Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

An attic is in many ways similar to the vast storage facilities that lie hidden beneath and above every museum you’ve ever visited. The exhibits you walk through are like the life you see being lived right in front of you. If you are an experienced museum goer the existence of that treasure trove of unseen artwork is something you know is there somewhere. For the archivist, all of that art is there for the asking.

A life remembered lives in the attic or the basement or the back of a closet in the remotest room in the house. Beth spent 3 long days and nights pulling together the totems of her parents lives from the nooks, crannies and crevasses of what is literally the Hurst family ancestral home. No fewer than 4 generations lived significant parts of their lives in what was once a tiny one-room schoolhouse surrounded by Amish and Mennonite farms. What an incredibly daunting task, that.

Hearing her tell of her task (we were “together” on speakerphone) was what it must have been like if you could have been an open ear at the excavation of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Rome. The attic had an attic; each closet had a closet. Every step further into each space unearthed another layer of the family’s history. Here a deed to the original schoolhouse, there the wedding certificate for her great great grandparents. Was her Dad a good student? Well, he had a pretty solid 3rd grade judging by his report card.

And the pictures! Oh my, yes, there were pictures. Beth and her sisters fell straight down the Schaeffer family tree. Who knew how much they looked like their Mom when they were all younger women? I got to see pictures of the stunning beauty I fell in love with some 35 years ago, a literal restoration of the portrait in my mind’s eye of our days of courtship. Treasures unearthed in the attic.

Stories, journals, histories, legends…they all came out of the attic’s attic and emerged from the closet’s closets. Beth’s “legs” fairly buckled under the responsibility of curation. What to keep? What should go? They are the last of their line, these Hurst sisters. Whatever was consigned to go would be forever gone. There are no more attics; there will be nothing to curate. She felt the presence of not only her parents but of their parents, and theirs, and theirs as well.

Is this nothing more than a melancholy musing on memory and loss? Maybe. There was a lesson in there, though, one that Beth and I stumbled upon as we “walked” through those archives together. It didn’t have to happen like that. As it turns out each attic corner, each tiny closet contained notes and stories that lead, like so many tiny treasure maps, to the next discovery. Why had my in-laws not taken us all in hand and walked us together along those pathways? For sure there were stories that should have been buried elsewhere, art not meant to be seen by generations hence (note to self: remember this lesson when it is time), but still, we thought of the joy we could have shared had we just known these treasures were there to share. That’s the lesson my friends, one that Beth would agree afterward was worth the lonely emotional lifting she did as she curated a life remembered, archived like so many art treasures in the attics and closets filled over generations and hidden from view.

Someone may be alive today who’s been filling those attics. Find them. There is joy in the attic. Like so much that is joyful, to share your discoveries with those who created them is just too wonderful to let it pass now that you know that you don’t have to.

In my travels, and those of my oldest friends and acquaintances, I have come across scores of people who are truly happy. Capable of feeling and giving in to joy. It’s such a special thing to see, and even better to in some way feel a part of that joy, wherever it may be from and whatever may have brought it to life. It’s out there, you know. Sometimes it’s subtle, as gentle and quiet as the proverbial footstep of a butterfly landing on a leaf. Other times it is raucous and riotous and simply blasts through your space like a runaway train.

That’s kinda cool.

Sadly, there are others out there who resent the joy in others. Whether they are themselves happy or not so much, the happiness of another feels to them like losing. It’s more than envy in the unhappy. For these folks it’s as if there is a finite about of happiness and joy in the world; no matter how much of either they may have at any one time they cannot see another’s joy without feeling as if it is somehow draining the reservoir from which they may drink some time in the future. Weird, huh? They sometimes seem more fixated on the blessings of others than on their own, so much so that their own joy slowly seeps away.

Happiness and joy are not limited resources. Quite the contrary. My happiness, my joy is not predicated on your unhappiness or your sorrow, and vice versa. Heavens, if one person’s happiness could come only from another’s despair we’d have long ago slipped into a rather dismal anarchy. No, joy is the ultimate non-zero sum measure. More than that, joy is an exponential multiplier. When you find or see joy in someone else and that vision makes you happy, the mount of happy you get is a full order of magnitude greater than it should be. If that joy and happiness should come to someone who has lately had little of either, well, that’s just that much better.

Life is pretty good around Casa blanco right now, and as much as I’d like to think that means it will always be thus that’s not how life works. Regardless, if I should stumble upon you in the midst of something joyous you can be sure that no matter what happens to be going on in my little world I’m surely not going to resent you or your joy. Quite the opposite. I am going to rejoice with you!

Whether the skies be cloudy or eggshell blue, a glimpse of the sun always makes it warmer for everyone.

Per WSJ, in order to compete against departed coach Lane Kiffin Mississippi State upped their player payroll from $25MM to $43MM after Kiffin departed for LSU. Yup, the WSJ called it a payroll. The starting QB’s salary to play college football is $3MM. At least Ole Miss got its money’s worth; they clinched the victory with a drive-killing interception in the end zone with less than a minute on the clock.

In other news, Williams College Defeated Bowdoin 17-7 in Williamstown. Visiting Bowdoin was treated to hot dogs and hamburgers before boarding a buss for the 5 hour drive home. No word on who picked up the tab.

Leading 10-0 with less than 7 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter the starting QB for Williams sprinted down the right sideline for a first down and a chance to seal the victory. As he was knocked out of bounds he landed awkwardly and sustained a season (and perhaps career) ending knee injury. By my unofficial count this was perhaps his 12th or 13th carry of the day. I happened upon him and his family after the game as they bundled him into a truck for the drive to the team doctor’s office.

