I'm Feeling the Christmas Spirit

And the retailers are drawing me to the buy-hole.

Consider Christmas Giving—though it can hardly be called giving in any traditional sense of the word—is the essence of this secularized festival of consumption. What is given is usually of low utility. In fact, economists call such objects deadweight gifts. “Deadweight” is short for “deadweight loss,” which is the difference between what a gift giver has spent and the value the recipient places on it. Joel Waldfogel, a Yale economist, has estimated that up to a third of the gifts given during Christmas are in this category. Billions of dollars are “wasted” each Christmas as Uncle Louie receives an unwearable Countess Mara necktie from his niece to whom he has sent an unusable Fendi purse. Both parties would be better off giving cash. But they don’t and that is what makes the transaction so interesting to economists and students of luxury.

Living It Up : America's Love Affair with Luxury
by James B. Twitchell

North Dallas Special

In 1952, my parents bought the home I grew up in for about $12,500. As a WWII veteran, my dad was eligible for a no-down-payment, low-interest, fixed-rate loan, and buying the Fox & Jacob's "cookie cutter" suburban house was just as cheap as renting. It had 945 sq. ft., three bedrooms, one bath, a one-car garage, and no air conditioning.

In 1953, my dad bought his first new car, a 1953 Mercury sedan. We were a one-car family, and he joined a carpool with other downtown workers in the neighborhood so that my stay-at-home mom could have a car for her activities during several days of the week.

Today, young parents of comparable economic footing to my parents would shop for a "North Dallas Special." Cynical homebuilders and realtors know they only have 20 minutes to establish curb appeal and other warm status fuzzies to potential buyers. Gaudy McMansion architecture, with complex, ornamental roof structures, "grand" entrances, and cheapness hidden in sides, rear, and general home engineering are what will make the sale to the three-SUV families.
$207,990, 3,277 sq. ft. Fox & Jacob (Centex) home in Rowlett, TX.

Available with no-down-payment, no principal payment, adjustable, Wall Street "guaranteed" mortgage

The crosses indicate a family moved by the Holy Spirit lives in this home

North Dallas Special
A type of house laden with the architectural symbology of upper class inhabitation, displayed in grossly exaggerated form for the purposes of marketing. The term refers to the particular concentration of this mutation in the suburbs north of Dallas, although the phenomenon is by no means confined to this region. The manifestation consists of a very complex roof form, a great deal of articulation in the plan ("breaking the box"), the use of a great variety of window shapes with arches in abundance; a double height portico ("entry feature"), a more expensive material on the front facade (brick, stone) with cheaper cladding (vinyl) to the sides and rear, and a thin veil of classicism (coins, entablatures, pediments, columns) following no known canon. Certain compositional flaws are the consequence of the attempt to incorporate the variety of a large mansion into a house of middling size. The marketing is referenced as "Curb Appeal" which thrives on first impressions projected onto the approach of the customer. The negative consequences of curb appeal are first, that the spatial enclosure is dissolved by the excessive articulation of the facade, and second, that the construction budget is exhausted by the semantics with scarce resources remaining for articulation at the rear yard where it might create some privacy by deploying a back building.

http://parole.aporee.org/work/print.php?words_id=515
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=North+Dallas+special

The North Dallas Special: a single home attempts to create the skyline of an entire village. It is meant to stand alone.

Homebuilders at the upper end of the market appear to be equally misguided in their approach to building design. Pictured here is what has come to be known as the “North Dallas Special,” or, less affectionately, as a “house on steroids.” Despite all its cartoonish qualities—its variety of window types, it overwrought trim—this house represents the industry standard for luxury. The design technique is straightforward: concentrate the budget on extra corners and exaggerated historical references, all in the name of “curb appeal.” Never mind that one practically needs a Ph.D. in physics to assemble this roof; this technique is what developers learn at homebuilding conventions, and what realtors have come to call the “twenty-minute house,” . . . refers to the fact that a house has only twenty minutes to win the affection of a potential buyer, since that is the average length of a realtor visit. The building industry is at its best for the first twenty minutes that one is in it. Specifically, the house is usually organized around a tall “great room” from which, immediately upon entering, the potential buyer is astounded by partial views of almost every room in the house. The disadvantage of this organization is that there is no acoustical privacy for the individual rooms, something that is not discovered until after moving day. Similarly, because so much of the budget is spent on the front of the house (much to the detriment of the street space), the back of the house ends up being a few sliding glass doors in a dead-flat wall, such that the backyard offers no privacy either. You exit the rear door to find yourself completely exposed in a windswept lot, directly visible to the occupants of the five other houses identical to your own.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck

Through the fifties and sixties, white flight to the suburbs laid waste to our inner urban centers, creating a "white noose." Dallas has fared better than many due to Texas laws allowing municipalities to aggressively annex outlying suburbs.

Anybody who travels back and forth across the Atlantic has to be impressed with the differences between European cities and ours, which make it appear as if World War Two actually took place in Detroit and Washington rather than Berlin and Rotterdam
James Howard Kunstler, Home from Nowhere (1996)

Why I Am a Drug Addict

I need relief from headache, tension. depression, irratibility, neuralgia and/or neuritis, without stomach distress, like I get from taking peyote.

Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Agency claims credit for this series,

which increased sales from $18 million to $54 million in just 18 weeks, so he bragged to The New Yorker that just the spot with the skull bangers "made more money for the producers of Anacin in seven years than Gone with the Wind did for David O. Selznick and MGM in a quarter of a century." Twenty Ads That Shook the World, James B. Twitchell

Maybe I should just take a Bufferin and go to Starbucks.

I’m Trying To Decide What Parts To Botox

Wow, some of these are issues that Botox won’t fix. I might have to go directly to a surgical face lift for those dropped jowls and neck bands. I’ve lost so much fatty tissue under my cheeks that they might have to insert or inject something big to push them back out.

But I don’t have enough money for all of that so I think I will just work on some of the wrinkle areas.

I really hate those horizontal forehead wrinkles--worry lines. They're there all the time and make me look like I'm anxious, interrogative or frightened.



Dang, the wrinkles in my forehead are also going up and down. That frown furrow makes me look mean, but I want to look nice.

Those eyes look narrow and suspicious. The crow's feet are looking more like ostrich feet. Those cholesterol deposits on my eye bags look like zits.

Man, that nose looks like it's been used as a punching bag. That will be an operation in itself.

Those nasolabial folds really make me look old and gaunt. I don't think I'm a particularly bitter person but looking at my mouth would make one think so.

Sucking on those cigarettes also is hurting my facial appearance. If I don't stop soon, my lips may look like this, with vertical smokers lines around the mouth:


Here's my shopping choices. I think I will sleep on it.

Frown Line Fader – The area at the top of the nose and between the eyes is known as the glabellar area. Vertical lines here make one appear angry or worried. Frown Line Fader gives one a more peaceful and pleasant appearance. $280 & up.

Crows Feet Clean Up – Lines at the outer edges of the eye caused by squinting can make one appear mean, exhausted or skeptical. Crows Feet Clean Up restores a young, rested and kind persona. $336 & up.

Forehead Finisher – Horizontal creases on the forehead may cause an aged, questioning or scared expression. Forehead Finisher relaxes these lines, resulting in a serene, youthful and smooth finish. $224 & up.

