Auld Indeed

All dates since January 1, 2000 have seemed unreal to me. I was born near the middle of the last century (1952) and, although intellectually I know this to be silly, to this day it feels to me as though the current year should be written Nineteen-something-or-other. I still sometimes hesitate when dating a check or document lest I start the year with the wrong two digits.
 
Though I seldom can put a specific date to recollected conversations, I can assign January 1, 1970 to one, simply because the date was the reason for it. After the turbulent 1960s, a new decade seemed to offer a fresh start. (It really didn’t: culturally the “1960s” as we usually think of them continued another four years; they transitioned into the cultural “1970s” over the course of 1974 as former hippies swapped their headbands for disco shoes.) “1970” itself had a futuristic ring to it on that day, which probably prompted the dinner conversation with my dad, mom, and sister about the far distant year 2000 when not just a new decade but a new century and millennium would arrive. I remarked that I would be 47 – older than my dad in 1970. This seemed so ludicrous that we all laughed at the notion. My dad said he didn’t think he would last that long. (He did: he died on July 12, 2000 at 74.)
 
Age 47 and the year 2000 both arrived on schedule of course. While I didn’t laugh at the latter event it nonetheless still felt ludicrous. Tomorrow will be 23 (!) years later yet. Perhaps the reader can imagine just how ludicrous that feels. So, for Auld Lang Syne I’ll fire up the Wayback machine to recall life 23 years before 2000 on January 1, 1977.
 
The radio played a bigger part in my life then than it does today, so it likely was playing. Playlists are easy to recreate since the Billboard 100 offers a week by week cheat sheet going back decades on which songs were popular when. The top 10 in the US for the week of 1/1/77 were:
 
1. Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)
Rod Stewart
2. You Don't Have To Be a Star (To Be In My Show)
Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr.
3. The Rubberband Man
The Spinners
4. You Make Me Feel Like Dancing
Leo Sayer
5. More Than a Feeling
Boston
6. Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word
Elton John
7. I Wish
Stevie Wonder
8. Dazz
Brick
9. Car Wash
Rose Royce
10. After the Lovin'
Engelbert Humperdinck
 
OK, there have been better Top Ten lists before and since – but there have been far worse, too. I didn’t own any albums containing any of those songs (in that era I preferred the likes of AC/DC and Bob Seger), but wouldn’t have changed the radio channel if any of those numbers played if it meant crossing the room. I might have in my car for a couple since that just meant pushing a selector button.
 
My personal life was in a fun phase in ‘77, which is appropriate for age 24 in the most hedonistic decade of the past two centuries. My very special lady was a strawberry blonde named Angela. 46 years later it still feels wrong to post a pic without her permission, so I won’t, though she does figure in a nonfiction short story on one of my other blog sites. (We broke up in ‘79 – it was her idea.) My car was a 1973 Ford Maverick (nothing like the current Ford with that name) of which I was fond. It served me reliably wherever I drove it. Two years earlier this included a circuit around the continental US. I have only one photo of it, strangely enough, and that just by chance because I photographed a cat. I lived at home with my parents, which is normal for single 24-year-olds today. It wasn’t actually rare then, but in 1977 it did tend to encourage the judgmental question “Why?” (The reason was money, of course; I bought a cottage a few years later, which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.) I was healthy, young, strong, and stupid. I wasn’t stupid on the surface. I was bookish (then as now), intellectual, and well-educated in the liberal arts. I was stupid deep down. The full effects of that wouldn’t show up for some years, however, so in 1977 I was blissfully unaware of it.

1973 Ford Maverick in background

All in all, 1977 was quite a good year. I’d be happy to experience it again, either exactly as it played out the first time around or, better yet, with the classic “If I knew then…” advantage.
 
Now, here we are 23 years after 2000. Assuming I survive past midnight, I will be as surprised as my dad was 23 years ago on January 1. It is too early to get a read on what 2023 has in store. For me personally 1977 would be a daunting act to equal, never mind exceed. But I’ll totter on and give it a try. Happy 2023! (I didn’t even hesitate on those first two digits.)

 

The Clash – 1977

 

Better Watch Out

Many of the superficial seasonal traditions – notably Christmas trees – were introduced into the United States by German immigrants in the 19^th century. One that didn’t catch on, however, was the myth of Krampus, the malevolent companion to Santa Claus. It is not clear why. There is certainly no aversion on these shores to scary stories. One need only look at the way Halloween took off far beyond its Celtic origins.  Santa himself has an ominous side. “You better watch out,” as the song warns us. Yet there is a difference between the prospect of getting a stocking full of coal (a threat often made but seldom implemented) for being naughty and the prospect of being beaten by birch sticks by a horned goat creature and then kidnapped.
 
BTW, 90 years ago my dad actually got a coal-filled stocking as a kid, either because my grandparents thought it would be amusing or because they were making a point. A toy tractor was also in the stocking which softened the effect somewhat. I still have the tractor.

To this day, although Krampus continues to be popular in Germany and Austria, most Americans still don’t know who he is. A fair minority does however. The stories began to get some traction starting 20 years ago, culminating in the 2015 Christmas-horror movie Krampus. Enough now know of him in the US to make Krampus-themed cards, tee shirts, ornaments, and games marketable. A quick look on Amazon will reveal a remarkable array of goods.