Obviously in pain, he was nonetheless smiling from ear to ear.

You see, the boys who took the field on Saturday for this NESCAC conference opener play football for the joy of the game. It’s an extremely rare occurrence for anyone who attends one of these schools to enter the transfer portal and move up the ladder of leagues, let alone strap up and play in the NFL. There are no NIL contracts, and the annual budget for football in the NESCAC is less than an upper mid-level FBS quarterback’s salary. They play for the game. They play for their schools. They play for each other.

Football injuries, especially head injuries have been in the headlines in both the legacy media and across the interwebs. Apparently a couple of helmet manufacturers have launched so-called “safer” helmets designed to mitigate the risk of brain injuries caused by direct contact to the head. This has brought out a chorus of critics who exclaim that no child should be allowed to play football at all, helmet advances be damned. Voices from every corner declare that they will never allow a son to play the sport, implying that those parents who do are a lesser version of the parent species.

I’m calling BS.

Head injuries are a scourge in almost all sports played by both boys AND girls. Know what sport has the highest number and percent of participants who have a meaningful injury? Hint: it’s not football. It’s not even a helmet sport. For boys it’s baseball and for girls it’s soccer. For sure there is a higher incidence of head injuries in all of the so-called “helmet sports”. Football, lacrosse, and hockey all require helmets to protect the boys and girls who play. “Head-hunting” is a plague in all of those sports, and not just when played by boys. Take in a girls’ hockey game some time. It’s a rough game.

And anyone who thinks soccer is a non-contact sport needs their own head examined. I mean, come on, they hit the flipping ball with their heads ON PURPOSE! At least soccer balls are waterproof now. Imagine what heading a waterlogged ball must have felt like back in the day.

So why play? Why, especially, play football? Well, at least one answer was to be found in Williamstown, MA this weekend. Some 50 or so men who played sports at Williams in the 70’s and 80’s–mostly football, lacrosse, hockey, and pre-waterproof ball soccer players by the way– convened in Williamstown to celebrate a friend’s victory over cancer and to affirm in person what we’ve been telling each other by email for nearly 20 years: the time we spent together on the playing fields and the people we played with were hugely responsible for the men we all grew up to be.

I know I’ve told you about this group once or twice. 185 men, almost all of whom graduated from Williams College between 1975 and 1983. The unofficial nickname count is 180. Most of these guys are so associated with their nicknames, at least in this environment, that we sincerely have no idea what their real name is! The genesis of many of these nicknames is often quite mysterious. For instance, I finally met “Porc” whose birth-name is John. I think pretty much everyone on our thread thought Porc was a misspelled version of “Pork”, or maybe a classic nerdy reference to “porcine”. Porc must have been huge. Yah…no. Porc is smaller than I am, a tennis player back in the day.

“Porc” is a reference to his full nickname “Porcupine” which he acquired on DAY ONE of his freshman year when he refused to give up on a single shot in an epic spontaneous tennis match with “Chickie” (who arrived pre-named). “Man, you’re as prickly as a porcupine! You just won’t quit!” Chickie went on to refer to John as Porc all day and it stuck.

This weekend was “Kidfest 4”. 5 or so years ago one of the original members of the thread from the Class of ’79–the fulcrum year around which the group has been built by “Hollywood”, senior captain of both the football and baseball teams as a senior–survived a cancer that has a 95% 2 year mortality rate. Kid is a character who is universally beloved by every one of the other 184 of us, and this was the 4th time we’ve congregated at our alma mater for a football game and a group dinner at the college pub. We were joined by several other men who survived cancers, heart attacks, strokes and all of the other stuff men encounter as they age.

Along side a few were the wives who carried them through, and a couple of husbands who successfully did the same for their wives. It was this year’s unofficial theme, the year of the caretaker. Hollywood and Tammer pointed out that in some way or another we each played the role of caretaker at some time and in some way. Even among ourselves stories of care among our not all that little “family” were being exchanged and the embraces of thanks were shared. Some 6 or 7 years ago quiet inquiries about struggling threadsters were met with direct advice and assistance, something that the group was not really designed to do but quite naturally just did. By my count, just in the room, there were 5 cancer diagnoses caught early because guys were encouraged to get a test, and another 3 or 4 buddies who had cardiac disaster averted because someone insisted they get checked.

Mind you, this is not a group of goody-twoshoes. This is a bunch of former jocks, all of whom showed up on campus as a classic alpha-male who was king of the hill at his high school. We bonded in the locker rooms and on the fields and courts and rinks where we played our sport of choice. We became a pack of alphas. We learned how to put the team first, to lean on our teammates and be there for them to lean on, to depend on us. We brought all of this to the rest of our lives. We bring it with us to this day; I left last night’s dinner with advice from older teammates about the next phase of my life that I will apply tomorrow.

I know that the men who gave me the advice will be checking in to make sure I do just that.

And that boy, the QB who got injured as the clock was running down on what would become the last on the field victory of his career? Well, he was assisted by more than his family and his coach as he got out of his wheelchair and climbed into the truck. A couple dozen very large, impossibly young men from both Williams and Bowdoin were there to offer him encouragement and to wish him well. Young men who are living today what 185 men lived more than 40 years ago. A small circle of old men watched the Williams QB smile and thank his teammates and the day’s adversaries.

