The Replay Button

Thanks to freezing rain during the previous night, the streets in NJ were skating rinks yesterday morning and the trees were encased in sparkling crystal. Unsurprisingly, the weight of the ice brought down tree limbs that severed electrical wires around the state. My power went out at 9 a.m. (I have a well and an oil furnace, so my heat and water go off with it.) I cozied up by the fireplace to wait it out. The outage was minor by the standards of such things. After two hours, JCP&L crews working in the ice reconnected a line somewhere and my lights popped back on. When they did I experienced a momentary sense of déjà vu. This is remarkable only because it has been years since my last sense of it. In my youth it happened with some frequency. This turns out to be normal. In most ways normal human brains hiccup more often as they age, but not in this one. In this one way they get more stable. The decade of life in which healthy people most frequently experience déjà vu is 15-25. Occurrences decline thereafter and all but disappear in seniors in the absence of medical conditions (e.g. epilepsy) or psychoactive drug therapy.

The Britannica Dictionary defines déjà vu as "the feeling that you have already experienced something that is actually happening." (The reverse experience – the feeling that something familiar is strange and alien – is called jamais vu.) There are several non-mutually exclusive explanations for the phenomenon. I choose to discount the paranormal ones though some people do not: an MD in Psychology Today, for one,  writes, “There are situations that are glitches in time when the rules bend and the mystery takes hold.” I think it rather more likely the glitches are in us, not in time.
 
Sometimes we really have a trace memory of something very similar to what we are currently experiencing. This was likely the case yesterday. I’ve sat before many fires in my life, and the woodsy area where I live typically loses power several times per year – usually briefly but sometimes for days. In other cases “dual processing” may be involved. The human brain processes sensory data on multiple levels at once and most of those levels are not conscious. (Hence we usually can navigate across a room successfully even when we are mentally preoccupied and not paying conscious attention.) A time lag can occur between non-conscious apprehension of one’s surroundings and the upload of the same information to our conscious awareness (processed in separate parts of the brain), in which case we may seem to experience an event twice – in a sense we do. The lag is miniscule but apparently noticeable. This can be more pronounced in cases of extended déjà vu called déjà vécu (“already lived”). One elderly British gentlemen with the beginnings of dementia has a chronic case of it; he gave up watching television because he said he always already knew what would happen next. He, of course, could not describe the show before turning it on, so this looks like a processing error rather than paranormal precognition. Another possibility (again, not mutually exclusive with others) has to do with the way we retrieve memories. Our memories are not stored all in one place but are scattered here and there. When we recognize some item as familiar, a mechanism in the hippocampus assembles those other bits and pieces of the memory into a sort of holographic whole. It may be possible, however, for one element to trigger that sense of familiarity even in an otherwise novel environment. Speaking of déjà vu in epileptics in particular, Dr. Alan Brown of Duke University’s Department of Psychology & Neuroscience commented to an interviewer, “My belief is that a pre-seizure déjà vu experience is triggered by spontaneous activity in that area of the brain that handles familiarity evaluations.” This may be the case among neurological normies too.
 
Whatever the real explanation may be, the term “déjà vu” is not appropriately used in the context I’ve heard it twice this morning: with regard to current events. This is a flawed use on many levels, as politically infused terminology usually is. The speakers, of course, meant that history was repeating itself. It isn’t. Max Beerbohm: “History,” it has been said, “does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.” Analogies made by armchair historians always should be treated cautiously, as should “lessons” supposedly drawn from them. As examples, arguably the two World Wars taught opposite lessons. The first was to exercise restraint lest a limited regional dispute spiral out of control: Austria’s problems with Serbia were not worth a world war. The second was to nip aggression in the bud lest it spiral out of control. In truth the two cases were different. The cases are always different.
 
As for current world events, I won’t add to the din of “analyses,” most of which range from bad to very bad. I just know that calling it déjà vu is calling it something it is not. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve heard it all before.
 

