Image by Rhex Firemind
A story of mine was recently published in the online science fiction journal, Ripples In Space.
It’s about artificial intelligence in a young female robot and a visiting scientist who wants to determine if she is capable of comprehending unconventional thought patterns.
It’s short and you can read it in a flash.
I call it “Learning”
Click to read. Thanks.
Lanny Morgnanesi
Babylonia
For this reason or that, I’ve adopted the belief that many human habits date back hundreds of thousands of years, to homo erectus, the Neanderthals, and Gods knows how many other hominid creatures.
I won’t go much into this now, but one much-more modern bit of evidence – for me at least – is the preserved Italian city of Pompeii, which remains exactly as it was in 79 AD. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the fallen ash froze it in time. When I toured it several years ago, my lasting impression was: These people lived just like we do today!
Now something new to me – but historically old – has added to the idea that we haven’t changed much, even if our technology has. This small piece of information comes from a book called, “A History of the Jewish People,” written in 1934 by Max Margolis and Alexander Marx. It was paid for by the estate of one Rosetta M. Ulman, who during her life wanted such a publication written.
In chapters covering the years from 175 AD to 1038, there is a great deal of discussion about two highly respected schools of learning that guided Jewish communities dispersed throughout the known world. The schools, Sura and Pumbeditha, were in Babylonia (modern Iraq). The two heads of these school was held in the highest regard by Jewish residents of Babylonia, Palestine, Egypt and many other locations. Every word from the leaders on religion, scripture, philosophy and life were sought out and followed.
Even the Arabs paid attention and gave their respect.
As I read, I wondered how word got from the schools to the communities. No doubt by heralds, messengers, traders and travelers. Obviously, it must have been a slow stream of news.
When Margolis and Marx get into a section on a schism between the two schools, however, it seems as if the news had a much faster way of getting out. The leaders of Sura and Pumbeditha were arguing over nearly everything. One highly sensitive issue was what kind of calendar or calculation should be used to set the Jewish holidays. They differed on this, and the result was that one year Passover was celebrated on two different days.
Ancient Israel
Margolis and Marx report that the “confusion” was so great “it was even noticed by non-Jews.”
My thoughts were: How did the details of this controversy and the two divergent holidays spread so quickly from Babylonia, through Palestine, to Egypt and North Africa, maybe to even to Spain, Greece, Turkey and Persia?
Was there a Jewish internet?
Information then and now was powerful and important and clever humans, with or without technology, knew how to spread it. What may be lost, however, is exactly how they did it, at what cost and to what extent. Margolis and Marx don’t get into that, but I’d sure like to know.
The ancient school at Sura
Either way, the results were a lot like the results now.
We’ve always been the same and probably always will be. If we ever clone a Neanderthal, he may fit in much better than we’d expect.
Depiction of a Neanderthal
But I would have known that. The bakeries, butcher shops, whorehouses, living room art, sidewalks and curbs and everything else in Pompeii seem to suggest the truth. And now, as more evidence, we have the ancient Jewish internet.
By Lanny Morgnanesi
Last night I had Oysters Rockefeller. It was accompanied by green beans, a baked tomato and finger potatoes. Preceding that was chicken noodle soup and a salad of baby spinach, walnuts, goat cheese and dried cranberries. Dessert followed. This was dinner at the retirement home – not mine, my father’s.
The food was slightly better than usual because it was Birthday Night, the once-a-month event that celebrates all those born in that month. But even on regular nights, the meals are of high quality. Overall, the place is well-maintained, very clean and well-functioning. The staff is attentive and friendly.
Sitting in the dining hall, however, I realized my father was unlike nearly all the other people. He was of a different class. Even in old age, maybe especially in old age, this kind of thing comes through.
“Hey,” a man who had the look of a retired corporate executive shouted across several tables at my father when he was a newcomer. “You’ve got a hat on. Take off your hat!”
My father is bald and wears a hat to keep his head warm. He explained this to the man yelling at him and declined the directive to remove it. I don’t think the two have spoken since.