The origins of Krampus are far older than Santa Claus, who can be traced to Nicholas, the third century Anatolian saint. Krampus pretty clearly derives from the half-human half-goat creatures (fairies, satyrs, fauns, and demigods) who predate even classical mythology. The best known version of the goat god is the mischievous Pan (cognate of the Rigvedic Pushan), who often was associated with Dionysus. Pan, like satyrs generally, represented the natural wild side of human nature, full of all its lusts. Accepting this side of ourselves was regarded as better than suppressing or denying it. He was generally worshipped in the wild or in caves, not in temples. In Athens on an Acropolis otherwise filled with ornate temples, there is simply a cave for Pan on the north slope. Today he is a major figure in modern Neopaganism including Wicca.
 
Over the centuries Church and political officials have made efforts to suppress Krampus mythology but without effect. He apparently is too much fun. Now he is too much a part of pop culture to go anywhere. There is a way to appease him. It is traditional to leave out milk and cookies for Santa. (This may account for his waistline.) Krampus, as one might expect, likes stronger fare. He prefers schnapps.
 
I don’t expect a visit from him this this year any more than I expect one from Santa. There are no kids in my household and neither takes much interest in adults. But in case I’m mistaken, if there is a choice between a birching from Krampus or coal from Santa, I’d rather have coal, especially if it comes with a tractor: John Deere preferably, with a full set of lawn care attachments.
 

Trailer for Krampus (2015)

Inconspicuous Consumption

“The pandemic is over,” so we’ve heard. Yet, three years after the first cases appeared in North America covid continues to stalk us. Some jurisdictions (LA among them) consider reinstating mask mandates and other restrictions as new cases rise. I won’t discuss the merits or flaws of previous and current responses. Enough talking heads do that and, despite what they say, the argument is never entirely “about the science,” for even when people agree on the purely medical aspects of the disease, they still disagree on policy due to differing values of the tradeoffs involved. I won’t join the finger-wagging on any side. But I am reminded of another endemic scourge that in the 19^th century for a quarter of the population was (sooner or later) a cause of death: tuberculosis (TB for short) or “consumption” as they commonly called it then. I don’t know if it offers any lessons on covid, but it at least puts the matter in perspective.
 
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Symptoms include formation of tubercles, especially in the lungs, leading to coughing, fever, expectoration of (sometimes bloody) sputum, and difficulty breathing. It has been around throughout recorded history, and probably far into prehistory. Tuberculosis has been found in Egyptian mummies several thousand years old. It is described in ancient Indian and Chinese texts – and later in Greek and Roman ones. It is found in pre-Columbian Peruvian mummies, indicating it was carried across the Siberian land bridge 15,000 years ago (if not earlier). It remained widespread throughout ancient and medieval times. To this day about a third of the global population carries the latent infection asymptomatically. Those with weakened immune systems are most at risk of becoming symptomatic, but the disease can appear in an otherwise seemingly healthy person. Unlike covid, it hits the young harder than the old. Unhygienic conditions common in urban settings (especially before the 20^th century) tax immune systems, and so unsurprisingly are associated with a higher risk for the disease.
 
In his paper A New Theory of Consumption English doctor Benjamin Marten in 1720 conjectured that the disease was contagious even though it didn’t spread as rapidly and reliably as other plagues. He was proven correct in 1882 by Robert Koch who isolated the TB bacillus. The term tuberculosis had been invented by Johann Schoenlein in the mid-1800s, though the disease continued to be called consumption by much of the general public well into the 20^th century. 19^th century physicians developed a treatment for TB: rest, fresh air, and sunshine, preferably at high altitudes. (This isn’t far off from the prescription of Galen, the Roman medical author who was also the personal physician of emperor Marcus Aurelius: he recommended the fresh air and sunshine of a long sea voyage.) Sanatoria popped up in places like Colorado and Switzerland specifically to treat TB patients. This wasn’t really a cure. The patients remained infected. Many of them died in these facilities, but others did see their symptoms abate to the point where they could resume something close to normal lives.

Huts for TB patients in Colorado

It wasn’t until after World War 2 that TB cases began to plummet with the invention of effective antibiotic treatments, which not only cured the ill but thereby reduced transmission to others. (Those with latent infections do not transmit the disease.) By 1980 the chance of getting TB in North America and Europe had become small, but in that decade a spike occurred. Those with HIV were susceptible to TB as were those with diabetes and other stresses on the immune system. Worse, new strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis appeared that were resistant to standard antibiotic treatment.
 
Today in the US the number of cases is still modest by historical standards but far from negligible. According the CDC there were 7,882 reported cases of TB in 2021, a rate of 2.4 per 100,000 (historical rates were orders of magnitude higher) though the agency acknowledges there probably is significant underreporting. Latent infections are estimated at 13,000,000, which is low by world standards but still a huge population in absolute terms.
 
The good news from this history is that it is indeed possible to reduce and control a longstanding dangerous endemic disease. The bad news is that it is nearly impossible (when not just plain impossible) to eliminate it. The bugs fight back. Sometimes all we can do (as individuals – I do not speak to public policy) is judge our risks and act as we see best.
 

Maria Muldaur – TB Blues

Moving Experience

I’ve moved my share of furniture over the years: most of it belonging to other people. Not professionally: just helping out. We all receive calls for help of this kind from friends and family, but simply because I always have owned a pickup truck I probably have gotten the call more than most. One of the more memorable lifts was for a friend back in the 90s who moved from NJ to an apartment in lower Manhattan. Getting the absurdly heavy fold-out sofa-bed up the stairs (it wouldn’t fit in the small elevator) was the highlight. I was on the lower end and again can feel the strain in my thigh muscles as I think back on it. “Is this sofa framed with plutonium?” I asked. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he answered. Somehow we got it up to the fourth floor.