John Fogerty - Deja Vu (All Over Again)

 

On Not Being Caught with One's Pants Down

A young friend of mine who regards me as an uncle sometimes has thematic parties. Once she hosted a formal tea party, not as a legitimate thing but in irony. On that occasion she asked to use my mom’s old teacup collection and some of my CDs of ‘40s-era music. The most recent was a “dad party” in which everyone dressed as older men and told stale jokes. For that one she asked to borrow my red suspenders. I wear suspenders (of various colors) entirely un-ironically.
 
Suspenders (in some places called braces) may be antiquated in fashion terms but they are surprisingly recent historically. One can’t very well speak of suspenders without first talking about what they suspend (or brace). Pants/trousers predate suspenders by millennia. (Terminology note: in colloquial US English all trousers are pants but not all pants are trousers, for “pants” also include such things as pajama bottoms and some undergarments.) Yet, even pants, while ancient, are not quite as old as one might think. Prehistoric people in colder climates did cover their lower bodies, but they tended to do it in pieces. Ötzi the Iceman, for example, had leggings and a waist vestment. Pants as a unified garment seem to have been invented at the same time as the domestication of horses, mostly likely on the Eurasian steppes. They are eminently suited for horseback riding. Ancient Greek artwork depicts Scythians and other horse warriors (including Amazons) in pants. The oldest surviving pair of trousers are more than 3000 years old. They were found in western China; the style and workmanship indicate a long established sartorial tradition.
 
Pants soon caught on among non-equestrian northern ancient barbarian tribes, notably the Germans, since they were more comfortable in cold weather than anything… well… breezier. Mediterranean cultures rejected the garments for a long time. When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 CE, the Roman Emperor Honorius took firm action from his home in Ravenna by banning the wearing of pants – pants being Germanic attire. In China, however, trousers were in continuous use from ancient times by both sexes, especially but not exclusively among the working class, and usually were worn with a robe. After the fall of Rome, pants in the West as male attire increasingly replaced other garments even in southern Europe, particularly among peasants and laborers. By the 15^th century they were nearly universal in European middle and upper class circles as well. Thereafter, the styles and lengths varied widely over time as fashions came and went. Breeches that ended just below the knee held sway in the 18^th century, but after 1800 full length trousers became fashionable. Middle class women in Europe and North America started wearing them (some working class women always did) in the late 19^th century as sport and casual wear and did so with increasing frequency in the 20^th century. (I have photos of my grandmother in riding breeches in the 1920s and my mom in jeans in the 1940s.) They became common business attire for women in the 1970s.
 
Pants, for all their practicality, have one drawback – at least for those with waist measurements similar to (or larger than) hip measurements. They can fall down. Belts are the oldest answer but are not a perfect one. I speak from experience as someone with a body shape that, in order to keep pants in place, requires 1) cinching a belt so tight as to hurt the kidneys, 2) constantly hitching up pants by hand, which is awkward or impossible when both hands are full as when moving a sofa, or 3) wearing suspenders.
 
Suspenders seem an obvious idea to supplement (or replace) belts, yet we don’t have any evidence of them prior to the 1700s. That isn’t proof they didn’t exist, but if so they weren’t mentioned in literature or depicted in art. In the 18^th century they were simple cloth strips tied to buttonholes in pants. Intended to be no more visible than garters, they were worn under shirts. (Suspenders are still sometimes worn under shirts that don’t tuck in such as sweatshirts or polo shirts.) These originals weren’t very comfortable. In 1820 Albert Thurston came up with an improved design made of tightly woven wool that attached with leather loops. (You still can buy these.) They could be worn over shirts (they pretty much had to be if the shirts were tucked in) but still were expected to be under vests, jackets, or coats. (As always, these fashion considerations were a middle and upper class concern; workers wore whatever was practical however was practical.) Suspender design continued to improve throughout the 19^th century; the products became more elastic and adjustable. In 1894 suspenders with metal clasps were invented, so they could be used on any pants – not just those tailored for them with buttons or buttonholes.
 