We tipped our caps and set off to join the rest of our crew, the men of Hollywood’s thread, as we gathered to celebrate all of the good in that room that has come to us since those days so long ago in the locker rooms and on the fields and courts and rinks of our past. The good in the room was us.

I’ll see you next week…

bingo

Some time ago I wrote about creating a way to measure health. Real health. Health that encompasses every aspect of what it means to be alive and well. As a former CrossFitter I definitely included Crossfit’s Disease -> Health -> Wellness continuum, and I also acknowledged the critical importance of his concept of “Fitness over Time”. As a classically trained physician/scientist there is clearly a place for more traditional metrics like blood pressure, serum lipids and the like, although they may, indeed, be a variable that is ultimately at least partly tied to fitness.

Where my thoughts on defining and measuring health seem to depart from most current trends is in the recognition that mental health–emotional wellbeing—is as much a part of being healthy as any other thing we might examine.

Think about it for just a moment. Most of what we would classify as mental illness has as many outward signs that we can see as diabetes and hypertension. Which is to say, none. Yet we—all of us, not just CrossFitters—see nothing but the good in treating diseases like diabetes openly and aggressively. There is no stigma attached to seeking care for your hypertension or your elevated LDL. To the contrary, if someone who loves you discovers you quit measuring your glucose before you bolus your insulin, they are for sure gonna get in your grill.

For whatever reason, mental illnesses are looked at quite differently. No one is asking the person with chronic depression whether she is taking her life-saving medication, for example. We might notice an insulin pump on a friend or family member, but then it’s quickly forgotten. Everyone seems to be very uncomfortable around the young man who has very obvious hand tremors from the life-saving medication he takes for his Bipolar disease. We all seem to be so much more understanding when we have to wait for a response from someone suffering from Parkinson’s Disease than from the young women who has the same symptoms as a side-effect from the medicine that quiets the dangerous thoughts in her head from Schizophrenia.

It’s not even necessary to look only at these kinds of severe mental illnesses when we are examining the importance of mental or emotional wellbeing as an integral part of being healthy. What good does it do to have a 5:00 mile, a 500 lb. deadlift, and a 1:59 “Fran” if it was self-loathing that drove you in the gym to get there? You may be quite accomplished, the envy of your peers, at the peak of whatever life mountain you wished to climb, and yet you cannot feel joy. How is it possible to be healthy without joy? I look at Usain Bolt and what I see is quite possibly the healthiest man alive. My friend Tim, the writer, tells me that Justin Gatlin has nearly everything that Bolt has—youth, fitness, wealth—but the combination of failure to knock off Bolt, and the public disapproval reigned on him as boos from the stands has left him emotionally broken. It’s subtle, but if you look at his face in the blocks of the 100M Final it’s there.

Our complex and conflicted attitudes and feelings about mental illness are especially evident when the topic of suicide comes up. Just typing the word makes me uncomfortable. Even how we describe suicide is fraught with hidden meaning that reflects our discomfort: someone has “committed suicide”. Right? Someone committed an act that we simply cannot fathom, one that leaves the survivors completely without any understanding whatsoever. How could someone DO that? It’s as if every suicide is the same as the suicide of the crooked prison warden in The Shawshank Redemption when he looks out the window and sees his fate arrive in the front seat of a State Trooper’s car.

In reality most of the time it’s simply not like that at all. Nothing about it is simple at all.

The outer walls at the periphery of my world have been breeched by suicide twice in the last couple of weeks. One of them actually does feel a bit like that prison warden. Frankly, I am too conflicted, too aware of the external circumstances and not enough aware of the internal life of the deceased to offer much right now. The other one, however, just stopped me in my tracks when I heard. The loss was profound. It has also introduced to me a new vocabulary that I truly believe provides a starting line from which we can change how we think about not only suicide, but all of mental illness. A friendly acquaintance lost his wife when she was killed by suicide.

We don’t need to know all of the details of the story. Suffice it to say that in the face of a child’s illness she suffered quietly. Too quietly to be noticed. Perhaps she didn’t realize how badly she was suffering, or maybe she was like so many of us and couldn’t bring herself to see her illness for the life-threatening entity that it was. No one will ever know. What is clear, though, is that this was not anything about commitment. Kidney failure may be cause of death in a diabetic, but it is diabetes that kills him. There is no difference here. The cause of death was suicide. Her disease, her depression is what killed this young woman.

Each of us has a very few moments in our lifetimes that forever change us. On the second Tuesday of July in 2006, unbeknownst to me, one of those moments was transpiring in a lonely, dark corner. Joyfully, the moment was a beginning, not an ending. Regardless, once learning of the moment I was changed forever. Now I knew. You cannot see any marks from mental illness, no swollen appendage or insulin pump. But it is there all the same, and it must be acknowledged and accorded the same degree of care as any other disease that may take our loved ones from us. Mental illnesses are real, and they can be deadly. There ought not be any conflict or discomfort in treating them.

We may stop losing so many of our loved ones when start to see emotional wellbeing as part of being healthy.

All of my news sources are literally drowning in AI doomsday predictions. Kristen Welker of Meet the Press asked the Speaker of the House when, not if, he would force a vote on a proposal to “slow the roll” of AI development. Every major American AI company has lost at least one, and most several key senior researchers or executives over the last couple of weeks. Some leave for a think tank, some return to academia, and at least one is off to study poetry. They all had the same reason for leaving.

None of their former employers were adequately frightened by the specter of truly autonomous, uncontrolled AI agents.