Lip Line Eliminator – Vertical lines around the lip make one appear harsh and bitter. Lip Line Eliminator eases these lines and makes the person look as though they have a sweet, gentle demeanor. $112 & up

Choice Chin – Uneven muscle tone in the chin area may cause asymmetry and unwanted dimpling. Choice Chin will relax the muscles, resulting in a smoother and better-proportioned chin. $56 & up.

Botox Brow Lift-A small amount of Botox can block the depressor muscles of the eye and give a slight lift to the eye. $168 & up.

http://www.bodyperfectusa.com/menuofservices.html

A Reinhardt of the Mind Poetry Corner

Pied Beauty:


More of this reader's work can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqiU2i2No-8

This one is worth further study:



One of the Beatles' later recordings, from Magical Mystery Tour:

Time and Gravity Weigh Down on Reinhardt Kids

I've had several acquaintances say to me in recent years that the best time of their lives was when they were seniors in high school. At the time, I thought this was odd--that my life has been getting better since high school, that age 17 and 18 was not my best time.

But in retrospect, it makes sense. We are at our prime in high school physically and mentally. It is a fun and adventurous time for most.

And this cold, cruel world can be hard on us as time goes by.

Gravity too takes its toll.

In a previous post, I have examined how physiognomy had some influence on our adolescent social competence. Here, I explore how aging and gravity affects our faces.

In the subject below, we see the effects of age from age 18 to age 58. Note some specific changes:
















The nose continues to grow and flatten as we age. (Thus having delicate feature when young can be an advantage toward older attractiveness). Eyebrows tend to thin and turn grey in color. Ears lengthen too. Elasticity of the skin weakens, and cheeks drop into jowls. For most adults, eyes tend to narrow as we age, due to brow dropping and flattening, but in this subject, the youth picture shows a certain look of "bedroom eyes" not apparent in the older photo. I learned the term "bedroom eyes" from a high school girl friend; it denotes a placement of the pupil high in the eye socket and covered slightly by the eyelid.

Generally, eyes tend to narrow with aging and also drop somewhat into skull, as brows fall and fatty tissue declines. Chins tend to broaden.

Here's another subject:















In this case we again see the broadening and flattening of the nose. Smile lines become accentuated and cheeks fall with loss of elasticity. Brows drop somewhat, become depressed, and crow's feet wrinkles become apparent at outside edges of eyes. Upper and lower eyelids show some drooping, and development of eye bags is apparent. Dropping cheeks create appearance of broader face. Lips lose some prominance due to decline in fatty tissue.

Many of our facial features are tied to our faces' underlying musculature. Our intricate muscles pull facial skin as we age. Botox treatments are a popular method of disconnecting our brains, muscles, and facial skin. To understand better facial changes in the above two subjects, it is helpful to study the muscles of the human face.




















Each of the labeled muscle zones can create dynamic wrinkle areas to cause crow's feet, bunny lines on nose, frown lines, horizontal forehead wrinkles, vertical wrinkle on the upper lip, etc. More about types of wrinkles in a future blog.

Here's another subject showing more pronounced effects of aging:













Nose growth and flattening in this subject are apparent. Smile lines show lack of symmetry due to plastic surgery on right side of face to remove malignant skin cancer on nose. Thinning and flattening of lips can be detected. Upper front teeth show deterioriation (bruxism)from years of nightly grinding while dreams help work through daytime work and home stress. Neck tissue weakens and falls with gravity, creating a double chin. In the upper half of the face, marked assymmetry and aging effects are prominent. Drooping lower eyelids and eye bags are accentuated from deposits of cholesterol due to creeping arteriosclerosis and from emergent liver spots. Crow's feet wrinkles grow at outside edges of eyes.

This subject, though obviously a whole brained person, has had accelerated activity in the left brain executive function of the cerebral cortex, due to job and family stress, which is projected in the enlargened right eye and the upsloping of worry lines in the right side of forehead Inherited pattern baldness led to this poor man's loss of head hair by age 30.

Ears and nose exhibit growth of strong black hairs. Ear wax has less liquidity and requires regular physician extraction. Spots of forehead (actinic keratosis) may at any time turn malignant.

Wrinkling of facial features can follow emotions, and this face shows some indication of continuous feelings of repugnance and horror.

As mentioned in previous blogs, females of the species typically control pair bonds, wavering between potential mates with strong testosterone markers vs. potential mates with willingness/ability to invest in progeny cultivation. Another factor is heterozygosity--that young adults have an ingrained inclination to selecting potential mates that mix up the genes--that diversity of gene stock leads to stronger offspring.

Check out these offspring:














Isn't it marvelous that as humans we have such acuity in discerning the features of fellows of our species?

Praise God for heterozygosity.

I Learned What I Could About the Facts of Life From the Sears Catalog

I suspect that most school-aged children today (sadly) learn about the differing body parts of adult men and women, not to speak of varied adult sex acts, from repeated exposure to Internet pornography. When I was growing up in the 1950s, we learned what we could by looking at the Sears catalog.

At about age six, I was introduced to the undergarments section of the Sears catalog by a six-year-old girl whose family my parents were visiting. She also introduced me to some explicit doctor games for which we were punished.

Dr. Spock, in his 1950s edition of Baby and Child Care, had devoted seven pages to teaching children about “the facts of life.” He takes a very liberal and reasonable position that curiosity about sex is normal and also advises on how to provide various age groups with information about why boys and girls are different, where babies come from, and how and why our bodies change during adolescence. I think my parents must have missed that chapter.

They did not restrict our access to the catalog, however, and many hours were spent studying not only the women’s undergarments section but all the models of all ages, various curious health appliances, shoes, record players, sporting goods, musical instruments, toys of all types and many other objects that made up fifties consumer culture.

Of course, the Sears catalog undergarment section was primarily aimed at the fifties women who purchased them. Psychoanalyst and fifties motivational researcher Ernest Dichter, under contract by the undergarment and cosmetics industries, as always did his best to translate American consumer mentality for the folks who had something to sell .

Brassieres. Contrary to the dreams of the male copywriter, bras to most women are a rather sober tool of support. Such support is on the one hand a necessity for well-fitting clothes and at the same time a very important aspect of a youthful appearance. Furthermore, it provides the wearer with a definite feeling of security comparable to a corset or girdle. Motivation studies showed that women expected three major services from well-fitting bras:

--To be made sexually more attractive
--To be eligible for compliments
--To be able to translate and manifest personality through them.

Women felt that the bra should be both noticeable and unnoticeable, that it should accentuate flirtation qualities but not the deeper meanings of the female breast such as passion or motherhood, that it should communicate with the man be remain strictly in the feminine domain.

Girdles. If you ask a woman why she wears a girdle, she will tell you that it is to improve her figure. . . . Only gradually over the last few hundred years has the girdle become a female garment. A tight-laced person is an insecure and inhibited person who at the same time is trying to simulate strength. Modern advertising of girdles stressed the fact that they give firmness and at the same time permit great activity and flexibility. Comparable to bras, girdles represent a female tool that does not have erotic attraction in itself.

Lipstick. Over 67 percent of women regard lips primarily as indices of individual character and individual personality. Shape is esthetically only of a secondary importance to them. Most women clearly link lip shape and desired lip shape for desired personality to attributes of warmth, generosity, friendliness, and humor.

