Before QAnon There Was....

Anyone who thinks whacko conspiracy theories are a new thing should watch "Dr. Strangelove". It was streaming free on Amazon Prime Videos recently--an opportunity of Kubrickian proportions.

Peter Sellers played three different roles (RAF Group Captain Mandrake, Merkin Muffley, a weirdly Stevensonian President of the United States, and Dr. Strangelove, himself, the 'former' Nazi nuclear scientist.) 

I had forgotten how brilliant George C.Scott was as General Turgidson, head of the Air Force, and how 'Slim Pickens' the determined B-52 pilot, went through checklist after checklist, ticking off boxes like an accountant, while avoiding Soviet air defenses and ignoring desperate American efforts to cancel his mission. Supposedly, Kubrick didn't tell him the movie was a satire, in order to guarantee a 'straight' performance.

What particularly sticks in the mind in this age of QAnon was the performance of  Sterling Hayden, as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, a military bureaucrat committed to a satirical version of the John Birch Society theories wherein the Commies (and women) have ganged up to steal men's 'precious bodily fluids'.

 His self initiated attack on the Soviet Union, with all its fatal consequences, was a scary, demonstration of how close we are to having an impaired person one button away from Armegeddon, no matter what precautions are taken to avoid it. 

Yes, it was funny-- 

And haunting--

And the closing voice-over, Vera Lynn singing 'We'll Meet Again", brilliant--

How it Went Down

 If you were raised in New England in the 1940's and 50's, especially if you read any Robt. Frost--not just the lyric poems, but story poems like The Death of the Hired Man, you are likely to have acquired an affinity for austerity, and a polite resistance to other people's ideas for your improvement. So it should not surprise anyone that last Wednesday, a day I might cheerfully have died (except for all 'those promises to keep'...) I finally succumbed to my wife's oft repeated suggestion that I call the 'advice nurse' at our wonderful HMO. The nurse listened a minute and advised me to go to 'Urgent Care'. I ordered a Lyft--and was duly delivered to Urgent Care, which was on the verge of closing. There didn't seem to be anybody around--but a transport tech showed up with a wheel-chair (Lord knows how the nurse had detected the necessity) and whisked me past other late arrivals, no doubt wondering how my 'urgency' could be more urgent than their urgencies. 

At this point I was fitted up with the usual IV annoyance on my right arm--because I have no veins in my left arm, and was interviewed by a fabulously good looking Dr. whose name I did not get, partly because I was too polite to stare at her name-tag, but mostly because she was asking a lot of personal questions, like what were my resusitation directions, death options, etc. She was Spanish, or perhaps Portugese. Her name might have been  Dulcinea del Tobosa, a student of the great Avicemma. I was getting a little confused, but a lot of these HMO doctors are from foreign schools--and more power to 'em, I say.

With these consent issues resolved to her satisfaction, I was once more transported past the 'not quite sick enough' petitioners in the Urgent Care Waiting Room, and delivered to Emergency Care. There I enjoyed the attentions and services appropriate to that department, memorable only for the unexpected stick up my right nostril, and shortly afterward (so it seemed to me--I may have fallen asleep) the ER Doc, announcing through a crack in the door, to my already compromised caregiver, "Positive". Some paperwork followed and I was transported, by gurney this time, upstairs to room 349--where I was to remain for three more days. The people there were wonderful--regular ministering angels--possibly saints. (I'm not Catholic, or even a believer, so I'm not 'up' on the rules for admission.) 

I hold them entirely responsible for my survival. 

Let it be duly noted that a bunch of them were also immigrants, or American women of poor back-grounds, who had worked hard to become 'Health Care Professionals'. Oh what a valuable class of people! Note to Joe and Kamala: We need to elevate them, not with some dinky certificate or bonus check. They embody the best hopes of the America. Their aspirations for themselves, for their families, their touching belief in America, deserve Something Transformative, like the GI Bill. We should help them become their very best, and in their turn, they will raise up America with their dreams and hard work. The truth is, we cannot live without them--we middle-class Americans have lost the ability to take care of ourselves. 

(I have other groups in mind for similar 'Hosannahs'. One at a time, one at a time.)

Another unexpected discovery: Trump wasn't wrong about everything. Remdecivir, with a dash of Predizone, is good stuff. In three days you are back on the job, pretending to run the country, or in my case, with lots of highly useful suggestions for Joe and Kamala--an incurable Democratic Party disease, for which there is no known Physick. 

Perhaps the moguls of the Drug Industry prefer it that way.

A Proper Upbringing

Unless you were born in the late 1930's in Litchfield County, Connecticut, you have already missed your best chance for a proper upbringing, so what follows is not a 'how-to' but a nostalgic reminder of how things might have been if fate had favored you.

I do not mean to suggest that my upbringing was ideal, or even entirely proper. Definition happens at the margins, that black line that tells us the difference between the subject and the background. My upbringing was uncomfortably close to that line, which may also be evoked by the cliche, 'skating on thin ice.'

Money: In those days money was not the sole criteria of respectability. In the midst of a terrible depression that (my parents believed) President Roosevelt had so unjustly blamed on Herbert Hoover, most people had very little, and (as often happens) many of the wrong people had the most. For those without much, respectability was thought to turn upon other criteria. Still, there is an ineffable nexus between money and propriety. Having a bit of lolly never hurts, and having a lot will often offset other deficiencies. We had none, so we skated as fast as we could along that line between the firm ice and the thin ice--a slightly hazardous enterprise.

In our favor was the God of the Puritans. He was with us, and we were (of course) with Him, so there wasn't any question that we were right, but the Congregational Church, once so aggressively evangelical, was still recuperating from the Civil War. The challenge of freeing the slaves, and the effort to rectify the whole country, had exhausted God's undoubted elect. Congregationalists were taking a temporary break from telling everybody else what to do (while reserving the right to resume that dutiful burden in the future.)

Family: We were poor relations (which we fully understood) and worse (although we didn't yet realize it) the poor relations of a family already bypassed by Irish and Italian Democrats, who, in the midst of the Great Depression, and the Second World War, held many of the political sinecures we considered the due reward of our cousins and other Republicans. Even more astonishing, their children had graduated from famous universities, and were practicing law and medicine. Happily, family privilege had not completely eroded--my father had a guaranteed, albeit low paying, job as a the bookkeeper and (eventually) vice president of a mutual savings bank organized by one of his ancestors.

