No, that’s not the Garden State, but it’s how New Jersey feels these days. Snow, ice, cold, snow, ice, cold, snow, ice, cold…. It’s actually a cave at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin. People there and elsewhere have it worse than we do – as humanity continues to screw with the world’s climate, causing extreme weather of various kinds, as predicted.
Memories Are Made of Something
A lot of us old people are excited about the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. It was February 9, 1964. A Sunday night, of course. I was 12 years old and we were living in an isolated area six miles west of Lancaster, California, in the desert about 70 miles north of Los Angeles. I remember watching the program, as we did every Sunday night, right before Bonanza. Everybody watched Ed Sullivan and Bonanza.
I also remember being excited about the Beatles’ performance that night and how excited my friend Dwight was too. Dwight was a tall, skinny kid, three or four years older than me, which was a little odd, but there weren’t many kids my age where we lived. That night is one of my favorite memories from those years.
Today, however, it occurred to me that by 1964, I was in junior high (the 7th grade) and we had moved into Lancaster, where I attended Piute School (it’s still there). We weren’t living in the desert outside of town anymore and I couldn’t have talked about the show with Dwight. I’m pretty sure he and I never saw each other again after my family moved into town.
Maybe Dwight and I watched something else one night and were excited about that? And as the years went by I somehow combined that memory with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan? Is it ok that some of the best things we remember never happened?
At least I don’t remember being at the show in New York City with all those screaming girls, but give me a few years.
Two Pieces of Good News from Washington
Speaker of the House John Boehner allowed a straightforward “clean vote” on raising the debt ceiling instead of holding the world economy hostage again. Many right-wingers are outraged. Maybe one day Congress will get rid of the debt ceiling altogether, since raising it merely allows the government to borrow money to pay bills Congress has already approved.
Secondly, Janet Yellen testified before Congress for the first time in her new role as chairman of the Federal Reserve. It’s hard to understand why President Obama initially seems to have preferred someone else for the job. There is a nice, clear summary of her testimony from John Cassidy at the New Yorker. This is his conclusion (calling her “dovish” means she’s not an “inflation hawk”, i.e. fighting inflation isn’t her one big priority):
She’s a historic figure. I am not just referring to her gender. I’m talking about her approach to policy making, and the emphasis she puts on creating jobs and reducing unemployment. “Since the financial crisis and the depths of the recession, substantial progress has been made in restoring the economy to health and in strengthening the financial system,” she said toward the end of her prepared remarks. “Still, there is more to do. Too many Americans remain unemployed, inflation remains below our longer-run objective, and the work of making the financial system more robust has not yet been completed.”
It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Fed chief come to office declaring that unemployment is too high, inflation is too low, and that we need to keep those Wall Street bounders in check. (Bernanke ended up saying some of these things, but he didn’t start out saying them.) In a post last year, I suggested that Yellen could be the most dovish Fed boss since … the Great Depression, and I noted that, “if Yellen does take over from Bernanke next February, there’s no reason to doubt that concern for the unemployed will remain her leitmotif.” Nothing she said today was inconsistent with that description.
Something They Don’t Tell You About Retirement
They didn’t tell me anyway.
After years of meeting or trying to meet deadlines, you suddenly have very few reasons to do anything at any particular time. No more “status reports are due by 3 pm” or “performance reviews must be submitted by November 15”. No more “close of business on Friday”.
Not that anybody ever dies by failing to meet a deadline, but when you’re retired, almost everything can wait. The most onerous deadline I have these days is getting a book back to the library on time (and they make it so easy to renew – they probably feel as silly asking for ten or twenty cents as you do paying it).
Of course, on the assumption that having a deadline can lead to beneficial activity, you can give yourself deadlines. That sounds funny at first, like the all-powerful Queen who makes a law she supposedly has to obey. But some serious people, Immanuel Kant, for example, have argued that freedom and autonomy don’t “consist in being bound by no law, but by laws that are in some sense of one’s own making” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
You figure out what’s right and then you do it for that reason. You use one of those great calendar applications to set your deadline, pick a nice color and set up an appropriate reminder. I haven’t done this much yet, but it sounds like a really good way to add some urgency to retired life.
Plus, when it looks like you won’t meet your deadline, you can simply drag it to some future, more agreeable date. That’s freedom and autonomy in spades!
Which reminds me of what the comedian Rita Rudner once said, something like:
“It’s great being single. There’s so much freedom. If you want, you can buy a chocolate cake, eat a big slice of it for dinner and then throw the rest in the trash. Then, the next morning, you can take something out of the trash and have it for breakfast.”
Ulysses S. Grant on Fear
Ulysses S. Grant, having been appointed to his first military command shortly after the Civil War began, was nervous. He was leading his troops toward what he believed to be the encampment of “Tom Harris and his 1200 secessionists”:
As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris’ camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on.
Then, at last being able to look into the valley, he saw signs that there had been a large camp below, but the secessionists had departed:
My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his.
I really like this guy. I’m glad he was on our side.
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
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