My Ford and I c.1984

My current Chevy

One of the few advantages to turning 70 (see last post) is that folks hesitate (not completely refrain, but hesitate) to ask for this assistance. “We’d better not give the old guy a heart attack,” they think. “There might be a liability issue.” Just last month a friend borrowed my truck but didn’t ask for my help loading it. I nonetheless lent a hand unloading it at the final destination, but no more than that. In truth I could have done more, but I saw no reason to say so. Fortunately, at 70 when you say “I’m tired,” people take you seriously whether it is true or not.
 
The word “furniture” comes from French “fourniture,” meaning “equipment.” We regard “equipment” as stuff other than real estate, which by definition is anything “attached to or under the soil”; equipment is the stuff on or in the real estate. It is therefore movable, at least in principle. In French the word for “furniture” is not “fourniture” but “meuble,” which derives from Latin “mobilis,” which actually means “movable.” (The word for “furniture” in Latin on the other hand is “supellex,” but there is no need to chase derivations any further.) In any case, it seems likely that friends have been helping friends move furniture far enough back into history for mobility to have become part of the very definition.
 
The very earliest furnishings might not have been movable – for which reason I balk at calling them furniture. At the Neolithic site Skara Brae in Scotland, for example, in excavated private houses dating to some 2500 BCE there are Flintstone-like stone dressers, shelves, and beds. They are really built-ins (I sure as heck wouldn’t try to move them) and so part of the real estate. But more portable furnishings turn up very early in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. They include nearly all the basic types of furniture still in use today: chairs (in a broad sense including sofas and benches), beds, dressers, chests, shelves, tables, and cabinets. No doubt a friend with an ass (I refer to the equine) was commonly called upon to help move them. Lightweight folding chairs, which can be carried easily, date back thousands of years. There are surviving examples of them from Egyptian tombs and depictions of them from both Assyria and ancient China. Styles and quality of furniture varied greatly from place to place and time to time but the fundamental forms and functions have remained the same.

Built-in furnishings at Skara Brae

Furniture (leaving aside the special case of antiques) is very expensive to buy new, but often resells for only a few cents on the dollar (when buyers can be found at all) even if it is barely used. For this reason some people frequent estate sales and yard sales as the sole sources of furnishings for their houses and apartments. It is a cost-effective practice, though of course the buyers need a friend with a truck to move the stuff from the site. From now on, though, if I happen again to be that friend, I’ll let them do the loading and unloading themselves. I’m tired.
 
 

Madeline Kahn – I'm Tired (from Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles)

Candles

A funny thing happened to me today. I turned 70. I’m not quite sure how that happened. Most of my friends are younger, which isn’t surprising. Just by the odds one would expect that. They ask the same question: “Do you feel 70?” In truth that is hard to answer. After all, I’ve never been 70 before so I’m not sure what it is supposed to feel like. I know the answer they want to hear, which is “No,” so I politely tell them that because the question isn’t really about me. My superannuation reminds them of their own advancing years and mortality, so they want reassurance that nothing bad is in store. Something bad is in store. But it might not arrive at 70… or 80 or 90. Then again, it might arrive much earlier.
 

A more honest answer is more nuanced. Most of the time I feel little different than 20 years ago, but it would be a lie to say that there are no moments (in every day) when I feel very different. Without crossing the line into TMI, let’s take simple examples. My living room ceiling peaks at over 16 feet (5 meters). There are 4 recessed lights near the peak. One of them chose yesterday to burn out. I had no trouble setting up and climbing the extension ladder to swap the bulb, but I don’t just clamber up and down the ladder the way I did a decade ago (never mind 4 decades ago). I climb carefully step by step and catch my breath afterward. Reroofing the garden shed this past summer (it required only 5 bundles of shingles) took as much out of me as reroofing the whole barn did 10 years ago. I still could do the barn (I think) but it would take a few days longer. There would be a lot of breaks – from the labor, I mean. I don’t think I personally would break, but you never know. I’ve fallen off a roof or two in my day. I probably don’t bounce as well anymore.

Barn roof

Garden shed

The number of seniors in the world continues to rise. In the US 17% of the population is over 65. This is more than the percentage of the population under 10. A senior who wants to exercise the age-prerogative to yell at kids to “get off my lawn!” may be out of luck. There aren’t enough kids to go around. The growing number of seniors is the primary (far from sole, but primary) reason for rising health care costs. 68% of Americans on Medicare have chronic medical conditions. As we age, immune systems decline, eyesight fails, bones thin, bladders get impatient, and respiratory efficiency drops. Yes, exercise helps, but it doesn’t reverse the general trend. And that is just normal aging. Throw in a serious ailment and things get pretty hairy.
 
When I was in high school, optimistic science teachers told us, “Some of you sitting in this room will live to be 200!” The biotech revolution was just beginning back then, and there was a widely held assumption that it would advance as quickly as hardware tech had advanced in the 20^th century. That hasn’t happened. Life expectancy has gone up but only because medical treatment has improved and – most significantly – fewer people smoke. The pace of normal aging itself hasn’t changed at all. A healthy 90-y.o. in 1922 was much the same as a healthy 90-y.o. in 2022 – there are just more of them now since they are less likely to be taken out by infections and other ailments. Getting to 100 is still a rare event. The odds of reaching 100 are 1 in 10,000. The chances of reaching 110 are 1 in 7,000,000. Yet students continue to be told the 200-years line (though nowadays they are also told the world will end long before then). Despite well-funded efforts by The Immortality Project and by Elon Musk’s Transcendence Project and by private biotech firms such as Calico (which aims to “develop interventions that enable people to live longer and healthier lives”), I am skeptical that there will be any dramatic slowing of the aging process in the lifetime of anyone in the world today.
 
