It has just come to my attention that, over on PaperbackSwap, the “users who want this book also want” suggestion for a particular title are:

Perhaps if I had been shelved in that section, I’d have had a second printing.

In related news, with the discovery that there is a web site which will give you my book for free, we have broken all previous pricing records. The new record is expected to stand until another web site decides to actually pay you to take their copy.

Switching gears for a serious comment:

It occurs to me that it’s been 12 years since my book was published. There were 6,000 copies, total. Of which I just found 61 copies still available for sale on the Internet. Plus 84 copies in libraries, ranging from the Library of Congress to Singapore. I find this amazingly cool.

Okay, here’s a question that’s puzzling me. From Brian Greene’s talk on superstring theory, a frame showing the usual means of picturing the general theory of relativity:

In the center, you’ve got the Earth warping three-dimensional space, depicted here as the two-dimensional plane in which the Moon orbits. (Actually, it’s depicted as the plane one lunar radius below the orbital plane, as the Moon appears to be rolling.) The Moon is pulled by the Earth in the same way that a marble would roll down a similar incline. Simple enough.

Here’s the question: in which direction is space warped? That is, to depict the warping of a 2-dimensional plane, you need three dimensions; we use depth here to show the inclination of the moon to head back into the Pacific basin from whence it came. Therefore, since it’s actually 3-dimensional space that’s being warped, presumably the direction of the warp must be into a fourth spatial dimension.

The obvious answer is that the direction of the warp is an artifact of the depiction: 3-dimensional space doesn’t need a direction to warp, any more than you need three dimensions to stretch out a flat sheet of pizza dough. But if that’s the case, if we’re talking about a warped three-dimensional space, don’t we need an external 3-dimensional frame of reference against which to measure the changes to our own space? And if so, is that a purely mathematical construct, or is there a physical analogue?

I have a gut feeling that this question is either blindingly brilliant or blindingly obvious. Probably the latter.

I’m two years behind on this image, which was brought to my attention by Carolyn Porco’s TED presentation:

Not visible in this resized version, but clearly evident in the original, is Saturn’s moon Epimethus, whose gas jet from its south pole is responsible for the thin ring outside the main body. If you’re wondering why a saturnine moon has a gas jet, Porco discusses the theory that it’s caused by internal high temperatures and pressures acting on a subsurface body of water, vented through fissures in the surface. These are ideal conditions for the creation and eventual discovery of life.

Which is perhaps not so surprising, as the only known body in the solar system which has life on it also makes a cameo appearance. In this excerpt, you can see Earth (normally occluded by solar light), waving hello.

Via The Daily WTF, this is my new favorite error message of all time:

I’m crossposting a comment I made in the ongoing thread over at Brian Greenberg’s ISBS, mainly because I think it’s a fine bit of writing that I don’t mind showcasing here. Secondly because it’s a bit far afield from our original topic. Thirdly because I’m reasonably sure I still have readers who think I have my head firmly lodged up my ass on matters military and geopolitical, and I’d like to hear them tell me why.

That said, while comments here are welcome, you’re invited first to click over and join us on Brian’s site.

Finally, there are edits made to this excerpt, primarily because what I thought flowed well as part of a comment reply looked too much like an ad hominem phrasing when lifted out of context. Brian and I disagree on a great many things, but fundamentally, if I’ve gotten heated in my debates with him over the years, it’s because I can never understand how a fine mind and great heart like his can see things so differently. It concerned me that my original text would give the opposite impression here, so I took the liberty of making minor changes.

Excerpt follows:

You seem to be saying that, regardless of what the political objectives are of the war, or whether the war can be judged a success on various terms, that there is a value imbued to the effort by the sacrifices made and pride taken by the participants. You call this nobility.

You might be surprised to hear that I agree. I think it is noble to risk dying for one’s country or one’s beliefs. Ideally, an American soldier going into combat would feel the moral force of both behind him or her. What I find exceptionally noble is that, for many soldiers — and I expect the true numbers here are impossible to quantify — they no longer believe that the war was for country or American values, but they continue to fight for their comrades in arms. To have only that remaining, to have lost the notion that there’s a greater meaning behind the sacrifices they’re asked to make, makes what is going on all the more poignant.

