Louis Roney: Salmagundi

• My very good pal and neighbor, Victor, made me a fine walking stick that aids me in my locomotion which is hindered by the ravages of my 92 years. In thanking him I wrote, “It is your Cain that has made me Abel.”

• On Jan. 16, Obama’s TV speech about guns was to this former Navy gunnery officer and gun owner, a lesson in risibility. Criminals, who are the ones who may use guns in acts of violence against you and your family, are surely not going to limit any of their weapons or plans because of Obama’s words. Obama didn’t even say specifically what his plans were. He said he was recommending 23 “Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions,” but his speech seemed filled of primarily general statements designed to please his audience. I, for one, want to know all the details. There are millions of guns in the U.S. and certainly the procuring of a gun is no problem for an evil person with mayhem on his mind and a few bucks in his pocket. “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants.” — Cesare Beccaria. Amen!

• It gets boring listening to the same old salmagundi that people resort to in their daily conversation. I must admit to a liking for big and explicit words, and do not mind the idea of stretching my readers’ familiarity with unusual expressions. Ernest Hemingway told us boys in a lecture one day that his best friend was his wastebasket. He said that most of the things he concocted ended up being thrown away as the trash he saw them to be in the clearer light of the next morning. The absolute requisite of every good artist is an honest self-critical faculty that keeps him from falling in love with every product he cranks out. Hemingway told us guys to be especially careful about stuff we wrote the last thing before we went to bed, and to reread it critically after our first cup of morning coffee. Different creative minds have different critical requirements e.g. Mozart hardly ever changed a note he had composed, whereas Beethoven labored slavishly over the compositions he finally let the public hear. One can, of course, become so overly self-critical that in the end he finds hardly anything of his own work worth preserving. We don’t know all the things that Beethoven threw away, but he left enough behind him to be a priceless legacy for mankind.

• A mental sapling writes me, “It will not be your America much longer.” That fact has weighed heavily upon the minds of many profound observers of our national culture, and I am only one of the least of them. History is perhaps our greatest teacher. Spaniard George Santayana who was a professor at the New England university I attended, wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana said that he stood in philosophy where he stood in daily life — he was a concise pragmatist, not an idle dreamer.

• On Jan. 13, Kathy Marini’s beautiful dinner party for 16 in her lovely Winter Park home exhibited the perfection she brings to all she touches — the table was immaculately set, and the menu was grand. It occurred to me that Kathy’s brand of attention to correctness and detail would serve us ideally in our national affairs.

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)