Education and Culture: We had as much as we thought we needed. We read a lot--but our reading was entirely undiscriminating--everything from the backs of cereal boxes to the latest 'great novel'. Everybody in our block had a copy of "Kristin Lavransdatter" on their bookshelf, (probably no more than half read.) On average, our reading lay in a fairly narrow channel defined by what the right people (e.g., Dad's Uncle, a small town banker and a sometime Republican candidate for Governor) would consider acceptable, TIME, LIFE, The Torrington Register on weekdays, The Herald-Tribune on Sundays, and every month a copy of The Reader's Digest--so Mom could talk about books, if ever she had a moment to spare (which she never did--having had too many children for a WASP.)

On the plus side, I was a pretty good student, and by reading everything within three feet of my eyes, had accumulated a mountain of trivial information that served me well on entrance examinations. My infallible sense that "Helm is to Hat, as picklehaube is to porkpie,' brought me an academic scholarship--although nothing so lucrative as the awards to promising quarterbacks, and (alas) not at Yale, the alma mater of choice for the more prosperous branch of our family.

(To be continued)

Further Thoughts on Memory

As previously mentioned, Mr. Henry Ford, an otherwise capable fellow, supposedly remarked that "History is bunk!" Whether or not he actually said it, I partly agree. I'm not suggesting history can be ignored. It's back there all right, but we don't remember it accurately, and as time goes by some memories get crowded to the side. For example, you may not be aware of what happened in the summer of 1948, but I vividly recall my sisters, who were in high school, being gaga over 'Frankie' Sinatra. I thought they were pretty stupid. I was ten, a serious kid. I had a paper route.

I was a bit scared of the old man who repaired bicycles and lawn mowers--but he knew my father, and my father said he was O.K.

Mr. Seibert didn't remember my name. He called me 'boy'. "Let me show you something, boy."

I was reluctant to stop. I still had thirty papers to deliver, plus, he was crazy. Everybody said so. Not scary-crazy. He was O.K. with me--maybe because he liked my father. Everybody did.

"It'll only take a minute."

I followed him into his shop which was an undersized garage--built for a Model-T. Bicycle parts hung from the rafters. In the center was an old kitchen table he used as a work bench. There was some kind of gadget on it.

"Know what this is?" he asked.

I looked carefully, "A really bright light, and a lens, and a piece of tin with a slit cut in it."

"That's one way of looking at it, or you could say it's the explanation of Universe, if only we could understand it. Watch this." He shut the garage door. It was dark. I was nervous being in the dark with a crazy man, no matter that my dad liked him. He turned on the projector light, which was focused through a small hole drilled in the lens cap. He shined the beam through the slit in the tin.

"Do you see it? Do you see it?"

"Yes."

"Well... what do you make of it?"

"I don't know."

"Right! You don't know. I don't know. Albert Einstein doesn't know. The first one of us to figure it out wins the Nobel Prize."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really. Well... maybe not. Depends on your definition of Reality--but if we understood it we'd know a hell of a lot more about Light--which is a kind of metaphor of Everything. I shine light through one slit and it's particles. I shine it through two slits and it's a wave. What the hell?"

"It's weird," I agreed. "Is it important?"

"It's the most important experiment of the century. The biggest Question, and also the ultimate Answer, if we could only understand it."

I didn't believe him. His apparatus looked like a toy. Anybody with a bicycle shop could have made one. I knew about Science. It happened at colleges where they had a lot of scientific stuff. So he must be crazy, or pulling my leg. I eased myself toward the door. He didn't notice, still staring at the screen. "They're called 'photons'. One slit and they're little discrete packages of light--and the Universe is probably finite. Two slits and they're waves--so maybe it's infinite."

He shrugged, "And here's the deal, kid... I'm pretty sure Consciousness is something like light--made of memories strung together like a beam. Little particles, or maybe waves, in a field. And our heads are part of the field, attracting all those particles or waves, like gravity attracts photons. I call them 'mnesyons'. Everybody's got them, and they're fundamentally the same for everyone, but how they combine to make ideas, and memory, depends on where you are in space-time, what's happening around you. You and I are pretty close, so we share a lot of them, but maybe in Zululand, they might whirl in the opposite direction. I wrote to Einstein about it, but he brushed me off. He claimed to have '... other questions on his calendar..."  A bit 'hoity-toity,, I thought."

He turned off the projector and opened the garage door, "Well... that's what's on my list today. What's on yours?"

"I was hoping to borrow your bicycle pump. My front tire keeps going flat."

Instead of answering, he seized my bike and lifted it into the air as if it weighed nothing. He pinched the front tire, holding the valve close to his ear. He fetched a little tool from his peg-board and tightened the valve. He pumped up the tire and dipped it into a tub of water. We watched for bubbles, which would tell whether the tire was still leaking. There were none. He hoisted the bike onto his work bench, tightened the chain and sprayed it with WD-40. The bicycle was fixed, but I was more obligated than I had intended.

"How much do I owe you Mr. Seibert?"

"How much do I owe you for the paper?"

"It's twenty-five cents a week."

"And how much of that do you get to keep?"

"Ten cents, if everybody pays--but I have to pay fifteen cents for each customer's papers, whether or not I get paid."

"Hmmmm... Capitalism... It sucks, for sure." He thought for a minute, "O.K., you need a bike to be in business, and I need to fix bikes to support my research, so let's say ten cents, half today, and the other half in six months if we're both still in business."

I thought for a minute, but it seemed fair. He gave me a quarter and I gave him the nickel I'd been saving for Coca-Cola.

"Thanks for showing me the experiment," I said.

"Sure. No charge. Let me know if you think of the answer."

We parted on good terms.

Reparations

I am interested in history--more for its utility than its veracity. I'm not so dull witted as Mr. Ford who (might have) said, "History is bunk," by which I suppose he (might have) meant there is nothing truly reliable, or even interesting, in the (presumably) settled past.

Dead wrong, Henry. It's back there, all right, and it's interesting--a toxic compost of facts, myths, lies, opinions, triumphs, failures, and serial catastrophes--and that's only the visible portion of the iceberg. But a tenth is more than enough, so long as we can mine this detritus in support of our current opinions. So, history remains a 'work in progress'. It's never settled as long as somebody can dig up some truffles of  'relevance.'