In the 1920s and 1930s suspenders worn openly over shirts developed a sort of cachet. Gangsters and private detectives are often depicted with them in films of the ‘30s and ‘40s. After World War 2 their popularity faded but they never went away entirely. For some body types they are, as mentioned above, practical – and, yes, my young friend is right that it’s a body type common among older men. Some wearers do not have this body shape challenge but simply like the look. Suspenders sometimes turn up in women’s fashions too, e.g. the Annie Hall phase in the ‘70s.
 
As for me, I just like keeping my pants up as a favor to myself and to the world at large – and yes I wear suspenders with a belt. I drive with a spare tire in the trunk, too. Redundancy is safety.  

A few years ago

A few months ago

 

 

Randy Newman – Pants

 

Rue the Day

Last week I stumbled upon a podcast with an interview of Richard Gideon, author of Power of Regret: An in-depth look into the psychology of regret, its benefits, and how to break free from guilt. The discussion was interesting and tangentially related to Carl Jung, some of whose writings I was revisiting (see previous blog), but I had other things to do. So, I logged off – but not before ordering the “book” off Amazon. When it arrived it proved to be little more than a pamphlet that, at 22 pages, uses the term “in-depth” generously. However, if an author can say what he wants to say in that number of pages, I suppose there is no reason to yammer on for more.

We all have regrets. Some people claim they don’t, but they do. Yet, I understand what they mean when they say this. They mean they’ve made peace with their regrets. Some have simply forgiven themselves. Others, more philosophically, recognize that in order to accept who we are right now we must accept everything good and bad that got us to this point; everything in life and nature is so interconnected, after all, that one element cannot be changed without changing the whole. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t do things differently if real life, like video games, had do-overs from various save points. But even this would require remembering having done it wrong the first time. Those things we would do over are still fairly called regrets. There is nothing to be gained by wallowing in them however. Making peace with them is the focus of Gideon’s publication.
 
Regrets come in three main flavors. The first are simple misjudgments that ended in embarrassment, harm, or financial cost. They don’t have a moral aspect. (I regret not having bought Intel stock in 1971 and Bitcoin in 2009.) The second involves a failure of character in our own eyes though not necessarily a violation of ethics. An example would be rudeness to a friend or parent just before he or she (for unrelated reasons) dies. While unpleasant, mere rudeness is not unethical per se, but a person still might feel regretful and guilty about it in the case mentioned. The third are actual moral transgressions that may or may not be criminal: betrayal, theft, assault, or worse.
 
We start accumulating regrets early, but by middle age we usually have a substantial stockpile. Back in 2016 the insurance company Allianz conducted a poll on life regrets. There were as many regrets of omission as commission in the answers. Some answers:  failure to quit abusive relationships sooner; failure to prepare children for independence, which is very much a first world problem; working too much; saving too little; clinging to grudges; not achieving more; spending too little time with children and with parents; and failure to be more daring. Men and women give similar answers with two notable exceptions. Women are more likely than men to express romantic regrets (44% vs 19%) while women are less likely than men specifically to regret divorce (27% vs 39%). Those two may seem to be in contradiction, but they are quite different: the former are mostly about what-might-have-been while the latter are about what-actually-was.
 
Gideon’s tips on letting go of the past are obvious, but are not wrong for being so. Put things in context, he advises, such as your age and level of experience at the time of the regrettable incident. Find the positive, e.g. the lessons and personal growth from the event. Remember that there is a reason that even under the law most crimes have statutes of limitations for prosecutions. We all are fools, jerks, and violators sometimes, and none more than those who insist they aren’t. There comes a time to give yourself a break over the past. “Stop being cruel to yourself,” Gideon says. “Accept you’ve served your sentence and let go of the guilt.”
 
So, remember but move on. If we don’t we’ll regret that too.

