Rabbit Holes: Paul Samuelson, John Steinbeck and Anu Garg
It’s a rainy day in Pensacola, and Florida needs rain. The reservoirs are depleted, and a drought has been declared. As I go through my e-mail, I come to Anu Garg’s A Word a Day post. (Today’s word is “incubus”). I subscribed to his daily e-mail many years ago as I studied teaching English as an additional language.
Anu Garg is profound. He chooses wonderful words, words my foreign students adored. He also includes a quote at the end of each post. Today’s quote was from John Steinbeck.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. -John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (27 Feb 1902-1968)
And it just so happens that this coming month, my book club is looking at three Steinbeck novels; Tortilla Flats, Cannery Row, and The Moon is Down.
One thing leads to another. Tortilla Flats takes place on a hill above Monterey, California, where paisanos live.
Of all the places I’ve lived, I have never loved a place the way I love Monterey, California. We lived on a hill above Monterey, above the old Del Monte Hotel, now the Naval Postgraduate School. The location sounds very suspiciously a lot like Tortilla Flats. The book bring back so many wonderful memories, particularly lying in bed at night and hearing the sounds of the sea lions barking down on the rocks, the gulls screeching, and the fog horn warning – we had a lot of fog.
And I remember Paul Samuelson, the author of the Economics textbook I used for an introductory economics class I took my freshman year in college. I never intended to like economics, but I found Samuelson readable – and even riveting. I remember one quote from his text: “Man does not always starve quietly” which had to do with his theories on economic development. Within that chapter, he also explains comparative economic deprivation.
This was a long time ago, so I am paraphrasing what I remember, and I might be getting it wrong. Samuelson talked about how once the most basic needs are met in a developing country, food, housing, clothing, jobs – you’d think everybody would be happy, but once people can stop scrabbling to survive, once they are stable, they start looking around and see someone who has more – and this is relative deprivation. The see someone with something they didn’t know they needed, and now they need this, too, to be happy.
So how does this relate to Steinbeck, and La Mesa Village, and Paul Samuelson?
My husband and I and our brand new little baby were leaving one military school and headed for schools in Monterey when he got a call from military housing in Monterey. It was such a nice, positive call when it started out, telling my husband about the lovely house we were to have with three bedrooms and a fireplace in La Mesa Village, and went on to give information about measurements and furniture and we were joyfully amazed. Our military housing had never been so fine, nor had any housing office called us and treated us so respectfully.
And suddenly everything changed. “Oh wait,” she said. “You’re not Navy?”
“No,” replied my husband, “I’m in the Army.”
“You’re not a Navy Captain?” she confirmed.
(silence as we looked in horror at one another)
“No,” my husband said shortly, the way you respond when a short-lived dream-come-true has just died.
“Oh. Well you’ll be in normal student housing then. Sir,” she added, respectfully, but all the pleasantness was gone.
And that’s where my friend Paul Samuelson, the first Economist in the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize (1970) comes in. How much do you remember from your college classes? As we accepted our student housing – not a beautiful 3 bedroom house with a fireplace, but a flat in a quad with two bedrooms and linoleom floors (no fireplace) I remembered the concept of relative deprivation. I had a roof over my head in Monterey, California, heaven on earth. I had a baby and good child care and great grocery stores; I attended the Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Language School. On weekends, we hiked at Point Lobos, and we were happy. Happy, except for that occasional twinge of jealousy when we passed the houses higher on the hill with three bedrooms and a fireplace.
And when I felt that twinge, I smiled and thought of Paul Samuelson.
AdventureMan’s Quest
Our marriage is cross-cultural. I am of the North, my husband is Southern. I learned to make decent cornbread, thanks to his grandmother who shared the secret of the cast-iron skillet, but I never mastered biscuits.
When he retired, AdventureMan went on a quest to make the perfect Southern Biscuit. He researched recipes. He tried recipes. He found an almost perfect recipe and worked with it, tweaking an ingredient here, an amount there. One day, with great glee, he made the perfect biscuit.
Part of the secret, once again, is a cast-iron frying pan.
The biggest part of the secret is butter. Lots of butter.
