Genetic Memory: Is there a way to know what my great-great-great grandfather was thinking?

22 Aug

I’m hungry. Always hungry. And I eat fast.

I sometimes think my ancestors must have been starving peasants and that I inherited their hunger. Now it seems there is growing evidence such a thing could be true.

It’s called genetic memory. The theory is that a person can actually receive the memory of past generations in his or her genetic code.

Doreen Carvajals wrote on the subject recently in the science section of the New York Times. She was raised Catholic but learned that centuries ago her family was Jewish, living in Spain and forced to convert during the Inquisition. She seeks to find the facts to all this in her own DNA.

A journalist and author, Carvajals discusses some of the research on the theory and even mentions a video game – Assassin’s Creed  — that employs the concept.

Her piece mentions Dr. Darold A. Treffert, a psychiatrist with a list of 300 people who, after head injury or dementia, became musicians, artists and mathematicians. His belief is they taped into genetic memory to learn these skills. He calls it “factory-installed software.”

The animal world shows great evidence of this. How, for example, does a tiger raised by humans develop all the traits of a tiger? Animal behavior always stick with the animal, whether or not there is learning and instruction. We used to simply call that “instinct.” But what is “instinct?”

Maybe it’s genetic memory.

Maybe we’ve all got it, in a mostly unconscious form. It’s there for our survival and keeps us alive by telling us to avoid this danger and embrace that solution. Genetic memory seems like a wise thing to include when building life forms. Why make each generation of a species learn something over and over again?

Once is enough.

For too many people, it is easy to imagine that in a former life they were queens of Egypt or heads of European dynasties.  Genetic memory, if it exists, probably is much more subtle, almost imperceptible. It must work like background noise.

Like the noise in my stomach?

Probably not.

My sister is a disturbingly slow eater who is not really drawn to food, yet she has the same ancestors as I. When placed under mild scrutiny, the theory of my hunger and rapid eating habits is just an excuse for unenviable behavior. More plausible is that some kind of chemistry drives it.

Still, I would like to know if anyone reading has had an experience with genetic memory. The more restrained the better. Bold tales are hard to believe. More worthwhile is a recollection of some unexplained conduct that surfaced from nowhere but proved worthy if not prescient.

I look forward to hearing from such a person.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going for a sandwich.

Tags: , , , , ,

The day Elvis died — my story

18 Aug

 

Elvis Presley died 35 years ago on Aug. 16, 1977. It’s a day I’ll never forget.

I’d like to tell the story of that day. It involved a nearly naked lady who said she knew Elvis and pleaded with me to help her.

I rose early that morning, my first as a reporter for a suburban Philadelphia newspaper. As I shaved, I listened to the radio.  A contemporary rock station was playing an old Elvis song, which was odd, since he was pretty much a forgotten relic by then. Then there was another Presley tune, and another.

Within moments I learned from the DJ that the King had died. I thought that sad, since he had been so great and influenced so many, but I moved on. Bigger things awaited me. I was a journalist now.

No sooner had I settle into my desk than the phone rang. Pretty cool, I thought. Someone knows I’m here.

“Are you a reporter?” a woman on the line asked.

Not a good first call. From that one sentence I could tell she was drunk and high.

“Yes, I’m a reporter,” I said. “How can I help you?”

She threw a bunch of nonsense at me then said, “Please make them stop. I don’t want any of their money. I don’t want anything. Please make them stop and leave me alone.”

She sounded truly upset.

“Don’t want any of whose money?” I asked.

“Elvis’. I don’t want anything. Can you tell them that?

I was on the verge of hanging up.

“Tell who?” I asked.

“I don’t know. His lawyers. They keep threatening me,” she said.

This was all quite ridiculous but I kept talking because I had nothing else to do that morning and maybe there was a local angle to Elvis’ death. That would play well in the next day’s paper.

“Why would they threaten you?”

“They think I’m coming after their money because I had Elvis’ child. But I’m not. I don’t want the money.”