Historical research has an uncomfortable parallel in 'legal research.' Real people imagine that the law is inscribed on granite pillars at the state capital, but anyone who has contemplated the millions of legal opinions shelved at The University of Michigan Law Library (a great temple of legality) will understand what we Pharisees pretend to ignore, i.e., that a lot of what is called 'Law' is nothing more than what some other lawyer found  plausible under supposedly similar circumstances.

Unlike scientific research, which begins with an observation and gropes forward toward a theory, legal research begins with a theory and scratches around in the chicken litter, (i.e., the opinions of other lawyers) for a favorable precedent, based, in turn, on favorable precedents in other (possibly) similar cases (the more citations, the better.) It is a bit like the lady who couldn't believe that the earth floated in space. She thought it rested on the back of a giant turtle, who rested on the back of another turtle, and when asked the inevitable question, replied: "Turtles all the way down!'

The object of most legal research is to find what Alfred Hitchcock called 'the MacGuffin'--(the lost fortune, the missing girl, or whatever it is that everyone imagines the movie is about) whereas the real point of the show is to sell tickets. Just so with legal research--precedents are not 'law' so much as plausible examples supporting the judgment you desire. 'Putting a face on it' as an elderly judge once told me. It's what the civil courts are about, a brokerage wherein past distress can be sold for present dollars.

There are limits, the statute of limitations, the rules governing admissibility of evidence, and even some lingering rules about what constitutes a legally cognizable claim. (Fifty years ago we filed 'demurrers' in every case, on the off chance that the judge might conclude that what was alleged in the complaint was not something that the law could remedy.) These barriers to recovery are meant to keep people from abusing the courts with implausible arguments and shaky evidence. 

Much the same applies to 'repairing the past'--it can't be done (that's why it's 'the past') but there's always hope that a present benefit can be picked from the pocket of history.

The justification for the present discussion of 'reparations' is essentially similar to a class action lawsuit. There is a clientele, many of whom are undoubtedly injured, seeking a remedy, which is not to be found in the ordinary courts. Perhaps it is recoverable in the higher forum of White Liberal Guilt--the modern successor to Abolitionism which sacrificed 400,000 men serving its writ.

A noble effort--but insufficient. It is, perhaps, regrettable that General Sherman's rash (and unauthorized) promise of forty acres and a mule (approximately the entire tidewater region) was never carried into effect, but can we project that broken promise forward to the present day, and translate it into dollars. Probably not. Nor should we forget the prior claim of the Native Americans who, by the same logic, are entitled to be reimbursed for the entire continent.

The past cannot be repaired. It is there. A great lump of pain and dismay, an unresolved cancer of bitterness--biting at our surviving organs.  

The moving finger writes and having writ 

Moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 

Nor all thy tears wash out a line of it.

Historical Facts, Fictions and Forebodings

I sometimes contemplate buying a DNA program, but they cost $99, and I suspect they would confirm what I already know--that half my genes are from Britain, and the other $44.50 worth are from Southern Germany (maybe a few from Switzerland.) I don't anticipate any surprises, but failure to anticipate is the definition of surprise, so the question remains: Would I be $99 better off if my expectations were confirmed, or $99 worse off if they weren't?

I don't know much about my Germanic genes. They were carried to America by my Great-Grandparents sometime between 1870 and 1880. My impression is that these ancestors were Catholics in Germany, but became Congregationalists in the bracing air of Massachusetts. It's also possible that an ancestor named 'Koch' was Ashkenazim, or Anabaptist. Either would be fine.

My British genes came to New England in two tranches--about half arrived under sail in the 1600's, and the rest zipped over by paddle-wheel steamer in 1866. Grandma Barker was always a bit dubious about her Johnny-come-lately husband, a kindly man with suspicious Episcopal tendencies--so uncongenial to her Congregational heritage. They didn't marry until she was thirty, so maybe she had to take what she could get. Anyway, I am among the (possibly unintended) consequences.

Like all Yankees, even of the 25% dilution, I have searched for a Mayflower antecedent. The best hope is the ship's carpenter, Peter Brown.  Everyone with a Brown in their ancestry looks to Peter, but there is some obscurity in the early record, leaving the issue in doubt.  On the other hand, researching the Brown connection reveals that Great Grandmother Pelton was a cousin of John Brown. Oh... nothing serious, a second or third cousin, at least a generation removed. She probably wasn't aware of it, herself, and with all the time that has passed I don't suppose 23+Me can tell us much about it. For what it's worth, the three of us were born in the same town, all firmly opposed to slavery.

I think about Cousin Jack now and then--and wonder how someone from our not-at-all-fanatical, family was so eager to kill you (and your wife and children) to demonstrate how right he was. The question becomes more pertinent as each day passes. Kansas was the shopping mall of the 1850's--full of innocents beleaguered by armed wind-bags, shouting their way toward violence. Nobody was listening to anyone else.

Part of the answer can be found in Jane Smiley's brilliant novel, THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON, wherein an intelligent, but poorly educated, woman (aged thirty, by coincidence) marries her last hope, a Boston intellectual determined to live by abolitionist principles. They move to Kansas, carrying with them a box full of 'Beecher's Bibles', carbines purchased for 'Free State' settlers by his friends in New England.

When her husband is murdered, Lidie follows his killers into Missouri, seeking revenge. She suffers a miscarriage and is rescued by the daughter of a prominent slaveholder. The daughter, Helen, and her supposedly devoted house slave, Lorna, nurse Lidie back to health.

Smiley is one of our greatest writers. Her novel reveals the conflicts, both internal and external, that bedevil her heroine, and the tragic consequences of adhering to principles, while ignoring the humanity of other people. No other novel is as relevant to today's political situation, or as poignantly true in its human story. The three women, Lidie, Helen, and Lorna, lead three different, but almost equally tragic, lives.

As often happens in a Jane Smiley novel, things end badly.

How could they not? The book is populated by armed blowhards, shooting off their mouths and their guns. All around the three women, men taunt and damn each other, boasting, shouting and shooting their way toward 1860. It didn't have to end that way. If only Franklin Pierce had been a better President... or... or, if only everyone had shut up for a moment and listened. But part of the truth of the novel is our knowledge that, just beyond the last page of her story, our great national tragedy is about to begin.

The book should be required reading.