Is there an upside to aging? In psychological terms there may be. Studies over the past dozen years indicate that happiness in the general population (there are always individual exceptions) follows a U-curve. Kids are happy and then grow ever more unhappy as they become adults, reaching a nadir of happiness in middle age – not coincidentally a time when we are likely to have the most bills and responsibilities while reaping the fewest personal benefits from them. In middle age we also experience our first age-related health declines. Then happiness increases again after 65. It is not clear why. Maybe we just stop giving a damn.
 
Inner contentment is all very well, but there is no point denying that physical decline is inevitable. It can be resisted, but ultimately not defeated. We might as well make peace with that. Still, as is often noted, it beats the alternative. I suppose that is another reason to be happy. My current target is to reach 75, at which point I’ll have lived longer than any of my immediate family. After that… well, we’ll see how things go. I might have to hire someone the next time I need a roof.
 

 

Bob Dylan – Forever Young

Trotting Out the Turkey

It is Thanksgiving week again. As a kid it was my favorite holiday, edging out (albeit not by much) Halloween and Christmas. A day when overeating was encouraged appealed to the budding hedonist in me. Better yet, for years I feasted twice due to competition between both sets of grandparents: midday with one set and evening at the other. Eventually my mom had enough of this and called a halt to it; she thereafter hosted Thanksgiving herself. This had advantages, too, it turned out. True, my single-day gluttony thereby was reduced to a single table, but all those marvelous leftovers were right there in our own kitchen. For the next few days, turkey sandwiches and pecan pie slices were there for the taking. For the past two decades I have hosted the meal at my table; the attendees vary from a handful to a crowd depending on the year (and extraneous events such as covid). I no longer gourmandize with carefree abandon as I did when I was 10, but I still have some fondness for leftovers.
 

The mythic association of Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims, by the way, we owe to late Victorian storytellers. There was such an event, but it was neither the first nor foundational. Harvest feasts in the Americas were common among the Spanish and French in the 16^th century and later in the English colonies. A Thanksgiving (called by that name) proclaimed in Virginia in 1607 preceded the one in Plymouth colony by 14 years. Thanksgivings were celebrated sporadically in different colonies in the 17^th and 18^th centuries without any thought of referencing Plymouth. It was first declared a US national holiday by George Washington as a one-off event in 1789. He made no mention whatsoever of the Pilgrim story. The holiday was about the new Constitution: a day for Americans to give thanks for “an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” Thanksgivings were declared intermittently in subsequent years by presidents and state governors. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln made the holiday permanent. He didn’t mention the Pilgrims either in his proclamation. He instead talked about the things for which to be grateful despite the Civil War. (He also started that weird turkey-pardon tradition.) FDR gave Thanksgiving one final tweak. Lincoln had set the date on the last Thursday of November; Roosevelt changed this to the fourth Thursday (some Novembers, of course, have five) as a Depression-era measure to extend the Christmas shopping season. That is where things remain today.
 
Few people really concern themselves with origin stories unless trying to make some political point. Most just like the excuse to hang out with family and friends and to pig out. Writes, however, researcher Chloe Nahum-Claudel of the University of Cambridge, “Feasts mobilise people’s values, their morality, and understanding of the world of which they are a part. They have particularly powerful world-making effects because they are both irreducibly concrete – satisfying hunger, exciting pleasures, coordinating the political-economy, and embedding themselves in the organization of time and memory – and expansively meaningful, simultaneously expressing and generating deeply held values.” Maybe so. But I’m pretty much just looking forward to the leftovers.
 

Jan & Dean - "Let's Turkey Trot"

Feeling One’s Oats

I gave in to the urge to snack earlier tonight. I opted for a couple of oatmeal cookies. (Literally two – not like “I had a couple of drinks with the boys,” which more typically means six.) Cookies are never exactly healthy. They don’t really qualify as cookies if they are. Still, I could have chosen worse. Oats, the central ingredient, have a lot going for them in terms of nutrition. That is not why I picked them though. When I was a kid my Scottish maternal grandmother (yes, we called her Granny) always had oatmeal cookies in her kitchen in a porcelain cookie jar in the shape of a log cabin. So, oatmeal cookies have a nostalgia factor for me. The aroma alone has a nostalgia factor. (I still have the cookie jar btw.) Besides, just for flavor and texture I like them better than chocolate chip – and I like chocolate chip.

The first page Google results of a search (including Wikipedia) on the origins of oatmeal cookies will tell you that the recipe dates to 1896 when it was published in Fannie Farmer’s cookbook. This isn’t true. She never said it was. It is fair to say Farmer’s best-selling cookbook popularized the cookie. Recipes for it, though, can be found in earlier 19^th century newspapers and magazines. The origins go back much further than those.
 
32,000 years ago human hunter-gatherers would eat anything that didn’t eat them first. Wild oats were very much on the menu, albeit mostly in northern climes since oats don’t grow well in warm environments. In cooler temperate zones they grow readily in a wide range of soil types. Despite such a deep prehistory however, after the Neolithic shift to farming oats were the last of the great grain crops to be domesticated – thousands of years after wheat, rye, and barley. The reason is that raw unprocessed oats are hard to eat and they don’t store well. Horses like them in raw form, but humans generally speaking don’t have horse teeth. I’ve tried raw oats (from horse feed) and they are really not as bad as all that, but as one’s primary diet I can see how they would tire the jaw. I don’t think it is an accident that the rapid expansion of oat farming occurred at the same time as the domestication of the horse. Oats make superb animal feed. (To this day 90% of the US crop goes to animal feed.) Since the crop was on hand anyway to feed animals, humans immediately set to making oats more palatable for themselves too. This meant grinding, rolling, or cutting the groats (whole oats) into smaller bits (even down to flour if you keep at it) that are easier on the teeth. Even so, oats were most commonly cooked in water to a soft texture as porridge or gruel. (I like oatmeal porridge.)
 