He was up early this morning, making biscuits for the family. The biscuits have buttery crusted bottom, and they melt in your mouth. One batch is enough for each of us to have one, and the rest we share with our family, nearby.
He texts our son that he just made biscuits, asks if they want some. Within seconds, the response comes “YES, please!”
It’s not just biscuits! For Valentine’s Day, it was Pasta Carbonara. For Thanksgiving, it was Smoked Salmon Fettuccine. He is skilled with duck, and sauces, and with steak. He has found his Secret Superpower, and he is a happy man.
What Love Looks Like at 76
I’m on my way down to restock the Little Free Library and pass AdventureMan, who always asks me why I love him. It’s hard to keep it fresh. It’s hard to find new answers to that question, but this time, it’s right there in front of me.
“Who likes to clean out the litter box?” I ask. He looks puzzled.
“No-one!” I answer my own question, but I continue “I love you because you clean out the litter box in hot humid weather, even when you don’t want to, and give the cats a nice clean place to poop! I love you because you do it faithfully, and I don’t have to do it! It’s not romantic, but I consider it TRUE LOVE!”
It makes him laugh. I am not the romantic young bride he met in Heidelberg and married six weeks later. I am pragmatic and grounded. I know what matters.
We have always had cats. I used to do the litter boxes, and when I got pregnant, he took it over because pregnant women can get a disease that can infect the baby. Around when our son turned 18 he had a perplexed look on his face and asked me “just how long after the baby is born can you scoop litter again?” and we both laughed.
True love is bigger than diamonds or white roses or wonderful perfume. True love is scooping the cat litter and cleaning out the litter boxes. Thank you, AdventureMan.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Joe Pickett Guides Us Through the Red Desert, Wamsutter and the Lincoln Highway to Rock Springs, Wyoming
The sun wakes us early the next morning, streaming in our window. The temperature is 22°F and there is a light frost on the ground. All we brought in are our backpacks, so we grab a quick breakfast from our supplies and head out.
“Why would you want to go to Rock Springs, Wyoming?” asked my new brother-in-law with genuine bewilderment, at the end of our trip as we were spending time with him and my sister.
I didn’t know he had been born there, and still has family there. No, we had chosen this obscure route because of a series by C.J. Box about a game warden named Joe Pickett, a series we have both read from book one to book 22. In Off the Grid, Joe is tracking a crazy bear into the Red Desert when he finds a bunch of terrorists and naive young people putting together a magnetic pulse bomb to create havoc in the civilized western world. (Honestly, I don’t even know how to describe the plot to you, sometimes it doesn’t have to make a lot of sense, you just sort of have to roll with it.)
I had never heard of The Red Desert before, and I had driven that stretch of Highway 80, the old Lincoln Highway, several times. It was always just a place to get through, but this time we would be looking at it with different eyes.
It all started in Qaqortoq, on our Wake of the Vikings trip (just type in Wake of the Vikings in the search window of this blog if you want to more about that trip). In Qaqortoq, AdventureMan asked me what I would do if I lived there and I told him I would learn to spin wool, something I’ve always wanted to do. He said “If I had to live here, I would kill myself or drink myself to death.”
On this trip, we passed through several towns about which he felt the same. We like being remote on trips. He doesn’t like the idea of living remote.
The field irrigators are on, and the spray etches patches of fairy ice onto the grass.
It is a beautiful day, and we stop often, just because we can. It is cold, but it is also beautiful. These rocks, we learn, are called fortification rocks, because in territorial wars people could use them to strategic advantage.
There were mountains in the distance capped with white snow. We began seeing pronghorns, and at one point, when we stopped to take a photo, I almost stepped on a dead elk, probably hit by a car. There was no smell, probably because it was still so cold.
Baggs, Wyoming, is at the border between Colorado and Wyoming and is at the southeastern tip of The Red Desert. Baggs was where AdventureMan said he would kill himself if he had to live in a town with 411 people.
