Thankful for the Memories

Today we are thankful for our memories of those who have walked the way with us.

We are thankful that we have become better at distinguishing the important from the unimportant.

And we are thankful that we have learned not to let the unimportant stuff bother us as much.

Reading, like Wine, Can be Better After Aging

2019's Little Women was the most recent film adaptation

Sure, you've "read" a book, but how much of it did you retain, and how much of it did you understand?

I read Little Women as a schoolboy. Enjoying the tale of Jo March and her sisters, I picked up its sequel, Little Men, which sat on the Louisa May Alcott shelf in the Winne Units library. The latter book about the following generation wasn't as compelling, but I digress.

As a junior staffer I had a boss who bent the rules without much self-reflection. His favorite aphorism was "it's easier to be forgiven than to ask permission." He was not successful in his business or personal life and was fired two years later.

Revisiting Little Women in 2020, I came across the passage where the teenaged Jo is earning good money for writing "sensational" fiction but doesn't want to tell her parents:

She had a feeling that Father and Mother would not approve, and preferred to have her own way first, and beg pardon afterward.

Four decades after hearing my ex-boss's wisdom, I made the connection to a sentence from a 19th-century children's book.

If good writing is re-writing, then appreciative reading is re-reading, sometimes 60 years later.

Related, from The Therapeutic Value of Reading:

When times are uncertain and scary, something familiar can be a source of solace. The survey of pandemic reading habits conducted by the researchers at Aston University found two types of readers: Those who focused on reading something new to them, to expand their knowledge, and those who re-read familiar books for the sense of comfort and stability and the lack of surprises.

The writer was being too dismissive: re-reading can expand knowledge, too.

Uncertain Times

When uncertainty rules, we turn to proven sources of guidance. So I cracked open a fortune cookie.

My action was rewarded when I got four, four, fortunes in one.

Time flies.
Suns rise and shadows fall.
Let time go by.
Love is forever over all.

Take your time (which flies and goes by): it's almost too much wisdom to absorb in one sitting.

Fire, Rain, Loss, and Wisdom

(WSJ Image)

In 1970 my college roommate played Fire and Rain nearly every day on his turntable. I liked the melody, but I heard the lyrics without listening. It's taken 50 years for me to understand James Taylor better: [bold added]

“My first successful song was ‘Fire and Rain,’ which starts with losing a friend to suicide. There’s a cumulative emotional quality to it, a message that’s useful to hear....generally, we don’t engage with things that are hard. In modern culture, do we go too far in the direction of never doing anything that’s unpleasant? It’s almost like we’re entitled to not having negative feelings.

I’m 71, and when you get older you lose more and more. Your accumulated memory and personal history are a huge compensation, but you have fewer people to share that with. Maybe cumulative loss is what old age is.”

Though "Fire and Rain" never reached number 1 on Billboard, it's on several top-100 and top-500 lists of the greatest songs of all time.

Shopping Till I'm Dropping

Costco: temptation averted

Buying in bulk to get the lowest price--like finishing everything on the plate--is a compulsive behavior that I'm trying to control.

Needing only six AA batteries, I nevertheless was tempted by the Costco display in Hawaii Kai; the pack of 40 Duracell AA's was on sale for $13.99, 35 cents per unit.

There was no foreseeable requirement for buying extra for my own use in Hawaii; my local relatives are also hoarders prudent shoppers and had plenty of their own, and I wasn't going to carry nearly three dozen batteries onto the plane, possibly slowing the TSA process.

Safeway: nope.

Safeway was selling them at 4 for $7.49, or $1.88 per. I would have to buy eight for $14.98, just to get six. Nope, I would rather buy the Costco 40-pack and leave 34 on the sidewalk for someone else to use.

CVS' promotion had the Duracell AA's on "sale" at 8 for $7.99. $1 per battery was much improved but still wasteful since I'd have two extraneous units.

I finally settled on the CVS store-branded six-pack for $5.49.

Paying 92 cents each was 2.6x the Costco price but was the optimal decision.

After all this running around, there's a philosophical point that I've been pondering for quite a while.

My investment portfolio has reached the point where I can gain or lose thousands of dollars each day.

Is it worth spending an hour agonizing over $14 vs $8 vs $6, especially since the sands of time are running low? We know that we should change our behavior to adapt to changing circumstances, but it's much easier said than done.

You Gotta Have Balls

It's old technology that we've just adopted: Tennis balls reduce drying time.

They move around between the items in the dryer, allowing the warm air to circulate more freely and thus reach more surface area of the drying items. They also seem to reduce static electricity in the finished load.

There's an optimal number of tennis balls that will minimize drying time and maximize "fluffiness", however it's defined.

In my younger geekier days I would have worked the puzzle, but now that I'm older (and lazier) 2-3 balls seem good enough, so that's what we'll use.

In many, many areas of life having more balls is helpful.

The Wisdom of Byron

Barron's profiles Byron Wien, 83, master strategist of Blackstone Group ($340 billion under management). A sampling: [bold added]

Byron Wien (Barron's photo)

his approach to philanthropy is “to try to relieve pain rather than spread joy. Music, theater, and art museums have many affluent supporters, give the best parties, and can add to your social luster in the community. They don’t need you. Social service, hospital, and educational institutions can make the world a better place and help the disadvantaged make their way toward the American dream.”

On politics, his prediction of an election victory by Hillary Clinton and Democratic control of the Senate looks good now, but he forecast the wrong Republican insurgent to win the nomination: Ted Cruz. With the possibility now of a Trump presidency, he says, “I’m hopeful that the checks and balances in the American political system will restrain Trump from implementing some of his more extreme ideas.”

When speaking before audiences of wealthy individuals, he has fielded questions about how to avoid overindulging their children. He warns them about flying their kids in private jets: “It changes them, and not for the better.”

I like listening to the wisdom of elderly, successful people. They're usually past puffing themselves up, being defensive about past failures, or trying to enrich themselves by lying or leaving out crucial information. We may certainly disagree with their opinions, but they are very likely to be speaking the truth as they see it.

Some of Byron Wien's "life lessons":