Put another way: you and I both know that the way we shape our military, it really doesn’t matter how badly clusterfucked a military operation becomes. Our forces will fight for each other when nothing else remains. I think this makes it exceptionally important that our leadership and our citizens should be exceedingly stringent and miserly before we decide that it’s time to open up the can of American whoop-ass.

I expect you to reply now that for most of our troops, perhaps the majority, perhaps the overwhelming majority, this is not what they are fighting for — that they remain convinced that this effort is for country and American values, and that this justifies their continued sacrifice.

And this brings us to the million-casualty question. If it is inherently noble to die for your country or your beliefs, then are the Iraqi insurgents imbued with nobility? Were the 9/11 hijackers? Palestinian suicide bombers? Timothy McVeigh?

If the answer is no, then you cannot argue that such actions are inherently noble. You have to argue that the specifics of your country or your values are what imbue that nobility to dying for your cause. Which leads to only two possible conclusions regarding the assumption of nobility for American forces dying overseas:

1) The death of American soldiers is inherently noble because America is the Great Exception; alone among all nations, causes, and beliefs in the world, we are touched by God, or have some other similarly irrevocable status by dint of being American.

2) The death of American soldiers is causally noble because Americans fight for what we deem to be decent, honorable, and right, and because America has acted for over two centuries as a beacon disseminating our notions of these values to the world, much to the betterment of humankind.

Personally, I’m a fervent believer in the second formulation, and I equally believe that, in this time and in this case, we have eschewed too much of our own morality to continue to believe this of ourselves. We have invaded nations which did us no harms to justify war, in the manner of our worst historical enemies. We have killed, tortured, and imprisoned the innocent, and we have continually lied to ourselves and to the world about the worst of our excesses and the worst of our actions.

Then, to justify ourselves, we wrap ourselves in the undeserved nobility that we ascribe to the poor bastards we ship overseas to fight and die, in that remaining scrap of the best of ourselves. The more we believe in the indomitable nobility of the American soldier, the more we can believe in the indomitable nobility of America, regardless of how much we shit upon our cherished beliefs.

Yes, the American soldier does maintain this nobility, because they continue to die for their country, or their beliefs, or their friends. But we do not deserve to bask in any dim reflection of their sacrifice.

Which leads me to the last of what you said, which I see as the dying gasp of American triumphalism to which we cling, that Tony Snow and by extension America’s leadership “likely knew more about what it’s like in Iraq than either of us ever will”. Because we desperately want to believe that our leaders are wise, and informed, and will act in the best interests of the nation.

Unfortunately, there is ample evidence and history that this simply has not been true. Our leaders have ignored what they could have known, rejected what they did not want to hear, lied continuously, and have broken faith consistently with both the American people and the American soldier. They could have chosen otherwise; they had the resources and the tools to be informed and act wisely, and they chose instead to act on gut instinct and a near-messianic belief in their own rightness and closeness to God.

This is why I think we all should have been terrified when we heard administration officials refer to their opponents as the “reality-based community.” Those who supported the Bush administration, the neoconservatives, and the warmongers collectively made our horror into a national joke. The price we’re paying now is precisely because if America deserves the mantle of righteousness, it is because we have had for two centuries a partial track record of being right. Of being correct. Of seeing the world for what it is and speaking of what it could be.

You can’t be right if you don’t know of whence you speak. And that is why I can’t mourn the death of the spokesman for those who have been so catastrophically, blindly, blisteringly, painfully wrong, and who spoke in America’s name as they were doing so.

Via Boing Boing, Scientific American interviews the author of Becoming Batman, due out in October.

Over on I Should Be Sleeping, Brian and I are having an interesting discussion on what’s appropriate following the death of a perhaps-controversial celebrity. By all means, join us if you care to make my opinions sound less inappropriate (or more so).

Speaking of inappropriate, I swear to God, when I saw this screenshot on another blog:

What I thought I saw was this:

According to Wikipedia, Max Headroom [1985] “presents a dystopic look at a run-down near-future dominated by television and large corporations.” Interesting time for that image to pop up, subconsciously or not.