AdventureMan mentions there are routes into the Red Desert coming up, and I counter saying that they are tracks, not routes, and if we were to go in, and get into some trouble, it is very remote and we might be those tragic elderly people who foolishly thought they could survive, but couldn’t. Honestly, I would love to see the Red Desert AND I know we are not the people we once were. I think we could survive a lot, being who we are, and I also know it is not wise, at our age, to tempt the fates. I can’t really tell whether he is disappointed or relieved by my response. My best guess would be – both.
That’s the tip end of The Red Desert in the background. If you look at the Google Map of today’s journey, you will see a big empty space in the middle, a biblical “trackless waste.”
Just around lunchtime, we enter Wamsutter, a boom-and-bust town with several past lives. AdventureMan finds the Hacienda Mendez, where we have our first taste of cactus salad – it is delicious.
And on we go, down the Lincoln Highway toward Rock Springs, the Red Desert to our left with high tabletop plateaus guarding the tracks leading to the interior, and the Great Divide Basin to our right, along with the Killpecker Sand Dunes (Wikipedia calls them the largest living dune system in the United States. I didn’t know that – did you know that?)
We head into Rock Springs and find our home for the next couple of nights, The Outlaw Inn. I could not resist the name.
They gave us a really great room, with two bathrooms, one with a toilet and shower, one with a toilet and tub. Just pure luck.
Dropping our gear, we headed out to explore Rock Springs. We wanted to find the college museum, but when we found it, nothing was open. In Joe Pickett’s world, this was where his daughter April went to university, a rodeo college. What we did find was a wonderful museum, the Rock Springs Historical Museum, and a wonderful docent who was willing to answer all our questions. This museum was wonderful. It included a full jail, and a padded cell as well as well-curated exhibits of communications, health care, etc. through the earliest history of the county.
I am eager for tomorrow, when we have a real adventure, searching for the White Mountain Petroglyphs!
My Secret Admirer Sends White Roses
This morning, just after I returned from my swim at the Y, the doorbell rang and my favorite florist delivered a dozen white roses from “My Secret Admirer.” AdventureMan didn’t bat an eye at the delivery. He knows I love white roses.
It’s been a great month. Last weekend we were in New Orleans for some Ethiopian food, walking around the French Quarter and Market, ice cream at Creole Creamery and grilled oysters at Superior Seafood – and then, more walking so that all that good food didn’t stick to us 🙂
It goes on – the new couch will be delivered tomorrow, God willing. Life is sweet.
The Sad And Painful Truth
AdventureMan and I have a lot in common; we share a lot of the same values and we’re in our 49th year of marriage.
And yet . . .
We also have our differences. Because AdventureMan is very commanding, I have had to learn how to gently but firmly set some boundaries.
So today he suggested we hit Shoreline Deli, which was fine with me because I love their Greek salad and I also buy a lot of my spices there. You can buy them in small quantities, and they are more fresh than the ones that stand waiting in your pantry for years.
It’s not a sit-down kind of place; we stand with others who have ordered, waiting for our order to be prepared and taken out. There is always a lot to look at, and often they have something that no one else carries.
As we finish lunch, AdventureMan says “I see you found some of your favorite cookies. I saved room hoping you would share with me.”
I said “Of course, what is mine is yours.”
Very quickly I had a second thought and reframed my response. “Of course, what is mine is yours, up to half.”
At this point, I opened the little box and counted the cookies, a very plain Greek cookie with very little sugar and some cinnamon.
What does AdventureMan say? “I can’t believe you’re counting the cookies!”
He knows why I am counting the cookies. We have stylistic differences. I can buy a large 85% Cocoa chocolate bar and eat one square a day. I don’t need more, and rarely do I really want more. AdventureMan, on the other hand, has unrestrained cravings. There are things I have to hide – mixed nuts, Japanese rice crackers, cookies, cakes, and M&M’s. If I don’t set a limit, or hide them, they are free game.
I am not saying this is wrong. It is simply a stylistic difference. At the same time, if I want something special, the only way I can be sure there will be some left for me when I need it is to hide it.
I am not an ogre. I also bought beautiful mini chocolate macaroon cookies Two years ago at this time we were in the Bordeaux region of France and bought a package of traditional macaroon cookies with dark chocolate bottoms and each had one at the end of each day, and they lasted right up to our very last night before we flew back home. They were so rich and moist that one was more than enough.