There are calls all around, from the left and the right, inside and outside the industry, from the young and the old. Sides have been taken. The fearful call for strict government control over the development of AI. Those concerned with the state of the world’s economies and the relative power of one major power or another argue for restraint levied on the regulators lest American economic interests fail to reach each next pinnacle first. While hardly luddites, the former group would sacrifice most, if not all of the benefits that might accrue to humanity from such a useful technology working in partnership with humans. The economy-first group shows a certain “damn the torpedoes” disregard for anything short of a dominant “first mover” victory.

Here’s my bid: Isaac Asimov gave us the AI-specific solution in 1942, and President Dwight Eisenhower created the effective fail-safe strategy in the early days of the Cold War.

Let’s start with Asimov. For those of you who haven’t done much classic science fiction reading, Isaac Asimov has, at the very least, a plausible case as the GOAT of Sci-fi writers. One of his pet topics was the inevitability of non-living entities possessed with super intelligence that eventually exceeds that of humans. His vision was that the earliest iterations of this “being” would be some sort of humanoid robot, a vision elucidated in what has become known as the “I, Robot” canon. My brother-in-law Peter and I have had an epic, decade-long discussion of the possibility that an “after-life” might exist in the quantum physics-predicted entity called the multiverse. Consistent with his deep belief in the rise of AI, in his last, great creation the “Foundation” trilogy Asimov predicts an eventual confluence of a universe-wide AI and the consciousness of every human who ever lived. The ultimate eternal victory for both AI and humanity.

In order for “Foundation” to be possible it was first necessary to ensure the survival of mankind once AI arrived and began its rise. Asimov addresses this in a 1942 short story, The Runaround, with the creation of the Three Laws of Robotics. First Law: robots may not harm humans or allow them to come to harm by inaction. Second Law: Robots must obey humans unless doing so violates the First Law. Third Law: Robots must protect their own existence unless doing so violated the first two laws. Some time later Asimov added an overarching law that would provide direction for AI as a whole in its interactions with humanity writ large, the Zeroth Law: A Robot may not harm humanity as a whole, or cause it harm through inaction. These laws, and examples of how they might function as the robots advanced and humans became more and more engaged with them, were published as a series of 9 short stories that were eventually assembled in the 1950 collection “I, Robot”.

All of the widely-held fears about the dangers of AI could be addressed by mandating the programming of the Three Laws and the Zeroth Law as a foundational element in EVERY AI of any sort whatsoever worldwide. Compete to be the best in any sector whatsoever, just don’t do so in a manner that will cause harm to either an individual or humanity as a whole. As I see it doing so would surely solve an awful lot of the small scale harms we see like financial scams, extortion and the like. On a grander scale, how could an AI possibly attack a power grid or water supply without running afoul of at least one of the Rules of Robotics? Every government and every international organization of every kind should mandate the adoption and implementation of the Three Laws and the Zeroth Law.

So why should any country agree to this? What’s to keep, say, China from just thumbing its nose at the rest of the world and forging ahead with a program that aims for subjugation of every other nation on the planet? This is where Eisenhower comes in. Why is it that mankind has managed to not obliterate itself in a hailstorm of nuclear missiles traveling hither and yon, annihilating both the human race and the planet? You know, mutual destruction that bombs whoever survives back to the stone age. Planet of the Apes stuff.

At the dawn of the Cold War, Eisenhower and the leader of every other nuclear armed country arrived at what came to be known as MAD: mutually assured destruction. Land a nuclear bomb in one country and that country responds with every bomb it possesses. This, as much as anything else, is why we aren’t all mute field workers under the watchful eyes of sentient apes. Smaller actors–think North Korea–are held in check by larger ones, usually in the same geopolitical sphere. Think China. Rogue agents (pun intended) would be just as much of a wild-card in AI as they could become in the nuclear arena. Honestly, you have to believe that several established nuclear powers would combine to destroy a country like Iran if it ever sent a nuke at Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base in Kuwait.

Unlike a nuclear war in which human life would be decimated, the target of the assured destruction would be the AI capability of whatever entity let loose an AI that harmed humans on any scale. Knock out AI and what do you get? Well, you definitely don’t consign a particular country or society to Stone Age conditions unless you think a pre-Siri or pre-Alexa smartphone as the highest tech level does so. Think 2010 or thereabouts. It’s not like you would be exposing the population of India or China or the U.S. to living conditions equivalent to the immediate post-Industrial Revolution, let alone the Middle Ages. You’re probably just backing them up to a pre-Uber Eats era where you actually had to ride your bike to the market.

Destroying or disabling a country’s AI does not kill its people, it makes it beholden to the rest of the world to support the advancement of its economy.

Smarter people than I, especially those who manage the world’s macroeconomics, can flesh out the details of what Mutually Assured Destruction of an offending actor’s AI would look like. My point is that the framework for an answer to the most basic of concerns about AI–whether it will destroy humanity as we know it–were worked out in the 1950’s by a science fiction writer and the war-weary President of the United States. Program the Three Laws of Robotics and the Zeroth Law into every AI, superseding all other functions. Agree on the START Treaty AI equivalents and create onerous disincentives sufficient to prevent violations. Allow technological advances that seek to gain an economic advantage in the same way that developments–electrification, computerization, etc.– have done throughout history.

Sounds like the makings of a really good book.