Oatmeal porridge was available in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and ancient China, but it wasn’t well regarded. Romans thought of it as horse food that you ate if you couldn’t afford better. They disdained Germans and Caledonians (in modern day Scotland) for their oat-heavy diets, but then again they had a hard time militarily with both so perhaps they should have given the matter further thought. At least some Romans apparently did. We have references to what seem to be oatcakes carried by Roman soldiers in Britain – perhaps picked up from the locals. Oatcakes are still a Scottish thing: oatmeal, water, butter…that’s about it though you can add more. Bake but don’t burn. (Written recipes for these date to the 1300s.) Tell me this isn’t more than halfway to an oatmeal cookie. What is missing other than sugar? Perhaps cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, et al., but those are enhancers, not essentials.
 
I’m pretty sure there were retired Roman soldiers who reminisced about the oatcakes they ate in their youth up by Hadrian’s Wall. Perhaps they then raided the horse feed to make some at home. I can relate, though I’ll resist the call of the cookie jar until tomorrow. I’ll also give Fannie her due. There is something to be said for being the popularizer. An invention that remains in obscurity is not much fun for anyone.
 

Skunkmellow – Whiskey and Oatmeal

  

The Long Snooze

When he was 90 author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) commented that the biggest cultural change from when he was a child was in the everyday awareness of death. His childhood Sunday family outings often were spent visiting relatives; back then that meant the graveyard, which was likely to include a sibling. Losing young (or young-ish) family members always was tragic but it was also expected. It no longer is. It happens, but it is not expected.
 
This change is to be celebrated of course. Most of us get to experience life into our senior years, and that is a good thing. In consequence though, we probably go overboard nowadays in denying death altogether. About 1% of the population dies every year (some 3,340,000 Americans in the past 12 months) but you would never know it. Unless you personally participate in some funeral service for a friend or relative, you’ll see no signs of it in daily life. It’s all hidden behind doors. Even in hospitals the deceased, of which there are many at any given moment, are kept out of view of all but a few. This may leave us more unprepared for the inevitable than previous generations, but I don’t see this changing anytime soon. It is the new normal. We dislike acknowledging our own mortality so we keep death out of sight and mind while we live day to day as though we’ll live forever. Life events arrive, however, that disabuse us of this mindset, at least for a time.
 
A couple of things bring this to mind. One was a funeral service for an old friend a couple of weeks ago. (He was in my sister’s HS class [‘68] and one of her posse of friends.) I sometimes remark that I know more permanent residents of the local Hilltop Cemetery in Mendham (where he was buried) than I do Mendham-ites who are ambulatory. This is meant as a joke but actually it is true. One of those permanent residents is my mom (also my dad and sister), and she is the primary reason for these thoughts. My mom died 21 years ago today. One remembers those dates for close friends, spouses, and immediate family as well as one does their birthdays.
 
The passings of those close to us are transformative moments. (I can speak from experience that it is especially odd to find oneself the last one standing.) Parents in particular are so integrated with our sense of identity that finding a new balance after their loss can take a while. We all go through it, however, if we ourselves live long enough. Some face it early, which is exceptionally hard. In the US by age 24 10% have lost one or both parents. In the age group 35 to 44, 34% have. It is 63% of those age 45 to 54. By age 64 it is 88%. (It is surprising to me that 12% of 64-year-olds still have not, but rising longevity makes this less rare than it once was.)
 
There is a part of me that always will be (among other senses of identity) the youngest of a core of four. But that seems like a faraway and self-contained stage of life at this point, much like my prep school years and college years were self-contained stages – also the years of couple of serious romantic relationships. Those remain a part of me too, even though life has passed beyond them.

The core four, c. 1982

For those who remain, life goes on. We form new friends and connections. A large, though diminishing, majority of adults become parents themselves. (I never did though my household at present is not empty anyway, as those who know me personally are aware.) Every now and then, however, (especially on anniversaries such as today) I raise a glass to toast old friends, classmates, and family who have left us. Then tomorrow is another day.
 
 

Little Richard – Thinking about My Mother

I Hear You Knockin’

Last night, Mischief Night (aka Devil’s Night, Gates Night, Mizzy Night, et al.), passed relatively uneventfully in my neighborhood – no signs of eggings and the like. As far as I can tell by the news, places with a history of more serious offenses (e.g. arson) have been fairly quiet too. This is one case in which the modern teen’s preference for the virtual world over the real one is a positive benefit to the rest of us: they can smash digital pumpkins to their hearts’ content in video games. (I always wondered, by the way, where the parents thought their teens were going when they left the house on Mischief Night.) The pranks continued on Halloween itself. These have eased up in recent years too.
 
While I trick-or-treated with the other kids when growing up (we traveled in unsupervised packs in those more innocent days), my teens were spent without Halloween parties. My dad was a builder and there was always a need to guard separate construction sites, which were a special draw to marauding kids and teens. If you want to spend a truly spooky Halloween, spend it (with no cell phone) in an unlit, unfinished house on a dark wooded lot. I didn’t fear ghosts. I worried about encounters with the all-too-human, but I guess my mere presence was scary too, because I never saw anyone. Any damage was always on a property that was unguarded – we couldn’t be on all of them all of the time.

