Treasuring Garbage

I’m not a hoarder either in a clinical sense or in common parlance. My closets don’t overflow with clothes and boxes; there is ample free space in all of them. There is free space on every coffee table and end table surface; on a few there is nothing but free space. There is nothing piled on the floors of the house other than the carpets and furniture that should be there. I have quite a few books, but they all fit on shelves; I discussed my policy of limiting my library back in 2016 in Stacking the Stacks and maintain the same policy today. There aren’t curios in my home beyond relatively few items that have sentimental value, e.g. an oxen yoke made by my grandfather, a painting by my mom, war souvenirs from my dad, etc. My mom was very anti-clutter. She voiced the dictum, “When in doubt, throw it out” and she meant it. I keep more dubious things than she did, it must be said, but I inculcated enough of her disposition to dispose that my rooms, while not quite Spartan, are clutter-free.
 
There are two exceptions on my property: exceptions not covered by TV/YouTube decluttering gurus such as Mary Kondo. (Her “spark joy” test, which counts an item as a keeper only if it specifically brings the owner happiness – a family heirloom for example – nonetheless isn’t a bad one.) The exceptions are my barn and the attic space over the garage. Both are crammed with construction materials. Most (not all, but most) of the items were stored there by my father, who was a builder. He has been gone 21 years. (My mother has been gone 20, at which time the property became mine.) Much of the stuff had been transferred from the barn on my parents’ old property when they moved here in 1978. That previous barn was built in 1961, and at least some of the stored materials in the current barn date to then. The stored materials include mismatched screens, non-standard doors, mismatched pine trim, mismatched shutters, PVC drain pipes, mismatched cabinets, 50-year-old locks, literally a kitchen sink, backer board, aluminum gutters, mismatched windows, and much much more. He stashed them on the “I might use that someday” principle.
 
Why I still have them decades later is another question. The question has the same answers as from those who cling to household clutter. Misplaced sentimentality and a reluctance to let go of the past are two factors, but there is a bigger one. Denial of death might not be the first motive that springs to mind but many psychologists point to it. (The Pulitzer-winning The Denial of Death by Ernst Becker, the landmark text of Terror Management Theory, is worth a read, by the way, for its broader applicability.) “I might use that someday” is a way of saying “I will be here to use it.” We probably won’t be – or we wouldn’t be calling the stuff “clutter” in the first place. If there is stuff in my barn for which neither my dad nor I have found use in 20, 40, or (in some cases) 60 years, it is highly unlikely I will use it in the next 5, 10, 20, or whenever.
 
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Swedish author and artist Margareta Magnusson faces the issue head on. Magnusson describes herself as "between age 80 and 100." (This is her first book, which may encourage some late bloomer authors out there.) She means what the title seems to mean: she keeps things of genuine sentimental value (to her) and things that she actually uses, but as an ongoing process she thins out other stuff that will just be a burden to heirs one day. She says in a YouTube video about the book, “One day when you’re not around anymore, your family would have to take care of all that stuff, and I don’t think that’s fair.” I must admit to being more selfish than that. Fairness to my heirs isn’t a big consideration for me. I like freedom from clutter for its own sake – a point she mentions as well. The work benches in my barn, for example, are far more useable without junk piled on top of them.

 
So a dumpster is arriving Tuesday – and perhaps one after that. The bulk of what is stored in my barn and attic will be gone for good. Not everything. I’m keeping the tools. Also the lumber. I’ll definitely make use of at least some of it. As for the rest, I might use that someday.
 

The Cramps – Garbage Man

1000 Words

I’m not a technophobe. I do use contemporary electronics. But I’m not a technophile either. I often prefer older methods. I prefer writing checks to making online payments, for example, as much as that increasingly annoys the companies issuing the bills, but I will pay electronically when necessary. The physical act of writing checks and then inking the amounts into a ledger instills a clear sense in my own head of those expenses and balances in a way I find satisfying – and eliminates the need constantly to look them up online. I prefer books printed on paper to e-readers. Sometimes particular titles are too pricy or inconvenient to acquire on paper in which case I will read them electronically. I prefer the drive-through window of the bank to the ATM though I will use the latter (rarely) after hours. I prefer the checkout counter with a human cashier to the self-checkout aisle, provided there are no long lines at the former. Some modern applications just seem odd to me though. The salesperson at the dealership where I bought my last car, for example, made a major point of telling me I can start the engine with my phone. I can’t imagine why I would want to do that. OnStar and even the manufacturer can start it remotely, too.
 