That busted the wacko meter.

“Look,” I said. “I have to go.”

She raised the level of her lethargic monotone.

“No, don’t go. You’re the only one who can help. Come visit me and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

There was more pleading, and I took her address. I told my boss what I was doing and where I was going. He laughed and looked at me with a combination of pity and loathing.

The woman’s working-class neighborhood was only a few minutes away. It had small houses but everything was neat and well-kept. Then I came upon a lawn that hadn’t been mowed for months. There were two cars up on blocks and several of the home’s shutters were hanging off the windows.

Unsurprisingly, this was the home of my caller.

I knocked on the door.

The woman who opened it looked like a zombie, with vacant eyes and blotchy skin and messy long hair. Her body, however, was magnificent. I knew that because I could see it.  All of it. She was wearing a nightgown as sheer as cellophane.

“Come in,” she said.

The immediate question to myself was: Do I stay or go?

My racing mind told me there was trouble ahead but also that this probably would never happen again for as long as I lived.

I would stay.

She pulled me in, sat me down, encircled me with vine-like arms and began kissing me with her putrid mouth.

After some difficulty, I pulled her off.

“I came here for a story,” I said, knowing there most definitely was not one. “Let’s hear your story.”

“Would you like a drink?” she said.

It was 10 a.m.

“No. Just tell me your story. Tell me about Elvis.”

And she proceeded to tell about where and how they met; the liking he took to her; how he came onto her strongly and how she yielded simply because he was Elvis.

“Do you have photos of you and him together?”

“Not really,” she said, walking over to a cabinet. “Just these, from about that time.”

They were photos of her, younger and very beautiful. She looked just like Priscilla.

“What happened since then?” I asked.

“This,” she said, turning the back of her neck to me and pulling up her hair to reveal a large surgical X. “I had an accident and an operation.”

I should have pursued this but didn’t.

“So you say you had a son with Elvis. Do you have his picture?

She did, a number of them.

In each and every one he looked just like a teen Elvis. Remarkable. It was starting to seem as if there might be some truth to all this.

As we continued to speak about the threatening calls, an uncomfortable noise came from the bedroom.

We were not alone.

Then he emerged. Zombie Number 2.

Beer can in hand, having probably digested a few Quaaludes (very popular at the time), a boy who could have been 18 or 15 shuffled out slowly like Frankenstein’s monster. His face was swollen, marked and bruised.

He never lifted his feet; he just slid them along. He looked straight ahead and not off to the side at us. But when he reached the spot where we were, he paused and ratcheted his head toward me.

“Are you the reporter?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well . . . I just want you to know  . . . that I’m not f—- her.”

Then he screamed and nearly cried, “But her old man thought I was and he beat the shit out of my face with a flashlight.”

Silence took over the room.

Then the boy said to me quietly, “You know . . . there’s something going on here.”

“Yes, I know,” I said.

Then, with utter contempt and a snarl he said, “You don’t know.”

Silence again.

It was broken by a knock on the door. I had been on an edgy alert the whole time but this sent me into an adrenaline-laced panic. My assumption was the woman’s husband had returned, armed this time with more than a flashlight.

I packed up my notepad and chose the window out of which I would jump.

The knocking continued. It was ignored by both boy and woman, as if it wasn’t there.

Finally, the door opened and a weak female voice was heard.

“Jimmy? Jimmy? Are you there?”

Jimmy’s mother stepped into the house. She was as frightened as I.

“Jimmy, it’s time to go. We are going now. Let’s go.”

He stayed put but she grabbed his arm and tugged and tugged and got him out the door.

I was right behind.

Back in the newsroom, I set my stuff down and planned to tell the story to my editor. Before I could, the phone rang.

“Is this Lanny, the reporter?”

“Yes,” surprised that my name was known.

“You don’t know me,” the male voice said. “I’ll admit this is kind of a strange call, but you may be the only person who can help me.”

Two in one day!

“How?” I asked.