Sharon and I, probably 1955

I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Nowadays I just have to remember to buy candy. Odds are I will not have any kids at the door tonight. Years pass between that happening. My driveway is well over 300 feet (100m) and flanked by dark woods in an area frequented by bears. Kids simply do not walk up it. When I do get them at the door they were driven up the driveway by parents who live in the immediate neighborhood. I keep a candy bucket at the ready just in case that happens. It probably won’t, so I’ll need to pace myself on consuming the contents of the bucket in the coming months.
 
I might hear knocks that seem to come from the door, but that happens every night and there rarely is anyone there. My house groans, creaks, and knocks as it expands and contracts with the weather and with the vagaries of the forced air heating system. Guests, less accustomed to the sounds than I, sometimes tell me the house is haunted. I don’t believe in such things, but even if I’m wrong I don’t mind. Any spirit that meant me ill-will would have demonstrated that intent sometime in the past 21 years that I’ve owned the place. Just as in my teen years I worry more about the all-too-human, the tax-collector for one. Fourth Quarter property taxes are due tomorrow. Now that’s scary.
 

John Fogerty - Haunted House

 

It's a Lock

I do a better (not great, but better) job of patching my aging house than my aging self. My leaking shower is in the process of being replaced. (The cat got into the newly exposed studs and then into the basement ceiling beneath, but that is another story.) Since the front door of my home provides the shortest access to the shower during the rebuild, I have discovered that my front door lock needs to be replaced. (Have you priced front door locks? Google them. They are simply ridiculous.) My door’s bolt locks solidly on the inside, so it serves its purpose of locking people out, but a key from the outside is useless. This normally doesn’t matter (which is why it has gone unnoticed) because the geography of my lot and floor plan funnels people to the back door. In the past 20 years I don’t think I ever have come home and entered the house via the front door. It is the rare rare visitor who rings at the front door rather than the back, and of course the door opens fine from the inside to let them in. Just in principle, though, I feel my door should unlock in both directions. At least a lock replacement is a minor repair compared to the shower.
 
The reader may have heard folks of a certain age (such as mine) remark that when they were kids no one ever locked their doors. Unlike the stories about walking five miles to and from school through four feet of snow uphill both ways, this has a small kernel of truth. “No one ever” is a wild exaggeration of course. Lock usage also was very neighborhood dependent, and even in the safest neighborhood people locked up sometimes, such as when they went away for the weekend. Nonetheless, in rural areas, smaller towns, and outer suburbs (including the one where I grew up in the 1950s) it was pretty typical most of the time for doors to houses, garages, and sheds to be left unlocked day and night. This may not have been the most intelligent practice, but it was a common one.
 
Today we are more cautious – or at least we intend to be. Sometimes we are careless, which is why even in 2022 nearly 30% of burglars gain access through an unlocked first floor entrance. The most common point of entry is the garage. (My garage doesn’t have a door directly into the house; the garage is attached to the house only by an open breezeway.) Odds are that the burglar won’t be a complete stranger (though that does happen): typically the burglar lives within two miles (3.2 km). I’m not sure if that is comforting or not.
 
This is hardly a new problem. As soon as people began acquiring personal property there have been others eager to relieve them of it. So, defensive measures are wise and always were. If an owner is inside the house, a simple slide bolt is very effective and difficult to defeat, but one can’t stay inside all day. Sometimes we want to leave but still keep out intruders. Accordingly, keyed locks are as old as civilization. A 4000-y.o. example found in Nineveh consists of an interior wooden slide bolt held in place by wooden pins that drop into holes on the top of the bolt. To unlock it, insert a key through a horizontal slot in the front of the door into a hole in the bolt beneath the pins; the key has vertical pegs that match the holes with the pins. Lift up so the key pegs push the pins out of the bolt; the bolt (key and all) then can be slid open. It’s quite clever really. To this day most door locks use a pin system, albeit with a rotating metal cylinder. Similar ancient locks have been found in Egypt, Zanzibar, and Japan. This design was bulky and easy to pick however so inventors kept working on the concept. The Romans (who needed to protect their loot) made iron locks with wards (interior tracks) operated with rotating bronze keys. They look very familiar. The Romans and ancient Chinese invented padlocks as well – apparently independently though it is possible a sample padlock traveled the trade routes in one direction or the other and inspired copiers. Most current mechanical locking systems (including a revamped pin system) were designed in the 19^th century, as was so much of industrial civilization. As for modern electronic locks such as those in hotel rooms, the less said the better.

Ancient Roman Key

 
In any event, no lock will do any good if is left unlocked. No alarm system will deter if it is turned off. So, I’ll take the precautions my parents and their neighbors ignored in the ‘50s. Though the bolt works fine, I’ll replace the front door lock too, just on principle.
 

Lydia Lunch – Lock Your Door

On Another Scale

A few years ago the unexpected tightness of my jacket (I seldom wear business or semi-formal jackets anymore) alerted me that I had allowed my weight to exceed my previous record high. So, I aimed to drop 40 pounds (18 kg) to get back to my old 1990s level. Though discipline in these matters is not normally my forte, over the next two years I slowly shed more than 30 pounds (14 kg) but found the final 10 pounds above my target weight to be stubbornly resistant. Then covid struck early last spring. Those 10 pounds vanished in little more than a week. Best diet ever? Not really. I would trade the covid for the pounds and consider it a great bargain. The week-long illness itself wasn’t bad (I’ve experienced worse colds) but the aftermath was awful. I felt fine if just sitting or standing but was exhausted and nauseated by even minor exertion. This loss of stamina lingered for months. Things got better week by week, but the effect lasted to some degree all through summer. Only in the past month have I felt fully normal again.
 
