decides that an individual U.S. citizen can be ordered by the government to buy health care or any other item — what disaster comes next? How could the common sense red, white and blue American people elect an America-hating president and install a “pinko” Supreme Court? Gone forever may be the freedom of choice, which has always been a proud possession of Americans. Such a move signals that we are moving ever closer to a Marxist government, and leaving democracy in the dust of distant pioneer trails. Concomitantly, leftist Obama will have inflicted upon the American people the “change” that he has so long sought.

Gaga at Harvard?

To what new lows has my venerable alma mater, Harvard College, sunk, with its exploitation of Lady Gaga and such risibles? 

Turning 375

Today I received an invitation to the 375th anniversary luncheon of Harvard College. I remember in 1938 arriving at Harvard late one night after a long trip up from Winter Park. I was 17 and had never been north of the Savannah River. Four years later, when I walked out of the Yard with my degree in one hand and my U.S. Navy orders in the other, I knew that I had completed a never-to-be-repeated experience. At my class’ 25th reunion in 1967, I sang as soloist with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, in Symphony Hall, in Boston.

Use it or lose it

Winston Churchill, son of a wealthy wastrel father, threw away a lot of his young years by being “merry,” and metamorphosed into perhaps the most important man of the 20th century. Churchill smilingly observed, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the common voter.” Somewhere along the line Churchill decided to shoot for the “best” and see if he could find it in himself. He did. My grandmother used to tell me, “If everybody is doing it, don’t do it. Avoid a life of bromides and hackneyed platitudes.” If you aspire to learn from people of quality, you must be quality yourself. One could suspect that excessive patience is foolish, and that the teachers and students who harbor it are foolish themselves. We with human intelligence communicate with other human minds, and our communication is the sole means by which wisdom is preserved. A brain is like a right arm: If you don’t use it, you lose it.

The possibilities

If anyone had told me when I was 17 that I was to become an opera star in the U.S., Canada and nine European countries, I would have said that person had lost his marbles. My youth was spent — I see in retrospect — assessing the many latent lifetime possibilities all around me.

Hot fool

I try to keep in mind that a damned fool is a person who generates lots of heat, and no light.

About Roney:

Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF

2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award

(Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)