“Listen, I’m not crazy or weird. I’m an actor in New York who is just trying to make a living. Things were going OK then all of a sudden there is this talk up here about me being Elvis’ son. Do you know anything about that?”

The weird had become bizarre.

“I might. But not much.”

Pause . . .

“Do you know my mother?” he asked.

“I think I just left her house.”

“What did she look like?”

I figured I would lie, but for some reason quickly changed my mind and asked, “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes,” he said.

So I told him, and not gently.

“Well, she was very high and she was very drunk.”

“That’s my mother,” he said.

We spoke a little longer and I took his number. I said I would call if I learned anything new.

At that point I stopped reporting and dropped the whole story. I was curious, but this wasn’t journalism. I had real work to do. I went over and told the tale to my editor, who gathered a crowd and made me tell it again. I must have told it five or six times that day, and many times after.

Of course, I never wrote a word of it for the paper, and the mystery of what really happened was never solved. I did call the police and told them what I had witnessed. They told me they knew about her. That’s how it was in those days. People knew, but not much was done.

About a week later I was leaving the newsroom to go out on a story. Normally I would leave by the rear entrance, but this day I went out the front, near the reception area. As I did, a visitor called my name.

“Lanny. Is that you?”

She was wearing clothes this time and was completely sober.

I was assaulted again by those vine-like arms and she tried to kiss me. I pulled away.

“You are gay. Aren’t you?” she said.

When I returned from my story I asked the person at the reception desk, “What was that woman doing here?”

“She placed a classified ad.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.”

It read:

“To the lawyers, representatives and family of Elvis Presley. I make no claims whatsoever to the estate of the deceased performer.”

***

EPILOGUE

Everything written here is true and exactly as it occurred. Had I intended this to be a fabrication I would have devised a better ending. The only untruth is the lie that this was my first day on the job. Actually, I had been a reporter for two years and possessed a master’s in journalism. I should have known better than to waste time on that crank call.

But had I acted wiser and more professionally, I would not have had this story to tell.

On the 35 anniversary of his death, may he rest in peace, Elvis Aaron Presley, and may all his children, however many there are, find happiness and success.

— Lanny Morgnanesi

Tags: , ,

The Republican Brand — efficiency

4 Aug

Everyone today is supposed to have a Brand.

            It used to be that a Brand was a product name, like Kraft or Kellogg’s. Now a Brand is a perceived promise, like Volvo means safety or John Deere means long-lasting durability.

Branding has gone beyond the corporate world. Colleges are supposed to have Brands. So are people, especially young job seekers, who are told by recruiters to establish personal brands.

Political parties talk behind the scenes about their Brand. The informal Brand of the Republican Party is that it is the party for the rich. This Brand works not only on the rich, but also on those who dream of being rich.

Very effective.

In reality, both parties have worked hard over the past four decades to dismantle the middle class. So for me, the real Brand of the Republican Party is not so much about the rich but about efficiency.

I learned this as a reporter covering the presidential nominating conventions in 1980. The Democratic confab in New York was utter chaos. Idealistic, but a bureaucratic nightmare of sloppiness. The Republican meeting in Detroit, however, was organized, smooth and run better than Disney World.

The differences were striking and, I think, reflective of each party’s national character.

This came back to mind last week when I read two news items. One involved the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the other Amtrak. The article on the housing authority was about cutbacks in staff vehicles and how at one time 200 authority employees were given free cars to use as they pleased. The piece on Amtrak, the quasi-governmental agency that runs the nation’s passenger railroad, said that over the past 10 years food and beverage concessions on trains lost $800 million.

Republicans, I’m sure, have been involved to some degree in both the housing authority and Amtrak. But both agencies really represent Democratic operations. Had Republicans been totally in charge, I doubt those news stories would have been necessary.

For starters, we all know Republicans don’t need free cars. Mitt Romney, for example, has so many vehicles he plans to install an elevator in the garage at one of his homes. Big savings there. With Amtrak, the Republicans would have given the food business to a private firm that contributed heavily to the party, and the government would have saved $800 million.

