Be the apple of my pie

Turns out I'm not only helping make a documentary about the Automat, but am even involved in a Kickstarter initiative to fund part of that effort. You'd think, given how many institutions funded parts of my education and of my dissertation work in particular, that I'd be a dab hand at asking for money, but in truth I'm tongue-tied at the prospect of doing so. I post the Kickstarter link, hand out postcards, email a few people to say Hey, isn't it funny, I'm doing this, but many, I learn later, don't pick up on my message, understated as it is. Seems I must find a way to more effectively solicit funds. And if I'm to do that then I'd best first explain why I truly think this project is worth your investment.

Know this: the film's purpose is not the dissertation's: they have the same topic but not the same thesis. The dissertation was intended to engage my fellow historians of technology and to contribute to a shared and somewhat abstruse discussion about technological systems. The documentary is trying to do something much more ambitious: to engage my fellow Americans and to contribute to a shared and universally relevant discussion about how we can best live together.

Americans used to eat together, now they eat apart, and when we eat apart we eat worse.

Horn and Hardart created a massively popular food system that, in part because of the presence of the automat machine, was communal in style. America in the 1920s was characterized by levels of income disparity equivalent to today's, but rich and poor ate together at the Automat. The 1920s also saw relatively extreme levels of anti-immigration and racist sentiment, but natives and immigrants ate together at the Automat, as did people of all races. And they continued to do so, in unprecedented numbers, for roughly the next half century. The Automat was phenomenal.

That is not how we eat today. Yes, Andy, we may all drink the same Cokes, but we don't all eat in the same restaurants, we don't shop at the same groceries, we don't even all drink the same water anymore. I'm positing--we'll see if it sticks, but at the moment I'm positing--that it was fast food that taught us to eat apart from one another: one transaction at a time, each serving individually wrapped, each tiny table and each hard seat in each low-ceilinged room intended for a single, hurried person. No one lingers in a fast food restaurant, no one connects; you refuel and get the hell out of there.

The rise of fast food as the preferred solution to the public's need for a quick, cheap meal probably reflects a general preference for separation, for personal space, and it correlates to a certain degree with the migration to the suburbs, with the adoption of the car in place of public transport, and with other examples in which American society opted for separation over connection. Are houses in the suburbs worse than apartments in the city? Is a seat behind the wheel worse than one aboard a bus? For the most part, no. But I'll tell you this, and, given a chance, I'll show you, too: a meal at a fast food restaurant is altogether worse than eating at the Automat.

Americans used to eat together, now they eat apart, and when we eat apart we eat worse. Why does this matter? Not just because it suggests we could have a better restaurant system if we had something more like the Automat, but because it points to a much bigger truth: that in general we do worse apart than we do together. Red state/blue state, income disparity, immigrant rejection, whatever the rational, whatever the reason, we need more reminders that separation costs us, as a country and as a society. How can we best live together? Not by living apart.

I don't know if, in the end and with your funding, this is what the documentary will communicate. The making of has been running for a couple of years now, and there have been many twists and turns along the way. But this is what I want it to say, and I do have some influence over that. So if you think this is worth saying, and you don't have a better way to say it, please give.

Return of Bearduck

The wife has always had a thing for cute:  she is, she's drawn to, she has an eye for cute. Years ago, when I was first courting her, I played along, as gentlemen do, primarily by engaging in extended discussion of cat names and admiring articles of clothing so identified. I won't say this activity was feigned but it was less than wholehearted. Not so my enjoyment of bearduck.

Bearduck, the bear who dressed like a duck.  The improbability of it, the jokes, the novelty, and most fun, the games we'd play in which the little figure would show up in unlikely places.  But one night, enjoying sushi boats, we took the game too far:  we placed Bearduck on an empty boat, watched him sail off towards the kitchen, and then sat and waited for his return.  He never came back.

Sometime after that one of us discovered Bearcluck, the bear who dressed like a chicken, and we've preserved him through all the travels and all the years.  He lost his rooster cap, Talia sewed him a new one.  We cared, but we never loved.  And we never forgot Bearduck, floating away.

Life goes on.  And on and on and here it is, Labor Day 2014, and we're celebrating our one year anniversary in our still-new home and BARn.  I'm on an errand, refilling supplies, and I realize that a package that's been sitting around for a few days is addressed to me so I grab it and open it and there's Bearduck, a bit bigger than I remember him, and wasn't his old outfit footed, but it's Bearduck alright, and I'm awfully pleased to see him.

Now, who sent him back home?  Not a Boston-based sushi chef, that's for sure.  No, no, it was an old friend, and a very special person with a very special mind, a mind so orderly and logical that it was able to recognize, after a hiatus closer to two decades than one, someone else's toy.  It was none other than VeronicaSpock, a lovely woman who does not dress like a Vulcan but who certainly thinks as clearly as one, and who likes for things to be where they belong.

What do you want?

Please note that containers are sold empty.  Honey is shown for illustrative purposes only.

 This one's about you, friend, not me.

What do you want?  Why don't you already know this, why don't you have an answer at hand?  Why, as you think harder about it, does the answer seem to recede into the distance?  And what's with this sense that you used to know but can't quite remember what that earlier answer was?  Lots of reasons, lots of really good reasons.

