15 minute read
Classic comfort in Greenwich
WAY
PRESENTED BY SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY
In the fields of architecture and design, classic is back, maximalism is in and tradition is trending.
So it won’t be long before someone snatches up this stone and clapboard Georgian at the end of a private lane off serpentine Round Hill Road in Greenwich. Situated on nearly four acres, this custom-built 8,526-square-foot beauty brims with color and texture, with luxury finishes and detailed moldings adding flourishes. Many of the 18 spacious rooms connect through French doors to large terraces leading to manicured lawns, mature trees and a sparkling pool. The rooms include five bedrooms, all en-suite, with the master having two baths, as well as two large offices.
The house, which is punctuated by a finished lower level and lists for $7,395,000, has never been on the market.
It is, as the saying goes, a keeper.
For more, contact Sandy Shaw at 203-618-3105 or sandyshawct.com or Michele Klosson at 203-912-8338 or 203-618-3131.
The need to lead
BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA
What makes a great leader? Studies have identified any number of traits — intelligence, diligence, extraversion, open-mindedness and self-sufficiency — but those could describe a fine middle manager or any successful businessman.
No, a great leader has something extra, something elusive and almost undefinable — almost. He, or increasingly she nowadays, has the ability to create, communicate and implement a shared vision — and, when the going gets tough, to temper tough love with optimism for the future.
The leadership question is perhaps the most important one we can ask right now, as we are in a moment of crisis, not the least of which is a crisis in leadership. The coronavirus — an implacable foe of high contagion and versatility — was always going to be devastating. But it has been greatly exacerbated by the systemic failure of Alexandrian leadership — leadership from the front — a quality that’s been lacking in the bunker mentality of the digital age. (Whatever else you may think of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror of the Persia Empire who inherited the hegemony of Athens and the other Greek city-states from his father, Philip II, he never asked his army or his people to do anything that he didn’t lead and share in.)
The irony in this is that to lead from the front you must put yourself last. You must be the servant of all, knowing that with great, incorruptible power comes great responsibility. This is a central tenet of the world’s major religions but particularly Christianity. In Matthew 23:11, Jesus, who washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, says: “But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”
A great leader, then, leads by example. Does German Chancellor Angela Merkel wear a mask? Run into her at the grocery store and see for yourselves, she offered. Throughout the coronavirus crisis, Merkel, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have been able, in Churchillian fashion, to balance the realistic need for communal sacrifice in the face of grave challenge with the hope that the challenge will be met.
It’s telling that these countries are led by humble but confident, pragmatic, quietly efficient women. Meanwhile, many of the countries that haven’t fared well or as well have been led by blustering “strongmen” — tough guys who are not actually strong and dwell in denial — delaying vital supplies, testing and contact tracing; refusing to wear masks and social distance; and putting profits before people in reopening too quickly. This phenomenon, which suggests the need for a new model of leadership that values “feminine” qualities, in the Jungian sense of the word, is not lost on others. In May, Helen Lewis, writing in The Atlantic, identified a pattern: Countries led by women did better in the time of the coronavirus than those led by the strongmen, giv
Art historians believe Michael Sweerts’ “Plague in an Ancient City” (1652, oil on canvas) references the plague that devastated Athens in 430 B.C. and ultimately took the life of its great leader, Pericles. Today the painting is part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in a city where the coronavirus has raged recently.
ing lie to the idea that women lack leadership qualities. (In the past they just lacked opportunities, although that didn’t stop England’s Elizabeth I and Russia’s Catherine the Great, two of histories shrewdest, most sophisticated rulers.)
In truth, there have been instances of fine leadership from America’s governors and mayors — male and female, white and black, Republican and Democratic. And yet that may not be enough. Cases of the virus haven risen in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsome was proactive early on, just as they are in Texas and Florida, where Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis respectively were not.
The complex relationship of leadership to society is one we have seen time and again. In 430 B.C., amid its Peloponnesian War with archrival Sparta, Athens was struck by a pandemic from Ethiopia that came through the eastern Mediterranean
and entered the port of Piraeus. (Historians are unsure of its exact nature. It could’ve been anything from Ebola to smallpox to typhus.) What is clear is that it devastated the city at a moment when its longtime leader, Pericles — the man synonymous with the golden age in Greece — had brought people in from the countryside for safety, thereby swelling the population, straining the food supply and putting the entire city at increased risk of infection.
The people rebelled, but Pericles — who had terrific communication skills, a must for a true leader — was able to assuage and rally them. When his two legitimate sons died, however, something of the light went out in him. Pericles himself succumbed to the plague in 429 B.C. at age 66. The disease returned to Athens from 427 to 425 B.C. but the city’s subsequent leaders were no Pericles. Though Athens would recover sufficiently to mount a military campaign, the losing Sicilian Expedition, in 415 B.C., its star had dimmed. It would never be the same.
