Ken’s Blog

I first came upon J. Botangier’s “The Needle and the Stitch” in the Strand Bookstore on Broadway near 12th Street. The Strand is the kind of bookstore that sells just about every imaginable kind of used volume. So finding an obscure American romance novel from the 1920s was not all that surprising. But, as I was soon to discover, this was no ordinary book.

Our heroine, Katherine Olmsley, is one of those heedless and headstrong young women one often finds in novels of this kind. Her upbringing in an old and respected Boston family, one that came “from old money”, as they say, only serves to highlight her rebellion against propriety. By the time we meet Kate, in her early twenties, she is a fully formed flapper, breaking young mens’ hearts left and right, knowing where all the right parties are, able to hold her own in debates about the latest scandalous ideas from Freud, even when tanked up on speakeasy gin.

All of this changes when she meets Rodney. For the first time she finds a deep connection, a soulmate. She is willing to overlook the fact that Rodney is different, even the fact that he is a household appliance. Sadly for our heroine, nobody seems to understand – not her family, her friends, the party people she thought were her true pals. When Rodney comes upon the scene, they all desert her.

And so woman and sewing machine set up house in a tenement on the lower east side. Unlike the young men she had been running with, Rodney is the perfect companion. He never complains, does not stay out late drinking with the boys, never even looks at another gal. When she comes home at night he is always waiting for her.

Certain intimate details of their relationship are elided over, as was generally the case for novels in this period. Perhaps this is for the best – the reader is left to exercise her imagination as to the nature of their bond. Besides, it must be admitted that a certain delicate level of euphemism is called for when discussing relations between flesh and machinery.

Suffice it to say that the relationship blossoms, deepens. Out of their impassioned lovemaking progeny inevitably emerges. At first only a hat, some gloves, the occasional woolen scarf. But eventually they hit their stride, they learn to understand each other in the way that only true lovers can. Kate opens a shop in midtown – the eponymous “Needle and the Stitch”. Word quickly spreads about the fine quality clothing to be had at the intrepid little emporium. Each item seems to be made with a kind of love rarely seen in such merchandise.

I won’t spoil the novel for you by giving too much away. Suffice it to say that if you pick up this little gem you won’t be disappointed. Not that it’s a perfect book. There are places where the thread of the narrative wears thin. And other places that could have used a firm editorial snip of the scissors.

But there are also madcap goings that will leave you in stitches, as well as lyrical and heartbreaking chapters, like the one where Kate, overworked and feeling hemmed in, is temporarily wooed away from her true love, tempted into a hot and torrid romance by a smooth operating steam press named Max. Will cooler heads prevail? Will our dear heroine eventually patch things up with Rodney? Will the two lovers end up tying the knot?

I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it for you. You’ll just have to read Botangier’s little masterpiece for yourself.

I enjoy doing puzzles, whether they be crossword puzzles, sudoku, ken-ken (a recent addition to The New York TImes’ puzzle page), pretty much anything that requires only a pen and a little time. Challenges in puzzles seem soothing to me, restful, whereas challenges in real life can be very stressful indeed.

I used to think that this difference is due entirely to the “magic circle” effect – the fact that the outcome of a puzzle has no real-word consequences. According to this theory, the puzzler understands that they are in a safe place, and therefore can exercise their brain without fear.

But recently I have come to see another difference, one that might be more fundamental. A crossword or sudoku or ken-ken puzzle, unlike problems in the real world, always has a solution. You know for certain, from the very outset, that the Answer is already in there, hidden within the puzzle itself like the prize in a treasure hunt, simply waiting for you to find it.

I would argue that this might be the salient quality of puzzles that makes them so appealing. We deal every day with the weirdness and downright disturbing nature of reality – arguments with friends and strangers that can seem to come out of nowhere, our nation’s economy taking odd and sometimes ominous turns with little or no warning, wars, hurricanes, unexpected illnesses or even deaths of friends or family members. The entire world can seem like a problem with no solution, a continuing set of difficult questions for which the only answer might very well be “There is no answer”.

But a puzzle’s ability to be solved is guaranteed, even before we put pen to paper, a fact which provides a deep source of comfort. We know that our puzzle had an author, that there is somebody out there, even if it’s somebody we will likely never meet, who is looking out for us. And so we know that in this little artificial world there is indeed always an Answer, unlike the situation we face in the often cruel, capricious and chaotic world of our lives.

So I would argue that it may not be so much the fact that puzzles have no real-world consequences, but rather it is their epistemological appeal – in the world of a puzzle there is always a wise (and for the most part benevolent) Creator – that makes puzzle solving so appealing as comfort food for the mind.