So, while modern tech is not always my first choice, I don’t shun it either. When the alternative is too slow or clunky (or just not up to the task) I’ll readily go digital. This is also the case with photographs. I do keep digital photos on my devices, and have scanned many old film photo prints for digital storage. Yet, I prefer physical photo albums to flash drive albums or the cloud. Perusing physical albums employs four of the five senses and thereby is more impactful. I’m not alone in feeling this way. Unexpectedly, this is one case in which the generations are upside down in their technophilia. It’s rare that I say this about any subject, but I’m with the Millennials on this one. A Chatbooks survey of 15,591 families found Boomers to be more OK with digital albums than Millennials and GenZ:
 
65% of Millennials prefer looking at printed photo albums vs. digital
62% of Gen X prefer looking at printed vs. digital
50% of Baby Boomers prefer looking at printed vs. digital
 
Physical private photo albums are remarkably effective at mood alteration, usually for the better. According to a study by Doctor of Psychology Peter Naish, looking at a family photo album was more effective at improving mood than music, TV, chocolate, or alcohol: 11% for the album compared to 1% for the others. It was better than wine for relaxation: 22% improvement vs 14%.

Physical albums are not just for solitary contemplation and reminiscence. The audience for them is small by design, but for that reason it is intimate. (There are such things as commercial albums, but the reference here is to private everyday albums stashed in the closets of everyday people.) They are intended to be shared with friends and family. Sharing an album is particularly good for passing along family lore. It is far better than stories alone: a kind of multimedia documentary. This requires, however, someone who knows the narrative well enough to tell it. Most albums are not well enough organized or annotated to speak for themselves. Mine are not. But I’m working on it.
 
At the moment I have three albums with only the loosest organization: 1) prior to 1950 (earliest pics are from the 1890s), 2) 1950-1969 (my mom was prolific with the Kodak in this era), and 3) 1970-present. Within each, the chronology is inconsistent and the notation sparse where it exists at all. In addition there is a box of loose photos of various ages and sizes; also there are 21^st century digital images stored on my hard and flash drives.
 
My plan is first of all to reselect what goes into the physical albums and what stays in the box or on the drives. It’s important to know what to exclude from an album so it isn’t daunting and unmanageable. If a family member played in Little League for instance (I didn’t) and there are hundreds of photos of the games, don’t include them all; no one – not even oneself – wants to examine all those. A page or two is enough. The remaining pics can go into a real or virtual box. There are, of course, some types of photos I wouldn’t include even if I had them. (Anyone who wouldn’t leave some significant things out of an autobiography hasn’t led a very interesting life and the same goes for photo albums.) The second task will be to rationalize the order of the pics within each book, making it chronological as much as possible. Finally, I need to whip up some terse but adequately informative written commentary to intersperse with the photo pages in order to explain the who, what, when, and where of the pics.
 
The reason for inserting written commentary? I’m the last living member of my immediate family so there is no one else to provide it. In the event the albums end up in someone else’s hands, they will be unintelligible without it. I do have cousins from both sides of the family who share some ancestors, but even for them most of the pics in the albums without my narrative will be what they are to strangers: contextless faces. This raises the question of for whom the albums are intended. (Besides myself, of course.) In her paper Looking at the Family Photo Album: a Resumed Theoretical Discussion of Why and How, Mette Sandbye (Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen) writes:
 
“Family photo albums are about social and emotional communication, they can be interpreted as ways of understanding and coming to terms with life, and at the same time they document more sociological aspects of daily lives, that we do not have access to from other historical sources… While every family photograph adheres in some way to the rituals and conventions of a particular group of people in history (e.g. American and Danish urban middle-class family life in the 1970s, Japanese urban middle-class family life in the 2000s), we must also consider the physical materiality of each album and its individual images.”
 