Nor would the Maya. Across the Atlantic some 1,200 years after Pericles, they abandoned the stunning stone civilization they had created throughout what is now Mexico and Central America. Whether because of war, drought or overpopulation, they lost faith in their kings. One moment they were living in magnificent cities that displayed their intricate knowledge of everything from the arts to astronomy. The next they disappeared back into their lush forests.
Great civilizations rest on the shoulders of great leaders, but in the end, that leadership may not stem the tide of history. And yet without real leadership, nations have little chance to survive — and thrive.
BEGUILING
Although many childhood dreams are packed away in attic boxes with old report cards, school pictures and baseball trophies, some dreams — of being an explorer on an African safari — can live again. Imagine waking in a magical place, far from our digital world, with only the sounds of the savanna to keep you company. Your heart skips a beat as an 18-foot giraffe (the tallest mammal on earth) appears from behind an acacia tree and walks slowly, gracefully and purposefully toward you.
Quiet and elegant, they seem to float across the savanna plains with the finesse of a runway model. Their elongated necks seem to defy gravity. It’s surprising that they, like humans, possess only seven vertebrae in their necks. Daily, their only task seems to be chomping away on more than 100 pounds of leaves a day needed to fill their bellies. Luckily, their 16-plus inch long black tongues have evolved so they don’t get sunburned. Insomniacs of the animal kingdom, giraffes seem to go without sleep. It wasn’t until the 1990s that scientists discovered they sleep in one to 35 minute bursts. They are the original “power nappers.” So what do they do all night instead of sleeping? They hum. Yes, hum! Just imagine listening to a giraffe’s lullaby.
In Kenya and Tanzania, there are three types of giraffes —
– Isak Dinesen
AFRICA PHOTO TOURS
BLONDES
the Reticulated, the Masai, and the Rothschild. The Rothschild giraffes were once so endangered that in 1932 a sanctuary was built in Nairobi, Kenya for their protection. This special place, Giraffe Manor, is open to tourists. The star attraction at the sanctuary are the 12 giraffes in residence who often peek their heads into the second floor windows to share breakfast with the delighted guests.
There are so many fascinating things to discover about giraffes and all the other creatures that can be found on safari with John Rizzo’s Africa Photo Tours. It’s an unforgettable trip filled with lions, elephants, leopards, zebras and rhinos — all waiting to be discovered by you.
Rizzo, an award-winning photographer, leads a team of experienced guides specializing in safari and tribal tours within East Africa — Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. His experienced team brings an intimate group of guests of all ages to see the “Big Five” (buffalos, elephants, lions, leopards and rhinoceroses) as well as visit with the Maasai, Samburu and Turkana people. It’s a once in a lifetime experience, far more beautiful than any of your childhood imaginings. Some dreams are so worth waiting for.
For more, visit africaphototours.com.
Statues of limitations
BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA
The murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests have reignited the long-simmering debate over monuments to racist historical figures — thrown into sharp relief by the events of Charlottesville in 2017 when white nationalists marched on that Virginia city to denounce the removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s statue, killing three and injuring 34.
The question of Confederate statues — which were erected long after the Civil War in the era of Jim Crow segregation (1890s-1950s) and thus serve no purpose beyond intimidation — would seem to be a no-brainer. Losers do not get to dictate either the terms of their surrender or the trappings of their defeat. There are no statues to Adolf Hitler in Germany.
But what about the monuments to the victors, those flawed men — and yes there are almost always men, white men — who created, preserved and expanded this union, often at tremendous cost to others? Should their tributes be removed
The American Museum of Natural History has asked New York City to remove James Earle Fraser’s 1939 bronze of Theodore Roosevelt from in front of the museum on Central Park West, citing the racial hierarchy of its depiction of the white president on horseback flanked by a Native American and an African-American on foot. Photograph by Edward H. Blake.
entirely, kept in place with contextual materials or moved to museums? Does it depend on the man and the monument? We can’t imagine the Washington Monument being dismantled, although much has been done in recent years to discuss President George Washington as a slaveholder, particularly at his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Nor can we see the Lincoln Memorial being destroyed, although President Abraham Lincoln was slow to see blacks as intellectually equal to whites and was first and foremost interested in preserving the union, not freeing the slaves. That he did so and “gave the last full measure of devotion” with his life tilt the scale in his favor.