Via Consumerist, a great video about the costs of a new iPhone 3G, Apple ad style:

Fascinating video of about 16,000,000 birds engaging in a ritualistic dance flight before descending and devouring a small town. I’m inferring the bit about the devouring.

Huh. Things I didn’t know: cell phone taxes are based on your area code. Which means that when I bought my cell phone in Las Vegas and got a 202 phone number, I really screwed myself.

According to this Javascript, I’m 66% likely to be male. Man, that’s kinda freaky, in a fascinating sort of way.

I had a dream last night in which I met Bill Gates in a high school gymnasium (not my own) and he gave me a Masonic handshake.

I completely forgot about this dream until I was reminded of it by Wil Wheaton’s tweet involving masonry, which suggests that my conscious life is not much less weird than my subconscious.

No, I have no idea why I suddenly needed to know this. I just did. Herewith, all of the first names of US presidents, followed by a count, sorted both ways:

I guess that’s one more way in which the Democrats were historic this year. We’ve never had a Barack or a Hillary, but we’ve had plenty of Johns.

LOS ANGELES—Scores of pundits who have invested their credibility in the safety of Macs found themselves scrambling today to defend the collapse of IndyMac Bank, potentially endangering the life savings of many Mac users.

John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said of the massive security failure: “The IndyMac situation is unique. It does not signal a direction for the industry as a whole.”

A former Mac user pledges her eternal fealty to Windows.

These comments were echoed by many tech pundits. Rob Enderle of The Enderle Group said, minutes after the announcement was made: “I’ve long said that people were foolish to rely on Mac for their financial needs. IndyMac — and indeed, the entire Mac community — placed their faith in FDIC, SEC, and ISBN compliance for far too long, disregarding the need to instead join forces with larger organizations that have captured the bulk of the financial computing industry.”

Cory Doctorow, contacted by phone at the Codefürhackersnötdweebsgoddammerung 2008 conference in Berlin, said of the collapse: “As I said on Boing Boing in 2005, Mac’s collapse was clearly inevitable after they refused to open-source their ATM network.”

Security consultants and Mac industry observers were flummoxed by the news. Adam Engst, publisher of the TidBITS Mac online newsletter, said, “Wait. What are you talking about? Are you one of Tristan’s friends?” Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times was unavailable for comment, possibly due to temporary hypoxia from the gales of laughter and the distinguishable sound of milk coming out of his nose.

Individuals who have invested in Mac are insured by the federal government up to $100,000, but any Mac user who has purchased the Photoshop Creative Suite has an investment of several times that amount tied up in their Mac. Mac’s failure is expected to have ancillary impact in numerous similar industries, including Granny Smith apples, Pixar, and the use of the Chicago font in movie titles. (See sidebar: “Sprint bracing for massive Impact sales as millions abandon their iPhone 3G”.)

Picking up on a meme from Brian, where Jeff has been, domestic version:

Mainly I’m doing this because I so rarely get to use the skill I picked up at 9 years old, memorizing the states in alphabetical order:

Arizona: business trip to Phoenix consulting for an ISP. I still have their T-shirt, which says “Think Globally, Hack Locally” on the back. I remain amazed by the concept of water misters at outdoor restaurants, and by my client’s warning that during the half mile hike from my hotel to his office, I’d need to stop for bottled water twice. He was right.

California: For some reason, I have been to Disneyland twice as often lifetime as I’ve been to Disney World. No, I can’t explain it either.

Colorado: I am informed that, in 1970, at the age of 1, I roadtripped to Denver. I can probably infer that several states between Indiana and Colorado should be filled in thusly, unless our Chrysler had long-distance high-jump technology. But as I feel I’m stretching to include Colorado in the first place, I’ll leave this stet.

Connecticut: Visiting friends and Weird Al. It was that kind of trip.

Delaware: Home of cousins, fraternal little brothers, and frequent tax-free shopping. I recommend the Chinese buffet.

District of Columbia: my adopted hometown. Brian has been there too. I’ve seen him there.

Florida: I’m Jewish. Of course we drove to Miami Beach regularly.