AdventureMan was delighted to see the chocolate-bottomed macaroons. We each had one. I have no idea how many there are. I am not counting; AdventureMan is free to nibble as he needs. I just needed one. Well, maybe two, they are tiny, very tiny.
Into The Great Wide Open: Postscript
Our son and his son, our grandson, quarantined for ten days and are now back at work and in school. My granddaughter continually tested negative; I speculate she had it last Spring in a very mild case. My daughter-in-law remains well, stalwart, caring for her family, by the grace of God.
It took me a while to get this trip written up; we bought new computers in June. We laugh at a concept our daughter-in-law introduced to us, the Law of Unintended Consequences. It strikes all the time. AdventureMan discovered he has to keep his old computer running in order to play his favorite game. I discovered I had never uploaded any photos from my camera to my new computer, and didn’t have a card reader with an appropriate connector. It took me two orders from Amazon to find the card reader which would connect and upload photos. It is also beautiful, in rose gold, and it gives me pleasure to use it.
In answer to a question I often get, yes, I take notes. I don’t often nap in the afternoon because then I don’t sleep well at night, so while AdventureMan catches a little snooze, I write up our experiences while they are still fresh. As I waited to receive a working card reader, I wrote up the narrative, and then once I had my photos, inserted them where they would be most helpful.
AdventureMan was inspired in Bozeman, at the Italian Blacksmith, and yesterday he was busy gathering supplies and planning dinner. Here is his first success at a charcuterie plate. I cannot imagine how he can make this any better than it was; it was a glorious festival of taste treats. (He made the pickled red onions himself!)
I have included a link to the Blacksmith Italian website above; if you are visiting Bozeman, it is a guaranteed hit.
Salmon Piccata; Reward for a Long Week
As we sat down for dinner last night, I reminded AdventureMan that when he retired (maybe the second or third or fourth time) he said he wanted to learn to cook seafood, maybe he’d like to take a class.
All on his own, with recipes from the Barefoot Contessa, the Pioneer Woman, Southern Living, the Pensacola News Journal, how-to videos on YouTube and all kinds of other internet sources, his dream has been realized. Not only can he cook seafood, but he does it really well.
Last night was the end of a long week; a week with the grandchildren, a week of continuing organization and efforts for upgrades to the house that give us pleasure, a week of errands in preparation for an upcoming trip and the normal duties of every day life. As a special treat, AdventureMan volunteered to make a Salmon Piccata, which I adore, and he also roasted green beans and tiny potatoes in oil and garlic, and put together a beautiful green salad.
To top it all off, he found a gorgeous Sancerre to go with it. I can’t drink a lot of wine any more, not just due to being diabetic, but also because as I age, I seem to be developing a smidgeon of better judgement. If I can only drink a little, I want it to be something I like a lot. AdventureMan has found the perfect formula; for every really good bottle of wine we buy, he writes a check for an equivalent amount to the Salvation Army, to feed, house and care for the poor. It may not work for everybody, but it works for us.
Sometimes happiness is looking back and seeing how far you’ve come. Sometimes being content is finding joy in the everyday incremental refinements we make in life. A man who will create a magical dinner on a hot summer’s day when I am exhausted is my kind of guy.
“Can’t I Buy You a Diamond?”
“No,” I replied. “How about we buy another house?”
So we did. It’s the house we are living in now, the house we bought, we sold, and we bought back again, and, God willing, I will never move again.
It always cracks him up that I don’t want a diamond. He says it would be cheaper to buy me a big diamond. He is right, but houses are better long term investments.
We had a great division of labor. AdventureMan worked hard, and his career took us to exotic locations, locations we both loved and found intellectually stimulating and challenging to our assumptions. He always chose his jobs in consultation with me.
I handled logistics and finances. I moved us, I packed and unpacked (AdventureMan handled movers on moving days) and I recommended investments, on which we decided together. Until we closed on this house, AdventureMan had never been through the closing process (the first time we had to place a call to the Red Cross in Germany, all planned in advance, who would verify that my husband was alive and well and standing in front of them) so that I could sign the papers with a power of attorney.