Other monuments, however, have come to their day of reckoning. New York City will remove James Earle Fraser’s 1939 equestrian statue of President Theodore Roosevelt, which stands in front of the American Museum of Natural History on city property on Central Park West. In making the request, museum president Ellen V. Futter said she offers no judgment of Roosevelt, only of the racially hierarchical composition of the statue, which shows him on horseback flanked by an African American and Native American on foot. (Futter’s statement may just be hair-splitting. It’s hard to separate the man — who espoused workers’ rights and imperialism, conservation and big game hunting — from the message.)
Opponents have said that by removing such statues, we are attempting to remove the past. You cannot, they say, read history — the story of the past — backward. True, but we live with the past, not in it as we try to learn from it. Many experts counter that what is needed is the curatorship to put these monuments in the context of their times. But even such scholarship may not be enough. In January 2019, the Museum of Natural History mounted an exhibit “Addressing the Statue” to consider myriad viewpoints on the Roosevelt monument.
It is one thing to study the past, however, another to celebrate it. The presence of such statues out of doors in places of prominence suggests an exaltation of the iconographies they espouse. The time for their removal has come.
Some of the statues will survive as museum exhibits; others as archival photographs; all as opportunities to understand where we’ve been and where we are going.
But there is something else we must understand: What is important or incendiary in one era is lost on another. In his poem “Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley contemplates a statue of Ramesses II that lies in ruins. (Ever the iconoclast, Shelley discounted all the many sensuous sculptures of the pharaoh that remain throughout Egypt.)
Still, Shelley’s point is well-taken: The “immortality” conferred by stone and metal, like that of flesh, is fleeting indeed.
WARES
RECREATION — AND RE-CREATION— AT HOME
BY CAMI WEINSTEIN
By the time this issue comes out, I hope that we will find a path forward on some of the more challenging events that we have been dealing with, including the coronavirus, health care inadequacies, massive unemployment and racism. For many of us, summer is a time to take a deep breath, relax and enjoy family and friends with leisure activities, including barbecues, picnics, concerts, sports, travel and home. This summer I’m looking forward to doing at least some of these activities, as we need to unwind more than ever.
Although many of us enjoy pastimes in large groups, this summer is different. We have been relishing activities in smaller groups and staying closer to home than we normally do. For me these past few months have felt overwhelming and I am craving ways to unwind and de-stress. A walk or run on the beach, hiking, a bicycle ride, gardening and painting are some of the things I have been doing to relax and recharge. Some other leisure activities that can be played on your lawn in smaller groups — and were actually more popular in the past — are badminton, croquet and bocce ball. They remind me of my childhood and can be so much fun to introduce to younger generations.
Puzzles are a great way to share family time.
Think about working on projects or leisure activities that you never have had time for in our fast-moving world. If traveling becomes untenable, maybe take some day trips. There are many wonderful places to visit and explore that may be only an hour or two away. The Hudson Valley in New York state, which includes the Rockefeller State Park Preserve; Mystic, Connecticut; and Jones Beach on Long Island are but a few. Most parks and beaches are open now and can easily be done in a day. Or create a picnic in your yard or nearby park with a more exotic theme from a place you were planning to travel to. I enjoy painting and though I had not picked up my paintbrushes in a long time, I took them out and started painting again during the Covid-19 shutdown. Now that the weather is beautiful, I have taken my paints and canvasses outside to paint en plein air. I also love knitting and to date have made some scarves and hats and I am ready to work on some knitted gloves. Creating things has always been a way for me to relax.
A fun family activity is to work on puzzles together and during these past months I have seen many on social media. For large puzzles, clear an area in a hardly used dining room and set up a puzzle to complete there. Or use a game table and leave the puzzle set up there. Since we have had the time to make several puzzles, we have traded them with friends once completed. When our kids were younger and we were away on vacation, we worked on crossword puzzles together on the beach and now on Sunday when we are all together at our beach house, we still do them together. A few heads are always better one.
Most of us who have been staying close to home might want to try out some new recipes. Take the time to learn a new, more complicated recipe or dessert. I personally don’t love cooking the same thing week after week. When our kids were younger, we would try a new recipe and then vote on it — keep it or leave it. We needed a majority vote to keep it in our arsenal of recipes. It was a great way to get the kids to try different kinds of foods and kept mealtime from getting boring. Cut some flowers from your garden and light some candles to put on the table and pull out your nicest china and recreate a restaurant experience right at home with your new recipe as the feature. Add a new cocktail, dim the lights and have a memorable evening.
No matter how you like to spend your leisure time, either alone or with family, there are plenty of ways to enjoy it.
For more, call 203-661-4700 or visit camidesigns.com.