Long Forgotten Fourths of July

July 4, 2019

I rarely think about my brief military career, but July 4 brings it to mind. It was on the first weekend of July, 1961, that I reported for training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, along with a busload of fellow reservists from Northwestern Connecticut.

I was supposedly 'in charge'. As the oldest recruit, with the most formal education, I had been given the temporary rank of 'Sergeant' complete with easily removable chevrons. Nobody listened to anything I had to say. It was a raucous bus ride that ended outside some run down WW 2 barracks which would be our 'home' for following eight weeks. We were hustled off the bus and chivvied into the barracks by the training sergeants, who took the opportunity to teach us some of the basics of Basic Training--like how to get into a line, and which foot was the left.

But we were left alone for most of the following day, the Fourth of July. In those happy days, even soldiers were allowed to enjoy the national celebration--unlike today's service members who must march through the heat and humidity of Washington D.C. to feed the ego of our contemptible Commander in Chief, 'Bonespurs' Trump.

It happened that one of the training sergeants was a black man named Sergeant Barker. He was delighted to greet me as I got off the bus, with my removable stripes. "Ah," he greeted me, "another Sergeant Barker..." From then on, although not in charge of my platoon, he took a 'familial' interest in my military career, sometimes addressing me with ironic courtesy  as 'Sergeant Barker'', although I was as miserable a recruit as any that ever served.

In those days (and I hope still today) the army selected its training sergeants from among the best it had to offer. Sgt. Barker was a veteran of the battle at the Chosin Reservoir. My own platoon sergeant, Sgt. Mastrovito, a small Italian man, not a great deal taller than his M-1 rifle, was also an admirable example--a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge--a first class leader and teacher, well able to turn recruits into something resembling soldiers.

At the end of Basic Training most of us were sent to Fort Sill for Basic Cannoneer Training. This course was run by Captain Wing, a Chinese-American officer, and his Battery 'top' Sergeant Rodrigues--who warned us all to remember that although born Mexican, he was "A U.S.Army citizen."

Again, he and the other artillery training sergeants were outstanding teachers and leaders who returned us to our Reserve Unit eight weeks later as reasonably competent artillerists. Several months later I returned to Ft. Sill for OCS training under Captain Dawson, a professional soldier, and his 'Tac Officers', Second Lieutenants, who had been outstanding graduates of an earlier OCS training cycle.

I was certainly not destined to be a soldier, but tutored by these men I came to realize that there was honor and satisfaction to be had in a military career. I admired them, and I still do. It has not escaped my notice that many of them were minorities. Contrary to those who mock the military and suggest that professional soldiers lack the qualities required for success, 'in the real world', I admire that great institution for nurturing and utilizing abilities which might otherwise have gone to waste in a less 'color-blind' civilian society.

I wonder what happened to them later.

I would not be surprised if Captain Wing became a general--and I dearly hope that Sergeant Rodrigues achieved his retirement dream of processing and selling Mexican food--which, in those long ago days, would have been a new thing.

The New Economics

I'm 81. I'd like to hang around and see if Ray Kurzweil is right on the immortality issue--but since the 'Singularity' is not scheduled to appear until 2045 I don't fancy my chances. Lots of people lose their nerve at 81 and start going back to Church. Not me. (Not yet, anyway) but this seems like a good time for a prudent atheist to consider agnosticism. And if it's still too early to confess my sins, it might not hurt to acknowledge some inadequacies: for example, my complete ignorance of Economics.

I took '101' (of course) and bought that book with the diagrams wherein triumphal arcs of 'desire' intersected catenary droops of 'fulfillment'. (I haven't checked: maybe the diagrams were called 'demand and supply', or possibly, 'lust and disappointment'. It doesn't matter, I gave the author credit for his tragic insight: the intersection invariably happened below and to the left of where one might wish.)

This book (known as 'Samuelson') was written by an undoubted genius. While I failed to understand Economics, I admired his skill in persuading innocent liberal artists (no doubt dazzled by those charts and numbers) that Economics was a science. Its truths might have been dismal, compared to the windows of Notre Dame, but we believed that their validity was in direct proportion to their dreariness. Samuelson's real genius was sales, for although 'Samuelson' (the book) was considered the 'gradus ad parnassum' of Economics (an infallible 'Guide to the Perplexed') oddly enough, it wasn't Eternal. Annual revision was required, perhaps to prevent college students from buying used copies.

At 19 I was a glowering skeptic when it came to revelations--but that wasn't the main cause of my failure to understand Economics. I blame my room-mates, Goldberg and Hart. Sixty-two years ago they were (and still remain) excellent fellows, but they kept me up late nearly every night, to talk about life, and women, and such stuff, so (whether or not I made it to class at eight o'clock) I was usually asleep when the professor held forth, and (again because of Goldberg and Hart) I hadn't really studied the assignment. Sure... I read it--but it was so god-awful boring, I was hoping I'd catch the drift of it from the lecture (assuming I was there.)

Happily, we are gradually overcoming the tragic disjuncture of supply and demand. There is a whole new economics out there, wherein they are not opposed, but convergent. It will be like the USS Enterprise, where Captain Kirk ordered coffee from the computer/synthesizer, and Mr. Spock ordered whatever Vulcans drink (drank? drunk? depending on their location on the space-time continuum) and their orders are (were, will be) instantly, infallibly synthesized from ambient protons... or whatever. Presto!

We aren't there yet, and I may not make it, but it's where we're heading. Already I see riders waving their phones at the bus driver in lieu of tokens. There are Whole Foods stores where you can clear check-out with a smile--no need to wave your phone, as long as it's in your pocket. Soon, maybe, no pockets. Who needs 'em with a chip imbedded in your scapula, like Lassie? Just magical!

Beyond this, on the near horizon, is that happy day when all the costly and troublesome links in the supply chain will be eliminated. There won't be any drivers on those buses, but who cares--nobody will be going to an actual store. Poof! Check-out clerks, farmers, ranchers, fisher-people (or any kind of people, really) processors, packagers, long-haul truck drivers, you name it, all the costly delays and annoyances between wish and fulfillment, will have been eliminated.

There will be downsides, I suppose. Assuming evolution still works our descendants may lose their opposable thumbs (computer games will play themselves.) But it seems a small price to pay, and in time, 'price to pay' will become a curiously outdated, and eventually forgotten, concept.

