Redux

 I got a phone call out of the blue last week from someone I dated none-too-seriously back in the early 1980s. She just wanted to catch up. I’ve done something similar. In the early 2000s I called out of the blue someone I had dated rather-more-seriously in the late 1980s. (She broke up with me in 1989.) I just wanted to catch up. Both calls were nice talks. There was no intent or effort to reignite anything in either case. Nostalgia just calls out to us sometimes. Besides, I think we’d all be in for a shock if we ever met face to face. I still think of the caller as 25ish. (I was 30ish). Both of us are now on Social Security.

 

I mentioned the call in passing to a friend of mine who asked an interesting question: “What if it had been your first love who called?” (That would have been age 23 in the 1970s: I got a late start in those matters.) Would I have tried to set up a face-to-face in that case? The answer is, I don’t know for sure. Probably not, especially if there was time to think about it. But sometimes we get caught up in a moment and blurt out invitations, so I don’t know. The first is always different.

Nearly 5 decades later it is still inappropriate to post a recognizable pic

 

I think this is a major reason why YA (young adult) melodramas on screen and in print are popular not only with the target audiences but with adults. 55% of readers of YA books are actual adults. Meghan Harrington, publicist at St. Martin's Press & Wednesday Books, comments, "YA readership includes everyone, whether you are 13 or 42." Todd Krueger, president of the Young Adult Library Services Association, says "It allows adult readers a reminder of a time of possibility, even if their own adolescences weren't spectacular." Those youthful years are full of firsts, and those firsts always burn brighter than later repeats, even when the repeats are better by most measures. First infatuations are more intense and first breakups more shattering. Older readers vicariously relive those experiences. Viewers, too. It is, in fact, hard to rewrite teen dramas for older characters. The over-the-top melodramatics in shows such as Roswell, Dawson’s Creek, and Riverdale simply wouldn’t translate to age 30-something characters. They are credible for teens. (OK, the alien thing in Roswell stretches credibility, but you know what I mean.) They are credible for early 20s, too, if the firsts have been delayed until then.

 

In a sense we don’t get past the first love, since that experience forms a part of our adult identities and influences all subsequent relations. People notoriously gravitate toward new partners who look and act similarly to the first one. Notes Theodore Lykin in a Fischer Institute article, “First love often serves as a benchmark for our future romantic relationships… leaving an indelible mark that influences our subsequent love encounters.” There is a neurochemical basis for this. In a 2005 study fMRI scans showed distinct similarity to scans of addicts. It is no wonder there are withdrawal symptoms when that first serious relationship ends. Psychologist Rose Bear, Lykin reports, notes that many years later we still may “hear a particular song that evokes memories of them.”

 

There is, of course, a reason why that first love ended in a breakup. That reason very likely still applies. It is not necessarily a good thing, common though it is, to try to recreate that first relationship in later ones. (Never mind the hint of disrespect inherent in that attempt.) This is asking for the same old problems. (This is advice I have honored in the breach.) It is possible to get past an addiction, and it is generally worth the effort. So, even after all these years, my answer to the question in the second paragraph is no – not that it is on offer, but still no. But it is a fond no, not a hostile one.

 

Linda Ronstadt – I Ain’t Always Been Faithful, But I Always Have Been True

Zero Out

Bill Perkins is an electrical engineer by training though he made his money as a successful energy trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange. He wrote a book with the same premise as one of my common jokes. I’m frequently given unsolicited advice that I need to invest in this or that annuity or some other financial product (by those who can earn a commission from selling me one) and also that I need to make and stick to a budget so as to live off income, and never diminish assets. I always dismiss the sales pitch, usually without explanation, but sometimes I’ll mention that I have no interest in preserving assets for another generation. “I have no kids,” I’ll say, “so while I definitely don’t want the last dollar to run out while I’m here, I’m perfectly okay with bouncing the check to the undertaker.” Bill Perkins has made a similar view a life philosophy: one more radical and deliberate than mine. He argues in Die with Zero that if you die rich you have not lived life to the fullest. Money buys experiences, both in the present and as memories in your future. Leftover money equals forgone experiences. It means you haven’t gotten full value out of your resources – or that you worked and saved for too long and should have retired earlier.

 
Perkins doesn’t turn Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant entirely on its head; saving for the winter is important. He notes, however, that the ant never had any fun or much of a life other than work. The grasshopper, he says, had a point too. The trick is finding the right balance between the two strategies. Perkins’ acknowledges that this advice applies only to those who have savings: anyone struggling just to get by doesn’t have the option to do much else. To those who do earn enough for more than just the bare necessities, however, he urges to remember that money is not an end in itself. It is to purchase the good things in life, now or in the future.
 