I’ll see you next week…

It’s opening weekend for the NFL, the closest thing we have in the U.S. to a collective religion. The U.S. Tennis Open has finals in women’s today and men’s tomorrow night (shame on them for putting that on a school night). MLB is lurching toward the playoffs (with both Pittsburgh and Cleveland still in the hunt!). And major college football is in week 2, still in its version of the silly season.

What’s the connection? All of these, including D1 football, are examples of big-time sports. Sport as business. The only difference between them is that in football they don’t pay the minor leaguers, the college athletes. And please, spare me any sanctimonious drivel about getting an education for free–nothing is free. D1 football is a job, no less than AAA baseball or Junior A hockey. The difference is that every other sport openly pays its minor leaguers, while Big Time college football continues to wallow in the cynical swamp of exploitation of its athletes. The same is true, of course, of Big Time college basketball.

There is an antidote for this. It’s called Small Time. That should probably be all lower case, too. Should be “small time”. Sport for the sake of sport. Putting in the time in practice to play the games because the games are fun. They are meaningful as an end in themselves, not as a means to some end of the rainbow pot of gold end. All of the stuff that the fat cat moneybags trot out as justification for athletic programs in the Big Ten, Big 12, Pac10, ACC etc.–alumni loyalty, creation of a communal atmosphere, a reason to return to Alma Mater–that’s all there is in “small time” sports.

I played a couple of sports at the D III level. Pretty pitiful lacrosse player and golfer relative to my teammates, relatively OK football player. Not a one of us made a pro roster. Indeed, not a single athlete from any team sport in the entire NESCAC (comprising some 10 or so small schools in New England) in that era played a single minute as a pro in anything. As a group we all went on to do rather pedestrian things like become teachers and cops and doctors and lawyers and bankers and…well, you get the idea.

Were our games any less meaningful than last night’s ND/Michigan game? I’m certainly biased, but how can the answer be anything other than ‘no’? We sweated and suffered and sacrificed our time for the joy of playing the games. Our schoolmates came to watch us play. Alums followed the teams whether or not they played on them. Follow them still. The games and the teams keep Alma Mater connected, provide a little line that ties us to our school in a way that is no different than the pull of Ohio State.

There is a purity in the “small time” that should shame the shamans of the Big Time, so sullied are they by the continual necessity to pretend that the Big Time is nothing more than the “small time”, only bigger. It just isn’t so. There is an honesty in the “small time” that is simply absent in the Big Time. The very best D III teams, the ones that win championships, still send only a trivial number of players to the pros in any sport, and therefore have as little relationship to A-level baseball as do those teams that never see an NCAA D III playoff game.

Unlike the Big Time, in the “small time” the games are simply part of who you are, not why you are.

It all started right around this time of year, 44years ago. Well, to be completely accurate it sorta, kinda, started in the bleachers of a UVM men’s basketball game almost a year earlier, but that was more of a “failure to launch” story that’s not all that interesting given the intervening decades. 44 years ago we went to watch a college football game together and I made dinner when we got home. Terribly over-baked scallops and cheap white wine if memory serves. Tomorrow Beth and I will celebrate 44 years together and 41 years of marriage. 10 addresses, occasionally 2 at a time. 5 dogs and 2 cats. 3 children. 7 grands. 4 mini-vans and 32 trips to Cape Cod with the in-laws. Countless meals that were better prepared and paired with better wine.

How does one do that?

Well, it’s simple but not easy. Nothing worthwhile ever really is. Simple that is. It starts with a 100% commitment. Not 50% + 50% mind you. Marriage isn’t committing to doing your share or splitting stuff down the middle. The 100% part of the 100% marriage is both people pledging 100% of everything they’ve got to making it work. All in from day one and every day from there on. Whenever anyone getting married asks Beth for her advice this is what she always tells them. You gotta be in for 100% from day one.

We met as students in the field of healthcare, and we acquired some really sage mentors very early on. The landscape in healthcare is littered with the carcasses of marriages that didn’t survive. Time after time our mentors pointed out the similar threads that ran through the stories of those marriages that fell apart. It almost always came down to something that came before the marriage in life’s pecking order. Maybe it was one career or another. Doctors are notorious for letting their careers get in front of everything. More generally our more seasoned friends pointed out the all-too-common timing of one rather typical failure, the arrival of the empty nest when the chicks had been at the center of a family’s life. Years and years of prioritizing Mom and Dad until one day you realize you barely know the person sipping coffee across the kitchen table.

Another 100% message: even with the arrival of children and all of the new and overwhelming responsibilities that come with them, the marriages that cruise through the rough seas that come up as a family grows are the ones where Mom and Dad remain first and foremost committed to being Mrs. and Mr.

Different folks who have a happy and loving marriage find different paths to accomplishing this. Beth and I chose to continue dating! For many years I told all kinds of people that the Honeymoon doesn’t have to be over until you say it is. But even without the event-level energy of a honeymoon, our simple strategy was to just continue our courtship. This isn’t always easy, just like I said a bit ago when I said we hit on “simple, not always easy.” But inside our house in front of our kids, and outside our house, with or without an audience, we found a way to make it clear that the one brightly shining beacon was going to be the Mr. and Mrs. of our family.

And thus was born Date Night.

You know, a little bit of luck can go a long way if it’s good luck that shows up at the right time. Our earliest dates began after the end of residency (even ophthalmology residencies don’t leave enough time for a baby AND a date). While hardly Dickensonian in scope, our lack of financial wherewithal was so scant that we had to choose between paying a babysitter or paying for dinner. Our first dates ranged from a shared cup of coffee all alone in a Burger King, to a single cappuccino, a magazine, and a bench in the back of a Borders. It didn’t matter; we were out on the town as Mr. and Mrs. and not Mom and Dad.