So no, diamonds are of no interest to me. I quilt, I cook, I garden, I do upholstery, I strung electrical wires – I work with my hands. When we travel, if I see some little earrings I can’t resist, real gold or real gemstones, we might buy them and they show up in my stocking at Christmas. I am content.
Oh yeh, and I like to buy houses.
AdventureMan knows me well. Last night he looked me deep in the eyes and said “With the pool closed this week, I know you’ll miss the exercise. I am willing to get up as early as eight to walk with you.”
That is a true sacrifice. AdventureMan loves his sleep, and he has earned every moment of it. I have a need to front load my day; I am an early riser and like to get it done. I don’t begrudge his sleeping in after all his years in the military rising at what he called “the crap of dawn,” and I fully appreciate his willingness to get up early and walk with me.
I love walking. This neighborhood is a great neighborhood for walking; the area between the two major thoroughfares are quiet and peaceful. Most of the houses are family owned, people are friendly, and where there are rentals, they are mostly to families with young children who want to be in this particular school district.
We are sort of looking for our next house. No, we are not going to move, but I think this is a really good neighborhood to own a small rental house. We’ve learned how important it is to have a good property manager; we wouldn’t manage it ourselves. I’m looking for something small, something we can clean up and modernize and rent out. I’m not in a hurry; we have enough going on right now with the updates on our current home, but we are who we are – we are people who need projects, who thrive facing a challenge, we are good problem solvers. And I like to have diversity in our investments.
AdventureMan is fully on board. With investments, I am the cautious one, he is more of a risk taker. Together, we do pretty well.
Best Birthday Ever
A few years ago, I hit a number and I felt like my life was over. Rationally, I knew I was doing fine, but just the sound of the number hit me hard. I remember feeling the same way when I hit 50, and I thought it was going to be terrible, but that very day I went to pick up my photos for my Saudi pass and my photograph was fabulous.
OK, you know, here goes that rationality thing again. The RULES in Saudi Arabia say you are forbidden to retouch photos. The photographer just stood there with a big grin as I looked at photos of me with all signs of aging totally removed. Inside, my heart was dancing. My head knew it wasn’t really how I looked, but my heart danced.
In spite of the heartache of my Mother dying of COVID, this has turned out to be a sweet year. I had some stellar moments, dancing-heart moments. I love our new/old house, as you can guess from all the sunsets I post. Now, my son and AdventureMan installed a Little Free Library for me to care for, and another dream has come true, and my heart dances for joy. My family was together, my grandchildren helped fill the Little Free Library, and we all had cake and ice cream together, masked most of the time.
I’ve always loved libraries, and the first job I ever had, at six years old, was checking out books at the little library in Alaska. The clerk had failed to show up; the librarian was busy with a big time-sensitive book order and I volunteered. She showed me what to do. So easy a six year old could do it, and I had a ball.
I avoided book clubs until I ended up so many years in the Middle East. A group of women I knew and trusted asked me to form a book club, and I reluctantly turned them down because I didn’t want that responsibility. Very gently, they kept inviting me to start a book club and finally, I asked “Why me?”
“You’re the only one who can bring in the books we want to read,” they told me.
I learned so much from these women, and the book club was a huge blessing, a window into the way a lot of women think who are from different countries and different cultures from me. I learned how HUGE it is when ideas can be examined, and discussed openly, even when one must speak indirectly. I learned again and again how many mistaken assumptions I had made, how narrowly I saw the world. Books matter. Ideas matter. Sharing books and ideas challenge our narrow views and give us broader understanding of our complex world, and our fellow human beings.
Tonight AdventureMan is making Pasta Carbonara, which I should never eat, but once or twice a year, I do. It’s not like AdventureMan loves Pasta Carbonara; he makes it for me because I love it. Some of those excess calories come off as I dance and dance for joy.
The year I thought my life was over, some amazing things happened. I’m not going to get all excited, like this is going to be the best year ever, but I am so grateful, I feel so blessed, to have some dreams I know I dreamed come true, and some unexpected dreams I didn’t know I was dreaming also come true.
“In my life, I’ve loved them all.”
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