Dad has his friends at the home. All the Italians, plus the open, gregarious people who don’t think too much of themselves. Still, I’m certain few share his background.
My father was born to immigrant parents. He worked in factories, served in World War II and afterward took a job with the United States Postal Service. He never made much money but late in life was approved for a 100 percent veterans disability pension (loss of hearing in one ear during the war). This was a boost to his income at a time when his expenses were low. Actually, he never did spend much money, but with this second pension he was able to save even more. He invested mostly in CDs and government bonds when inflation and interest rates were in double digits, and made good money when he sold a house originally purchased for $15,000.
So, unlike a lot of working men, this working man was able to afford a berth in a rather nice retirement home. By doing that, he has to put up with the kind of people who may have had servants and commanded a realm.
“I wouldn’t sit there,” a thin, small, patrician-looking woman told me on Birthday Night. I was trying to sit down with my father at “her” table. “Mildred will be coming soon and that’s where she sits.”
We sat anyway. The hostess had placed us there, advising that Mildred would be seated at another table, and so the suggestion was ignored.
But it did not stop there.
When I asked my father what he was going to order, I spoke somewhat loudly into his hearing-aid assisted “good” ear.
“Please lower your voice, ,” the woman told me.
“I need to speak loud enough for him to hear,” I said.
“He can hear you,” she said dismissively. “And Mildred will be coming soon.”
When she spoke again of Mildred coming, I was tempted to call her an old bat. Before I could, the hostess came over and said, “If you are uncomfortable here, I can seat you at a different table.”
I took her up on that.
Officially, there are no assigned seats at this particular home. But so many residents insist on sitting at the same place all the time, and with the same people, that things can get nasty. It could just be that old people are nasty, yet I sense past lives of entitlement influencing the forcefulness of these individuals. Most are dressed fairly well as they push their walkers about. Many women get their hair done regularly and accessorize with jewelry. My father, meanwhile, doesn’t care much about his appearance.
Overall, the class distinction here comes down to look and attitude, since there isn’t a lot of spending and few extra possessions. There’s a haughtiness in at least a strong minority of the residents. In some cases, it’s mean arrogance.
One night I brought my father back to the home after dinner at my house.
“It’s not quite seven,” I said. “You can get in on tonight’s poker game.”
He didn’t answer right away, then said, “I’m never going to play poker here again.” His face was full of hurt.
“Oh no,” I said. “What happened?”
“Four of us were playing in the game room. Nickle and dime. Everything was fine. Then I won four hands in a row and this guy, a very bitter man who always seems to be in a bad mood, says in a loud voice, ‘I’m not going to play with a cheater.’ He was referring to me.”
“What?” I had this ridiculous image of arthritic hands trying to deal a second, with cards flying everywhere.
“I thought maybe I didn’t hear him right or that he was kidding. But he repeated it. ‘I’m not playing with cheaters.’ I said something back and then I got up and left. That’s it. I’ll never play again.”
It was difficult for me to believe anyone in a retirement home could act this way over a game, but I guess I’m naïve. Anger and unhappiness, and perhaps paranoia, don’t disappear with age. Maybe they get worse.
My father’s accuser, whom he pointed out to me on a latter visit, had the appearance of a grumpy man in charge of something important who treats everyone around him poorly. It’s possible he was delusional, and that this was not about class, or feeling superior, or not trusting someone unlike you. Still, while eating dinner in the dining hall and looking over the patrons (they all look so similar), I had an idea.
Why not adopt the college model for retirement homes and diversify the population by offering scholarships?
Colleges and universities see a homogeneous student population as a detriment to learning and understanding life. By working hard to diversify those who are admitted, higher ed administrators believe they improve the student experience.
The retirement home experience sure could use improvement. So why not take some affirmative action and offer elderly scholarships and admit people who otherwise would not even think of applying? It could become a whole new thing. Corporate sponsors could be found. In trying to recruit the residents, personnel from the home could attend retirement parties at factories and other places of blue collar employment. They could even go after people with special talents.