Each day the modern woman is confronted with the gap which exists between her mental image of herself and what she sees in reality in the mirror before her. Her desires and frustrations about herself, her personality and physical attractiveness, and her use of cosmetics to fulfill the desires and limit the frustrations determine in the last analysis the importance of specific cosmetics. Lipstick represents one of the most important allies in achieving this desired goal. Some women indicate that they only use lipstick and no other cosmetic, while others feel that, of all cosmetics, lipstick is the most vital.

Perhaps the most frequent image used to describe feelings about lipstick is indicated in the following quote: "I must use lipstick because if I don’t have it on I feel as if I’m not dressed. I feel drab and lifeless and lipstick just hits the spot. It really is something what lipstick will do for you."

The explanation for such an attitude seems to be twofold. People feel that their lips are the most intricate part of their personality and, at the same time, that they have to be covered up to hide inner hopes and fears. There is a desire to protect one’s real self, a desire to prevent self-exposure. Lipstick has a deep, psychological role in creating an emotional tone and mood. It has many facets, from the morning uplift when cheerfulness is induced by seeing a bright face in the mirror rather than a drab one, to the more complicated emotional role of providing self-confidence and helping to create a façade to greet the public; it renews one’s self confidence and refreshes one’s self-image.

Sleep actually shatters defenses and barriers against a hostile world. Dressing and the application of lipstick serve to mend the walls, re-erect the barriers, and assemble the scattered units of personality into one whole piece to meet the oncoming day.

Handbook of Consumer Motivations.

Everything you always wanted to know about mid-twentieth century catalog undergarment advertisements can be found at:

http://www.corsetiere.net/Spirella/George/Gontents.htm

The Consolation of Philosophy, Psychology and Magic

The new biological research into genes and brain chemistry offers amazing insights into ourselves. Often, however, there is a disconnect between describing something scientifically and explaining its function.

New findings from biology can be a consolation to parents and young people suffering from psychological illness. For instance, a family with a daughter who has life-threatening anorexia can be soothed somewhat with explanations that the disorder is caused by genes inherited from grandma or brain chemistry gone awry which can be fixed by medications, not by bad mothering or cultural madness.

From another point of view, these new sciences have yet to provide many cures or life-changing understandings of sickness and health. When merged with formerly popular schools of psychology such as psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanistic psychology, cognitive-developmental theory, etc., recent scientific investigation only adds new overlays of variables. When scientists are pressed to explain how a gene came to be or what impact brain activity in a particular area has, they often lapse into the latest explanatory fashion, evolutionary psychology mumbo jumbo, and make wild speculations likely to be no more accurate than Freudians made seventy years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolation_of_Philosophy

Mignon Lied to Her Mother because of Synaptogenesis in Her Prefrontal Cortex

Age 15 ½ brought new social status to kids like me who now had a driver’s license and parents who would let me use their car. Adolescence is a time to pull away from parents and home, to drive cars, with brains drenched in dopamine, to establish an independent self, to explore the world and to take risks.

In early teens, many of us prevaricated somewhat with our parents in describing our evening itineraries. A group of twelve or so formed a plan to meet at the Big Town Bowling Alley [http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/2006/08/big-town-mall.html] for some mixed team games—a relatively risky venture for this group of late blooming 15- and 16-year-olds.

And I can’t think of a more wholesome activity for young people than bowling. As Ernest Dichter, fifties marketing consultant, explained to the bowling alley industry:

The efforts and achievements of the bowling industry in modernizing their establishments and upgrading their equipment is a tribute to their foresight and
perception in understanding the growing leisure needs of people today. . . . Bowling . . . represents a rare combination of a sport, a game, and a highly desirable and enjoyable social activity. Furthermore, the fact that people of varying degrees of skill and proficiency can easily participate in bowling without being subjected to outside pressure or criticism from teammates has made this sport one which enjoys the maximum amount of universality. . . . [Bowling] is among the few athletic social activities which are not only acceptable to but particularly enjoyable for both men and women. Handbook of Consumer Motivations

But Mignon’s mother did not want her to go—I’m not sure if she disliked bowling (that beery, blue collar activity) or boys more—and Mignon had to tell a fib. Her mother suspected monkey business, found her out at the bowling alley, and escorted her home.

Here’s what modern neurobiologists tell us was happening in Mignon’s brain:

The remodeling of the adolescent brain—a brain that science had considered largely finished—spreads over such a wide range of systems that we need to rethink how we think of teenagers altogether. Over a span of ten to twelve years, the adolescent brain, through a series of sometimes subtle and something breathtakingly dramatic shifts, is transformed from child to adult. The grey matter of an adolescent’s frontal lobes grows denser [synaptogenesis] and then scales back [pruning], molding a leaner thinking machine. The teenage brain fine-tunes its most human part, the prefrontal cortex, the place that helps us cast a wary eye, link cause to effect, decide “maybe not”—the part, in fact, that acts grown up. The brain of the teenager undergoes a proliferation of connections for dopamine, a neurotransmitter important for movement, alertness, pleasure—high levels that may have evolved to help adolescents of many species take the necessary risks for survival, from exploring new fields for food to asking that saucy girl to dance. . . .The long, thin arms that connect brain cells are coated with insulation [myelination] that speeds signals in brain regions devoted to such fundamental capacities as emotions and language.

The Primal Teen by Barbara Strauch

More specifically, Mignon recently had experienced a flourishing or exuberance of her prefrontal cortex, its volume increasing by 5-10 percent from middle childhood; then her brain began a rapid pruning back, losing one percent of synapses per year until age 18 and beginning a gradual myelination and rigidifying of those neural pathways that had worked well in her adaptation. One of her experimentations was likely a simple synaptic lie to mom, which from the long evolutionary view, was an effective way to solve a problem and get what she wanted—it’s future oriented thinking. But mom likely corrected that neural pathway before it was set in myelin.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/adolescent.html

More about Big Town:
http://davenportandwiggins.com/_wsn/page10.html
http://deadmalls.com/malls/big_town_mall.html
http://big-town-mall.blogspot.com/2006/09/where-was-big-town-mall.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town_Mall

Adrenarche and Puppy Love at Reinhardt

When did I have my first crush?

Dang if I can remember, but according to a hormone researcher at Univ. of Chicago, Martha McClintock, nearly everyone, male or female, when interviewed at a young age, reports having a first crush at age 10, in the fourth grade, well before testosterone or estrogen have reached adolescent levels for nearly all children. At around ten, children do have an early rush of androgens produced by the pituitary gland and enter the stage of adrenarche.

At 15, why did I fall in love so quickly while jumping on the trampoline with a girl I had previously been unattracted to?

From The Primal Teen by Barbara Strauch:

[Arthur Aron's] research has repeatedly shown that people fall in love more readily if they're already in a physically aroused state. That doesn't mean only a sexually aroused state, but any activity that gets the blood running high. For instance, two people who meet in a scary place, like on a high suspension bridge, or who think they're going to get an electric shock in a lab experiment, or who've been running on a treadmill . . ., are more likely to become attracted to one another.