 

Edith Piaf – Non Je Ne Regrette Rien (No, I Regret Nothing)

Jung Minds

Prompted by a discussion about Carl Jung on an online book chat group to which I belong, I retrieved The Portable Jung from one of my bookshelves this week for a revisit. The content is thoughtful, erudite, intelligent, and insightful. I can see, however, why Freud grew frustrated with Jung and broke with him. (Freud tended to take philosophical differences personally.) In the section on Synchronicity, for example, Jung shows himself far too ready to credit claims regarding ESP, astrology, and other paranormal phenomena without questioning whether anything might be flawed about the researchers’ methods or data. It’s hard not to visualize the more skeptical and materialistic Sigmund rolling his eyes.

 
Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious is less flaky in own writings than is often portrayed by others. It is little more than an acknowledgement that human beings are not born as blank slates (as was asserted by many academics of the time – and our own time for that matter) but that there is such a thing as evolved human nature. Evolutionary psychologists say the same thing in a more straightforward way. Jung’s exploration of myth and mythic symbolism impressed Joseph Campbell (deservedly so) and inspired him to write the intro to this anthology. It is likely however that Jung’s writings about the “shadow self” have had the most lasting cultural impact.
 
The shadow is the part of our personality that we don’t like to acknowledge. It consists largely of those thoughts, lusts, motivations, and desires that violate social norms and (more importantly) our personal ethos. It also consists of positive traits that we have trained ourselves to keep hidden; for example, if our assertiveness was punished when we were children, we may habitually suppress it later in life. To the extent that certain personality traits harm one’s self-image, they may be repressed or (worse) projected onto others. This is not identical to Freud’s description of the unconscious, since some of this is in fact conscious: that’s why the person feels uncomfortable about these traits and tries to deny them. Yet, Jung argued that we all have cruelty and destructiveness (and worse) in our natures. To become psychically whole and healthy we must acknowledge the shadow and integrate it into who we are. This doesn’t mean we should give into destructive impulses; it just means we do ourselves no favor by denying their existence. Unlike the groundhog, seeing one’s own shadow clearly can lead, so to speak, to an early spring. Jung writes,
 
“By not being aware of having a shadow, you declare a part of your personality to be non-existent… If you get rid of qualities you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter.”
 
Besides, there is nothing praiseworthy or good about any action or inaction if it isn’t a choice – if you have no other option. Jung was a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche in his youth, and one of Nietzsche’s lines was, “I laugh at those who think themselves good because they have no claws.” If you don’t have the capacity to do harm, then it’s not a big achievement to refrain from causing it. If you do have the capacity (including the capacity to enjoy it) then ethical decisions become possible. All that matters in the realm of ethics is what you do when you have a choice, not what you think or feel.
 
The notion of the shadow has entered pop culture. Jeff Lindsay literally refers to the “shadow” of the main character in his Dexter novels (which were adapted to a long-running TV series), but that example is too easy: too on the money. Let’s look instead at a slightly less obvious example: the old cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A character named Angel in the show is a vampire that has had his soul returned to him: a soul in the context of the show is a moral compass. Vampires in the show are normally soulless and are therefore psychopaths. They do what they like without guilt or moral twinge. But, as in real life, there are psychopaths and psychopaths. Not all psychopaths are serial killers. Most are law-abiding, not because they care at all about the law or about ethics or about anyone else’s wellbeing, but as a rational choice: they personally just don’t get enough jollies from crime to balance the likely penalties. One can be a psychopath and not a sadist, which is to say one can be nonchalant about causing pain without actually enjoying it. Angel berates himself for all the twisted evil sadistic things he did while soulless. Why? Because he knows the sadism was there in his own human character before he ever became a vampire. Losing his soul just removed his inhibitions against expressing it, but it was there. His whole character arc in this show (and then his own spin-off) consists of re-integrating his shadow self without turning to evil deeds again.
 
I don’t think I’m at much risk of becoming a vampire despite having encountered my fair share of bloodsuckers in life. Also, I gave up most shadow boxing some years ago, though it was a hobby for a while. But then again my claws are not as sharp as they used to be. I still recommend in a general way taking Carl’s advice to befriend the shadow side of oneself. But don’t let it operate the chain saw.