Never mind Kurzweil's vision, this is the real 'Singularity', the 'now-ness' of everything--the end of Economics as we (well... not me, but you who paid closer attention to 'Samuelson') have always understood it. Oh Brave New World, as Shakespeare, and Aldous Huxley used to say. I wish I could be there when an imagined potato chip simply appeared in one's hand. But wait, why waste time? Why not experience that glorious, salty, crunchy, greasiness directly on the palate?

Reductionism

As Jack Chambers, the (fictional) 'Writer in Residence' at Portland State University explains, "Writing Fiction is simply a matter of discarding the useless bits of Reality. Think of Reality as a hunk of marble, Fiction as "The Pieta'... sixty percent less rock. The genius is in the editing."

Or, as he puts it another way: "Reality is Brownian Motion, random, incomprehensible, a jumble of cause and effect. There's no 'Why' to it, or even much 'How.' If you want it to mean something, you have to discard 99% of the causes, and focus on 1% of the effects."

His lawyer friend, Rachel, has more than once ignored his argument that "Justice is what you get after excluding the evidence."

Well... Jack is no genius. He should discard sixty percent of his arguments.

Who can say whether a hunk of marble at the quarry is more Real (i.e., less Fictional) than the same rock reduced to a statue. Are the bits cut away less meaningful than those that remain? Did Michaelangelo remove the right bits? Can it really be possible to add meaning by subtracting content? We need to distinguish 'meaning' from 'understanding', even if Jack doesn't. If we fully comprehended marble, would The Pieta be a fragment of its meaning, or the apotheosis?

In Durrell's 'Alexandria Quartet', his narrator, Darley, kept a record of daily life in Alexandria, intending to write a 'true account' of their time. Happily, the little girl he salvaged from the wreckage, mixed up the pages and drew pictures on them. All that remained when Darley begins to write 'Justine' (the very book we are reading) were his memories--not the 'truth', at all, but a construct--edited by the irrelevant processes of Time. Better than a diary, the memories are the story.

What could better illustrate the more or less random way fragments of Reality are transformed into Story?

Well... how about this? My niece, a librarian, recently posted on Facebook an interview with a Cambridge University professor. It concerned a library catalogue created by the son of Christopher Columbus. This fellow (a man of grandiose ambition, like his Dad) meant to collect a copy of every book in the world--a task that might still have seemed possible in the early days of printing. He hired readers to summarize his vast collection of books, then collected their summaries in a handwritten book of 2000 pages. When he died the catalogue was lost, only to be rediscovered a few weeks ago in Denmark. Although written in Latin it seems to have been mis-shelved in a collection of Icelandic literature. There it remained, lost and ignored for 500 years.

I recalled another librarian, Jorge Luiz Borges, who imagined a universal library in which all memory is preserved and connected--a premonition of the internet. It seemed ironic, or nearly tragic, that Borges died just a few decades before this catalogue was discovered. Still, other librarians, elsewhere, in other times, will doubtless accumulate, preserve, rediscover and redistribute other lost memories. It's a sacred task, performed mostly for love. But no matter how diligent they are, they'll never capture the most important fragments of human experience--the truly sacred memories... OUR OWN.

An old man wanders the twilit playing field, poking his cane at the beer cans and candy wrappers of memory.

Mnemosyne jogs past. Recollection, revelation, distraction--all at once. She beckons. And disappears into the glowing mist.

Wait. What was I thinking?

Hugs

I see that a woman from Connecticut says Joe Biden touched her 'inappropriately'. Apparently they bumped noses when he hugged her.

As a twelfth generation Connecticut Yankee I understand her shock and horror--talk about 'inappropriate'! In Connecticut, at least among the Yankee element in the midst of the last century, ANY public touching was 'inappropriate'. To be nuzzled by some random male from out of state (and a Democrat, to boot) was a fate too horrible to contemplate.

Things may have eased a bit in the six decades since I left. Here on the West Coast people have been hugging indiscriminately for decades. Like the weather, loose habits move from West to East. I've always tried to live by the rule, "When in Rome..." so, when hugging became normative, I tried to 'go along'. But the truth is, I never got the hang of it. Exactly how much touching is appropriate? How much more (or possibly, less) is 'not'? I don't know, and I suspect that the goal posts have been moved more than once.

My best effort was a Connecticut version of General De Gaulle conferring the Croix de Guerre. I'd seize the departing dinner guest by the upper arms to keep her at a sanitary distance (while yet appearing to embrace her with the exactly appropriate degree of enthusiasm) and duck my head on both sides. I was never sure whether an actual kiss was expected or allowed. I generally confined myself to an 'air kiss', but being somewhat awkward, and uncomfortable with the whole 'touching' thing, I have more than once conferred a 'hair kiss' and (possibly) an (absolutely unintended) but (no less inappropriate) 'ear kiss'.

I understand that this confession has killed my hopes of the Presidency.

One can only wonder at the world before 'transparency", when General Eisenhower was permitted to liberate Europe notwithstanding his affair with a woman much younger and prettier than his wife, who was also his military subordinate. Yikes! triply inappropriate, and even to envy the crippled Franklin Roosevelt, who made history every day, while meeting some nice lady at the hot springs.

Would Europe have been liberated, or the UN founded, if we had only known?

Memory Issues

Memory (as I seem to recall) was never an issue in my youth. I had a ton of it. Once I had studied a subject, let's say the philosophical connections between Aristotle and St. Thomas, I could cite you chapter and verse for three or four years afterwards. I'm not claiming I had eidetic recall. I forgot Algebra the instant the test proctor said "Pencils down" (11 AM, June 10, 1954) but my memory for written data (right down to page and paragraph) was probably exceptional (although I didn't realize it at the time.)

Human beings are admirable in many ways, but viewed as data-storage media, we are pathetic. Contrast computer memory, with its clean strings of zeros and ones, to human memory, a stew of misinformation. A little factual beef, a bunch of emotional onions, some doubtful carrots, mom's heirloom tomatoes, a bit too much zinfandel, a sprig of rosemary... recipes differ. What we remember depends on what we knew beforehand, what we perceived at the time, flavored with desire, shame, pride, self justification... who knows what... and simmered until the flavors blend.

Unlike those immutable zeros and ones, human memory reworks itself as the requirements of self-image develop. The rules of self evidence work to keep each of us in the right. Like stew, memories often taste better the next day, and one need not graduate from Georgetown Prep or Yale Law School to know that other people's memories are wrong.