Monkey Business at Reinhardt

I learned some of my first lessons about upcoming adolescence in youth activities at the now defunct Lakeview Christian Church. As a tag-along to the Art Williams family, I participated in Sunday School, Scouts, baseball, basketball, Wednesday night church and summer church camp. In the fifties high-growth suburbs, the principal activity in the neighborhoods was raising children. Most parents had moved to the suburbs away from their own parents and extended family influences, so parents could shop around for new churches, often shifting denominations. For example, my parents half heartedly explored a status move to the Presbyterian church from the church of their mothers--Methodist. Art Williams chose a nondenomational church that attracted arch conservative businessmen. Down the street on Old Gate Lane were White Rock United Methodist, St. Bernard's Catholic and Lakeside Baptist Church.

Lakeview Christian Church had a small library for its youth group, and I was able at age 11 or so to check out a facts-of-life paperback. In more recent years, the church pastor (a 1966 BA grad, by the way) has taken a more personal interest in sex education for his flock:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/110107dnmetminister.2dac26c.html

White Rock United Methodist had the largest and most active youth group. By age 12 or so, we at Lakeview were hearing rumors that the Wednesday night Methodist Church service had rampant petting taking place in the parking lot.

Just as I learned about Christian love and animal sex competition at church, in my secular school system, I also could see the diverse physical changes going on in the bodies of my classmates. Suburban public schools in the Dallas fifties might have 100-150 students per age group in elementary school, feeding into junior highs with 500-700 per class, then feeding into the mother of all high schools with 4,000 students. Bryan Adams High School through the sixties was one of the largest in the state (and history of the human race) with senior classes holding more than 1,000. Today, that high school only has 2,300 students.

Adolescence for many of us began in the sixth and seventh grades. In previous grades, our peer status was to some extent controlled by teachers, who doled out rewards and withdrew status on the basis of things like cooperation, academic performance, sports, and other adult-controlled activities. Beginning with adolescence, much turmoil occurred within peer status networks. The early bloomers, who according to this research had the pick of the "dating litter," began to assign status on the basis of masculine and feminine physical characteristics, especially facial features.

Actually, precocious puberty did not always lead to picking from the litter. Being taller, broader or hairier than your classmates could lead to awkwardness and self consciousness. There is little

evidence that precociousness, per se, leads to promiscuity. Some studies do show that girls in high-stress homes, including homes with an absent father or a stepfather, have accelerated puberty. What does a biological father in the family have to do with it? Perhaps his pheromones have an effect. Precocious puberty can lead to shortened stature, a limitation especially to the male. Teenage girls on the average mature earlier than boys and often prefer boys a year or two older, more equal to them in physical maturity.

Evolutionary psychologists tell us that our adolescent hormones were leading us to pair bonding preferences based on factors such as body symmetry, averageness and sex hormone markers. Let’s look at a few:

We can detect some marked asymmetries in facial features of this subject. Note the left eye is narrower than the right. Eyebrows do not match. One side of the mouth and lips is broader than the other. The left side of the chin and jaw are much more pronounced than on the right side.

Why would we prefer symmetry? Perhaps we instinctively recognize it as an indicator of developmental stability--someone whose genes are to be preferred in a baby we make.

Here's two chimerical symmetric composites of the male face:

A related factor is facial smoothness.

In the male figure we can detect active acne and acne scars. In the female figure a paleness, lack of uniformity in skin coloration, and lack of oil glow may indicate disease histories or genetic disabilities opposed to our preference for gene health.

Here we see two subjects with strong markers of symmetry, averageness and sex hormones. Note the male's strong, low brow; broad chin; narrow depth between brow and bottom of nose; and relative thinness of mouth. Features appear symmetrical, and no particular feature seems out of average. In the female, we note estrogen markers such as large eyes; high, up-sloping brows; full lips with modest teeth prominence; high cheekbones; and more pointed jaw. In person, both subjects likely displayed genetic and health markers such as clear, consistent complexion glow, framed within a hairset exhibiting luster and averageness.

Let's look at one more set:

Recent research confirms that females when horny (at a certain point in menstrual cycle) are attracted to strong testosterone markers such as seen in the second subject. Females control most pair bond choices and also prefer at other times in their mental life men with more feminine facial characteristics such as seen in the first subject. Will he invest in my progeny?

http://www.livescience.com/health/070102_facial_features.html

More about averageness and hormone markers, synaptogenesis, and the importance of hip-waist and chest -waist ratios in future blogs.

Advertising Made Me Do It

My 31-year-old daughter said to me recently that she could not fathom what was going on in her mind when she was 13 years old. I took this as the obligatory apology for adolescent bad behavior that children give their parents once they reach their late twenties and the myelin in their brains has tightened up.

Psychoanalysis posits a fairly uncontroversial theory that children experience a period of latency during middle childhood—a relatively stable progression between the psychosexual conflicts of early childhood and adolescence. Of course, children in the middle ages of childhood do have curiosity and some experience of sexual feelings. In many fifties families, even those who followed Dr. Spock’s permissive doctrines, an exception was made when children showed curiosity about the sexual organs of the opposite sex, witness the belt scars on my ass at age six after being caught playing doctor with a family friend.

Puberty came at Reinhardt to many, and we likely were influenced by media sources, such as advertising:

James B. Twitchell in Adcult USA describes two types of magic central to our culture which we find in advertising—contagious and imitative.

The contagious is the basis of all testimonial advertising—the explanation of celebrity endorsement—and has its religious counterparts in such matters as the relics of Christ. If you use this product, if you touch this stone, if you go to this holy place, if you repeat this word, you will be empowered because the product, stone, place, word . . . has been used by one more powerful than you. Imitative magic, on the other hand, is a variation of circular thinking. Because the product is made of something, you will be likewise if you consume it. So Africans use the powder of rhino horns, the Japanese crave certain mollusks, and we deodorize our bodies and then apply musk (from the Sanskrit for testicle) perfume. Then all over the world we get into a car with an animal name (yet more imitative magic) and go on the prowl for mates. Magic is such second nature that even when advertising sticks it in front of our noses, we are not stupefied.


. . . Naturally enough, the advertising directed at the adolescent is invariably the most drenched in libidinous magic oil. Look at any magazine from Details to Rolling Stone, and you will see more adolescent hands in other people’s pockets and down their trouser fronts, more faux intercourse with motorcycles, automobiles, and cigarettes, and more simply lewd positioning of the human form than in any R-rated movie. What do we expect? In adolescence we lather our bodies in unguents, slither into the most uncomfortable clothing, perform ritualistic dances that often include slamming into immovable objects, drive hunks of pig iron at breakneck speeds, and ingest poisons, until finally we exchange amulets, repeat mystical vows, and at last get on with it. All the time we are quite unaware of the authority of such behavior, and later when our children start to consume the same magical mumbo-jumbo, we say, “My, my, isn’t this advertising dreadful. It’s making Missy and Buck behave so badly.”

Adolescence is a time of life that we do not forget as we get older. As our little child bodies changed week by week and new peer social hierarchies provided revolution to our self image, we knew what was going on—that our bodies, our skins, was who we were, for better or worse. At some level, we knew about the subject of my next blog:

Synaptogenesis, Estrogen and Testosterone at Reinhardt

I Wanted To Watch Ted Koppel, But All I Could Find Was Nancy Grace and Entertainment Tonight

We’re in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. They [the sponsors] come to us asking for women 18 – 49 and adults 25 – 54 and we try to deliver.
Robert Niles, NBC VP of Marketing

In an earlier blog, I reviewed some of the social class theory developed in the 1950-60s to help better understand my parents, neighbors, and the families we grew up in within what were extremely homogenous, lily white suburbs of East Dallas. In the new millennium, social class is much harder to define. Whereas Herbert J. Gans in The Levittowners could provide some fairly salient generalizations about marriage, family life, parenting attitudes, and civic participation of blue collar, lower middle class, upper middle class, etc., today categories of age, income, ethnic background and educational level can explain less.