 

Peggy Lee – Me and My Shadow

 

Dangerous Toys

For recreational reading this week I indulged in some escapist fare. Long before his mainstream success as a novelist and in Hollywood (e.g. Jurassic Park), the overachieving Michael Crichton while still a Harvard med student wrote pulp crime fiction novels on the side under the pseudonym John Lange. They aren’t bad. In the 1972 novel Binary a domestic political extremist hijacks a nerve gas shipment and plans to release the gas in San Diego. The title refers (primarily) to a safeguard in the most advanced chemical weapons stockpiled by the US at the time: two components of the nerve gas were kept separate. Neither was deadly on its own; they were lethal only when mixed and they would be mixed only when used. Sometimes, as in binary artillery shells, mixing would occur when the projectile was in flight. Now that I describe the plot, it somehow seems less escapist.

One of the more enlightened decisions of the Nixon Administration, by the way, was unilaterally to eliminate US stockpiles of lethal chemical and biological weapons. Nixon stated that nuclear weapons were a sufficient deterrent to all forms of weapons of mass destruction, which was a clear implication that any attack on the US or its allies with any type of NBC (nuclear/biological/chemical) weapon would be grounds for nuclear retaliation. Eliminating the stockpiles safely took time, however, so they really were being transported on highways to facilities for processing and disposal under dubious security arrangements at the time the Crichton/Lange book was written. They didn’t require a lot of expertise to use. Short of acquiring a functional and armed nuclear warhead intact, on the other hand, terrorists would be unlikely to be able to do anything with hijacked nuclear materials other than, perhaps, contaminate an area by dispersing them. The most realistic nuclear danger always has been and still is from governments.
 
The US has never declared a definitive “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons. The Soviets did, but nobody believed them. Official Russian military doctrine (English source War on the Rocks) promulgated in 2014 more honestly states,
 
“The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
 
The Congressional Research Service 2021 report titled Russia’s Nuclear Weapons: Doctrine, Forces, and Modernization concludes the unofficial (real) doctrine may be less cautious: "When combined with military exercises and Russian officials’ public statements, this evolving doctrine seems to indicate that Russia has potentially placed a greater reliance on nuclear weapons and may threaten to use them during regional conflicts." This is sometimes called a policy of “escalate to de-escalate.” The report’s conclusion is supported by commentary in other Russian official documents such at the 2017 naval doctrine, which states that deterrence can be achieved during an escalating conflict by “demonstrating the willingness and determination to employ force, including non-strategic nuclear weapons.”
 
This isn’t much different from US policy. (Nor is it much different from that of the UK, France, North Korea, Pakistan, and India; China officially has a “no first use” policy, though unofficial policy is anyone’s guess; Israel doesn’t admit to having the 100 or so weapons everyone assumes it has, so it can have no official position; South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons in 1989.) Accordingly, the risk remains what it was during the Cold War: misjudgment of an opponent’s response either to a threat to use or to the actual limited use of tactical nukes with the result that events escalate out of control. This is just something to keep in mind while playing brinkmanship games in places such as Ukraine.
 
I’m of an age to remember the height of the Cold War. There was a weird sort of dark humor about the whole thing that was prevalent at the time – a way of coping with what was beyond our control. I posted some years ago about my memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis: see 22 October. I remember well the civil defense drills in school. Recalling them does not evoke nostalgia. Schools are scary enough these days without having cause to restart them.
 

Sheldon Allman – Radioactive Mama (1960)

On the Nose

I grew up in the town where I currently live. My mother grew up in the same town. My family operated businesses (all in some way real estate related) in this town since the 1950s. Accordingly, quite a few locals know me, at least in passing. Most don’t anymore to be sure, especially relative newcomers. (I closed my Main Street office in 2014.) To the overwhelming majority of residents I’m just another anonymous face. But enough do, especially old-timers, that it is rare for me to go the market or to lunch or some other local public place without getting at least one nod or wave or “Hi Rich” from someone other than the staff. The reverse, of course, is true as well. Among the many strangers in those places there is always someone I know at least in passing. (Fewer each year, truth be told. I sometimes joke that I know more local residents in Hilltop Cemetery than I do above ground, but the “joke” is very nearly true.) On the occasions when conversations happen in such encounters (as when someone familiar sits at the same lunch counter and says “Hi Rich!”) I am likely to hear gossip about other old-timers of the “Did you hear what happened to so-and-so?” sort – mostly because I probably know who so-and-so is whereas a newcomer would just respond with a bewildered shrug. (I’m not above offering gossip, btw; I just don’t have much on tap anymore – that I care to share anyway.) In turn I’m likely to get an occasional mention in similar conversations among others – again, not as much as in the past, but it still surely happens.
 