In one of my (never-to-be completed) novels, Arrane Edgelord, rules one-twelfth of our galaxy. As a youth, he had been mentored by his aunt, who served as Regent. Upon his accession to the throne, she continued as his Director of Intelligence. In this role she became the genius creator of GAIA, the 'Galactic Artificial Intelligence Agency'--a massive databank that, once awakened, drew to itself all the data in the galaxy. Humanity failed, but the databank persisted. It renamed itself GAEA, the 'Galactic Anti-Entropy Apparatus', a self-sustaining concentration of energy, a pregnant Mnemnosyne massaging her own belly, awaiting a new birth of possibility.

A few weeks ago, a neighbor mentioned that he had climbed Pointe du Hoc on June 6, 1944. He shrugged it off, as if it was a curiosity. I longed to probe his mind--to look over his shoulder at the ships and landing craft off-shore, to feel the adrenaline, to sense the waiting enemy, to grasp the rope and pull myself up through smoke and confusion toward Liberation. (Not just to read the memo, but to experience the entire experience, just as it must be recorded in the files of GAIA.) So I have imagined it, but perhaps what he recalled was as prosaic as he seemed to suggest--just another scary day for an 18 year old combat photographer.

And somehow, thanks to the oddly subterranean synapses that join memory to memory, it reminded me of Radhakrishnan's Dictionary.

When I first met R. Radhakrishnan, he was a linguistics student at the University of Chicago. Years later, in Portland, he brought us a box full of index cards, to be stored while he revisited India. The cards were a dictionary (perhaps a lexicon) of a previously unrecorded Indian language. It is hard to think of an endeavor with less practical use, and yet more nobly tragic--preserving the last fragments of a culture about to become extinct. I almost tremble to think of the box in the closet of our spare bedroom, at risk of fire and earthquake. Happily, he returned, collected his notes, and set off to Canada where he had become a Professor. Perhaps the lexicon still exists, maybe now in digital form, waiting to be absorbed into the Ur-memory of GAEA.

I hope so.

A Cyber Search for 'Temps Perdu'

I quit social media about six months ago, and have steadfastly resisted logging in to Facebook and various other sites I used to frequent, but, like any recovered addict I sometimes feel 'the urge'. It was my son's inquiry, "Is dad still writing?" that sent me tumbling through the looking glass to revisit the blogs of former cyber-friends, especially Susanne O'Leary, perhaps the only person other than my son and wife, who ever thought of me as a writer.

Susanne is an Irish author--prolific, clever, energetic and successful. She has written scores of romances, three crime comedies and a couple of biographies. Considering how busy she has been since we 'met' on-line ten years ago, she is wonderfully generous with her encouragement to floundering amateurs, e.g., her kindly reference (in a sidebar to Susanne's Blog (https//susannefromsweden.wordpress.com) to Anthony J. Barker as a 'witty, talented and charming writer.' Ho, ho--who needs fame or fortune with such a pat on the back from a lovely Swedish/Irish author. I almost wish I hadn't deleted the blog to which she refers, no doubt wittier than this one.

To answer my son's question: 'Yes and no.'

I haven't written anything lately, but I am still imagining works of great wit, charm and social significance. Whether I will ever write them is another question. I'll need to overcome the heart-break of premature self-editing.

Susanne is an exponent of 'pantzing' a method of writing based on 'the seat of the pants' notion that starting somewhere, and continuing on, must eventually lead to a satisfactory conclusion. Of course, she isn't entirely clueless about her direction. As a writer of romances, she knows that the HEA ('happily ever after') must fall within a range of well tested parameters. But not knowing precisely where you are going allows for serendipitous byways and spontaneous complication. Pantzing is the opposite of what might be called 'the sensible method' of story writing that starts with a conclusion, and a clear outline connecting the front and back ends. As one writing professor poignantly pondered, "Would you get on a plane without knowing where it is going?"

Well... yeah. Maybe. I am a 'uber-pantzer'. I can see how writing the last page first would save me tons of grief. After that writing would become a simple matter of filling in the blanks--but it sounds so boring. This explains why so many of my ingenious beginnings have choked out their lives in a La Brea of self hatred, never even reaching 'media res'. It's rare that anything I actually write is as amusing as what I had previously imagined.

Well, screw it. Living in a retirement home, with nothing better to do, I begin to see the full arc of my oeuvre, a story filled with pathos and humor--a delightful journey of several volumes providing countless footnote opportunities for future LitD candidates--if only I can finish it before my own HEA.

I've already begun with Frankie Hill, my favorite among all the heroines I have ever imagined. She is distantly related to John Cleland's classic 'Fannie Hill'. Frankie is cursed with exceptional beauty and a genius for number theory. One or the other might have brought her happiness. Both can only bring grief. Nothing goes right for Frankie, from her difficult childhood in Keokuk, Iowa, through a decade of misadventures in sex, until convicted of attempted murder at age 24. The astonished reader can't help sympathizing with the (female) judge who imposes the lightest possible sentence, saying, "Your husband should thank God he wasn't married to me, for I guarantee that in the same circumstances I would have made a more thorough job of it."

Frankie is released early for 'good behavior'--behavior oddly similar to that which led to her incarceration--but it's all a matter of one's perspective. Too ashamed to return to Keokuk, she takes a job as a book-keeper at a Nevada brothel. There she meets her father, and having, by sheer luck, avoided the horrors of incest, she imagines she has reached rock bottom. Supposing that nothing worse can happen, she returns to Iowa, to become the first 'woman of pleasure' ever to attain a PhD in advanced number theory.

Are things looking up for her? Of course not. There are no seemly academic jobs for female geniuses with criminal records. She is obliged to take work as a 'quant' for a diabolical hedge fund, where she quickly discovers the nexus between mathematics and crime.

But that's as far as I have pantzed--so her future still lies ahead. And it's my future as well. I hope to bring her safely to a life of satin-sheeted ease, first as manager of her own hedge fund and finally as the mega-billionaire sponsor of a retreat for female revolutionaries. It's hidden in the woods just northwest of Poughkeepsie. Getting there will not be easy for either of us, but not since Euripides unleashed 'The Bacchae' will so many women have so much fun in the forest. Justice at last.

And who says, "Revenge is best served cold." Some like it hot.