You've been taught not to want the things you do want.  I do this all the time to my kids.  What does Felix want?  More syrup on his pancakes, more soy sauce on his rice, more honey on everything.  No, Felix, you've had enough syrup...more soy sauce will ruin your rice...we are out of honey, again.  What does Gideon want?  To stay up all night, "reading," to climb out the window that leads to the apple tree, or, formerly, possibly still, to drink out of the toilet.  No, Gideon, no, no, no.  And it doesn't end there:  we are constantly telling one another not to be greedy, not to strive too obviously, not to leave the dirty dishes sit, not to have an affair.  If we exclude the leaden question of What-do-you-want-for-dinner-tonight you will find that, as an adult, you are rarely asked what it is you want, and almost never asked what you really want.

Things get taken away from you--a favorite restaurant closes, a friend dies, lovers leave you, families get broken, Utz discontinues their Mesquite BBQ Kettle Cooked potato chips, why why why why why?--and you confuse the desire to fill that hole with the want that creates something new.  Yes, you want those things back, it's a true want, but it's a useless, irrelevant want, and it drowns the weak signal of the want-for-that-which-you've-never-had.

You aren't in touch with your emotions and finding what you want depends on being able to feel it.  You will never answer this question by analysis, it isn't a puzzle to be solved.  Wants are discoveries, not inventions, but your education and your work have done almost nothing to teach you how to find things, only how to make them.  The making is what gets you the things you want, but we're not there yet.  Feeling comes first, and at your age feeling is uncomfortable at best, and if you're like me it actually hurts.

Last, there's just no space in life for questions like this.  It's open-ended, doesn't offer quick wins, and any answer you do find is probably going to cause an awful lot of trouble.  Searching necessitates sitting still, which you don't do.  Searching is helped by having conversations with people of a sort you don't normally have.  You might have to start keeping a diary or seeing a shrink, you might have to travel or take a long, long drive.  Who has time?  Who has capacity?  And who even wants to admit they don't have what they want, much less that they don't even know what that thing is?

When you really look at it, it's just a terrible question to have to ask yourself, a terrible question to have to share with others, and it's just a terrible pity that you must.  But you must, so get to it and stick to it, and good luck to you.  You can do it, you can find an answer, or a part of one.  And once you do know what you want perhaps we can blog some more together about how to go about asking for it.

How are you?

How are you, I'm asked. Here's as good an answer as any: I took this selfie yesterday, after I got stung on the tongue by a bee.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that other than the bee sting I really can't complain.

For the birds

Birds, never much cared for them. And no, this isn't me generalizing my feelings about crows, it's just that I don't happen to be one of those people who are into them; whether by innate fascination, some deep desire to fly, whatever it is that draws you people-who-are-not-like-me, I'm not like that, I'm not like you, I don't like birds, much. Until quite recently, when suddenly it got personal.

As what passes for winter around here itself passed, spring came and with it a pair of small birds that chose to nest under our eaves right near the outlet of our non-functional but completely unobstructed kitchen vent. I noticed them because of their frequent comings-and-goings and because of the occasional chirp that came through that vent. And then I noticed them a lot more because they had chicks, which chicks chirped strenuously and repeatedly throughout the daylight hours, directly into my kitchen. They chirped, I discovered (Science, take note), whenever one of their parents either entered or left the nest, or was in it, except at night. This was irritating for their human housemates, but this housemate, at least, is just barely enlightened enough to have thought to think of it from the parent birds' point of view, which I imagine is something like this:

We wake at dawn and, with our kids screaming at us, go get some food. Working in shifts we bring it back home to give to our kids and before we can even start to stuff it down their throats they scream at us some more. Each one screams at us when we are feeding their siblings, and when the food is all gone they scream even louder until we have to get the hell out of here. We get some more food and it all happens again. This goes on all day until finally we all fall asleep, completely exhausted. Then it happens the next day, and the day after, and so on.

I can really identify with this.

The chirping went on for many weeks, and as I grew accustomed to it my annoyance died and my sympathy with the parents grew and then when it ended, and extra small birds started fluttering clumsily around my yard, I found I missed the chirping and realized I'd grown fond of this little family, or the parents anyway. But they left and I did too, headed to the mountains for a few days in a tent cabin.

Now here's a nice coincidence for you: while I was in the mountains, and my family with me, friends came to stay at our house. Special friends. Ornithologist friends. And while they were here, for all of 24 hours, they made a list of all the birds they saw. This is the list:

1. California towhee
2. American crow
3. Lesser goldfinch
4. Downy woodpecker
5. Chestnut-backed chickadee
6. Oak titmouse
7. Pileated woodpecker
8. Warbling vireo
9. Band-tailed pigeon
10. Turkey vulture
11. Spotted towhee
12. Pacific slope flycatcher
13. Mourning dove
14. Oregon junco
15. Bewick's wren
16. Bushtit
17. American goldfinch
18. Western scrub-jay
19. House finch
20. Tree swallow
21. Anna's hummingbird
22. Nuttall's woodpecker
23. Brown creeper
24. White-breasted nuthatch
25. Winter wren
26. Hutton's vireo

If they had stayed up late they would likely have heard a Great horned owl, too, but they wouldn't have heard our personal bird family--House sparrows, as it happens--because, as I said, they were already gone.

That is not the coincidence. It is cool, and a surprise to me because I would not have guessed there were quite so many different birds flying around the place, and good news too because now I like birds, sort of...but it is not the coincidence. The coincidence is that our personal bird family (as best as I, the non-ornithologist can tell) had also decided to move to the mountains, there to raise a second family, only this time they did it inside our house (tent cabin) not outside it. We cohabited again, the two families, for several days, and it was a real pleasure for me at least, if not anyone else. You can view the film here, or you can come visit next spring and, I trust, see this same little family yourself.