I was going to post a comment in response to Dagmar’s comment on yesterday’s post, but I realized there is enough here to warrant another post. In particular, I was struck by her observation that these TV networks would not be violating this woman’s privacy unless there was an audience out there willing to tune in.

OK, intellectually I understand that there must be millions of people who tuned in to watch while Fox and CBS showed excerpts from that video. But I’m having trouble understanding why those people thought it was ok to watch.

Only when I read Dagmar’s insightful comment I did start to grapple with the disturbing fact that there must be a large audience eager to watch while CBS and Fox engage in deliberate abuse of an innocent party. I hadn’t thought about this before because it had never even occurred to me to watch that video. I’m sure it’s easy to find on the internet, but it seems to me that anyone who watches it, whether on the internet or on TV, is violating another person’s right to privacy.

Here’s the analogy that comes to mind: Suppose John is with a friend in a restaurant, and a diner at the next table goes to the restroom, leaving their pocketbook on their seat. John’s friend reaches into the pocketbook and pulls out two crisp twenty dollar bills. The friend puts one bill in his own pocket and hands the other to John, saying “Hey look, free money!” John takes the money, reasoning that he didn’t steal it, his friend did.

That’s pretty much the position you are in if you willingly watch that puerile video on Fox or CBS. You didn’t air it, they did, so you can tell yourself that you don’t need to take responsibility for watching it. Except that you do. Being a willing audience for such things makes you exactly as guilty as John was in that restaurant.

In my view, each of us – every citizen – has an ethical obligation to pointedly avoid watching Fox News or CBS Early Edition – at all – until those networks apologize for violating the public trust and that woman’s rights. Otherwise we are condoning and encouraging this sort of abuse.

You might not agree. In which case I humbly suggest – assuming you do not wish to be a surprise guest on a national news program – that you make very sure there are no hidden cameras in your bathroom.

Today I read that some peeping tom recently took illicit videos of an ESPN network sports reporter through the peephole of her closed hotel room door, capturing footage of the unsuspecting woman while she was naked. Amazingly, it was reported, both the CBS Early Show and Fox News had opted to show portions of the video on air.

If you haven’t heard about this, you’ll probably think I’m making that last part up. After all, logic tells us that this woman’s basic rights had been violated – a rather unsavory crime – so surely no responsible news organization would reward such a crime by repeating the violation on national television. That kind of coverage is the ultimate encouragement of continued criminal activity, the kind of validation most voyeurs could only dream about. But thanks to CBS and Fox, for one lucky peeping tom the dream has become a reality.

Since it’s inconceivable that any news organization could actually be either that stupid or that venal (as in “Gosh, let’s join forces with this criminal and help him to violate this poor woman, because that will make our ratings go up”), one must presume that both organizations were following some higher principle, some enlightened path so evolved that it eludes the minds of us ordinary folks.

Fortunately for you, gentle readers, I have obtained inside info – unreleased documents from top-secret executive planning sessions – showing that Fox and CBS made this transition into blatantly criminal activity as a way to raise the consciousness of our nation. It seems that we are merely seeing the start of a continuing lesson in civics, as the producers at these news networks work to expose crime in a truly novel way: By participating in it. For example, in the case of the peeping tom video, they wanted us to understand on a visceral level the monstrousness, the sheer violation, of the invasion of privacy that occurred in that hotel. And the best way to do that was to themselves publicly commit the same crime against the same victim, while millions of Americans watched in horrified disgust.

The actual documents delineating network plans for the fall lineup are too long to reprint here. But I can give you a glimpse of some highlights, a preview of the coming television season, as these esteemed news organizations collectively continue their ongoing foray into civics education:

August: Fox News exposes Michael Vicks’ brutal exploitation of innocent canines by bringing some dogs onto the show, and then proceeding to viciously bludgeon each one to death with a baseball bat, while the studio audience is encouraged to take bets on the order of their demise. In this way we are all made to become more sensitive to the plight of man’s best friend in today’s world.

September: Rising to this challenge, CBS Early Edition brings an assortment of small children from Darfur onto the set, and the news anchors proceed to hack them all into pieces with machetes. By the end of the segment nothing is left but a pool of blood and assorted body parts. Surely such a demonstration will raise our collective consciences, causing millions of caring Americans to open our hearts and pocketbooks in order to ease the plight of our African neighbors.