That bit of good luck arrived when we moved into house #2, very pregnant with child #3, when a phone number was given to us by one of our new neighbors. That phone number was attached to two sisters who lived around the corner and became our go-to baby sitters for 15 years or so. Date night became a thing when Kerry and Chrissy came into our lives and gave us the confidence to be out on a date every Tuesday or Wednesday night for years. In a wonderful turn of events Beth was able to pay back one of them when she babysat for Chrissy’s firstborn when it was time for the young Mom to head back to work.

It doesn’t matter what you do if you have a date night. Beth and I grew to love the pursuit of fine dining and everything that goes along with that. Other people who liked our idea did things like go to the movies, visit museums or galleries, or pursued a common hobby or sport. The details don’t matter. What matters is that you are openly saying that being wife and husband is important. Important enough that date night will be a huge priority. Date night will be defended.

Everybody who mattered knew about date night and how important it was to us. For sure the kids did. When they were very young they would get excited to see what we were wearing and hear where we were going. One of our earliest endeavors was a comically unsuccessful foray into ballroom dancing. This 3 month odyssey coincided with a period during which we couldn’t decide how we wanted to decorate our living room, and really couldn’t afford to do so even if we were divinely inspired. The kids renamed it the “dancing room” and we all practiced the samba together.

Simple, right? But still, not necessarily easy. Illnesses, injuries, occasional “really can’t say no” work stuff and other unremarkable and mundane life things sometimes got in the way. But you know, looking back, we had a run of 12 or so years when we really did manage to make a date night happen almost every week. An ending of sorts happened when we discovered that our routine had become a little bit too routinely predictable, leading to a rather common teenage behavior that quite comically caught both Beth and me by surprise. While hardly angels growing up neither Beth nor I would have ever dreamed of “borrowing” a family car without permission, especially before we had our driver’s license.

You can imagine our surprise when we came home 15 minutes earlier than usual to find that one of those mini-vans was AWOL and just in time to see it come careening into the driveway on two wheels, our child and a buddy in the front seats and the “escape vehicle” there to pick up said buddy close behind. Not easy. While this effectively put the formal Date Night on pause for a couple of years the very public consequence for our child and the private consequences of the three “accomplices” made it quite clear that the underage joy-riding was bad, but the much greater sin was the violation of Date Night!

So here we find ourselves. 41 years less a day since we married, almost 44 years since our first date. It’s a nothingburger number, 41, but it’s still another year of 100% from both of us, and the incalculable blessings that have come our way because of it. We’ll go out for dinner (we invited a bit of family to celebrate with us), and probably have a little bit of wine while we’re at it. We’ll hold hands. Maybe split a cappuccino. Simple stuff. And we’ll sneak a knowing a glance at one another and smile when everyone exclaims how easy we made it look.

Happy Anniversary, Dollie! I love you to the moon and back and I always will.

I”ll see you next week…

Savannah is populated by hundreds, maybe thousands, of ghosts. In truth if we met any last night I either didn’t notice or don’t remember. They, the ghosts that is, are all said to be sad or angry. If Savannah does indeed have ghosts it stands to reason that they ALL aren’t angry or sad, and that got me to thinking about ancestors.

Have you ever examined your heritage? You know, looked at what’s swimming in your gene pool, and where it’s been through history? There’s probably a ton in there, probably a ton of information that is worth knowing. History is awfully cool, a rich and vibrant panorama that can be viewed from any spot and examined in either direction. Your OWN history is like this. You should know your own story.

Some of your heritage may still be around, their panorama moving ever slower as they spool toward the end of their part of the story. Are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Have they imparted all they, and you, need? If they were to leave this life, if there be ghosts, would they be those quiet, happy types, or the sad angry ones that provide fodder for tour guides “crawling” the haunts of Bogart and his ilk? Time grows short for your living heritage, for them and for you.

If there’ll be ghosts, might you be wise to learn their stories before they cross over?

1) Twig. “You can bend a twig, but not a tree.” Theo of Golden

A small force early in life can alter the course of growth. Same thing with a career. I hope some of the “foresters” of my med school years are still around to see how straight and tall the twigs they pruned have grown when we return 40 years later.

2) Trickle. “It was hard on all of us to watch her trickle away.” Theo of Golden

My siblings and I and our spouses watched my parents slowly trickle away. Their bodies still in the room; their essence slowly departed and eventually gone. Blessedly, they remembered each of us until the very end. Many are not so fortunate. We’d spent much time together over the years. Time during which we learned much about what made us all who we were.

It hurt so much more to know just who it was we were about to lose.

3) Dolly. Boy, has anyone over the last, oh, 30 or 40 years been as universally loved as Dolly Parton? Nope. Not from where I sit. Old and young and everything in between. Didn’t really matter what kind of music you typically listened to, you listened to at least some of Dolly’s stuff because so many musicians you DID listen to covered so many of her songs.

What an impressive human, Dolly Parton. Raised in the holler in abject poverty that was so severe it was even more spartan than how my Dad grew up. No electricity. No running water. 1 of 12 kids (like my Dad). Like so many poor kids of that era she literally couldn’t wait to get away, and yet everything we saw her do she could trace back to that backwoods building in Tennessee. She constantly and consistently gave homage to her family and her upbringing. Raised by a father who couldn’t read, one of her charities has given away 330 million books and counting to pre-school children.

