Writing about the value of the humanities as a field of study, Leslie Epstein offers important material for reflection. This Boston University professor has a reputation not only for his teaching but for several favorably received novels. Another of his credits comes from being the father of Theo Epstein, the erstwhile general manager of the Boston Red Sox.

Here I quote from three parts of a letter Leslie wrote to the New York Times:

“Everywhere, at every level of the American educational system, students have been cut off — or have cut themselves off — from the best that those who have come before them have thought and created.”

‘What the obsession with keeping one’s eyes on the prize has led to, I fear, is a certain coldness of heart.”

“In short, the lack of beauty in one’s life has consequences: the coarsening of one’s sensibility, the shrinking of imagination and the loss of feeling for what might be possible in the world. That is why, at bottom, one studies the humanities.”

Table talk over lunch with three friends turned, as it often does, to U.S. foreign policy. One of the friends had recently returned from a visit to Cuba. That stirred discussion of the continuing U. S. embargo and the Cubans who had left that country for Florida when Fidel Castro seized power.

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My friend, Emerson Stamps, three years ago wrote a letter to his father. At that time, November 2008, Emerson was 85 years old and his father had been dead since 1939.

As he explains, Emerson did not expect either to have his letter read by his father or receive a response from him. Nonetheless, he wanted to share in some way his excitement at an event of November fifth of 2008.

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Last Sunday morning, at the pool where I swim each day, my path took me toward a young child in the arms of his mother. When the woman smiled, I paused and asked the child’s name. “Truman,” the woman told me, a name that caught me by surprise because of my not having previously encountered anyone with that name. In reply, I muttered something about Harry S. Truman, the former president. She did not answer directly but looked accepting of my remark.

Later, having finished my swim, I walked past the same child. This time he was with his father so I paused and said how pleased I was to hear Truman’s name. I added something about the pleasure of hearing the name of a Democratic president, here in Cambridge where almost all of us favor the party Harry belonged to.

The father, however, promptly corrected me. His child was named, he said, not for Truman, the president, but rather for Truman Capote, the writer. Astonished, I could only express my enjoyment of the two major Hollywood films I had seen a few years ago about Capote.

Wax cylinder recordings found in Thomas Edison’s laboratory have revealed the voices of Otto von Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke, two powerful figures of 19th century Germany. In 1957 the box containing the cylinders had been found but no one knew their contents till last year.

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Dear Richard,

Thanks for the well wishes, I’m sorry I missed you as well. It is tough over here but I am doing well and my men are well. We are all tired, missions day and night and young men are still dying, six men were killed three days before Christmas, they were all Polish. I had to go and pick up the shattered bodies and destroyed vehicle. We are in their battle space. I will be very happy when this comes to an end. I should be back in Boston by mid-march. It seems an eternity away but I know it will arrive. I am truly tired of war I have seen too many horrible things and too many faces of the dead live in my head. The only good thing is that it has brought me closer to Jesus and his teaching. I miss my family, friends, and dear wife.

Best,
George

The last words of Steve Jobs, on his deathbed, were OH WOW, OH WOW, OH WOW. This is what his sister, Mona Simpson, reported in the eulogy she gave at his memorial service.

Though she is a novelist and could possibly have shaped this phrase for its dramatic effect, still it rings true to the man. While living, he was prepared for wonder and, next to death, might well have called out in a kind of ecstasy.

This way of dying fulfills what I once wrote long ago: “How can anyone on the brink of dying not be filled with an almost insane wonder?”