October: Fox News mails innocuous looking letters to all one hundred senators, as well as all four hundred and thirty five members of the House of Representatives. Each letter has been surreptitiously laced with the deadly Ebola virus. Within five days every member of congress is dead – except for Al Franken, who it turns out is immune. Speaking on behalf of a stunned nation, President Obama profusely thanks Fox News for raising our collective awareness of the potential dangers of postal terrorism.

November: Not to be outdone, CBS Early Edition detonates a 0.5 megaton nuclear device in downtown Chicago, thereby wiping that great midwestern city from the map, killing several million people outright, and effectively making the region uninhabitable for a radius of about a hundred miles around. Americans watching at home get the point, and rally around ongoing negotiations with Russia toward mutual nuclear disarmament.

And so it continues, as our intrepid news organizations, newly empowered with civic zeal, teach us one valuable lesson after another. Looking over the lineup for the coming year, I think it’s really wonderful that these networks are taking such an interest in the teaching of social awareness. Personally though, I’m a little nervous about next April. That’s when Fox News is scheduled to do a segment on the Holocaust.

I find it touching and rather sweet that Microsoft has named its new search engine after a beloved American singer. Bing Crosby is sometimes overlooked by newer generations, but his innovative vocal stylings on such classics as “Swinging on a Star” and “White Christmas” influenced Sinatra and many others, resulting in a cascade of musical influences that have inspired many in the biz, from Bono to Amy Winehouse. Until its introduction of “Bing”, which is quite an impressive piece of software btw, I hadn’t realized that Microsoft possessed such a high level of subtlety and sensitivity to our nation’s formative pop-cultural influences.

I hope they continue in the spirit of this lovely gesture to Der Bingle. Here are some modest suggestions, likewise drawn from the golden age of great crooners. In the spirit of Louie Armstrong, a technology to let you carry all your data with you, accessible from any browser, could be called “Satchmo”. After all, how better than to suggest that “the internet is the computer” is a winning strategy than by honoring the man who sang “That Lucky Old Sun”.

And rather than naming their new gesture based interaction system “Natal”, now that it is tantalizingly close to reality, perhaps they could honor the Chairman of the Board himself and call it “Ole Blue Eyes”. After all, Sinatra gave us such classics as “High Hopes”, “The World is in my Arms” and “I Believe”.

Even Vista might be resurrected and renamed “Dean”, after Dean Martin, the great mid-century vocalist who gave us such classics as “You’re Breaking my Heart”, “Just One More Chance” and “Have a Little Sympathy”. And for distributed computing over the internet, why not rebrand the rather overworked phrase “Cloud Computing” in a way that would truly set Microsoft apart from certain highly touted competitors? They could call it “The Velvet Fog”, in honor of Mel Tormé. On the other hand, Mr. Tormé was known for singing “Cast your Fate to the Wind” and “Perfidia”, so that might not really be sending the right message.

But one could argue that naming too many product offerings after singers now long dead is a risky value proposition. Memories are short, and Microsoft is already taking a substantial risk with its brave new product title, given that Bing Crosby passed from this mortal coil in 1977 – long before many of today’s users of internet search were even born. So I would suggest that the company hedge its bets, by including at least one pop singer who is not long dead, but merely, say, freshly dead. Along those lines, perhaps they could introduce a utility that blocks unwanted ads from showing up on your desktop. It would be called, of course, “The King of Pop”.

We are so utterly immersed in our cyber-enhanced world that it can be hard to properly understand the context surrounding the historic event of forty years ago today, so thoroughly does our current world view skew our perception of the word “technology”. To put things in proper perspective, the total computational power involved in the Apollo mission to the Moon was far less than the computing power contained in your cell phone.

When JFK launched his grand challenge to put a man on the Moon and bring him safely back before the decade was out, not even five years had elapsed since the first simple integrated circuit had been demonstrated in a laboratory. Telephones did not have computers in them. Nor did cars, ovens, toys, hotel doors, stereos, or the myriad other objects in one’s daily life.

Yes, there was already a fantasy of a technological future – the Jetsons come to mind – but that was more of a physical fantasy than a cybernetic one. The coolest thing about the Jetsons was their flying car – a natural extension of post-war America’s extended love affair with the automobile, and a collective cultural desire that dates back to Henry Ford in 1908.

Similarly George Jetson’s robotic housekeeper Rosie was not portrayed as a marvel of artificial intelligence, but rather as a thinly disguised gloss on the 1950s TV character Hazel – a smart-alecky blue collar housekeeper engaged in perpetual affectionate class warfare with her boss, the upwardly mobile suburbanite George Baxter. The only thing that really distinguished Rosie from Hazel was the way she managed to zoom around the house while balancing on what looked like a single tiny roller skate. Again, a celebration of mechanical innovation, not cybernetic advancement.