Here’s a quick assessment of how one might be classified today for the purposes of consumer marketing demographics. This online assessment only takes a minute and provides immediate results.

http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/presurvey.shtml

I come in as an Innovator (Actualizer), Thinker (Fulfilled).
http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/types.shtml

The following is a description of the VALS categories by James B. Twitchell in Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture, 1996. He is more entertaining than the SRIC website in his descriptions, though his book is a bit dated.

The psychographic system of SRI is called acronymically VALS, short for Values and Lifestyle System. Essentially this schematic is based on the commonsense view that consumers are motivated "to acquire products, services, and experiences that provide satisfaction and give shape, substance, and character to their identities" in bundles. The more "resources" (namely, money, but health, self-confidence, and energy also figure) each group of consumers has, the more likely they are to buy the "products, services, and experiences" of the group with which they associate. But resources are not the only determinant. We are also motivated by such ineffables as principles, status, and action. When SRI describes these various audiences, they peel apart like this (I have provided them with an appropriate car to show their differences):

Actualizers [Changed to Innovators in the current VALS terminology]. These people at the top of the pyramid are the ideal of everyone except advertisers. They have "it" already or will soon. They are sophisticated take-charge people interested in independence and character. They don't need new things; in fact, they already have their things. If not, they already know what the finer things are and refuse to be told. They don't need a new car, but if they do, they'll read Consumer Reports. They do not need a hood ornament on their car.

Fulfilled [Changed to Thinkers in the current VALS terminology]. Here are mature, satisfied, comfortable souls who support the status quo. Often they are literally or figuratively retired. They value functionality, durability, and practicality. They drive something called a town car, which is made by all the big auto makers.

Believers. As the word expresses, these people support traditional codes of family, church, and community, wearing good Republican cloth coats. As consumers they are predictable, favoring American products and recognizable brands. They regularly attend church and Wal-Mart [buying Chinese goods if they are a value], and they are transported there in a mid-range automobile like an Oldsmobile. Whether Oldsmobile likes it or not, they do indeed drive "your father's Oldsmobile." [Can't find Olds anymore; better buy a Buick.]

Achievers. If consumerism has an ideal, it is achievers. Cha-ching, goes the cash register. Wedded to job as a source of duty, reward, and prestige, these are the people who not only favor the establishment, they are the establishment. They like the concept of prestige. They demonstrate their success by buying such objects as prestigious cars. They like hood ornaments.

Strivers. Young strivers are fine; they may mature into achievers. But old strivers can be nasty; they may well be bitter. Because they are unsure of themselves, young strivers are eager to be branded so long as the brand is elevating. Money defines success and they don't have enough of it. Being a yuppie is fine as long as the prospect of upward mobility looms. Strivers like foreign cars even if it means only leasing one.

Experiencers. Here is life on the edge--enthusiastic, impulsive, and even reckless. Their energy finds expression in sports, social events, and "doing something." Politically and personally uncommitted, experiencers are an advertising dream come true, because they see consumption as fulfillment and are willing to spend a high percentage of their disposable income to attain it. When you wonder who could possibly care how quickly a car will accelerate from zero to sixty miles per hour, it is the Experiencers.

Makers. Here is the practical side of Experiencers; Makers like to build things and they experience the world by working on it. Conservative, suspicious, respectful,
they like to do things in and to their homes, like adding a room, canning vegetables, or changing the oil in their pickup trucks.

Strugglers. Like Actualizers, these people are outside the pale of Adcult, not by choice but by economics. Strugglers are chronically poor. Their repertoire of things is limited because they have so little. Although they clip coupons like Actualizers, theirs are from the newspaper, not from bonds. Their transportation is usually public, if at all.

The categories are very fluid, of course, and we may move through as many as three of them in our lifetimes. So, for instance, from ages eighteen to twenty-four most people (61 percent) are Experiencers in desire or deed whereas fewer than 1 percent are Fulfilled. Between ages fifty-five and sixty-four, however, the Actualizers, Fulfilled, and Strugglers claim about 15 percent of the population each, whereas the Believers have settled out at about a fifth. The Achievers, Strivers, and Makers fill about 10 percent apiece, with the remaining 2 percent Experiencers. The numbers can be broken down at every stage, allowing for marital status, education, household
size, dependent children, home ownership, household income, and occupation.

So I can understand that as an Actualizer, Thinker (and Maker in the making) and old, overeducated semi-retiree, I should not expect anyone to program television, radio, movies or periodicals for me, since I rarely buy anything. It should be no surprise to me that I find the mass media to be a great wasteland. But I’m not complaining. I actually like Nancy Grace on occasions. I understand there are millions of overworked, underpaid, big-spending, young moms who deserve a break in the evening to see some tabloid titillation and pervert perps brought to justice. And only in America can old nonspenders like me still find plenty to entertain ourselves with given that there is so little to find within the media.

A Reinhardt of the Mind Poetry Corner

Epistle To Be Left In The Earth
by Archibald MacLeish




...It is colder now
there are many stars
we are drifting
North by the Great Bear
the leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rocks
to southward
Red sun grey air
the crows are
Slow on their crooked wings
the jays have left us
Long since we passed the flares of Orion
Each man believes in his heart he will die
Many have written last thoughts and last letters
None know if our deaths are now or forever
None know if this wandering earth will be found

We lie down and the snow covers our garments
I pray you
you (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names
I will tell you all we have learned
I will tell you everything
The earth is round
there are springs under the orchards
The loam cuts with a blunt knife
beware of
Elms in thunder
the lights in the sky are stars
We think they do not see
we think also
The trees so not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us
The birds too are ignorant
do not listen
Do not stand at dark in the open windows
We before you have heard this
they are voices
They are not words at all but the wind rising
Also none among us has seen God
(... We have thought often
the flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous
The wind changes at night and the dreams come

It is very cold
there are strange stars near Arcturus
Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

Magic in the Postmodern World

From Adcult USA, James B. Twitchell, 1996, Columbia University Press.

The magi were the ancient Zoroastrian theurgists whose actions animated the universe. They were the ones who knew the buried codes. Little wonder, then, that it was members of this caste who traveled to Jerusalem to bear witness to one of their own--the Christ child, the new and improved magus. And little wonder that the modern magi are in advertising around the globe, adding "value" to interchangeable objects. They make disposable goods into long-lasting charms. It is the ad execs who produce Budweiser beer trucks in the middle of the desert, transform monsters into gentlemen hulks with a spray of Right Guard, activate those cute scrubbing brushes for Dow Cleanser, put a smile on the pitcher of Kool Aid, change a deep-swimming shark into a Chevrolet Baretta, and make millions of pimples disappear in the mirror . . . like magic. . . .