Georgia: Several student conferences. I distinctly remember hanging up my towel to dry, and at the end of the day, it was damper than when it started. I can’t believe anyone ever lived here before the invention of air conditioning. When Sherman burned Atlanta, you sure couldn’t tell the difference on the basis of ambient heat.

Illinois: Two trips to Chicago, plus numerous opportunities for quality time at O’Hare.

Indiana: ex-girlfriend at Earlham. Cf. Ohio.

Maine: Various trips to hazardous biofacilities as a child. (Why adults think children will be excited about seeing sharks, I’ll never know. I remember thinking, “no thank you, I like all of my fingers equally.”) Most recent excursion was for Steve and Courtney weddingpalooza with Brian.

Maryland: one of two adopted home states.

Massachusetts: various conferences and friends in Boston, which is a city that shares this with Canada: I could see myself living there if it weren’t so frickin’ cold.

Minnesota: I don’t think this counts, but numerous Northwest airlines stopovers. Need to get back sometime. Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, and Madison are three places where I say to myself, “wait, I’ve never actually been there? But I’ve planned on going so many times!”

Nevada: Yeesh, like you couldn’t guess this already.

New Hampshire: Where we went Wal-Mart shopping while in Vermont.

New Jersey: adopted state #2. I’m known to spend far too much time in Atlantic City.

New York: I recall stopping off in Buffalo once on the way to Toronto. Otherwise, not much memorable about this state. You can safely give it a miss.

North Carolina: aside from drive-throughs, I attended a wedding here once just past the Virginia border. Ranks equally with my attendance at the Billy Graham Crusade for Jeff thinking, “these people are not like me.”

Ohio: aside from a memorable and ill-considered trip to Cleveland, responsible for the transmutation of another girlfriend to “ex” status, I once walked to Dayton airport from the middle of I-70 after a consultation with my bus driver proved that I would not otherwise make my plane. Have you seen North by Northwest? It was like that, but without the plane shooting at me.

Pennsylvania: my home state. Roadtrip from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh sometime if you want a true appreciation of how frickin’ large the western states are.

Rhode Island: home of Brown University, where the Store 24 is closed from 11 PM until 7 AM. No, I couldn’t figure it out either.

South Carolina: home of South of the Border and all the priapic plastic crap you could ever want.

Tennessee: roadtrip to Vanderbilt, which means that I think Kentucky should also be included in the marked states, but I can’t remember if that’s where we were faced with the prospect of a grit breakfast. Most memorable moment: the Vanderbilt scoreboard said we were the “Penn State Quakers”. Second most memorable moment: a friend and I, neither of us who would expect such an honor, scored the lowest purity test scores on the Band bus.

Texas: another cheat, as I got stranded in an airport for an hour on the way to Vegas. I can’t say this counts, but I also can’t say that I feel like I’ve missed much.

Vermont: Jeff’s opportunity to warp young minds at a peace camp. Also where I learned three chords on a guitar on another roadtrip.

Virginia: a briefly adopted home state, but not in the places where cigarettes are cheaper.

Washington: An evening layover in Seattle during Jeff’s “Every Time Zone Except the Maritimes” trip. DC-St. Louis-Seattle-Vancouver BC-Calgary. Hmmm, I guess Missouri is also on the states I don’t count.

West Virginia: Harpers Ferry weekend. Will probably head back, now that they have poker.

You might think that E. asinus spinal atrophy would be cured in 2008 by environmental factors, but you’d be wrong. Luckily, help is on the way.

Current Jeff level of geeklust for an iPhone: 8 out of 10.

Odds that I’m actually going to buy one: about 1 out of 3.

Why? Because right now, it looks like Apple and AT&T are still crippling the single feature that I actually need: Bluetooth tethering, aka DUN. In plain English, this means “your Internet connection can actually go places other than your cell phone.”

Back in January, I jumped ship on T-Mobile to switch to Sprint EVDO and a shiny new Palm Centro. The Centro is perfectly cromulent as a smartphone; as you can see in the attached photo, the user experience can best be described as “the wet dream of a road warrior… in 1998.” The Palm OS is getting very old and very creaky; it works well (especially in comparison with the Windows Mobile devices I’ve used), but most of the time when it’s doing something particularly cool, it feels like an Atari 2600 that’s been upgraded with a 16K RAM cartridge. Compared to the iPhone 2.0 demoed last week, there’s simply no contest.