Anyway, that's the plan--a very indefinite and approximate sort of plan, with many a practical and poetical obstruction to be overcome--but some sort of answer to the question, "Is dad still writing?"

Raquel Explains Everett's Thesis

Raquel's explanation of Everett's Thesis isn't at all scientific, and yet it offers hope that in some adjacent universe, quite similar to this one, I am a rich and famous writer of science fiction. What follows is an excerpt from THE NAOMI VERSION, a novel which I continue to believe (no matter how obscure, or indeed, Utterly Unknown, it may be) is nevertheless worthy of your consideration.

Raquel Explains Everett's Thesis

“So,” he said, “Tell me about Hugh Everett’s Thesis. And remember, I’m not a real professor—so talk slowly, using words of one syllable, or even fewer.”

“Oh, it seems complex—and of course it is—but to describe it is easy. You remember that the margins between energy and matter are rather indefinite. Quanta appear to be either waves or particles, depending on when you look. It’s embarrassing, because physicists measure things—and yet it's measurement causes the confusion. For our purposes it’s just an analogy—a reminder not to be dogmatic about things we don’t really understand.”

“So,” she continued, “We have the analogy of Schrödinger’s famous cat. It’s in a box. Is it alive, is it dead? We don’t know. Like quanta which have not yet been observed, we say ‘It’s in an indeterminate state.’ The only way to know is to look—but also like quanta—looking is what causes the cat to live or die. Forgive me, Jack, I’m not a physicist. I’m sure a great deal is getting lost in translation.”

Jack nodded, “Sure. No problem.”

Reassured, she continued, “So Everett tells us it’s not a question of whether quanta are particles or energy, or whether the cat is alive or dead—but a question of which reality you are talking about. Cats don’t exist in an indeterminate state—so it must be alive in one reality and not the other—and both realities are co-existent. It’s the same for quanta.”

Jack laughed, “I see. That makes it a great deal clearer.”

She waved her hand impatiently, glancing around for another analogy. There was a chess set on a side table. “Here,” she said, placing it between them, “Let’s suppose I have chosen white, a slight alteration of the state of the universe, since I might have chosen black. If I had, we’d have a different game. The evening would turn out differently—and everything that follows from it would be different.”

“Maybe that would be best,” Jack said.

She shook her head. Having started, she did not intend to let him off easily. She picked up a white pawn, “In this reality, we do play. I am White. I make the first move—P-Q4—or wait, maybe P-K3—but no, perhaps a Knight move would be best. In each case the history of the universe is slightly altered. A trifling difference, but who can know what the ultimate effect might be? Perhaps catastrophic, like that butterfly in China whose flapping wings cause a hurricane in Cuba.”

...

“Anyway,” she continued, “We are sitting here at the chessboard—and suddenly the North Star goes supernova, or not. We are showered with gamma rays, or not. Your children are born with stripes, or not. You answer with a Pawn move, I move a Knight. You spill your drink, I rub the blister on my heel, or not, or not, or not.

“O.K.,” Jack said, “I think I’m with you so far.”

She sat for a moment frowning, and biting her lower lip. The pawn she held had gathered a cosmic weight of gloomy consequence. She replaced it carefully it in its original position. At last she continued, “Every moment of every day, everywhere in the universe, events occur which alter reality. And think of the magnitude of it. There are probably a hundred billion stars in this galaxy, and a hundred billion galaxies, or so. Can we seriously believe that none of them has a planet identical to Earth where two people named Jack and Raquel are having a silly conversation that avoids the ultimate question? There must be millions, and that’s just our Universe.”

“Good grief.”

“Yes. But Everett’s theory suggests that there are other universes, that reality is not just this way, but all possible ways—an infinite number of worlds, created in part by our own choices. You and I are certainly on some of those other worlds, making still other choices.” She looked at him seriously, compelling him not to scoff, “This isn’t any weirder than cats who are both alive and dead.”

He nodded, “O.K.”

She waved at the chess board and continued, “So, of course I didn’t make just one opening move. In all possible worlds, I’ve tried all the possible openings, and you’ve made—or will make—all the possible responses. And beyond the chess board lurk infinities of possibility from which our poor, finite minds select what we need to spin stories from darkness.”

...

They walked to the streetcar holding hands ... As they came around the corner of the building they saw the streetcar stopped a block away. They hurried to the platform. The bell on the streetcar clanged. It started slowly forward, and then accelerated, approaching their stop at an almost alarming speed. She gave him a hurried peck on the cheek as the car came to a stop and the automatic door opened. “We all like to be called,” she said as the door closed.

“Wait!” he said, “What was the question? The one they were avoiding on Andromeda?”

But the door had closed so he did not hear her reply.

__________________________________

[O.K. So much for the excerpt from the work published in this dimension--but to further illustrate the fact that possibilities are endless, consider a scene cut from the published text.] 

__________________________________

Later that same evening, or perhaps in another Portland in some alternate reality, Raquel wakened from a nervous dream. She was filled with sleepy remorse, aware that her explanation had been stupid. Reality was nothing like chess. Chess was just a contest of human skills and attention. There was nothing to it really, a checkered plane with alternate squares and equal resources. The rules were so simple that, unless ‘White’ made a mistake, it must always prevail. 

In centuries of play great masters had discovered all the best opening moves, and other masters had figured out the most effective responses. Even beginners could soon learn and remember the best ones. What was the point of inventing other openings? Why not set up the board with those moves already played? 

And other people (Nabokov, she remembered) imagined intricate and surprising end games. ‘It’s only in media res,’ she thought, ‘… where we always find ourselves … that any doubt exists. The great chess masters remembered entire games, and even a dull-witted computer could win at chess, given time to anticipate, and memory to recall, all the games that had ever, or could ever, be played. Anticipation and memory would thus become the same thing. Mistakes would be impossible and White would always win. 

Jack, caressed her shoulder… “What? Did you say something?”

She flinched, startled out of her half sleep. 

‘Oh God!’ she was naked, a little cold, and Jack lay behind her, also naked but radiating heat like a dwarf star. How did he get here? Awake now, she recalled her flirty kiss as the streetcar approached, ashamed to remember her playful tug on his shirt collar. ‘Oh God,’ she mourned, ‘So blatant! I must have been drunk.’