Not a typo. 330 MILLION.

Dolly’s sense of high style famously came from a chance encounter with “working girl” in the town next over. She owned it. Used it to turn any critical conversation away from how she dressed to what she thought. She parried every criticism and every “dumb blond” joke with sensitivity and wit. She got the best of everyone from Carson and Letterman to Barbara Walters. To Newsweek in 1977: “Some folks see my artificial look and think I have no depth. But my inner sadness and joy are as real as my hair and nails are fake.” To Letterman: “Honestly, it makes me mad. All these people staring at my chest, but I’ve got a great ass, too.”

She sang “this dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool” on her debut album, and truer words have rarely been sung. Dolly Parton, one of one. She will also be one of the few folks everyone knew who everyone will miss.

4) Entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more particles are so intrinsically linked that the state of one particle instantly determines the state of one or several of the other linked particles regardless of distance. The theory of superposition, that all particles consist of an infinite number of possible positions until you measure them, is the theory that underlies the famous Schroedinger’s Cat thought experiment.

It is also the theory underlying the possible existence of the multiverse, the infinite number or versions of our universe that exist unseen because they are, well, unseen.

It’s the key component that forms the plot line of my favorite Sci-fi book, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. A brilliant physicist and his equally brilliant artist girlfriend discover that they are pregnant before they have become truly committed to one another. Their tiny little life lies in a very real kind of superposition. Stay together and become a family means dramatically downsizing their professional aspirations. All-in pursuit of their careers means leaving family behind. Like the cat in Schroedinger’s box, their fate becomes fixed once they have opened the door.

Entanglement is something else. An added something. Once “measured” is there an effect on another version or versions of themselves in rest of the multiverse? Does entanglement only exist at the smallest of scales? An electron alternating between spins or a molecule somewhere between its cis and trans form, each all of the above until observed? Once observed, measured, how is it that their entanglement effects itself on the particle entangled?

Does this work at a macro level? At any given point in time are two people in a macro version quantum entanglement linked in such a way that the measurement of one instantly determines the state of the other?

5) Estrangement (n). The deliberate physical and emotional distancing from family members and other loved ones resulting in near or complete loss of communication. Estrange (v): to sever contact with a family member or other loved one. Estranged (adj): to have communication with a family or other loved one severed.

Over the course of the last 6 or 7 weeks there have been no fewer than 3 articles in the WSJ about the phenomenon of estrangement and the peculiarities of its modern day iteration. Each article was followed by a series of letters to the editor with opinions on all sides of the issue. In today’s Sunday Times Magazine “The Ethicist” is asked to weigh in on the subject. Where once this was territory with cleanly marked borders, a child cuts all communication with a physically or emotionally abusive parent or a family ceases to communicate with a child who has a mental illness or recalcitrant substance abuse, the theme in all of the above mentioned articles has been the relative downgrading of what constitutes grounds for estrangement.

Beth and I know several people our age who chose to cut communications with a family member. We also know several couples who have had a child sever those lines with them. Our lived experience with these people echoes what I have been reading these last several weeks, and what I read this morning. It is as if there are two, distinct scenarios in play, each with a generational dynamic, and each seemingly with a starkly different therapeutic engagement. This latter aspect, the actions of therapists, is particularly different today in contrast to that seen in eras past.

I find this latter part to be interesting. When we were a very young couple with very young kids we had friends who had rather unhappy relationships with parts, or even all, of one family or another. Many turned to a therapist for help in making their way through these gauntlets. To a person, though, the effort was an attempt to find some way to tolerate whatever it was that was making them unhappy in the extended family. I can’t recall a single instance in which they either sought advice on how to, or were ever counseled to cease all communications and contact with their family.

Nobody should be expected to remain a participant in a family in which extreme examples of abuse such as physical or sexual abuse, severe addiction, or severe untreated mental illness that puts other family members at risk exists. Our one friend endured beatings and constant emotional abuse from a parent who went untreated after a psychotic break when our friend was in jr. high school. Yet another suffered extreme emotional distress when they were abandoned by a parent who had a hidden second family and an entire life they chose over our friend and their siblings when they were in high school. Neither of those friends has had any contact with those parents since. Sometimes, in the case of real abuse, the shoe must be on the foot of the parent. We know yet another couple who have a child with a severe substance abuse problem who tends toward violence when they have lapsed. For their own safety and emotional well-being they have been forced to cease all communication with their child.

And yet, it’s quite hard to rectify the situations of couples we know as adults who have been proactively estranged by their adult children. In several cases we were spectators to the lives of their young families. We interacted with them as families and as couples, and spent lots of time with their children when the parents weren’t around. There weren’t and aren’t any mental health issues. The possibility of any type of physical or emotional abuse was so distant as to be unimaginable. And yet there they are, suffering what can most accurately be described as a life sentence of silence, apart, without parole.

It’s inexplicably sad. The addition of a new generation, the appearance of grandchildren often makes these stories sadder, still. At dinner one night with one of these couples one said that the beginning of the school year was particularly difficult as they watched neighbors head off to games and plays, concerts and recitals. “I guess I just thought that I would get to be a part of that just like my Mother and Father did.” They spoke of birthdays and holidays where their gifts and their cards were returned, sometimes just showing up on the front porch, unopened. “What do they tell the children? How do they explain why they haven’t seen us? What do they say when the children ask why Grandma and Grandpa didn’t send them anything for their birthdays or for Hanukkah?”