But there’s one thing it excels at: dropping that EVDO connection into my MacBook anytime, and mostly anywhere. I’ve found that 50-60 KBps covers most of my Internet needs (exceptions: podcast updates, video streaming, and large software downloads), and I’m unwilling to go without it. At the time of this writing, AT&T is yet to say whether they’re going to offer 3G tethering with the iPhone.

Which is somewhat galling, as they offer tethering for Blackberry phones, and the iPhone 1.0 is perfectly capable of tethering with an unofficial hack. So if tethering is a must-have feature, there’s only one option right now: keep the Sprint phone and get an AT&T plan just for the iPhone.

Geeklust, yes. $200 a month worth of geeklust? Not so much.

Plan B is to go with the iPod Touch, which strips out a few iPhone features (notably GPS, which is on the “want but don’t need” list), but with Wifi-only access, its biggest drawback is that it’s only supercool about 50% of the time. That problem could be easily solved if the Touch could be used to tether to my Sprint phone—which again, is something I can do easily with my Palm TX. (Why would I tether a Palm TX to a Palm Centro? 480×320 screen resolution, versus 320×320 on the Centro, and a faster CPU.) Again, the jury is still out on whether this will be allowed by the corporate masters at Apple and AT&T.

I’ve been a happy uncustomer of AT&T Wireless since around 2000, when they hit me with a $500 charge for “going over” my unlimited minute rate plan. Yes, that still boggles my mind a little bit. My gut tells me that all of the various technology crippling I’m talking about here is based on some bean counter’s analysis at AT&T, not Apple, and I generally avoid companies with policies like these on general principles.

(For that matter, I’m less than impressed with my AT&T experience today, the first weekend that they’re offering the new free Wifi connection at Starbucks. I’ve been to two different hotspots today, and it’s taken over 15 minutes each time to reach the login screen, a sure sign that the servers are completely overloaded. I suspect that the same thing will occur when the 3G hits the shelves for a few weeks.)

I have no doubts whatsoever that these problems will all be solvable with third-party software upgrades; I have many doubts that Apple will allow such applications to be sold in the Application Store. But it’s for this reason that I’m very happy to hear that Apple is no longer sharing in the revenue of AT&T’s service contracts; since Apple keeps 30% of the revenue stream from application sales, that means they’re incented to offer software like this, and less likely to be in a binding contract with AT&T that prevents them from doing so.

Only time will tell whether that means we’ll see applications such as two-way tethering, VOIP, and (dare I dream?) online poker on the iPhone; give me the first and I’ll buy one. Give me the third and I’ll buy two.

So I’m spending a few months partially (and temporarily) deaf in one ear, thanks to evolution’s apparent inefficiencies in constructing working ear canals in my ancestors. (Or alternately, its inefficiency in preventing them from breeding, which implies I shouldn’t bitch too much about it.)

I’ve written the following extremely simple AppleScript to act as a tester to see how my ear is doing from day to day:

repeat with i from 1 to 7
	set volume i
	say i
end repeat

In my left ear, which is apparently working at full Jeff audio input capacity, I can easily hear “one”. In my right, I’m usually coming in between three and four. Trying to find a reference to translate “set volume i” into decibels so I can figure out exactly how bad my hearing is, but in the meantime relative results have been useful for comparison.

In any case, my hearing is bad enough that I have trouble with dialog at movies, so here’s the checklist for getting decent service with assistive devices, for those of you who also find yourselves temporarily needing them.

1. Get to the theater early. The listening devices will be in a big box and tangle of wires near the ticket booth, and there will be a delay while they fetch one that might work.
2. Different theaters use different devices, so you’ll want to spend some time figuring out what dials and switches to use. Ask for a manager if you need help; the box office won’t know diddly about these.
3. Insist on fresh batteries; I’m currently hanging at Starbucks waiting for the next show because my gizmo fritzed out right after the previews.