How do we think things work if not through the powers of magic? Why should we think that ours is an age of reason, an age of scientific observation, an age devoid of wishful thinking? The days of the Inquisition, Ponzi schemes, rain dances, the South Sea Bubble, witchcraft, and Dutch tulip mania are hardly over. In their place we have the stock market, state-supported gambling, chain letters, abstract expressionism, credit cards, national debt, filter tips, premium gas, anorexia, vitamin supplements, Amway, Lourdes, horoscopes, social security, trickle-down economics, leveraged buyouts, long-range weather forecasting, higher education, installment buying, the rhythm method, UFOs, hedge funds, eat-more-but-lose diets, the value of diamonds, astrology, prayer, [blogster emendation: blow jobs that lead to impeachment; smart bombs aimed at Bin Laden; removing shoes at airport security; launching war against terrorism; Internet pornography growing within the ghost of the dot.com bust; no-down-payment, no-principal-payment, adjustable home loans; Enron stock; thirst for democracy; vicarious TV life with sports stars and other celebrities as well as news programming aimed at the buying middle-aged woman's concern about sex perverts; 401Ks to replace pensions; U.S. Corps of Engineers levees and dams; paying $1,000 a year out-of-pocket for Pfizer's Lipitor to prevent sudden death from heart attack; voting in the 2008 Presidential elections] language, and, of course, almost all advertising. Economists like John Kenneth Galbraith make careers by pointing out how American economic culture is based on various pipe dreams, but they also forget that without the magic of these dream worlds we would not have "reality."

The Soul of Sliced Bread and Breakfast Cereal

An area where psychoanalysis still holds sway is eating disorder therapy. Moms can transfer neurosis to children through the way they manage the child’s diet. I have no particular knowledge of the intricacies of this problem--I’m fortunate to have not been touched myself or within my close family by this disease--but in reading Ernest Dichter’s marketing research, I have a new interest in how my mother managed her kitchen.

I think my mom was fairly tidy in her packaging of my school lunchbox, but there were times I could tell she was falling in a rut. After three straight months of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips, I was bored to death with lunch. I think we came to a mutual agreement that it would be better for us both if she just gave me a lunch allowance to eat from the school cafeteria.

According to Dichter in Handbook of Consumer Motivations (he’s writing about 1950s homemakers) moms take special care in packing their children’s school lunches. “Food wrappings are a demonstration of the concern and affection in which the members of the family are held. . . .Women respondents wrapped the package in a certain way to make sure that it was secure. Many women would run their hand over it. They would do it several times. It was as if they could seal the wrap by the magic of touch. Among other respondents it was noted that when they had finished wrapping an item, they tended to square the package. These homemakers felt that the better the shape of the package was, the more securely it was wrapped.”

Through my mother’s example, I have always had brand loyalty to Mrs. Baird’s white bread. It’s been banned from my home for twenty years or so as an empty carb food, but if I were to buy a loaf of white bread, I would buy Mrs. Baird’s.

Anyone who grew up in the Dallas area knows that Mrs. Baird was a grandmother who baked bread and delivered it in a buggy. Many of us children toured a Mrs. Baird’s baking plant as a field trip within scouts or some similar children’s activity. We remember the wonderful aroma of the plant and getting to eat a slice from a fresh baked loaf covered in melted butter.

The Baird boys, I’m sure, had a marketing department that helped establish the “image” (Dichter’s term) of the product. They were pleased with the nostalgic grandma image and also approved and maintain today the advertising line that Mrs. Baird’s “continues the tradition of hand twisting each loaf of bread, a special commitment to quality.” According to one Dichter study, consumers “preferred bakeries where workers did touch the dough and where the bakers acted as if they were baking bread for themselves at home.” Robotic man hygienically covered to prevent his germs from contaminating food product at Lubbock Mrs. Baird's plant

Mrs. Baird’s is now owned by Bimbo Bakeries. I can imagine the owners eating lunch at their country club and fretting over the regional baking business. My recommendation to them is that they buy machines to twist the bread, give the poor man above a decent job, and lay off several of their marketing dick executives to pay for it.

The sale to Bimbo was tied to misbehavior of Vernon and Carroll--Ninnie would have been ashamed of them. http://www.answers.com/topic/mrs-baird-s-bakeries?cat=biz-fin

Other fifties moms preferred breads like Wonder Bread and Sunbeam that promised energy from space-age nutrients. Breakfast foods, too, promised powerful ingredients to provide strength. Regarding breakfast, my mom fit Dichters’s observation that at breakfast not only do we need to “replenish the sources of our bodily energy physically,” but psychologically, breakfast is “ a rehearsal for coming battles, a stocktaking of our resources and a tuning of our senses to the world at large.” We want crunchy cereals because we “look upon breakfast as a sort of adversary that has to be conquered.” For those of a less pugilistic spirit (I’m one of these), we prefer crunchy cereals rather than mushy soft cereals because crunchy cereals “fulfill our tactile curiosity. You can play with cereals in an oral fashion. They have interesting shapes that can be cracked with a snap, crackle and pop.”

Kellogg's Frosted Flakes' endorsement by Superman matches Nike's use of Michael Jordan, but probably at a much smaller cost.

For more about the gender of cereals and sandwiches, including Rice Krispies, see this article.

According to Dichter, "the future trend will not be a supermodern pattern of “atom-powered” cereals. The truly modern cereal will combine all the warmth and affection of the substantial old-fashioned cereal with the fun, lightness, and convenience of modern dry cereal.” (He was right on target here.)

Many of the fifties families in my neighborhood could be classified as lower middle class restrictive or lower middle class expansive. (Click here to see previous blog on fifties suburban social classes.) Use of sugar at breakfast may be a litmus test of our families’ social class. According to Dichter, “sugar is a conflict product. We need it and want it and at the same time we are often afraid of it. . . . Every time the housewife reaches for a package of sugar, . . . she is subject to conflicting feelings of varying intensity.” Moms can basically be classified as sugar hedonists, sugar moderates, or sugar puritans.

I commend my mother (who has never had a weight problem) for being a sugar hedonist, but doing it in such a way that it was no big psychological deal. Despite her Twinkie- and cookie- and Coke-filled cupboards, I’ve always been able to stay away with no effort from all sugar-based, refined products.

We Thought We Were Providing Our Children With Paradise, and They Found It To Be Hell

Mine was not always a happy childhood, and I sometimes blamed my parents for selecting our family home in the bland, sterile neighborhoods of Casa View. If I were asked, “What would have been the right and best place to grow up?,” I would have stumbled in confusion. Perhaps an extended rather than a nuclear family, in neighborhoods reflecting the range of diversity in races, ethnicity, and income levels. Where everything was not new—such as in a dense city with a history of place and with a long development of commercial and social systems. Or perhaps on a farm, close to nature and exempt from consumer shopping and materialist concerns. Or in a place where there were not so many kids banging up against one another in overcrowded schools.

Herbert Gans, in The Levittowners,(1967) points out that nonsuburban types of homeplaces had their owns sorts of unpleasantness.

Yet even though Levittowners and other lower middle class Americans continue to be home-centered, they are much more “in the world” than their parents and grandparents were. Those coming out of ethnic working class backgrounds have rejected the “amoral familism” which pits every family against every other in the struggle to survive and the ethnocentrism which made other cultures and even neighborhoods bitter enemies. This generation trusts its neighbors, participates with them in social and civic activities, and no longer sees government as inevitably corrupt. Even working class Levittowners have begun to give up the suspicion that isolated their ancestors from all but family and childhood friends. Similarly, the descendants of rural Protestant America have given up the xenophobia that turned previous generations against the Catholic and Jewish immigrants, they have almost forgotten the intolerant Puritanism which triggered attacks against pleasure and enjoyment, and they no longer fully accept the doctrine of laissez faire that justifies the defense of individual rights and privileges against others’ needs. . . . These and other changes have come about not because people are not better or more tolerant human beings, but because they are affluent. For the Levittowners, life is not a fight for survival anymore.