In other words, family albums are not just personal keepsakes but historical documents that have some relevance for historians trying to reconstruct daily life in some time and place. Commentary helps. It’s a long shot anyone’s family album will end up in an archive somewhere for this purpose of course. In truth, mine are likely to end up in a trash bin eventually. But maybe not. On the off chance they don’t, I’ll name names and places. Meantime, the project (“project” might be too strong a word for something to which I attend so sporadically, a little bit at a time) prompts me to revisit old friends, many of whom exist only on images and in memory. It’s better than chocolate. I’m not so sure about alcohol.
 

Blondie - Picture This

The Un-Big Sleep

For some reason the websites I’ve visited for the past few days have been rife with ads for mattresses and bedding. The AIs that watch us online in order to tailor ads for individual users somehow decided I was a likely buyer. I’m not entirely sure what about my activities convinced them of that. My best guess is that I recently clicked on a science article about the world’s oldest discovered bed: 77,000 years old, it was discovered in 2011 in Sibudu cave South Africa by an archeological team from Witwatersrand University. Made of rushes, woven reeds, and leaves, it is 1 foot (30 cm) deep and a spacious 22 square feet (2 square meters) in area. While this is interesting in its own way, the AIs are mistaken to have concluded from it that I’m in the market for a new mattress of my own.
 
The mattress industry and the organizations that front for it claim you should change your mattress every 7 or 8 years. By that standard I’m overdue by about 20 years. I have no plans to change it though. It looks and feels the same as it always has: no frays, lumps, or sags. Is it as firm or comfy as it once was? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose so, because the question hasn’t really crossed my mind until just now. I sleep on it just fine regardless. If the day comes when I don’t I’ll worry about it. Not until.
 
It is not unreasonable to make the place where we spend a third of our lives comfortable, of course. A nice bed (though I’ve slept soundly on the occasional floor) and a distraction-free bedroom certainly help achieve slumber. I’ve seen the claim made in articles about the history of domestic architecture that individual private bedrooms are a modern ideal dating back no further than the Enlightenment. This is simply untrue. It is true that most people couldn’t afford individual bedrooms before then (or after, for that matter). Many still can’t, especially for the kids, even in the solid middle classes. The ideal, however, dates back to the beginning of civilization – and wealthier folks achieved that ideal then as they do now. Below is the floor plan of a Roman townhouse; the second floor (with a stairway from the peristylium) contained additional bedrooms; the bedrooms were small, basic, and usually contained just a bed (with a mattress stuffed with feathers or hay depending on cost) and a dressing table, but they were private.

Modern bedrooms are rather different. The average American house has increased in square footage by 50% in the last half century while the number of occupants per house has dropped by 25%. (Since the average includes older homes, the difference between old construction and new is even more stark.) Master bedrooms (now often called primary bedrooms, though I’m sure that term will be incorrect soon enough as well) have grown most of all; in new homes they average more than 225 square feet (21 square meters). In luxury homes the dimensions of this one room can be larger than the entire average house in 1950. They are furnished accordingly. But while bedrooms and their accoutrements get ever more elaborate, the amount of time we spend in them for their primary purpose – sleep – gets smaller and smaller.
 
There are sleep specialists who claim that the upswing in ailments commonly attributed to such things as processed foods and sedentariness (not that these are harmless) are more attributable to inadequate sleep. Neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Walker, for one, writes that sleep deprivation weakens the immune system (including response to vaccines) while increasing the risk of coronary disease, cancer, and stroke; further, it increases the risk of Alzheimer’s, decreases general memory and mental function, and is associated with higher rates of obesity and diabetes. The correlations are not flimsy: they are robust. Some are definitely causal and others probably are. These ill effects, both organic and mental, are just a few on a much longer list. The effects set in quickly, too: “Inadequate sleep – even moderate reductions for just one week – disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly [in an otherwise healthy person] that you would be classified as a pre-diabetic.” Some of the effects are hard to quantify. What percentage of road accidents is attributable to sleep deprivation? We don’t know because we can’t readily test drivers for it the way we can test them for blood alcohol levels, but controlled experiments show sleep deprived drivers to be every bit as impaired as drivers who are legally drunk. They tend not so much to fall asleep at the wheel as to zone out for split seconds (or longer) here and there, which at 60 mph is more than enough time for tragedy to occur.