During the past several months I ignored the bathroom scale and forewent any calculated calorie restriction while rebuilding strength. So, it was with some trepidation this morning that I took a breath and stepped on the scale to assess the damage. I stepped off and stepped on again but the result was the same. Not even a single kilogram change since last spring. Those last 10 pounds shaved off by covid remained off – OK, 9 pounds stayed off, but that is close enough. The challenge now is to keep them off without the unwelcome assistance of a viral infection.
 

fat cells

Weight is a challenge to people around the world. Far more people today are overweight than undernourished. This is, of course, far better than the reverse, which was the case for most of human history. Hunger hasn’t vanished by any means, but the reduction of it deserves noting and celebrating. Nonetheless, the flip side to that achievement is that The World Health Organization calls obesity a global epidemic. It is not contagious in the usual sense – you will not catch obesity from a fat man who sneezes on you – yet it is socially communicable: an oft-cited study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that your friend-group affects your weight. A friend becoming obese increases your risk of doing the same by a whopping 57%. Oddly, the effect (though present) is much less among family members than among friends. It is speculated that friends tend to copy each other’s eating and exercise habits while contributing to one’s notion of what is or isn’t fat.
 
The usual definition of obesity used by both the WHO and CDC is a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 30. (Merely overweight is a reading over 25 but under 30.) The BMI is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters. BMI is a rough and ready tool for describing people of average fitness or when comparing populations. It has some obvious problems when applied to any one individual. For example a 5’10” (1.76 m) person weighing 210 pounds (95.45 kg) has a BMI over 30 and is therefore obese. Yet, those numbers could describe either a tautly muscled body builder or a flabby couch potato: the BMI is the same for either even though it is silly to call the former obese. Those anomalies cancel out however when studying a lot of people, so it has statistical utility anyway.
 
There are always articles and news items about this or that in the environment “causing” obesity, for example the “significant” hormonal effects of chemicals in certain plastics. The news articles (in popular publications anyway) rarely point out that the correlations (not necessarily causes) are statistically significant (i.e. unlikely to be due to chance) rather than significant in the sense of large. In fact, most such effects are tiny in actual weight. Somewhat better-known risk factors for obesity include lack of sleep and a non-optimal mix of gut bacteria.
 
Ultimately, however, we gain weight when we eat more calories than we burn. (We’ll put to the side the question of what foods are healthier in ways other than calories.) According to the Department of Agriculture adult Americans consume 23% more calories per capita than in 1970. (I remember 1970 and we didn’t starve ourselves then.) It’s hardly surprising that we weigh more. We lose weight when we eat less and exercise more. We all know this. We don’t like to hear it. I don’t like to hear it. It’s a bummer.
 
So, I’ll continue to reconsider second helpings. Maybe I’ll even catch up on some sleep.  What I will not do is seek another round of covid. I’d rather regain 10 pounds.
 

A ditty from a less “body positive” era:

The Andrews Sisters – Too Fat Polka

On the Fritz

Every moment in history (or in an individual life) is an inflection point. One always can point to a single choice made by someone(s) somewhere that would have made a world of difference had it been made the other way. Yet, some eras really are more stable than others – a more momentous choice than usual would have to flip in order to make a real difference. It is why our attention is more readily drawn to unstable eras when things are unusually in flux; there are so many more obvious “if only” moments when the touch of a finger could tip the outcome. The 1960s are one such era – and not just for nostalgic Boomers narcissistically reminiscing about their youths, though it’s hard to deny I am one of those. 1968 was a world apart from 1963 in popular culture, social mores, and public affairs. Those five years really were revolutionary, but easily could have gone very differently for better or for worse. The revolution was broader than five years, of course. “The 1960s” as we think of them had all of their roots in the 1950s and reached their fullest expression in the 1970s, but the most glaring surface transformation was smack in the middle of the ‘60s proper.
 
Comic book author/artist Robert Crumb probably didn’t affect the big picture of the decade very much even though in a sense he painted it. In other words the social trends of the ‘60s would have been little changed without him, but the visual representation of them would be different and probably poorer. Then (as now) I was rarely in step with the times and never ahead of them, so my first awareness of Robert Crumb was as the artist who drew the cover of Cheap Thrills, a must-have 1968 album by Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin. Fortunately, my sister was a couple years older than I and infinitely hipper, so she then supplied me with underground comics by Crumb. I enjoyed them but was not enough of a fan to seek out more and collect them.

 
One of Crumb’s recurring characters was Fritz the Cat, who first appeared in 1959. The cat’s backstory was not always the same. Sometimes he was a pretentious liberal arts student. Sometimes he was an international spy. Sometimes he was a famous rock star. But always Fritz was an obnoxious self-involved egotist in (despite the feline form) all too human fashion. His real interests are sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. Side characters deliberately, ironically, and unabashedly exaggerate stereotypes of the day, whether racial, social, or political. Why are the characters all animals? Crumb just felt freer using them: “I can put more nonsense, more satire and fantasy into the animals.” Nonetheless, as he mentions in a comic, they are “not unlike people in their manners and morals.” Considering the era, Crumb’s vision of humanity is ultimately a dark one: surface idealism and altruism have crass selfish underpinnings in nearly all his characters.
 
In 1972 legendary animator Ralph Bakshi produced the movie Fritz the Cat, which mashes up storylines from a few comics but mostly relies on “Fritz Bugs Out.” Fritz in the film version is a college student who is far less intellectual than he thinks, and whose ideological rhetoric encourages a riot that turns him into a fugitive. Oh, yes: the cartoon is X-rated. The movie was a box office success, but Robert Crumb hated it. He hated it so much that he killed off Fritz in the comics in 1972 in order to discourage a sequel. (It didn’t work: the sequel The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat was produced anyway.)
 