For example, a scholarship could be offered to a champion shuffled board player who could be entered in a new retirement home league and bring pride and glory to his particular home. Maybe there’s a bingo player out there who has developed a strategy that goes beyond chance. He or she would be an attractive find. Or, if there are any left, old vaudevillians could be recruited. They could entertain fellow residents in exchange for their scholarships.
In the beginning, the scholarship elderly would be looked upon as beneath those who pay full price. But I suspect – and hope – that with time they would be accepted and maybe even be able to sit at the table of their choice. Like at colleges, they would change the atmosphere, attitude and culture of retirement homes, bringing more tolerance and empathy.
And less grumpiness.
I think this is worth a try. Now who will fund that first scholarship?
By Lanny Morgnanesi
A certain American president is dominating 90 percent of what we see, hear, and discuss, so I’ve decided to write about a somewhat anonymous but highly unusual person I’ll call Melvin.
Melvin was intelligent. He did his undergraduate work at MIT and was studying veterinary medicine when I roomed with him and another vet student at a large university. Melvin is difficult to describe. I like to think he was Andy Kaufman before Andy Kaufman was Andy Kaufman. His life was a performance, not on stage, just walking around. The difficulty with Melvin, like Andy, was understanding the purpose and meaning of his performances.
For example, I could hear Melvin in his room when he had women over. During climax, he would always shout, “Christ was a Jew!”
After a time, I asked why he said this. He probably was employing his distinctly odd sense of human when he answered, in complete deadpan, “What else would you possibly say?”
I always suspected he was mimicking a character from a William Burroughs novel or some equally obscure place.
As a vet student, Melvin studied much more than I did. One evening, I was in the living room of our campus townhouse entertaining two women friends. He had a test the next day and was upstairs with his books. He obviously needed a break, and he took one in performance mode.
Melvin came running down the steps, frantic, dressed in cutoff jeans, no shirt, no shocks, no shoes. It looked like he was sweating. He carried a beat up old guitar.
“I’m on in 10 minutes,” he said to the three of us in a panic, “and I can’t play a thing.”
Then he ran to a window, opened it and jumped out.
Andy Kaufman couldn’t have done better.
But the best of his bits occurred when I and our third roommate walked him to a house where he was to meet a blind date. We wanted to see what she looked like and stood nearby as he knocked on her front door. When she opened it, we could see she had an exquisite body. It was rare and perfect in every way. She was not, however, attractive. My recollection is she had a slight resemblance to Richard Nixon.
Melvin looked at her and excused himself for a moment. He walked to the street and, with a rather demonstrative gesture, threw his glasses under the wheel of a passing car. Melvin then looked at me and the other roommate and said, in a tone of old movie contempt, “So long, suckers.”
He went back to the house, went inside, and wasn’t seen again for three days.
I’m certain that by the end of the three days the young woman who looked like Nixon knew almost certainly that Christ, indeed, was a Jew.
Now isn’t that better than Donald Trump?
By Lanny Morgnanesi
I’d like to share some thoughts on a topic often considered inappropriate, even offensive. That topic is modesty.
Decades ago, modesty was a common word and part of a common discussion. It was considered a good quality, something advocated by parents, teachers and others who sought to guide and instruct.
Today, it has become a pejorative. The reasons for this include:
The modesty issue first confronted me in high school, in the 60s, when the miniskirt was popular. That tiny article of clothing made it difficult for a young woman to sit down without revealing much of herself. There was a lot of pulling at the skirt in an attempt to cover up, but this was mostly ineffective. I recall wondering if my female classmates knew what was in clear view. They must have. They must have seen each other. The exposure was so common that a male friend had a name for it. He called it “having your picture taken.”
I felt sorry and embarrassed for the women wearing these skirts, thinking how totally ashamed I would be if, for example, I were caught walking the halls with my zipper down. I wanted to say something but lacked the nerve.
Men in high school, frankly, seemed more modest than females. But to this day I don’t know why. The swimming coach at school once told me it was difficult to get men on the team because they had to wear those tiny Speedos, which showed masculine protrusions. This I understood. So why didn’t women have a similar concern with the miniskirt?
Out of high school and college and into an office environment, I had an unexpected and really surprised warning from an older male colleague about my own modesty. It was a hot summer day and I wore a short-sleeve shirt.
“That’s not professional,” he said. “You’re supposed to wear long sleeves. Always long sleeves. You don’t show your arms at work.”
I had never heard this rule and took heed of his counsel. The next day also was hot, but I wore a long-sleeve shirt. In a meeting that day, I noticed the women were showing an assortment of arms, legs, shoulders, cleavage, even toes. Not fair, I thought, and questioned how this double standard came to be. Would the women in the office accept me if I were showing my chest or toes? I was certain they would not, and that everyone would believe I had lost my mind.
These little stories are not to suggest that modesty is alien to all women. I dated a woman once who, while not overtly modest, had a disdain for showy fashion and sexy clothes. Her common attire was jeans and a shirt. She wore a dress only when it was called for, and never used make up or styled her hair.
She made an exception at a Halloween party. As a costume, she put on heavy makeup, fixed her hair and wore a provocative dress. She looked totally different, very enticing. I raved about her appearance and told her to do it again sometime. As long as I knew her, she never did.
I respected and admired that.
Earlier I mentioned Muslim women. Years ago, I had one as a friend. She was Indonesian. Pretty hip, fashionable and not at all religious. We were both living abroad in an international community. After a harsh winter, spring broke out to our great relief. On a warm bright day, I told my friend, “You know what I want to do? I want to make a picnic lunch, take a blanket outside and lay in the sun. Would you do that with me?”
She said she would, but after a minute on the blanket she got up and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I know you just want to enjoy the day and don’t mean anything by it. But I’m a Muslim woman and I can’t lay out on a blanket in public with a man. I just can’t.”
I assured her I understood. We packed up and went to a restaurant. I felt horrible for not realizing what I had asked her to do. I had been totally blind to it.
This might have been more about dignity than modesty, but the two actually meld.
Clearly, there is some trace of a belief that says modesty has its place and that it can be adopted by choice and without compromise or surrender of rights. With fashion the way it is today, with so many women going out confidently in pants that are nothing more than a second layer of skin, and at a time when so many men are being exposed as sexual predators and uninvited Lotharios, why doesn’t a modesty movement – a small one – take hold?
To help me better understand this, I need women to explain the issue to me, mainly why even a modest amount of modesty is moderately objectionable. So please comment here. More important, what is the strong attraction to modesty’s inverse? Why the other extreme? That’s the even bigger question.
This is what has truly confounded me, ever since those high school days when young boys, uncaring about the dignity of their female friends, regularly got their pictures taken.
One final note. I know a man who became a woman. After the change, she seemed obsessed not by womanhood and all that it can and should be, but rather by the superficial — jewelry, clothing and appearance. Something there seemed missing or wrong.
Can it be the same with the modesty issue?
Lanny Morgnanesi
With the Russians continuing to mess with us, it might be time to consider an alternative system of government. Perhaps Plato can guide us.
As a twist to what is current, I’m writing positively about immigrants.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, newcomers have always played a role in improving American’s special brand of capitalism. A recent innovation I stumbled upon involved food, a truck and a series of parking lots around the Philadelphia suburbs.
The participating entrepreneurs are Chinese and the heart of the operation is
a Chinese app called We Chat. This single app, available in English and Chinese, is something like Facebook but has been built out so it is many apps in one. It is used by millions of Chinese people around the world to do things for which Americans use multiple apps. Now it is being used to find and organizing markets for products.
Business people from Philadelphia’s Chinatown section use it to sell food products to people in the suburbs who might not want to drive into Chinatown. There are a number of groups doing this. I’m not sure how many, but I know one sells just mushrooms, one vegetables, and one food from Xian province.
The seller I did business with was selling frozen dim sum products. They buy from wholesalers and sell in bulk, mostly on the weekends.
As the weekend approaches, We Chat is used to tell buyers what products are available in the upcoming delivery. Most important, they are informed of the the times the food truck will arrive and depart from each parking lot on the delivery circuit.
The customer orders using a phone and is given an order number.
The closest stop to my house is about 20 minutes away, and the truck would be there Sunday from 10:20 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. It’s a small window because the truck has to move on to the next lot and new customers, like a bus on a schedule. I arrived around 10:15, and saw an unmarked truck at the far end of the lot, away from a large shopping center. That was it.
The back of the truck was open and loaded with boxes labeled with numbers. There was a man inside.
On the ground was a woman with a clipboard.
“I’m number 56,” I told her.
I had ordered two 5-pound bags of something called Shanghai Xioa Rong Boa. In English they are called soup dumplings. These dumpling have become a big hit in several newer restaurants in Chinatown.
Not long ago, Chinatown in Philadelphia was a tired, weary, unexciting place. The restaurants were dirty and the menus hadn’t changed in years. Most, I believe, were owned by long-established Cantonese. Now, after a whole different wave of Chinese immigration, there is a new breed of entrepreneurs in Chinatown. They have opened stylish eateries with fresh, fun, unusual offerings. Some are inexpensive and have attracted large numbers of urban hipsters.
As a result of this renaissance, soup dumplings are found all over Chinatown. They come in several varieties. To properly enjoy them, you have to master the technique of eating them.
The soup dumpling exterior skin is made from dough. Inside is the filling, usually meat and soup. If you eat them wrong, you risk scolding your tongue on the hot soup, or exploding the dumpling and having soup cascade onto the table and your clothes.
One way to eat them is to use a Chinse soup spoon. Put the dumpling on the spoon and take a small, gentle bite of the skin. Let some of the hot soup leak out onto the spoon, where it can cool. In addition to cooling, this releases the pressure and prevents an explosion. Sip the cooled soup then, after a moment, bite fully into the dumpling or put the whole thing in your mouth.
At Dim Sum Garden on Race Street you can get an order of eight pork soup dumplings for $6.25. These are fresh, not frozen. You can even watch them being made. At the truck, a bag of 100 frozen dumplings is $20.
“Only two bags?” the woman outside the truck asked.
“Yes, just two.”
The man inside put my order in a plastic bag. From the looks of things, all the other orders were in larger boxes.
“And, I heard you get a free drink,” I said.
The man in the truck put a can of Sacred Lotus Leaf Herbal Tea in my bag. As required, I paid in cash.
The tea was from Fujian province in China but the frozen dumplings came from a factory in the Maspeth section of Queens, right near Brooklyn. The commercial neighborhood was established in the 17th century by Dutch and English settlers. I guess immigrants continue to operate strongly there. In fact, Queens – the home of President-elect Donald Trump – may be the most diverse town in all of America, maybe the planet.
“There are 1 million immigrants and a mix that is perhaps unprecedented in this borough’s history,” said Joseph Salvo, a demographer with the city Planning Department.
He said the population is almost equally divided among Asian and Hispanic groups from countries such as China, Guyana, Ecuador, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, India and Korea.
Either way, someone there in Maspeth was working a job that helped bring soup dumplings to my table, and people closer to my home have come up with a great and inventive alternative to food shopping in the city.
The whole thing seems pretty good, and my thanks go out to the immigrants – or sons and daughters of immigrants – whose hard work and clever approach made it happen. They were attracted to the U.S. because of our system. They learned it, and grew it, and allowed many to benefit from it.
Bon appetit! Or maybe I should say, hen hao chi!
Lanny Morgnanesi
There’s a song called “Seven Spanish Angels” that makes you feel sorry for the protagonist, who probably is a killer.
When you hear the song you don’t think of him as evil or bad. Instead, you sympathize with him.
The subject of the song is a Mexican outlaw. Alone with his woman, he is trying to make a stand against a posse and vows that this time he will not be taken back to Texas alive. As he battles on, Seven Spanish Angels at the Altar of the Sun wait to receive him once he is killed in the Valley of the Gun. And he is killed, along with his woman, who points an empty pistol at the posse so they are sure to kill her, too
It’s tragic.
The love of the man for the woman, along with her devotion to him, and his weariness and his struggle, and the sympathy of the Spanish Angels, makes you believe that maybe he is innocent.
Perhaps you even think he is you.
Willie Nelson recorded the song with Ray Charles and you can hear it here. It’s a great tune, but it is not life. In life, we more often think the worst of people rather than the best. This is especially true if the people are not like us. Even in the song, it requires Spanish angels to look after a Hispanic, suggesting that Anglo angels don’t much care.
True understanding takes a rare kind of wisdom born of diverse experience.
A character in a French film, the name of which I’ve forgotten, has that kind of wisdom. He is a retired judge who befriends a young woman. In a melancholy moment, he tells her, “Many people have come before me in court, and many I’ve sent to prison. Yet in every case, had I been in their situation, I would have done the same as they did.”
Makes me wonder what I would do if I were among those who worry every time a police officer approaches, even if I’m just sitting on my front porch. If my life could be taken at any time by an officer of the law, and for no good reason, could I be silent and passive while waiting for change?
I tend to think I could not. My reaction would edge toward protest and revolt. I know there are people like me who would take up arms rather than submit to this kind of treatment.
But not actually being subject to it, and believing it can never happen to them, those who would arm themselves can’t comprehend how the real victims could possibly do the same.
When someone is not like us, we can’t see their humanness. Beyond that, we ascribe all sorts of sub-human qualities to them.
Not long ago, I met a former NFL assistant coach, a big, powerful man who came close to tears telling a story of someone who once didn’t think much of him.
In the story, the future coach is attending a small college where the typical student came from a small town or farming community. The coach was not typical. Relevant to the story are these facts: He is black, good at math and a frequent hand washer.
One semester he tutored math to a white student who fit the school’s rural profile. At their final session, the white student expressed sincere appreciation and said he had learned more than just math. He said he discovered that something taught to him all his life – that black people lack intelligence and are dirty – was just not true.
The coach, in telling the story, said that if people just got together more the walls of division and hate would crumple.
He makes a good point. But even with more mixing, there sometimes can be an element of protective posturing that confounds true understanding. We’ve got to break through that as well.
Which brings me to another song, a 1961 hit called “The Bristol Stomp.”
There really is a place called Bristol and the Stomp (a dance) was first done there. The song says, “The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol when they do the Bristol Stomp.” I grew up not too far from Bristol and I can tell you that in the early ‘60s the kids in Bristol weren’t just sharp, they were required by some unwritten code to be utterly and fantastically cool.
Even the older men – all the Italians and about half the Irish – thought they were Sinatra.
There was a walk and a talk; a way of standing and a way of dressing. Outer toughness was always present. My neighborhood was nothing like this. Bristol was a kind of threat to us. If there was going to be a fight at a high school basketball game, we’d prefer it not be with Bristol. For lack of coolness, we would never think of dating their girls (although I once did and it was great).
They acted superior and we bought it.
Yet they were destined to end up working in the local steel mill and we were destined for college. Their defense mechanisms could only get them so far.
What surprised me was when, through a part-time job, I actually got to know a couple of kids from Bristol. Their veneer suddenly became transparent. They weren’t much different from me. Fears, worries, hopes, dreams – all about the same. Some weren’t even tough – or cool.
I came to understand them, rather than fear them.
The Seven Spanish Angels looked after and rooted for their Mexican brother because they had something in common with him. They recognized the difficulty of his life and sympathized with him. But outside of songs, there are no Spanish angels. Angels have no nationality or culture. At the Altar of the Sun, there is only universal compassion. It is for everyone because everyone in the human brotherhood is deserving of it.
Down here in the Valley of the Gun, it is most important to learn the sameness of our species rather than the unimportant differences. It is much harder to aim a deadly weapon at someone when you can see yourself on the other side of the barrel.
And so I add a few words to the conversation, one that will take a great deal more than words to resolve.
Lanny Morgnanesi
NotebookM 