When it came time to find a homeplace for my own brood of four children, my wife and I picked a small, college town. For many years, we lived within a block of the downtown courthouse square. Residents in our neighborhoods were of diverse backgrounds. The smalltown community, and the nearby large cities, provided abundant social and cultural capital. We later moved a bit out of town to a 1912 farmhouse, with farm animals, and thousands of acres of parkland. All proved boring to my brood.

So it goes that, according to my kids, I failed them just as my parents failed me. By the age of 18, my daughter was dead set that she was going to get out of her boring hometown and never come back. My son, attending his tenth year high school reunion recently, remarked on the general contempt many of the graduates (those who had moved to other parts of the country) felt toward their hometown.

Jesus, If Market Researchers Can Figure Out Motivation, Why Don’t Just Rule The World?

The infamous Virgina Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho was analyzed by the media and its experts from many points of view, including psychoanalysis. Psychologists and psychiatrists disagreed concerning whether the best diagnosis for Cho was autism, Aspergers, or paranoid schizophrenia. Some of a psychoanalytic bent explored Cho from the viewpoint that he might have been a repressed homosexual. In response to various speculations about Cho’s psychosexual problems, one writer commented that (in 2007) psychoanalysis is an unproven and discarded theory.

If I were forced to read today book after book of psychoanalytic theory, I would be bored to tears, in part because I would find speculation after speculation to be lacking in scientific proof but also unable to subjectively ring true to my understanding of myself and the people around me.

I do find today some benefit from reading books that contain psychoanalytic speculations on my motivations toward consumer products. Whatever their orientation, most psychoanalysts writing during the first half of the twentieth century were shooting from the hip with little accuracy, missing their mark as often as hitting it. The researchers on the individual’s relationship with inanimate objects, that is consumer goods such as autos, soaps, toothpaste, and cake mixes, used methodologies that would hardly pass muster in any graduate level university research program today.

The leading depth boy or the 1940s-1960s, Ernest Dichter, was trained under some of the best scholars of pre-war Vienna. Psychoanalysis was not taught and even banned as a subject of discussion in the university program he attended. But as a sort of sideline, he did go through analysis and practice for a short time as a therapist.

In the U.S. for his corporate clients, Dichter approached each project with a variety of study approaches, usually a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. He basically invented the use of focus groups as a technique of marketing research. He is credited with making first use of the term “image” to describe the important brand qualities that must be developed to distinguish commodities.

In earlier blogs, I’m mentioned many of his insights. Here’s a few more worthy of consideration.

--Why do cake mixes usually require that an egg be added?
The manufacturers could easily include the egg or a substitute as part of the dry mixture.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.cooking-chat/msg/e4ae9f3134d5b3c4
http://books.google.com/books?id=yzIm-oJyXNkC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=dichter+%22cake+mix%22+egg&source=web&ots=aJyER84A-O&sig=KSSzDEX71YDe7P0DZM5ujqPJlQo
Dichter found housewives have a need to put a cook’s touch to the cake. An egg is a symbol of fertility.

from Dichter's Handbook, 1964

Baking provides a feeling of love and security. Aroma and odors pervading the house when mother was baking are fondly remembered. The most fertile moment occurs when the woman pulls the finished cake, bread loaf, or other baked product out of the oven. In a sense it is like giving birth. How did it turn out? Did it fulfill expectations? Once the baked product is placed before the family a good part of the interest of the housewife has been lost.

--Who buys new automobiles and why?
Ernest Dichter’s research for the auto industry set the tone for much fifties and sixties advertising. In a previous blog, I have mentioned several of his findings—that people have fond memories of their first cars, that cars are an expression of freedom and independence for housewives. The commercial from the previous blog is scripted from Dichter’s playbook—that wives usually make the final purchase decision. Dichter also found that car owners associate a car whose doors close firmly and securely with a well made vehicle. Americans also have a mystical attachment to family road trips.

--Who drank my dad’s Chivas Regal?

According to Wilson Bryan Key, Subliminal Seduction, 1973

Market research on Scotch drinkers revealed that individuals who drink Chivas Regal rarely serve it to friends. At best, these scotch drinkers, even those at the very high income level of over $25,000 per year, will keep Chivas Regal for only their bery best friends, clients, or special guests whom they are trying to impress. Chivas drinkers usually keep less expensive brands of Scotch around the house for general guests or casual or lower station visitors.

Key, a notorious quack, paranoid, and pervert [who sees vaginas, penises and the word “Sex” in anything, but especially advertising], goes on to analyze that the ad above actually contains the subliminal picture of a dog (man’s best friend) which is intended to provide an unconscious stimulation to the purchase of alcohol.

--Jesus, If Focus Groups and Opinion Polls Can Figure Out Motives, Why Don’t Just Rule The World?

From The Assault on Reason, Al Gore, 2007

After a long and detailed review of all the polling information and careful testing of potential TV commercials, the anticipated response from my opponent’s campaign and the planned response to the response, my campaign made a recommendation and predication that surprises me with its specificity: “If you run this ad at this many “points” [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to this response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5 percent in your lead in the polls.”

I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5 percent. Though pleased, or course, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.

When Baby Boomers Meet their Maker

I hope that entire industries must review their work products at the pearly gates.

I think the logistics boys—those whose careers have consisted of engineering smart distribution of products—will make it to heaven. They’ve done much to keep prices low during the last several decades.

And I think the bomb engineers may have a chance. When Ike or MacArthur pushed the button, they would indiscriminately kill tens of thousands. With smart bombs, Bill Clinton and George Bush can at least keep the target relatively small.

Everyone who has had anything to do with the U.S. chemical industry likely will go to hell, especially those chemists in white lab jackets who create the ingredients to packaged household goods such as insecticides, herbicides, detergents, beauty products, over-the-counter drugs, and packaged foodstuffs. I’m sure there are worse villains among the ranks of the Dow Chemicals and Procter and Gambles of the world, but the group in charge of consumer products have left whole continents of toxic waste behind them.

The hardware and software engineers likely will make it in. With Hollywood, the U.S. computer industry has been a key to the country’s maintenance of trade balances and prosperity.

Each Hollywood producer, director, and actor will have to state his case individually to St. Peter. The group working in this scene from Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing Charm School likely will make it in.

And also all dance instructors, including Mrs. Keeling, will find their places in heaven.

Hoover, FDR, Reagan, Bush and Reinhardt

The explosive growth of Dallas suburbs in the fifties has explanations in some larger currents of U.S. history.

When my parents were young adolescents growing up in Tulsa, OK, they likely read in newspapers about the 1932 Bonus Expeditionary Force, a force of 15,000 veterans who marched across the U.S. and encamped in Washington DC to cash in veterans’ bonuses approved by Congress in 1924. General Douglas MacArthur, then Army chief of staff, brought in troops, some led by lower level officers Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, to rout the Hooverville squatters.