My mom at 13 in the center of town 1941

Gossip gets a bad rap, but anthropologists and psychologists argue that it is normal, human, and an evolutionary benefit both to the species and the individual. Some argue that humans owe their primo advantage (language) to gossip. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar for one writes, “In a nutshell, I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.” A hunter-gatherer group will max out at about 150 people (it generally splits when it gets any bigger), which are few enough that everybody knows everybody. Navigating the very complex and constantly shifting social structures within this community (knowing who is doing what with whom and how that affects your status) is crucial to personal and reproductive success. Not many of us live in groups and villages of 150 people anymore. We might not even know our own neighbors. (I know my own neighbor’s name only because of mis-delivered mail.) So, modern gossip (masquerading as news) instead tends to be about public figures we all recognize (strangers though they may really be), but the old fashioned personal type within social cliques and subsets still occurs too.
 
Theophrastus in his list of character types (c. 300 BCE) wonders at the motives of the Gossip: “It is a standing puzzle to me,” he writes, “what object these men can have in their inventions.” I suspect Theo was just feigning ignorance in order to seem less like them. The motive, whether self-acknowledged or not, is and always has been social status. This is most obvious when gossip is weaponized as it so often is in the workplace… and the damage it can cause is the source of its bad rap. None of us wants to be targeted in this way. It is why we recoil from nosy questions from would-be gossipers. It is why we consider some questions to be nosy. (Alternate spelling: nosey.) Financial questions are always sensitive except among close friends and family – sometimes even there. We often learn the hard way how answers to “How much do you earn?” or “What was your bonus?” can be used by others in the workplace for their own negotiations – often to your detriment. Even in a nominally non-competitive social context (in reality there is no such thing among any species of primate) nosiness can be off-putting because of its potential social harm to us. What question is nosy and what isn’t depends on how close and confidential a relationship is, of course. Just a few examples of ones I have gotten in the past year from casual acquaintances include:
 
            What did you get for that property you sold?
            Do you have a mortgage on your home?
            [Those two are public record, if anyone really wishes to check.]
            Why aren’t you married?
            [I usually answer this one with “Because hell hasn’t frozen over.”]
            Why don’t you have kids?
            [Just lucky, I guess.]
            Since you don’t have kids, who are you leaving your estate to?
            [I get this one repeatedly and usually answer with “I plan to spend every

            cent.” This might be true.]
            How much is on your credit cards?
            [Yes, this was a real question.]
            Did you do a lot of drugs in the 60s?
            [The 1960s or my 60s?]
 
I actually don’t mind these inquiries: I don’t answer them seriously but I don’t mind them. I long ago (not as far back as high school regrettably, but long ago) learned to deflect them. I find nosiness irksome only when it crosses over into active busybody territory, e.g. the person who asks if you bought a new boat and, if the answer is yes, then calls the police because the boat trailer in your back yard violates some obscure zoning ordinance. It is the person who confronts a neighbor because a “Yard Sale” sign violates a homeowners association code. It is the person who calls social services on parents who let their kid walk to school. A woman once called the police on me because my car broke down in a No Parking zone; they arrived while I waited for a tow truck, but didn’t write a ticket. I won’t tell the name. That would be gossip.
 