Taking a moment to vent: when I stepped out of the theater to get a new unit, the box office took the unit, took old batteries out of another one, and gave it back to me with those. I turned it on and got nothing; handed it back to her and said, “I’m deaf—can you hear anything with this?” “No.” “Then give me a new one like I asked you.” By this time, I’ve missed five minutes of archeological exposition and they’re looking at me with a bovine expression, not quite understanding that when I pay for a movie, I want to see it.

Incidentally, this is reinforcing my general belief that this is why movie theaters—and Hollywood—are in for a very rough time; when you pay ten bucks for a movie, what I believe you’re paying for is the experience of seeing it with theater-level quality. I caught Iron Man the other day, and most of the film was pocked with threading and other signs of wear. Now I’m seeing a movie I can’t hear. In both cases, I’d get a better experience watching the film on my laptop; my headphones are built-in audio assistive devices, thankyouverymuch. Theater number 1 was out of popcorn “butter”, theater number 2 treated me like crap when I complained about the audio; both are generally considered flagship theaters in the DC region. This does not exactly reinforce my desire to go to theaters.

My alternative is to wait twelve weeks and rent the DVD, or wait four to six weeks and download the DVD off the Internet. Oops, strike that—a DVD-quality version is available already, months in advance of the legal DVD release. A good theater can compete with this, and can continue getting their twenty bucks on a regular basis for admission and popcorn—the problem is that the industry seems to care so damned little about providing good theaters.

Listening to a Diane Rehm podcast about returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. The statistics show that the majority of these soldiers are basically screwed. One in five vets have one of these diagnoses; around 40% of them receive treatment.

Quick show of hands in the audience: how many people are surprised by this? Aside, of course, from administration planners.

Putting this into some raw numbers: according to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, 1.5 million troops have served in those wars. Using the specific percentages from the podcast, that means 240,000 soldiers with PTSD, and 240,000 more with depression; 105,000 have both diagnoses and are counted in each of the above figures, for a total of 300,000 veterans suffering from mental illness as a result of their deployment. 180,000 go undiagnosed or untreated. (No, the numbers don’t add up; I’m extrapolating from percentages in the podcast which have the same discrepancy.)

Personally, this is one of the things that made the $3 trillion cost of the Iraq war plausible to me; the 300,000 with potentially debilitating mental illnesses is only one of many long-term effects of the war that tend to be overlooked by the many Americans who were gung-ho about opening a can of whoop-ass on our enemies. And that’s really the issue here — having built the most powerful military in human history, a cursory reading of the last sixty years shows that Americans are damned comfortable with using it, certainly more comfortable than our self-image as peaceful would imply.

I think it’s well past time that we teach ourselves about the human costs of war. Never mind the 84,000 civilian casualties in Iraq; our tin ear to the suffering of foreigners is probably not going to change in the near future. But we certainly care about American casualties.

So next time, just for a lark, wouldn’t it be interesting if the American people demanded an accounting from an administration about what the statistical results are likely to be from going to war? We have six years of data from these wars; it shouldn’t be much of a leap to be able to say that if we send 100,000 soldiers into combat, we can expect N deaths, lifelong injuries, and mental disorders resulting. The 1.5 million figure above includes combat and noncombat positions; the odds of both injury and mental illness directly correlate, obviously, to combat exposure. We certainly collect specific data on combat casualties, and can use these when considering future deployments. Improvements in medical techniques between wars serve to both reduce the number of combat deaths, and increase the number of lifelong injuries; for these reasons, an accurate estimate should include both predictions based on past statistical results, as well as trendline modifiers for new techniques.

In this war, of course, any such predictions offered by the DoD would have been remarkably rosy, as their original plans were to roundtrip the troops there and back in under a year. But such predictions were never made; no one ever said, “For every 1,000 troops we send, 200 are coming home mentally ill, 21 are coming home wounded, and three come home on their shields.”

If such predictions had been made based on Gulf War I, the numbers would be far lower for killed and wounded in action — although long-term disability numbers are substantively similar. The Vietnam KIA and WIA equivalents are 22/1,000 and 117/1,000 respectively. Perhaps there might have been greater introspection upon the shift from a “shock and awe” war to one of occupation, if the shift from lower towards higher ratios were remembered as possible consequences.