Hoover’s hard line toward vets helped bring a new president into office, who took up the need for national support of veterans. In a 1943 fireside chat, FDR pledged that U.S. troops returning from WWII must never come home “into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line or a corner selling apples. . . We must this time, have plans ready.”

Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights in June 1944, providing returning vets with a goldmine of benefits, including tuition and living expenses for post-secondary education as well as government guarantee of mortgages for homes. In 1945, less than 5 percent of Americans held college degrees and less that two out of five had completed high school. It is estimated that U.S. education support for veterans provided nearly three years to the average vet’s education. Government support also helped finance nearly 90 percent of private homes constructed in the 1950s. The educated workforce was so widely productive that during the fifties the wage gap between social classes reached an all time low.

So my dad, coming out of an impoverished childhood during the depression and wartime military service, was fortunate to have a government which more or less slingshot him into middle class respectability, with a business school education and a new home and car. My family’s trajectory toward affluence was helped again by their use of expanding credit sources in the late fifties and sixties.

The GI bill was offered to all vets, regardless of station or race or creed [Rosie the Riveter got no such benefits], but the absence of government laws against discrimination led to patterns of suburban segregation difficult to overcome. By 1960, not a single black had been able to buy among the 82,000 new homes built in Levittown, New York (or Casa Linda/Casa View).

In 1967, Martin Luther King spoke of the 1932 Bonus Marchers when he called for hundreds of thousands of marchers to again make camp in Washington DC. He reminded Americans that, in emulating the Bonus Marchers, “The stirring lesson of this age is that nonviolent direct action is not a peculiar device for Negro agitation, Rather it is an historically validated method for defending freedom and democracy, and for enlarging these values for the benefit of the whole society.”

Since WWII, each succeeding decade has brought U.S. vets declining benefits. Bush’s National Guard forces in Iraq, as second class military, have taken over half the casualties in the war but are eligible to received only a third of the GI Bill benefits available to regular troops.

It is an irony that “The Greatest Generation” benefited so greatly from a political system that supported their economic growth, but under leadership of men like Reagan and the Bushes has undercut similar levels of support to their new generation of young warriors.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=20058

A Reinhardt Mystery

According to Ernest Dichter, in The Handbook of Consumer Motivation, all boys and girls love their bicycles. “Together with the first dog owned, the bicycle represents one of the first symbols of independence and pride of possession. The bicycle is oiled and shined. The first trips taken with a bike are often symbolic demonstrations of growing maturity, or getting away from family.”

It was my love of bicycles—of taking them apart and rebuilding them with parts from other bicycles—that caused me to strike up a friendship with Burley Gilliam. Burley lived in a small frame house on a deadend street—Stevens Street, which I walked down most days on my way to and from school. The builders of Eastwood Park had created a small easement and sidewalk so that people could walk from Sylvia Dr. in Eastwood Park to the industrial area around Cayuga. Many early residents likely used the sidewalk to walk over to the old country store, Sullivan’s.

My memories of Burley are extremely vague. My main interest was the metal shed behind his house, where he had many junk bikes. I think I bought off of him a 26” two-speed bendix back wheel and hub, which I spoked into my 20” DIY prototype sting ray bike.

My general memory was that he came from a very poor family and lived in a very wild and crazy home at the end of Stevens.

As I often do when I research my blogs, I googled Burley Gilliam and have found an extremely notorious man within the U.S. criminal justice system. Various clues indicate this is the same Burley Gilliam who lived at the end of Stevens—and who seemed to mysteriously disappear as one of our schoolmates by the fifth grade or so. One clue is that Burley Gilliam is an extremely unusual name.

Here’s the Florida prison systems info on Burley:

DC Number: 097234
Name: GILLIAM, BURLEY
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Hair Color: BLONDE OR STRAWBERRY
Eye Color: HAZEL
Height: 5'08''
Weight: 211 lbs.
Birth Date: 08/13/1948
Initial Receipt Date:
04/02/1985
Current Facility: UNION C.I.
Current Custody: MAXIMUM
Current Release Date: DEATH SENTENCE

Aliases: BURLEY GILLIAM

Scars, Marks, and Tattoos:
Type Location Description
TATTOO OTHER FLY ON PENIS
TATTOO RIGHT LEG COBRA LOWER LEG

Current Prison Sentence History:
Offense Date Offense Sentence Date County Case No. Prison Sentence Length
06/08/1982 1ST DG MUR/PREMED. OR ATT. 02/01/1985 MIAMI-DADE 8214766 DEATH SENTENCE
06/08/1982 SEX BAT/ WPN. OR FORCE 02/01/1985 MIAMI-DADE 8214766 SENTENCED TO LIFE

Note that he was born in 1948, just the right age to have been a schoolmate in the fifties.

Also, more google work and review of various legal transcripts indicates Burley had strong ties to Dallas, His first conviction for rape occurred in Dallas in 1969; in a transcript, he says his mother-in-law lived in Dallas.

Here’s a short summary of some of his early home life—all of which is in keeping with my minimal memories of his household on Stevens St.

Dr. Marquit testified to the following significant facts concerning Burley Gilliam's life: Burley was abused by his father who was an alcoholic (R. 2846); his mother was a "nervous-type" of person who could not control her children and was out of the house for long periods of time (R. 2846); as a result of his mother's inability to act as a parent, Burley, the oldest child, was forced to take care of the rest of the children, a responsibility for which he was not prepared to handle (R. 2847, 2855); when something went wrong involving the other children, Burley was punished (R. 2847, 2855); he had very little parental nurturing (R. 2847); he was a "very sickly child" who suffered a myriad of health problems (R. 2848); he had a learning disability (2848-9); his learning disability was neglected by his mother because she provided nothing in terms of parenting other than physical necessities (R. 2849); in addition to his father, his mother also was an alcoholic (R. 2849); he was beaten "considerably" by his step-father (R. 2850); he is not sadistic (R. 2860-1); and he does not hold a grudge against his mother or father for the fact that they were not good parents (R. 2860).

At the penalty phase, before the jury, Koch relied on guilt phase testimony from several of Gilliam’s family members: Koch: Your Honor, we have no additional testimony to present. We likewise would be relying on the testimony of Kay Salem, John Beagle, Fay Beagle, and Dean Wilkins [sic].[13] The only evidence the State presented was a certified copy of Gilliam’s 1969 rape conviction in support of the prior violent felony aggravator. As did the defense, the State relied on the testimony adduced during the guilt phase: [State]: At this stage of the proceedings, the State would be relying on the testimony of Dr. Rao, Souviron, Wilder, and the testimony of Mr. Walter Burt, with particularity to the issue raised in this trial.

Gilliam’s mother, Ludine Wilkins, and sisters, Cecil Faye Beagle and Kay Salem, testified during the guilt phase that Gilliam’s stepfather brutally beat him as a child.

Appellant's sister, Erleni Salem, testified that their mother was not home "much of the time" to supervise her brother Burley Gilliam and the other children. She testified that their mother worked during the day and evenings and "partied the times she wasn't home" (R. 2886). Ms. Salem described how Appellant was the saving grace for her son Lloyd after her husband's death (R. 2888-89).

For the gruesome details of Gilliam's 1982 crime, click here.

Is this Burley Gilliam the boy at Reinhardt whom I bought my bike parts from?