In other words, the world of the 1960s was still focused on the physical world as the ultimate measure of technological advancement – buildings that were the highest ever, weapons more explosive than any ever built before, jet planes and submarines and automobiles that broke all previous speed records. The most celebrated superhero was still Superman – that master of the physical, celebrated for his unparalleled strength, speed, ability to fly, even X-ray vision. The technological focus of the 1960s was, in essential ways, an extension of the Victorian, with its trains running ever faster, huge steamships sailing across the globe, mighty cities built with ever newer and stronger materials and methods of manufacture – not to mention those X-rays (first discovered in 1875).

In an important way, that first footstep on the Moon was the paramount expression of the Victorian dream – a fantasy come true for anyone who grew up reading Jules Verne, H.G. Welles or Hugo Gernsback. Humans could truly say that they had passed the ultimate physical test – they had shown they could break the bonds that tied our species down to mother Earth.

But once having proved this, there was nowhere else to go. In a sense, the Moon landing was a death knell for such Victorian era dreams. What appeal could a mere train or jet plane or tall building hold for a species that had walked upon another heavenly body? What had been mere hopeful fantasy and speculation from the time of the ancient Greeks – and earlier – was now cold hard fact.

Sure, we could go on to Mars and beyond, but there was no longer any mystery as to whether such a feat was possible. Once human footsteps had touched the surface of the Moon, we knew in our heart of hearts that we could find a way to walk upon the planets.

And so in the four decades that have followed, our culture’s yearnings for technological transcendence have gradually turned 180^o, from outward to inward. Our technological desire has focused less on extending the body, and more on extending the brain. When Neil Armstrong took his first step upon the Moon, forty years ago today, he became the last Victorian hero – the final iconic expression of a world now gone.

Today I noticed a small article in The New York Times. Glancing at the headline, I thought I saw “New Literary Prize in honor of Harry Potter”. Well, that seemed interesting. How often are prestigious literary awards created in honor of fictitious characters from juvenile literature?

When I looked more closely, I realized that the headline had actually said “New Literary Prize in honor of Harold Pinter”. Well, yes, that is considerably more consistent with the world as we know it. Yet by the same token, it is also far less interesting news.

I began to wonder in what sort of parallel universe a prestigious literary award would be named after J.K. Rowling’s intrepid boy wizard. It would, in a sense, be a world that had much in common with our own. For one thing, it would clearly contain Harry Potter, and most likely his friends Ron and Hermione. But it would also likely be a world with a distinctly different set of values and priorities. In other words, interestingly different.

There is a long tradition in science fiction of convergence theories of alternate universes. From Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” to Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” through to the recent “Star Trek” reboot (I wonder whether it is even possible to discuss J.J. Abrams’ recent film without using the word “reboot” at least once), universes that run in parallel with ours always seem to contain eerie coincidences of fact, even when they differ from ours in the fundamental rules of physics itself.

For example, according to Pullman, Cambridge University survives fundamental differences in the nature of humanity itself, while according to Abrams, every parallel universe apparently produces a certain intrepid starship crew with all of its members magically in place, whatever other calamitous events may befall the changed world around them.

The newspaper headline I had so carelessly misread got me to thinking that headlines might be a nice way to define such oddly parallel yet tellingly different alternate universes, worlds running alongside our own that resemble ours in the particulars but diverge in the fundamentals.

Imagine if tomorrow you were to wake up and read a headline along these lines: “Dolly Parton chooses new interim vice president.” What might that say about the world you had just woken up into?

I for one would be curious to find out.

Today a friend showed me a bit of the computer game “Pitch Black”. Although I had never played this game, I was surprised by how familiar it looked. Soon I realized that this was because the visual look of the game – the interiors, architecture, lighting, camera, even the shape of the doors and passageways, possessed the same dingy dystopian post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi motif that pervades Valve’s “Half Life”, Id Software’s “Quake” and similar games.

If you don’t play these games, they all look eerily alike. And yet if you do play them regularly, I suspect that this particular surface gloss is absolutely necessary – de rigeur. It’s what clues you in that you are in a first person shooter, and lets you know what to expect.

On a different scale, this is similar to the way we Americans initially perceive Bollywood films. For most of us, because we are not immersed in them, do not speak their visual language, they all seem the same to us. And yet the people for whom these films are made see none of that. The texture itself – the particulars of the costumes, the musical style, the dance moves – these are as invisible to the film’s intended audience as a four/four beat is to the fans at a rock concert.