There are a handful of people (those with a specific variant of the BHLHE41 gene) who can in fact get by on only 6 hours sleep without impairment. In effect, they sleep more efficiently, getting all the benefits in less time. It is unlikely (to put it mildly) that you or I are one of them: the trait is an extraordinarily rare one found in a small fraction of 1% of the population. Even they are not immune to sleep deprivation; if they don’t get their 6 hours they suffer too. Walker quotes his colleague Dr. Roth, “The number of people who can survive on 5 hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population, and rounded to a whole number, is zero.”
 
The rest of us (which is to say very nearly all of us) to be at our best need the 7 to 9 hours the CDC recommends. Yet ever increasing numbers of behave us as though we are the exceptions. Since the 1940s the average time dedicated to sleep in the US has dropped nearly two hours and we are paying the consequences. We like to blame long work hours (even though they are shorter than in the early 20^th century when people slept longer) and other exogenous reasons for this, but for the most part our sleep reduction is voluntary. We deliberately stay up late even though we have to get up early. Perhaps work schedules could be shifted to start later in the morning to accommodate modern lifestyles, but that would help only if we don’t adapt by staying up even later. Schools definitely benefit (the kids, if not the teachers and parents) from later starts; schools that have tried starting an hour later without making other changes have boosted student SAT scores 20 points.
 
Is it possible actually to die from lack of sleep? For obvious reasons we can’t ethically test this on humans, but animal studies (some of which would not be permitted today) indicate yes. A 1983 experiment at the University of Chicago with rats that were kept awake resulted in 100% mortality in 18 days. Cause of death could not be determined. There were no identifiable organ failures. The rats just died. The Guinness World Records has stopped publishing new records for human hours without sleep because of the danger posed to people trying to break whatever the current one might be.
 
I get up between 7 and 8 a.m. pretty much every day. I have no obligation (anymore) to arise then, but I simply don’t sleep past that time even if I wish to do so. Accordingly, the only flexibility in my sleep schedule is at night. I can doze off as easily at 11 p.m. as at 1 a.m. After reading Walker’s book I’m more inclined to choose the earlier hour. Despite the AIs’ concerns, my mattress won’t pose a problem, though I suspect that the mere use of that word in this blog will keep the mattress ads popping up.
 
We’ll give Shakespeare the penultimate word on sleep:
 
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
– Macbeth
 
Last word we’ll give to Rita Rudner because, why not?
 
“Sleep really is the best of both worlds. You get to be alive and unconscious.”
 

Garbage - Sleep

Auto Motives

In all first world countries, but especially the US, it is difficult to get by without a car except in large cities – and not all of them. Los Angeles is only the most obvious example of a motorized metropolis. Where I live in the outer suburbs (sometimes called exurbs) of NYC, autos are the only practical transport. There actually are public transit options such as buses and commuter trains, but you still have to drive to the stations. This is not some big mistake. (Some social engineers consider it one, but from the perspective of the drivers it is not.) People who live in the suburbs and beyond choose to do so, for the most part, even if it means a long commute and auto payments. We like our cars. We spend much of our lives in them. Alarmingly, 1 out of 107 of us die in them according to the American Safety Council.
 
I recall the eagerness with which I and my classmates in high school anticipated getting our driver’s licenses. A license meant mobility. It meant freedom. There seems to a change in attitude about this among 21^st century young people – one that is baffling to their elders. Nothing illustrates today’s version of the generation gap so well as the tendency of teens to delay getting licensed: according to a Yale study 70% of eligible teens currently delay licensing by at least a year. There may be less to this than meets the eye. They do get licensed eventually at the same rate as their parents. They just do it later – sometimes years later. They do a lot of things later for reasons I won’t try to fathom. The time comes when they do drive however, and most will buy cars when they can.
 