These are just two small examples of how the GOP could save the country money. There must be thousands more. If the Republicans could solidify power and close these gaps without giving away the proceeds in sweetheart deals to special interests (far too likely), we might be able to balance the budget without further damage to the middle class.

The party could then adopt the branding tagline that AT&T has been using at the Olympics: Rethink Possible.

Tags: , ,

Imagine America with a Queen

29 Jul

I don’t think too many Britons say nasty things about their Queen.

They don’t object to her politics because she really doesn’t have any. They may get mad at all the money – their money – she spends on palaces and servants, but they get over that.

What she represents is them, the collective whole, and they seem to appreciate it, rally round it, and draw strength from it.

A keen memory of mine is from a dinner toast at a British embassy. It consisted of two words that meant 10,000. It was simple and so reverent:

“The Queen.”

The leader and figurehead of the United States, by contrast, is called names and blamed for all kinds of bad things. His motives are questioned, as if he refuses out of spite to use clear and easy solution to big and complicated problems. It is frequently suggested that he is out to destroy America — on purpose.

Not so with a queen.

I was never much for monarchy. In fact, a favorite movie line of mine comes from Monty Python after, I think, a noble personage advises a lowly peasant, “I’m your king,” and gets the answer, “Well I didn’t vote for you.”

But seeing Queen Elizabeth at the Olympics, sitting there as an honored representation of all Great Britain, inspired envy.

From afar, and perhaps in fact, the British seem to have a cultural homogeneity that the U.S. does not. While Britain is markedly divided by class and is mixed racially (from immigration), there is something holding all together.

You only have to listen to the way the Brits sing their anthem “Jerusalem” to know this. They did so at the Olympics and it moved even me, a non-Brit. The final, powerful verse is:

 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green and pleasant Land

 

Americans love being Americans, but we are a country of individualists. We can be distrustful of each other. Our tendency is to work on our own to improve our lives, not to work collectively for a new Jerusalem. In Britain and much of Europe, there is a collective desire to see that all have health care, that all can afford higher education, that all can get around on trains, subways and buses.

We don’t have that in the states. We do have the Interstate Highway system, but only because the military needed evacuation routes in case of nuclear war.

The American continent does have a distant legacy of working as a tribe. But the ways of the Native American people never had an impact on the rugged, go-it-alone settlers.

Hardworking, innovative Americans have performed technological and economic miracles working alone. It was this kind of culture that allowed us to break from the English, better them and pretty much rule the world.

Still, I feel as if we lack something as a people. When I see the Queen of England, who I didn’t vote for, I have this wish that we could get behind our leaders in a forceful way that lifts our spirits and moves us ahead quicker. Of course, such a system would require that leaders be pure of heart and dedicated to the American cause and not their own.

This would be the hardest thing to accomplish, even if we gave them all palaces.

Tags: , , , ,

Google wounds the New York Times

28 Jul

It has been said that Freedom of the Press is restricted to those who own one.

With presses being of small importance today, that dictum has lost its punch. Today, he who controls transmissions in the digital world decides who goes on stage to shout.

Case in point: The New York Times, which ironically owns a press or two, lost more than $143 million in the last quarter mainly because a digital powerhouse – Google – changed an algorithm.

Google algorithms decide what pops up when a search is done. About.com, owned by the New York Times, once had a clear channel through the Google transmission line. When it clogged, favoring others and not About, the website lost traffic and revenue and its parent, the great media giant of the past, was laid low.

Fortunes have been made and lost trying to game the all-powerful Google algorithms. The algorithms are raging rivers of commerce, with gold at the end for those who can safely and consistently navigate them.

While it is frightening to think how quickly Google can change the information landscape, it must be said that About was a low-quality content farm (yet another irony) that was trashing up Google searches. Google acted to protect itself and better serve its customers.

Free speech was at a premium when it took an expensive press to get out a message. Now this, a big change … but not a change at all.