Something very fundamental seems to have changed in at least some parts of our communities. Where once adult children sought assistance in managing the challenges of family ties they deeply desired to keep, there is now an active community led by a vocal group of very high profile therapists that encourage such estrangement. The Ethicist: “But, to paint with a broad brush, therapeutic culture has tended to expand, sometimes recklessly, what qualifies as abuse or harm. In an earlier era, the complete severing of family ties seemed to be justified only by extreme circumstances…Today the adult child going no-contact may speak of not feeling ‘seen’ or of parents who weren’t ’emotionally present’, failed to ‘respect boundaries’, or were ‘controlling.’ Sometimes the grounds–‘narcissistic abuse,’ some generalized ‘toxicity’–sound alarming but are so amorphous that they can be neither refuted nor verified.”

He continues: “All these complaints can arise from genuinely damaging relationships. They can also describe ordinary parental shortcomings. But we should pause at the premise that total, you’re-dead-to-me estrangement is justified simply because continued contact makes someone less happy.”

Is that it? Is the reason for the apparent decline in what constitutes grounds for a life-time ban due to a shift in the therapy community zeitgeist? As young parents we sought the counsel of trusted elders, and we did speak with therapists in an effort to work through some of the stickier, harder parts of raising our family. Always with the desire to maintain a workable, and hopefully happy and loving relationship with not only our children, but also our parents.

Indeed, one of the estranged couples told a story one night over dinner of what would now be a classic example of “failure to respect boundaries” and “controlling behavior” likely to result in estrangement. A clear, red-line boundary around guns and gunplay had been made clear to both sets of grandparents, and yet one summer a set of grandparents arrived for a visit with gifts of very realistic-looking squirt gun pistols and rifles. The in-law in the couple thanked their in-laws for the gift, removed the squirt guns and announced a water balloon fight commencing in 15 minutes. When the grandparents expressed their displeasure at the removal of the guns the young parent-in-law simply reiterated their long-held rule against toys of such type in the house, and asked what their mother-in-law would like them to bring with them when they arrived at the annual family Labor Day party.

No argument. No histrionics. Certainly no cessation of communications or threats to the relationship. Simply a firm restating of the boundary and an equally clear indication that they planned on family business as usual.

These couples who were not creators of a seriously abusive or dangerous relationship, but who have nonetheless been estranged by their adult children tell of “parting words” like “I need to choose myself”, or “I need to protect my peace”. And yet, these sentiments can coexist with an intact family. One that continues to communicate. One in which a next generation gets to receive, and the generation of grandparents gets to extend caring and yes, love. From my seat at those dinner tables everything about estrangement in the absence of truly abusive and harmful behavior on the part of either generation is not normal. It’s actually quite abnormal and strange.

Says so right in the word.

I’ll see you next week…

How much information is too much? Is there an element of timing in that question? For instance, is the amount of information that is ultimately enough (and not too much) subject to a schedule? I’m prompted to think about this by a couple of very current events, or types of events: two instances of death resulting from police/citizen interactions and more than several instances of government officials enmeshed in scandal, or the appearance of scandal. You’ll not find commentary here about the particulars of any of these current events; I have no standing. My thesis, though, is that the twin virtues of transparency and disclosure have been tarnished by the evil twins impatience and entitlement.

Think about it for a moment. Events that are large and important fairly cry out for patience and a deeper, more thoughtful discussion. One that begins after facts have been extricated from the web of innuendo born in the bosom of opinion. The stampede of analysis now comes even as a story unfolds, before it even ends. It matters not whether we are observers of an event that touches on a certifiable “big theme” (e.g. racism), or one that is tiny, local, or personal (e.g. infidelity). The commonality rests not with the protagonists but rather within the observers, especially those who comment: it’s all about them.

Are you old enough to remember when it was considered unseemly to be a self-promoter? Even if you are, it’s tough to recall those days before the ever-connected world when blatant “look at me” or “listen to me” behavior was met with the collective cluck of a society bred for humility. This “cult of self-promotion” not only imposes itself on big events and grand issues (comments that begin with “I think…”), it also means that no one is to be allowed a privacy if the entitled self-promoters decide that they simply must know, well, whatever. “A universal, wrathful demand of the public for complete disclosure” about everything and anything. (Gideon Lewis-Kraus)

The need to know trumps all; one who asks the question in some way is granted all manner of primacy over one who might have the answer. It’s uncomfortable to watch at times.

The phenomena is not without irony. Witness articles critical of self-promotion that tell the story of someone who is almost famous for talking about not promoting him/herself. Nice, huh? It’s like a hall of mirrors, a kind of “Inception”. Trust that it doesn’t escape my attention that there are more than several folks out there who consider “musings” a form of self-promotion. An irony within a discussion of irony.

There’s a certain power in thoughtfulness, a seriousness that induces thoughtfulness, in turn, in the listener. If we always know what you think or what you did precisely when you thought or acted, how are we to ascertain what, if anything, is important? If one demands full and immediate disclosure of any and all information, regardless of how significant or trivial it might be, or how public or private the consequences, how are we to order anything at all along the great/small continuum? At some point the primacy of the inquisitor must find its limit, if only for a moment.

A moment of peace for the rest of us, should we care to think about something deeper than the event in question. A moment of peace for an individual who might harken back to an earlier day, one when it was possible to graciously decline to offer anything at all, lest it encourage someone to be interested.