Though between 17 (legal age for a license in NJ) and 20 I drove vehicles owned by my dad (my mom’s car was off limits), the first that was in my own name was a 1973 Ford Maverick. Aside from the brawny engine, a 302 (5 Liter) V8, it was a basic model lacking even AC. It cost $2900 in August 1973. I have fond memories of it. It took me all around the USA and was an intimate component of my 20s, the most experience-rich decade for most of us – definitely for me. Oddly I can find only one photo of it, and its presence is incidental: it happened to be in the background when I took a snapshot of a cat. Also in the background is a green 1965 GMC pickup. This, too, was a workhorse vehicle for me at the time, but it was in my dad’s name; when he bought it in 1965, after all, I was still several years from getting a license. The first truck in my own name was a 1979 Ford F150. It, too, was a basic model and also was powered by a 302. Ever since, I’ve always owned both a car and a truck. I don’t need the latter as much as I did when still in business with my builder father, but I continue to do enough of my own work to have use for a vehicle that can carry lumber, roof shingles, wheelbarrows, portland cement bags, or what-have-you.

'73 Maverick and '65 GMC pickup
in background

What brings all this to mind is that for the first time since…well…ever, both my vehicles are new. (Well, one is several months old now, but it is a 2021.) This has dented my finances, to put it mildly, but I’ll enjoy the new car aromas while they last. I tend to keep my vehicles a long time – over 20 years in two cases – so I may not get another such whiff in this decade. (We’ll leave to one side how many decades are in play at my age.) My old 1998 GMC 2500 Sierra pickup reached the end of its road last autumn: at that time my mechanic advised against sinking more money into it to keep it running. So, late last year I looked up nearby inventories of 2021 GMCs of the exact same model. The prices were simply ridiculous, averaging $73,000. I’d be afraid to use such a precious vehicle for the purposes I need a pickup: hauling blocks, gravel, plywood, etc. I opted instead for a very basic no-frills Chevy Colorado; even this was priced in the mid-20,000s, which is enough. It is 2WD, however, which made this past winter my first in decades without 4WD. It was missed. My other vehicle was a 2014 Chevy Cruze, which was a satisfactory runabout on dry roads but worse than useless in snow. So, last week, though there was nothing really wrong with the Cruze other than being over 7 years old and 2WD, I bit the bullet and traded it for a Chevy Trailblazer: an SUV with All Wheel Drive priced similarly to the Colorado. My wallet is far lighter, but I’m comfortable with the choice.

new Trailblazer

That my three most recent vehicles are Chevys is not due to brand loyalty. They are in fact the only Chevrolets among the dozen cars and trucks I’ve ever owned. (See my 2013 blog The Road Worrier about 10 of them.) They just happened to be the right vehicles at the right prices (by today’s standards) in the right locations; given how long I usually keep my vehicles, considerations such as resale value retention that might have favored another make (e.g. Toyota) didn’t really factor into the decision. Nonetheless, the historian in me rather likes that the brand has a deep past.
 
The company was founded in Detroit by Billy Durant and Swiss race car driver Louis Chevrolet in 1911. It was one of 270 (!) auto manufacturers in the US in 1911, from which only 5 brands survive: Chevrolet, Buick, GMC (trucks), Cadillac, and Ford. Durant had founded General Motors in 1908, but corporate politics forced him out of management in 1910; he regained control in 1916 but his time in exile is why Chevrolet was formed in the meantime as a separate entity. Billy bought out Louis in 1913 and in 1918 the company was absorbed into GM where it has remained since. The initial Chevy models were upscale and pricy, but the company soon shifted strategy to take on Ford directly with moderately priced vehicles aimed at middle class buyers. This started with the 1916 Model 490 priced at $490 ($12,100 in inflation-adjusted 2021 dollars). The first Chevy truck, based on the 490 chassis, was introduced in 1918. By the end of the 1920s Chevrolet sales had overtaken Ford though the numbers swayed back and forth in the years that followed.
 
I didn’t grow up in a Chevy oriented household. My parents liked Pontiacs for whatever reason. My mom even had a GTO, though she sold it when I got my license: I think there was a connection between those events. In addition, my dad always had a Jeep truck for work and occasionally a GMC as well. Their one atypical purchase was a 1968 Mercedes Benz 230 with 8000 miles on it that my dad bought at a steep discount; the original owner had a disagreement with the IRS, lost the argument, and needed money pronto. But while the bowtie emblem (which dates to 1913 btw) wasn’t to be seen in our driveway when I was a kid, my parents’ very first car well before I was born was a 1941 Chevy. I have a photo of it taken on a Florida beach in 1947, the year they were married. So, there is a certain two-generation completion of a circle in coming back to the brand. Then again I have a photo of my grandfather with a Model T, so maybe I should squeeze in one more Ford in my lifetime, which would be a circle on a first as well as a third generational level.