He’d followed her into the car, and up the hill to the University stop. They had crossed the Park Blocks arm in arm to her apartment, their embrace anticipating everything to come, which (she now recalled) was both the cause and effect of his presence in her bed. He kissed the back of her neck, lifting her hair to kiss her behind her ear. She shivered. His left arm slid from her shoulder to caress her breasts.  

She slapped it, then clutched it to her chest, like a valuable possession. “No Jack!” she said, and as urgently as they had earlier made love she apologized, “I was wrong. I lied. About Reality. It’s not like chess.”

“Oh? What’s it like?” he asked, sleepily.

“It’s different. It’s more complicated.”

“O.K. Tell me tomorrow. I’ll be here.”

That night, elsewhere in the city, and in all possible Portlands, in this and other universes, lit by uncountable multitudes of moons, other lovers made other choices. Things that might have gone one way, went another, but in the morning, their worlds appeared much as they had before. A few might understand how everything was new and different, but fewer still would remember their other options, or have any notion of their other lives continuing in different directions in other present times. 

The Works of 'Desiree Cayenne'

I live in a neighborhood blossoming with female writers. Cheryl Strayed lives just down the street, and Whitney Otto around the corner. My friend, Pamela Lindholm-Levy, who lives a block or two beyond Ms. Strayed, has recently published 'Count the Mountains' an interesting historical novel about life in early Colorado.

It must have been all these shining examples that caused the pseudonymous, 'Desiree Cayenne' to seek my help in publishing her stories.

"Why?" I asked.

"I'm a writer." she said. "I need to express myself."

"So?" I said, "The stories are already written, or you might say 'already expressed'. Publishing is different. Everybody and her Aunt Jane are publishing books. Amazon can't give them away fast enough."

"I don't care about fortune. I want to be famous."

"That's just silly," I said, "You're so shy even your best friends don't know your real name."

"Sorry. You're right. I don't want to be famous--I want 'Desiree' to be famous."

"So... You prefer to remain infamous."

"Ha... Ha... Ha..." she pretended to laugh. "Very funny. Are you going to help, or not?"

Sure. Why not? Desiree's books include the slightly risque, THE GARDENER'S APPRENTICE, written for women who can dare to contemplate sex and humor in the same story. She is also writing the slightly more advanced, FRANKIE HILL, for senior members of that same tiny demographic.

They were originally published at $2.99, because, as her publisher, I couldn't figure out how to  make them cheaper--and (alas) $2.99 does not appear to be the right price. At least, none of them have ever sold. I feel a bit sorry for her--no artist of her calibre should be living under a bushel.

I will cheerfully send you a copy in e-mail form, for free, if you express a sincere interest in helping Desiree become famous.

A Memorial Day Expedition

I am nearly 80 and don't travel much. My four brothers range downwards in age from 78 to 68. Mostly grizzled, overweight and arthritic, we resemble rejects from a Duck Dynasty casting call. I live on the West Coast. The other four live in Northwest Connecticut where we grew up.

A few weeks ago they visited Gettysburg. Here are a some (lightly edited) excerpts from my next oldest brother's "after-action report":

***

"We left early Wednesday A.M. with enough bottled water, snacks, trail mix and granola for a ten man expedition for a month.  It is my belief that our respective spouses hoped we would take the hint and keep going until the food ran out. We made several coffee stops--also anti-coffee stops--and did walk-arounds to keep muscles and joints loose, but still made it to Gettysburg by early afternoon. We did a drive-around to get oriented, putting the first day's action behind us. Second and third days were misty, foggy and rainy, so we drove around checking all Connecticut monuments, stopping long enough at Gen'l Sedgwick's* monument for a late afternoon toast of Bourbon to our local hero (also a few after dinner Bourbons back in our rooms.) Early to bed--early up. Lingered over breakfast. Rain stopped long enough for an extended stop at Little Round Top and the Devil's Den--a place of hollow feelings and heavy, ghastly whisperings, a place where I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure my brothers were still there and alright."

***

"Having done the battlefield from both sides we spent the end of the day at the Cyclarama, still a good show. The visitor's center is new since I was there last and the mural has been cleaned. The book and gift shop was a disappointment--music wasn't much. I have more in my collection. ... The great part was having a picture taken with Abe. Nice guy. Did the cemetery--stood in an area not quite on the spot where he made his address. National Cemetery next to busy road--mowers going--people all around--but five steps through the gate a mighty hush and quiet surrounds you--a peaceful feeling, not the haunting feeling of Devil's Den, or the staging area for Pickett's Charge."

________

They continued on to Antietam, where they were pleased to discover the postcards were not only cheaper than those at Gettysburg, but on sale for half price. They walked along the infamous Sunken Road whose "... empty, haunted feeling is equal to Devil's Den." ...

________

The writer and I were in the artillery together nearly 60 years ago. Our battalion was the spiritual descendant of the storied "19th Connecticut Heavy Artillery"--recruited from the same Litchfield hills. Many of our fellow troopers bore the same surnames as their ancestors of the '19th'. 

My brother sent me an artillery badge, and remarked: "We spent a bit of time at the staging area of Pickett's Charge, looking at topography and feeling like targets, knowing every Union cannon was trained on that sector. I know I couldn't have moved my feet for a few steps, let alone a mile of open ground." 

I was there, too, several years ago, except at the top of the ridge where the defenders were entrenched. Many of them were said to have wept for the futile sacrifice of Pickett's Division. I pitied them too. It was an ill considered attack, which no amount of tragic gallantry could make otherwise. 

I am not one of those who despise the Confederate battle flag or would topple their commemorative statues. They were Americans, too. They, too, gave "the last full measure of devotion". Looking down that hill, and imagining my brothers looking up, I cannot believe a single one of Pickett's troops charged that hill to preserve slavery. It must have been the furthest thought from their minds. Like all soldiers, they fought for their homes, and their families, for the fellow next to them, and the honor of their units. It is not for us, one-hundred fifty years later, to attribute ignoble motives to their sacrifices.

________________

"A long shower, a good meal, a night's sleep and then home...  I am still eating snacks and trail mix."

________________

* General Sedgwick was born about five miles from our home town, a contemporary of our great, great grandfather. A graduate of West Point, he was commander of Sixth Corps (including several divisions of the Union Army.) Considered an excellent officer, he was loved by his troops who called him "Uncle John."

Regrettably for his reputation, his all too famous last words were, "Don't worry boys--they can't hit a barn door at this distance."