What I do remember about the runup to war was talk of the financial cost we’d bear — numbers that were also laughably low and, to be charitable, optimistic. (To be accurate, lies and malfeasance.) Sure, there was plenty of vague talk about troop casualties, in that sort of “gee, it’s awful” tone we use about such things. I expect that my analysis here is extremely amateurish compared to the casualty estimates that they have at the Pentagon for any given military action, and these numbers should be made public and part of a public debate about any future war we consider. Some wars will still be self-evidently worth their predicted cost, but for others, perhaps it might be worth teaching America just what it takes to open up the can of whoop-ass.

I had two thoughts today, pretty much back to back, which put me into a strangely contemplative mood.

The first was, “What the hell am I going to do with that wedding pitcher?”

The second was, “Jesus, it’s six months today.” Six months since my father died, when decisions such as “what the hell should I do with that pitcher” fell to me.

I think the two were coincidental. I have a mental block when it comes to the exact date of my father’s death, and I had to check a calendar to confirm that today is the semianniversary. The question of what to do with the pitcher is unchanged from what it was yesterday or what it will be tomorrow, but it’s the anniversary that got me to thinking this way, to wanting to write about it.

The pitcher is part of a collection made by my mother, who like many Jewish women of her generation, had display shelving which she mostly filled with expensive and pretty ceramic crap. About a third of that crap is my fault. I spent twenty years traveling around the world, looking for gifts to bring home. At an early age, I realized that if it was breakable, useless, and optionally Jewish, it had Mom written all over it. (Jewish was frequently difficult when shopping in Asia, so somewhere along the way kashrut was replaced with sake set.)

Those items are easy; these are the keepers. I’m highly sentimental, and these are part of my story with my parents. It’s not just a Hungarian tea set, it’s the Hungarian tea set which, after schlepping it across Eastern Europe on a bus for three weeks, and hand-carrying it onto the plane, returning home after a trek of 4,000 miles, I managed to drop the teapot lid from a height of two feet onto an equally breakable glass dining room table.

Miraculously, both held. Otherwise, my parents would have heard the Finno-Ugric blue vocabulary I had learned on my trip, at high volume.

It’s the rest of the pretty and breakable crap which is giving me trouble, and raising the question of just what a memento truly is. Take the wedding pitcher: it’s the size and shape of what might be used to serve lemonade on a hot day to a family of eight. My parents’ initials are engraved on it, in a font that screams “1965, and not the part that came anywhere near acid.” To the best of my recollection, I’ve never seen it used.

But I can tell you where it sat in the old house, and how it looked at an upward angle when my eyes were only three feet off the floor, and that a picture of my mother from her prom was on a shelf beneath it. It was a very attractive picture, and I don’t know if I still have it.

I can tell you today that the pitcher has very little meaning for me. But this isn’t really about today, it’s about who I’ll be and what I’ll remember thirty or more years from now, and what mental bits of my parents which I have now might be lost between now and then. What I might want to hold onto. And what might help me remember.

I doubt I’ll ever care about the pitcher. But how often do I think about the prom photo without the pitcher to lead me there? Do I lose one if I lose the other?

And perhaps to make it even more twisted, seeing as how this blog is as close to a permanent record as I have, and I expect to keep it available for my own use until I’m past the point of caring: does this essay, on the six-month anniversary of my father’s death, replace a glass pitcher?

I have no idea.

There’s one thing that’s always struck me about death, about the way things should work to my way of thinking. After the mourning, after the wound has started to close and life has gone on in the way that it does, it seems to me that a fair God would give you the chance, every once in a while, to just sit and kibitz with the people you’ve lost. Like Homecoming, without the football game and the brass band. I’d like to crack wise about what my father went through, needle him a little bit like my mother and I would have, and have him appreciate the humor, as he would have. And then to say, seriously, “That really sucked for you. I’m glad you’re past it. It’s good to see you again as I remember you.”

Then I’d ask, “hey, what should I do with the pitcher?”