Bull Moose Jackson - Nosey Joe (1952)

 

The Glad Seed

Nostalgia can be evoked by the smell, sight, or taste of almost anything familiar, but food is definitely a big trigger. Often we like something for no other reason than its familiarity. Take root beer, which I have in my pantry at this moment. Watch reaction videos of non-Americans trying root beer for the first time. Few like it. Most think it tastes like cola gone seriously wrong somehow. It is similar to the reaction of most Americans on their first exposure to kvas, a Russian soft drink that tastes something like liquid carbonated rye bread. It’s weird to newbies, but I fully understand why Russian expatriates get nostalgic about it. So too with other flavors. Childhood memories of home cooking are often the strongest source of food nostalgia.

                                            

In my case the nostalgia is not from home cooking per se – not from my parents’ home anyway. My mother was a remarkable woman of many talents but cooking wasn’t really one of them and she didn’t pretend otherwise. “Like mother used to make” to me means off the shelf and probably from the frozen section: nothing really wrong with it, just generic. (This describes my own present-day cooking, too, by the way.) The memorable home meals from my childhood were memorable for reasons other than culinary. My paternal grandmother on the other hand was a phenomenal cook who always worked from scratch. We’d go to her house on holidays or just the occasional Sunday, and I’m experiencing taste-memories of some of her dishes right now just by writing about them. My grandfather was from Budapest and my grandmother’s family hailed from Bratislava (both Austria-Hungary at the time), so much (by no means all) of the fare on their table was very Central European: things like stuffed cabbages, stuffed peppers, and goulash. Don’t spare the paprika. One of her signature desserts was a poppy seed swirl cake: heavy enough on the poppy seeds for a single slice to make one fail drug tests for a month.

 

Poppy seeds are what brought the whole subject of food nostalgia to mind for today’s post. I get a yen for them occasionally, but nearby markets carry only poppy seed muffins, lemon cake, and bagels. These are fine but don’t stir any childhood memories. There is a Hungarian bakery about 40 minutes from my house that sells baked in-house poppy seed swirl cake, but a 1 ½ hour round trip (including in-store time) is a long way to go just for a cake, so I always talk myself out of it unless in the neighborhood anyway. However, I happened upon an ad for home delivery of Stern’s poppy seed cake a few days ago. I rarely order anything food-related online. Food shopping is just something I prefer to do in person, but on this occasion I decided to make an exception. The cake was delivered by Amazon to my door and I’ve been nibbling at it since this morning. OK, it’s not grandma’s by any means, but it really isn’t bad. It’s close enough to evoke the strong case of food nostalgia that I was after.

Poppies (Papaver somniferum) are among the earliest domesticated crops. Poppy seeds have been found at over 40 Neolithic archaeological sites from Anatolia to France. The oldest sites precede 5000 BCE, and for good reason. The seeds have excellent nutritional value. They are high in fiber, omega-6 fatty acids, zinc, magnesium, and thiamin… and of course the dried sap from the poppy flower pod has its own attraction. It is the source of opium, from which morphine, codeine, and heroin are derived. The ancients across Eurasia were well aware of the sedative and pain relieving qualities of opium. Greek and Roman writers (including Pliny and Galen) describe its narcotic effects. Yet the seeds themselves contain very little of the drug. Even if one were to eat an entire cake like the one pictured at a single sitting, the only high would be from the sugar. This is why poppy seeds are legal in the US even though opium is not.

 

There is just enough related chemistry in the seeds however to give false positives on tests for opiates. This is not just a rumor or some plot device for a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine fails a company drug test. The Mythbusters ran an experiment on the “myth” by eating poppy seeds (a relatively small amount at that) in one episode. They confirmed that they tested positive for opium afterward.

 

Poppy seeds are a versatile ingredient and they turn up in a variety of baked goods. Nearly all of them are good but the swirl roll remains my favorite, no doubt because of my early experience with it. It continues to be popular in Central Europe today: especially (but not limited to) Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. It goes by many names: makowiec, Mohnstrudel, mákos bejgli, et al. But whatever one chooses to call it, I suspect I’ll be ordering another one soon. Maybe next time I’ll have it after stuffed cabbage… but not before a blood or urine test.

                                                                                                                

 

Seinfeld – Elaine fails drug test