These first pungent encounters with the strange texture of an unfamiliar medium are part of the fun of living in a multicultural world. As we gradually enter an age of global digital media, I wonder whether we will experience this feeling less and less – as genres from far-flung corners of the world eventually become everyday and familiar, or more and more, as the number of newly available genres begins to multiply and propagate.

Are we entering an age of a common media language, the way the bulk of popular music in our culture began to converge to rock and roll half a century ago, and the way most written communication now seems to be morphing from long form prose through Blogs toward 140 character tweets? Or are we fragmenting into a new Tower of Babel?

Darned if I know.

Several years ago I was at one our extended family’s periodic gatherings. We were reminiscing about family members now long gone, and eventually the subject got around to my dad’s mom. Everybody had a different memory of her, and it seemed that most of the memories were quite different from mine.

My memories of grandma Helen, dating mostly from when I was between three and five years old, were mostly one of a delightful companion. She had one of those old apartments in the Bronx where all of the furniture is from another time, where everything looks and smells like something out of World War II or earlier. She was clearly always delighted to have me come and visit, during those times when my parents dropped me off for her to watch for the day, while they went off on some errand or another.

There were all kinds of wonderful things to play with in grandma’s apartment – old boxes with buttons and odd ornaments, framed paintings stacked up in the closet, old telephones, photos of mysterious people in little hinged cameo cases, a genuine miniature painted commemorative San Francisco trolley. Endless things and places for an intrepid little boy to explore. And through it all, grandma would bring me treats – one time it would be rugallah from the local bakery, another time it would be yummy Mallomars.

The rest of the family apparently did not share my remembered enthusiasm. Those who had been older than five when she was around recalled a very difficult and combative woman, obstinate and contrary, who consistently made life difficult for everyone around her. It’s as though we were talking about different people entirely.

And yet she clearly had a hold on everyone in the family. When I happened to mention that she had once given me a piece of advice, the entire group instantly became hushed. What I said, to be precise, was that grandma Helen had once told me there was just one thing I should always remember to do – advice that I had unfailingly followed ever since.

After what seemed like a very long and awed silence, one of my aunts finally asked what it was that grandma Helen had told me all those years ago. Everyone leaned in to hear what I had to say on the subject.

Feeling somewhat puzzled at all the fuss, yet rather proud to be the keeper of arcane family knowledge, I explained: “She told me that a young man should always remember, every day, to wash his face.”

Today I got a tour of Nike – in Beaverton, Oregon (near Portland). It’s quite the place. They have lakes and sports clubs and restaurants for their employees, Japanese gardens for contemplation, tennis courts, running tracks and swimming pools for exercise, as well as a regulation sized soccer field right in the middle of the artfully constructed rolling hills of this vast wooded campus. In the seemingly unending outdoor parking lot, we parked right next to a spot that is permanently reserved for Michael Jordan (he wasn’t there). Being in the Nike campus is a little like being in a dream world. You can tell that the employees all feel very well taken care of – I suspect the company has extremely high job retention.

There is also a huge company store where employees (and some of us visitors) can buy anything Nike offers at far below retail prices. Walking around this giant emporium, I was not surprised to notice that the enormous array of items on sale – shoes and socks and footballs (both American and European) and jackets and golf clubs and boxers and sweatshirts and tennis rackets and just about anything else sports-related that you can imagine – had exactly one thing in common: They all displayed the famous Nike swoosh symbol. Now, it’s important to understand that Nike doesn’t actually make most of this stuff (although in one of the more secretive buildings on campus they do some impressive technical development) – they have people in China to actually make the shoes. So what exactly is going on here?

I think the answer lies precisely in this sense one gets, while walking around this campus, of being in the midst of a lovely dream. What Nike offers their customers is indeed a dream – the dream of being like Tiger Woods, or Mia Hamm, or Lance Armstrong. It’s a good dream, one that gets kids to exercise, to learn self-mastery, to try to be the best they can be And of course it’s also a business, a phenomenally successful business. Every time you buy something at a Nike store your body becomes a highly visible sales platform for the Nike brand. There is an endless spiral of positive reinforcement between the brand, the customers who wear it, and the sports stars who are handsomely paid to lend their illustrious names and faces to the entire endeavor.

It’s not about making clothes – an activity that is outsourced to other parts of the world where labor costs are far lower. Rather, it’s about making money by giving people a way to define themselves, to strive to become a more ideal version of themselves, through identification with their cultural heroes.

There are worse ways to make a living.