None of this had crossed my mind in a very long time until a couple weeks ago when I stumbled across an online reference to Cool World (I no longer remember where), another Bakshi animation from 1992. Though it had nothing to do with Crumb, the reference brought him to mind anyway and prompted me to look him up on Amazon. The collection The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat caught my eye and a few days later it arrived at the door. It contains tales from Fritz’ first 1959 appearance to his untimely 1972 death. Someone reading Crumb for the first time is likely to ask the same question as a first time viewer of the movie: Is this an homage to its era or a venomous send-up of it? The answer is yes. It is both.

 
Is there any relevance in the Fritz comics to the 2020s? Perhaps, at least if we consider what a similarly representative comic about our own time would look like. If the comic is honest the answer to the same question surely again would be yes. And in half a century folks will ponder what would have happened if this person or that in 2022 simply had made another choice.

 

Caleb Janssens’ vlog on Fritz

 

Twelve Factoids

There is no subject that we of the current age have not managed to politicize – even the most random ones from fly fishing to botany. We argue over “false facts” (the ultimate oxymoron) and call each other anti-science for believing or disbelieving the wrong ones. But while I despair of finding any that are truly apolitical, there are facts and factoids which are at least non-partisan, which is to say they can be spun in almost any direction. So, just for fun and relief, here are a dozen for today.
 
The ancient Egyptian word for cat is “miaow.” (The current Coptic, which derives from ancient Egyptian, transliterates as “emou.”) One has to admire the ready intelligibility.
 
The slogan on the first coin minted as US currency (1787) was “Mind Your Business.” I like it.
 

According to Public Policy Polling, 28% of Americans believe a secretive elite conspires to run the world. Only 28%?
 
When neurologist James Fallon compared his own brain scan to those of known psychopaths, he discovered he was one. I hate when that happens.
 
Gavisti, Sanskrit for “war,” literally means “desire for more cows.” I’m still not turning vegan.
 
Five countries have no national debt: Singapore, Taiwan (yes I know its status as a country is ambiguous), Brunei, Palau, and Liechtenstein. Those governments just aren’t trying.
 
There is a word for someone who never had a haircut: acersecomic. I wouldn’t have thought there were enough folks to need a specific word.
 
Nocturia is the need to get up at night to urinate. OK, I get why there is a word for that.
 
Edgar Allan Poe was paid $9 for the publication of “The Raven.” No wonder his midnight was so dreary.
 
The mother of Matt Groening (creator of “The Simpsons") was named Marge. Sigmund would approve.
 
Jaguars are attracted to the scent of Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men. Wildlife photographers bait them with it. Wrong New World big cat.
 
Research from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University indicates that falling in love typically will cost you two close friends. Is one of those friends the beloved?
 
Those are twelve, which incidentally is the point value of the word “twelve” in Scrabble.
 

Alice Cooper – Grim Facts

Autumn Chill

At a time when hurricanes lash to the south and north, it is trivial to note that autumn arrived on the 22^nd last week accompanied by an abrupt change of local weather in NJ from balmy late summery to crispy fall-like. Nonetheless it did. A cold wind chilled in the morning. We may yet get toasty days (maybe even weeks) before frost settles in, but they will be short-lived checks on the general decline of the number displayed by the thermometer that hangs outside my back door.
 
Though a plurality of Americans tell pollsters that autumn is their favorite season, it is not mine. (I admit that Halloween and Thanksgiving are fun holidays, but they would be just as fun were they celebrated at any other time of year.) As I grow older I cling to summer longer. I ignore the “unofficial end of summer” on Labor Day (for non-American readers, that is the first Monday in September) as artificial. If temperatures permit the self-deception I ignore the equinox itself. I can’t ignore the closing of the pool. That happened today, so summer is over, even for me. I’ll soon be raking leaves. Then comes the solstice, but I hardly want to think of that now.

Poet and novelist (he preferred to be called a poet) Robert Graves asserted that all true poetry is about the seasons as a metaphor for the cycle of life from birth to love to aging to death (or vice versa). It may not be obvious at first glance but at least some element of that has to be in a poem for it to speak to us at a primal level. You can write verse about other things (motorcycle parts, for instance), he argued forcefully, but not poetry. I’m not sure he was right, but I understand (and feel) what he was getting at. My sister (1950-95) was the poet of the family, so perhaps I’ll let her finish this welcome (if such it is) to autumn.
 
Lakeside Campsite in September by Sharon Bellush
 
I have
An abominable awareness
Of the soles of my feet. They
Are sand-stung, unused
To pebbly lake bottoms, pine needle
Beds –
My feet sting and my breath
Draws deeply, nostrils
Flared to absorb
The air that forces
Coolness into well-heated lungs –
The twilight turns the
Sun from bright to
Smoldering metallic rose and
Seething wavelets draw the
Fury down
To the level of docks, and lake and sand –
And me –
I stick a toe into the pinkness
And it numbs –
The ruggedness of all I feel
Intrigues me; I am a match
For the brittle dusk
 
The campsite is calm, the wind
Is dying, a burnt-wood smell
Drifts into the sun – I watch
It sink, impaled for a time
On a mountaintop –
Waves of purple, vermilion
And green shoot up
To the clouds
In a symphony of
Lonely light –
I turn to replenish the fire.
 
-- 100 of Sharon’s poems are posted at my Richard’s Novel Ideas blogsite: https://richardbellushjr.blogspot.com/.
 

Buck 69 – Cold Wind