Perkins also urges us not to ignore the “now.” Awareness of what time it is in one’s life is important, for there are things one can do in one’s 20s (e.g. backpacking through Europe) that are less practical in one’s 70s or even 40s, given the responsibilities that tend to arise in that decade. Have your peak experiences (whether adventures or having kids) at the right time, which usually means earlier than most of us do it. We delay such things for fear of squandering money, but “squandering our lives should be a much greater worry.” He advocates multiple bucket lists: one per decade since we age out of some potential experiences as years pass. On the income side, there also are certain investments that are appropriate to different ages; a real estate investment with a long term potential for a capital gain, for example, might be fine at age 42 but at age 72? Exactly when will the 72-y.o. enjoy the benefits of that capital gain? Perkins offers practical advice on how best to allocate resources over a lifetime in order to enjoy that life.
 
Perkins feels his book is pertinent because so many of us fail to live our best lives. Median net worth in the US even after retirement rises steadily by age well into the 70s, which seems to him an indication that the retirees aren’t enjoying (and haven’t enjoyed) the fruits of their earnings. Perkins has a point. Possibly his book is not the best gift for a natural spendthrift, though in fairness he does not advocate going broke before you die. Yet, though the book is worth a read, I think he underrates the peace of mind that unspent savings can offer: that is a desirable experience, too. Besides, timing that “Zero” is a crapshoot. I for one might be here for longer than I expect, so despite my undertaker line, I am not willing to bet on an actuarial table in order to determine when to spend my last dollar.
 

Brook Benton – My Last Dollar

Oneiric Time Travel

It long has been known that sleep helps incorporate and reinforce useful recent memories into long-term storage while pruning out unimportant memories. This is why it is helpful to sleep after cramming for a test the next day rather than studying through the night – quite aside from the more obvious effects of lack of sleep. You will remember more. Dreams are part of that memory reinforcement process even when we don’t consciously remember those dreams the next day. Dreams connect recent memories with old ones in imaginative ways and thereby deepen their integration into who we are. This is generally a positive experience when we remember a dream at all, but of course nightmares do happen. They happen to everyone sometimes but are especially common among those with PTSD. 52% of combat veterans report frequent nightmares compared to 3% of civilians. Once again, everyone has them; the difference is frequency.

The Nightmare (1781) - Henry Fuseli 

 
It appears that dreams follow a chronological pattern. According to a recent study dreams early in the night are dominated by recent memories: events people, and experiences of the previous day. As the night wears on, dreams get associated with ever older memories. My own experience supports this anecdotally. My dreams lately have been full of people and places I know from long ago – including family members deceased for decades. We tend to remember only those dreams during which we wake up, and I usually wake up suddenly in early morning daylight. The reason is a cat who habitually enters my room at that time and jumps on me. It is no wonder I remember dreams that are tied to old memories. That is when they are scheduled to occur.
 
The researchers determined which type of dream-memories were associated with which sleep stages by waking 20 volunteers 12 times per night. I hope the volunteers were well-paid because that would be really annoying. The cat is annoying when he does it once.
 
I don’t mind these nostalgic dream trips however. I’m almost always in my 20s in them for one thing. (I never actually state an age, but I can tell.) It’s nice to feel that way again, if only in dreams. It is also nice to have a visit, of sorts, with people and pets from my youth. Dreams about yesterday on the other hand are bound to feel more mundane. I don’t plan to be awakened 12 times to test this though. If the cat tries it on his own, I’m locking him out of the bedroom.
 

Blondie - Dreaming

 

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

The air remains smoky today in NJ thanks to the vast forest fires in Quebec. It has a very woodsy aroma, and so is not unpleasant but for its density. In fact, it is triggering a desire to fire up my own barbecue grill. Maybe I’ll wait for a day with better air quality outside, but a few home-grilled burgers would be mighty tasty. I prefer using charcoal for the smoky flavor. There are some localities (not mine fortunately) with ordinances against charcoal, but not for being a fossil fuel, which charcoal is not. Burning wood and wood products is regarded as carbon-neutral since wood grows back thereby reabsorbing the carbon. Arguably it is superior to letting wood rot naturally, since that produces more methane, which is less desirable than CO2. The reason for restrictions is smoke. Yet, without smoke it’s not really barbecue – grilling, maybe, but not barbecue. Smoke is an essential ingredient. My neighbors are far enough away in any case for us to not notice any smoke from each other’s grill.
 