 

 

Tags: , , , ,

Go here to see your comrades in a bathing suit

22 Jul

There is a coastal beach resort in China called Beidaihe.  It’s  a summer retreat for top Communist officials. While vacationing, they seek alliances and plan political strategy for their big fall conference.

The resort was featured in a New York Times story today. It brought back memories because I once was there.

Years ago, before China got rich, I was living and working in Beijing. I traveled extensively in China and Beidaihe was the first town I visited that made me feel as if I were no longer in China.

Beidaihe may  have been somewhat seedy. but it was also bright, colorful and cheerful.  I liked it very much. In a way, it reminded me of the Jersey Shore.

At that time, few Chinese went on vacations. Evidence of this was the little stands in Beidaihe where visitors could rent bathing suits for the day. The women’s suits, if I recall, were very modest and dowdy.

The Times story points out that Beidaihe is known for political intrigue. The town is connected to the tale of Lin Baio, a top leader that some expected to replace Mao Zedong. Indeed, Mao is said to have sanctioned the succession by publicly telling Lin, “With you in charge, I’m at ease.”

But it was determined later that Lin may have been planning a coup. He tried to escape to Russia in a plane from Beidaihe. The plane crashed and all were killed. To this day, many consider the crash suspicious.

So, while in China, it was a common joke among the foreign workers to voice support for each other with the ironic, “With you in charge, I’m at ease.”

It always got a laugh.

I wish I could use it in the states, but it just won’t work.

Anyway, that’s my little story about Beidaihe.

Tags: , , ,

The very first iPad was made of wax

21 Jul

Antiquity is full of surprises and incredible technological wonders. It’s a shame to think how many have been forgotten or lost.

My surprise of the day came from learning that the ancient Greeks and Romans carried a portable, reusable tablet that was their equivalent of the iPad. It had two wood-framed pages that could be folded like a book. The pages were coated in wax, and writing was done with a wooden stylus.

To reuse, the wax pages were heated slightly and then smoothed over.

This was literally a “tabula rasa,” the cute Latin term used today to describe a blank slate or a person without preconceived ideas. There are references to such tablets in Homer and the device may date to the 14th century B.C. It is believed they were used by the Greeks and Romans and in Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine. Evidence of them can be found up until the Middle Ages.

They ancients never lacked for technology and engineering.  They just did it differently; sometimes better. Our 20-year old highways may be crumbling, but the Roman aqueducts still stand.

Tags: , , , , ,

Unlike the U.S., the Danes are blissful, successful and highly taxed

18 Jul

There’s a happy little country in Europe that is so successful, foreigners pay to put money in its banks.

That’s called negative interest. Denmark, population 5.5 million, asks for it and gets it. Mounds and mounds of Euros from the troubled European nations are flowing into Denmark as a safe haven. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the negative interest is low, with two-year debt yielding between minus .05 percent and minus .08 percent, but it shows the strength of that economy.

Unlike the U.S., Denmark has a positive trade balance, relatively low government debt and an unemployment rate of about 6 percent. (compared to about 9 in the U.S.) The Danes are said to be some of the most contented people in the world.

Oddly, or perhaps not, Denmark has the highest rate of taxes in the world.

Isn’t that ironic?

We in the United States are, for the most part, miserable and worried about our jobs, the economy and taxes. Our total taxes, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, are 24 percent of GDP. In Denmark, people are completely satisfied with paying taxes equal to 48 percent of GDP.

“We have a luxury problem,” said Jacob Graven, chief economist at Denmark’s fourth largest bank.

Sometimes, solutions to seemingly unshakable problems can be found in the most unlikely, 180-degree alternatives. To often, however, the ether of the American culture has convinced us they are off-limits, extremely dangerous and will erode and ultimately destroy our way of life.

Why are we Americans, known for innovation, so averse to opening our minds? Who is responsible for closing them, and how did they manage to do such a great job of it?

Tags: , ,

At the beach on a sunny day, what would the old tell the young?