my mom and a 1941 Chevy

my grandfather Bellush
c.1922

 

Chuck Berry - Riding Along In My Automobile

Green Postures

Woods cover a bit more than four of the five acres (two hectares) on which I live. The remainder (less the coverage by the structures and some bushes) is grass. I do nothing to the grass but cut it: no fertilizers, no sprinklers, no seeds, no weed killers, no chemicals of any kind. Whatever grows there grows there. This isn’t out of any philosophical commitment to a “natural lawn,” which is something of an oxymoron anyway. It is out of indolence. Less than an acre of lawn doesn’t sound like much trouble to mow, and it wouldn’t be were it all level. It isn’t level. Even if my old Wheelhorse tractor-mower happens to be running, which it usually isn’t, it can safely be used on about half of it. The slopes require a hand mower, in some spots pushed along in a mountain goat posture. On muggy 90+ degree (33 C) NJ summer days such as during this past week, an acre is plenty.

back lawn

Both my parents grew up on farms. Both commented to me that they never mowed the lawn when they were kids. None of their neighbors mowed the lawn. Rich people did have lawns in the 1920s and 1930s manicured by hired gardeners. Neither set of my grandparents fell into that category. They left trimming the grass around the house to the sheep, goats, geese, and other grazing animals. In downtown areas (even in small towns) most people either had no lawns or tiny ones that could be cut in minutes with a non-motorized push mower. Lawns and lawn care didn’t become a widespread middle class fetish in the U.S. until after World War 2 with the rapid growth of suburbs: much of it deliberately planned by zoning boards that specified single family homes, lot sizes, and setbacks. Lawn grass is now the third largest crop (if one may call it a crop) in the U.S. covering 63,000 square miles (163,000 square km).
 
It is often said that grass lawns didn’t exist in ancient times. This is not quite true – almost but not quite. Wealthy Romans did create gardens with a mix of grass, ornamental plantings, and statuary; some of these gardens were philanthropically opened to the public as privately managed parks. Grassy areas also were kept for sports and military training. Ancient public buildings in the East and the West sometimes were on landscaped grounds that included grass and plantings tended by gardeners. However, private lawns in the modern sense around private houses were not really a thing. They seem to derive from Medieval feudal estates; the central defensible home or castle was surrounded by grass in order to have a clear view of approaching enemies. Grazing animals did most of the work at first but, as neat lawns increasingly became status symbols as the risk of attack by marauders faded but the desire to out-swank one’s peers increased, humans took over much of the task. By the 18^th century, tended lawns were firmly established status symbols. They were copied by the lesser gentry in the 19^th century as push-reel mechanical mowers made the task of mowing less labor intensive thereby requiring fewer servants. The middle classes followed in turn.
 
Most of the grasses that make up North American lawns (including varieties with deceptive names such as Kentucky bluegrass) are not native to North America. They were imported by early colonists because they were better suited for grazing cows and horses than native grasses. In this role they were and still are beneficial. Whether they do harm in the role of suburban lawns is a question to which the answer varies depending on location and water availability. In wet areas probably not, but in arid regions such as much of the US Southwest sprinkling a lawn is a dubious use at best of a scarce resource.
 
Suburban homes that aped wealthy estates on a small scale (mini-manors surrounded by grassy grounds) were central to a lifestyle to which many aspired after World War 2. It is a lifestyle to which many still aspire though for a variety of reasons it is less fashionable to say so than once was the case. The chore of cutting the lawn is among the smallest of the myriad costs to maintaining the lifestyle.
 
Most of my neighbors employ local lawn care businesses. I’m much too cheap for that. I cut my own grass, trim my own bushes, rake my own leaves, repair my own retaining walls, reset my own walkway slates, and so on. I complain about it but hope to be able to go on complaining about it for some years to come. (Financial considerations make the time projections iffy.) If I’m still here when I’m too old or debilitated to handle the grass, however, maybe I’ll get sheep. I hear they do a good job.

Ellen Greene - Somewhere That’s Green
(from Little Shop of Horrors)