Grills and barbecues are prehistoric. Braziers, fire pits, and purpose-built outside fireplaces were the most common tools for the task. They are mentioned in some of the earliest writing. We have Egyptian and Sumerian barbecue recipes dating back 6000 years. Slow-roasted smoked pork in China dates back similarly and remains popular today. The word barbecue comes from 16^th century American Spanish barbacoa which meant a framework of raised sticks – which is to say a grill. This in turn came from Arawak (Haitian) barbakoa; the West Indians used these grills over hot charcoal to smoke meat, i.e. barbecue.
 
The whole process became much simpler and more popular only a century ago, however. In the early 1920s Ford motor cars still had a lot of wooden parts including the wheels. Consequently, there was a lot of scrap wood left over from manufacturing. Not a fan of waste, Henry Ford readily backed the idea of his relative E.G. Kingsford to turn the scrap into charcoal briquettes and sell them at Ford dealerships. The briquettes caught on and soon were sold by various stores. To this day Kingsford has 80% of the US charcoal briquette market. Grills continued to be a mix of braziers, ad hoc constructions, or outside brick fireplaces however. These have never disappeared and have been supplemented by high-end smokers. But the classic easy-to-use portable backyard grill came along in the 1950s.

A fellow named George Stephen worked at the Weber Brothers Metal Works. His job there was welding steel hemispheres together to make buoys. The idea struck him that these hemispheres with legs and a few air holes would make good lightweight grills. Weber backed his idea. By the end of the 1950s Weber grills were a common backyard sight. The brand remains a dominant one. The devices make it very easy to say to oneself on the spur of the moment, “I think I’ll grill a few burgers this afternoon.”
 
I think I’ll grill a few burgers this afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow.
 

Johnny Horton – Smokey Joe’s Barbecue

Slippery

I took my Chevy to the local lube center yesterday for its second oil change. It took 20 minutes. For me it would have been a day’s project. I’m not a competent grease monkey though I admire anyone who is. I’m fine performing the monkeyshines of rough-and-ready carpentry: rebuilding my exterior wooden steps, reroofing sheds, replacing a basement window, and so on. When it comes to maintaining or repairing machinery however, I’m aware that anything I do will most likely put someone else to the trouble of undoing, so even for simple things I hire a professional from the start.

The notion of lubricating sticky moving parts is apparently an intuitive one since it dates back to prehistory and the earliest and simplest machines. Not until the time of Leonardo de Vinci did the underlying science of friction coefficients begin to be formalized, but ancient mechanics and engineers learned by trial and error what worked and what didn’t. The wooden axles of chariots and wagons, for example, quite quickly would char or even seize up the wheels without some slippery intermediary between wood and wood. Not even the shift to metal parts entirely solved the problem. In the third millennium BCE, Sumerians and Egyptians opted for leather loops greased with animal fat when mounting wheels. One chariot from an Egyptian tomb used a mix of fat, lime, and soap. Bitumen also sometimes was used but in the absence of refining this kind of raw petroleum varied a lot in viscosity and quality. The ancient Chinese used similar methods but also frequently opted for vegetable oil blended with lead.
 
In the West, animal fat continued to be the preferred lubricant for everything from wheels to ballistae to man-powered cranes throughout the Classical Era. New technologies did slowly get adopted however. In 330 BCE Diades, one of Alexander’s military engineers, developed roller bearings for battering rams. Bearings soon found their way into civilian uses in mills and potters’ wheels. The roller and ball bearings needed lubrication too, of course, and bitumen sometimes proved suitable for them.
 
The next big change came in the early years of industrialization in the 18^th century. New mechanisms – steam power in particular – were built to tighter tolerances and needed better lubricants. The industrial revolution would not have been possible without them. Whale oil was the solution but there were limits to the supply. The breakthrough came in 1859 when William Drake struck oil in Titusville Pennsylvania. Within a few years fractioning and refining of petroleum became a major industry. Synthetic oils from coal and other sources were invented in 1877 by Charles Friedel and James Crafts.
 
Today’s machinery uses up much less lubricant than earlier models. When I was a kid as long ago as the 1950s, a road trip from NJ to Florida required an oil change and lube before the return trip. In the 1960s and ‘70s I checked the oil on every vehicle my parents (or I) owned at least once a week and frequently had to add a quart. Nowadays cars are scheduled to go 6000 miles between changes – and that schedule is a conservative one. Out of habit I still check the oil levels from time to time, but I haven’t had to add oil to one of my vehicles between regular changes for 15 years. Besides, the information centers of my car and truck now would bray at me were the oil level to drop.
 
The oil change remains indispensable to keeping one’s vehicle roadworthy. If only preventive maintenance of my own body’s machinery were so easy and reasonably priced.
 

Jeff Beck – Grease Monkey