17 Jul

If you look deep, faces reveal stories. One day on the beach, with faces all around, thoughts leaped from them.

In the posturing young males there was a cocky yet fragile confidence; a faith in one’s self, one’s strength and one’s energy, but also a poorly hidden fear of the unknown. There was a willingness to stay in place and time, and the troublesome idea that knowledge may be more important than charisma.

In the young females there was desire and hesitancy; a need for some unformed quality not found in the males; a necessity to move forward in place and time; a deep yet unacknowledged realization of superiority kept in the shadows by overly cautious optimism.

In the old there was either satisfaction and peace or pain and disgust. The first group had goals, some modest, that were met. The second harbored resentment; unhappy with fate and exhausted of second chances.

Seeing young and old together made me wonder what the old might tell the young.

Here is the advice I would give:

 

  • Realize you are much smarter than you think but that you know almost nothing.
  • Accept that good work requires lots of bad work.
  • Learn a second language; it will get you a second soul.
  • Play an instrument . . . well.
  • Read the great stories and myths of your culture. Let them guide you.
  • Place honor before money.
  • Know that truth is relative, fluid and deceptive.
  • Never deny a person his or her dignity.
  • Don’t wait.
  • Happiness is attainable but difficult to recognize.

 

As the words surface, the young, for a short time, will be both blind and deaf and wonderfully preoccupied. Then they will politely move on, overwhelmed by their own brand of discovery and their own style of learning, a more important kind, the kind even the old hold in high, if unspoken, regard; the juice of life that lodges forever in the mind.

Tags:

Jews and Muslims together; vet neglect; the easy life in Greece

14 Jul

A small assortment of items:

I discovered a rare, interesting and encouraging case of Jews and Muslims uniting. Both are working together against a regional court ruling in Germany that outlaws circumcision, equating it with bodily harm, a criminal act.

While the court ruled in a regional case with only regional authority, hospitals across Germany are reacting by banning the procedure.

Jews and Muslims, who circumcise their male children, see this as an attack on religion and have found common ground.

From the New York Times:

            “The often very aggressive prejudice against religion as backward, irrational and opposed to science is increasingly defining popular opinion,” said Michael Bongardt, a professor of ethics from Berlin’s Free University who added that the ruling reflected a profound lack of understanding in modern Germany for religious belief.

 

###

 

Prolonged wars drain the treasury because killing is expensive. Equally expensive, with no end date, is the post-war cost of curing – and the difficulty of actually doing an effective job.

In June Bloomberg Businessweek  reported that:

  • 1.3 million disability cases were filed with the Veterans Administration in 2011, a 48 percent increase from 2008.
  • 905,000 cases are awaiting action.
  • 14,320  VA employees must handle the load.

There really is nothing new in this. Since the Revolutionary War, it has become routine for the government to abandon soldiers once they no longer are needed.

###

Eating ice cream with a Greek national, I learned a little more about why that nation and its economy cannot climb out of its fiscal swamp. The Greeks just aren’t working very hard, especially in the summer.

Perhaps we all knew this, or at least thought it. But my friend made it clearer, telling me how the Greeks take a fairly long siesta after a hearty and leisurely lunch (the day’s main meal). They nap from 2:30 p.m. until 6 p.m., when they return to work.

A light dinner generally is eaten around 10.

In the summer heat, however, only the merchants who service tourists go back to work after the nap.

Once I recovered from the realization that Greece is basically a part-time nation, I looked at my friend – a U.S. resident undergoing a great deal of stress from multiple layoffs in her family – and asked, “How in God’s name can you leave a place like that?”

###

Many clever lines in Woody Allen’s new movie, To Rome with Love.

Here is a rough paraphrase of one. It’s Woody’s character, a father speaking against his daughter’s new boyfriend, a left-wing Italian lawyer who he thinks is a communist.

“I understand being a leftist. I was a leftist when I was young. But I was never a Communist. Never. I couldn’t share a bathroom.”

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →