Home Guru: All the World’s a Stage, But Our Stage is at Home
By Bill Primavera
When I opened my own PR firm ‘lo those many years ago, my very first assignment was to write a speech for an icon in the hospitality industry. It was to be delivered at a university where a major area of concentration is hotel management. The focus of the talk was to be a sort of cavalcade of major events that have taken place at hotels, as a stage of sorts for world history.
As I wrote the speech, I reflected on the events of my life and remembered tha, when I was young I thought that staying home was being “no place” and that the high points of my life were to be played out away from where I slept at night. But as I look back on the “footprints” of my life, I find that my homes have been principal players in the script of my life story.
If art imitates life, one might ponder where great literature and the other arts would be without the background exposition provided by the home.
In literature, the home helps develop the plot under varied roofs, from “This is the House That Jack Built,” the clever nursery rhyme that is a cumulative tale of how one event affects another, to “The House of the Seven Gables” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with its suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft, to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that President Lincoln said started the Civil War.
In that war, the power of the background score was demonstrated by the tale “Home, Sweet Home,” banned from being played in Union camps for fear that is was so redolent of hearth and home that it might incite desertion.
In movies, how could Scarlett O’Hara’s character be defined without her unwavering devotion to Tara? In “Miracle on 34th Street,” isn’t a Cape Cod home the object of a little girl’s vision of a perfect life? The home also has supported the plots for great drama, even horror. Consider “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Amityville Horror” and “Home Alone.”
On television, for those of us old enough to remember, popular series followed the Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie,” the Cartwright family inhabiting “Ponderosa” and J.R. Ewing of “Dallas” getting shot at Southfork.
While some homes set the stage with visions of great power and influence – Versailles, Buckingham Palace, The White House – even humble abodes can tell their stories. Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-Step program, called his Westchester residence Stepping Stones; the actress Helen Hayes called her Nyack home Pretty Penny to convey its price (later paid by Rosie O’Donnell).
Homes and even their rooms remain indelibly attached to the major scenes of our lives. I remember exactly where I was at home when I learned that JFK was assassinated and the nursery I was wallpapering when my wife announced that she had her first labor pain. I stood transfixed in my bedroom as the first plane hit the World Trade Center, realizing that I would have been in that building at that moment had it not been for a late postponement of a meeting.
Currently, I am transitioning from an 18th century farmhouse bearing the name of an early American patriot who served first as the supervisor of my hometown, then as a state senator, to a new residence bearing the name of our President-elect. Every day while living in my former home, there was always something to remind me of our country’s founding. In my new home, my thoughts are quite in the moment. After the election results, one of my neighbors in my new residence asked my professional opinion as a realtor if the name attached to our property would enhance its value.
My dear Aunt Helen, who served as our family chronicler, told me something about an ancestral home that I hadn’t known existed until recently. It seems that during World War II the Nazis occupied the Primavera villa in Chieti, Italy because it was the grandest residence in town. When I learned that, I decided to learn more about my family tree.
Today, most of us live in modern housing, which serves more as a bare stage in which we dress the set with our fixtures, colors, fabrics and furnishings, and the wealthier among us can do that grandly.
But whether our homes are manorial or ever so humble, they occupy center stage in our life stories, confirmed by Dorothy Gale’s testimonial, after her excursion over the rainbow and back, that “there’s no place like home.”
Bill Primavera is a licensed Realtor® affiliated with Coldwell Banker and a lifestyles journalist who writes regularly as The Home Guru. Visit his website at: www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com and, if you would like to consult with him about buying or selling a home, contact him directly at 914-522-2076.
Examiner Media – Keeping you informed with professionally-reported local news, features, and sports coverage.