The Queen Mary

/4 Comments/in

About four years ago I went to Long Beach, CA to give a talk. But of more interest to me than the conference was that Long Beach was home to the Queen Mary. After taking passengers across the Atlantic for 31 years, this ocean liner was permanently docked at Long Beach and converted into a floating hotel. I was drawn to the Queen Mary because, when I was two years old, my mother took me to Europe aboard this ship. The purpose of the voyage was to rendezvous with my father, who had gone to Berlin to work in the lab of a famous German scientist. I wrote about this trip in a recent blog post.

I vividly remember standing on the deck in mid-ocean, looking up at one of the huge smokestacks. It suddenly belched black smoke and emitted a terrifying, bone-shaking blast. Well, I say I vividly remember this experience, but in fact I probably don’t. Psychologists believe that kids rarely retain memories from such an early age. It’s more likely that my memory was induced by several iconic photographs my mother took on the ship, as well as stories she told me over the years. But real or induced, I’ve held that image of standing at the base of the belching, blasting smokestack for almost 70 years. So being in Long Beach was an irresistible opportunity to retrace my footsteps on the venerable decks of this famous ocean liner, to which I had a special relationship.

Since I’d arrived the day before the conference began, there was plenty of time. A long waterfront walk from my hotel took me to the Queen Mary. Signs led me to an outdoor elevator that went up several stories to the main deck. As soon as I stepped onto the ship, I saw them: three enormous orange and black smokestacks (which I soon learned were actually called “funnels”) looming above me. An unexpected shiver ran through my body. Walking to the base of the middle funnel, I looked up at its immense height. For a two-year-old, it must have seemed even taller! Was I standing in this exact spot when it smoked and hooted so many years ago?

I strolled all along the deck, touching and then standing beneath each of the other two funnels to be sure I had the right one. I took many selfies. And, very uncharacteristically, I approached another tourist and asked him to take some photos with my phone. Not only that, I also realized I needed to share how momentous this occasion was, so I told him about being on this ship as a small child, clearly long before he was even born. He smiled indulgently.

Then, for the next several hours I walked up and down the many levels of the ship. At some point, I figured, I’d pass the cabin where my mother and I stayed during our Atlantic crossing. I think I was hoping for a sort of dowsing-rod effect, so that I’d experience a special tingling when I came upon the door to that very cabin. But though I felt no particular prickles after my extended promenade, it was deeply moving to be on the same ship, walk the same decks, and see the same funnels that I had so long ago. As I almost compulsively touched the many railings, doorknobs, and furniture all over the ship, I felt transported back to that time. Memories–or perhaps, pseudo-memories– welled up. No matter which, I felt much more connected to my long-gone mother than I normally did, and to our time together on that voyage. My talk at the conference the next day went fine.


Recently I joined an ancestry website that offered links to all sort of historical data. As a result, I’ve been digging into my past. Naturally, one of the things I was particularly eager to find was concrete evidence of my European trip as a toddler. After considerable searching, I found it: a ship’s log documenting that Joyce Klein, age 33 and Kenneth Klein, age 2, departed New York City for Cherbourg on 16 February 1951. But wait–the ship was The Queen Elizabeth! How could that be, since I distinctly recalled that we had travelled on the Queen Mary? Then it occurred to me that maybe we went out on the Queen Elizabeth, and returned on the Queen Mary. After all, my “memory” of the voyage consisted of a single image beneath a huge orange and black funnel–the memory must have been from the homeward journey. I searched further. Bingo! I found the ship’s log for the return voyage: Joyce Klein, 34 (her birthday occurred during our time abroad), and Kenneth Klein, 2, left Southampton for New York on 29 March 1951. And the ship? Inexplicably, it was again the Queen Elizabeth! I was stunned.

Almost in a panic, I Googled these two ocean liners. It turned out they were sister ships, both constructed in Scotland for the Cunard Line. The Queen Mary was built first, beginning trans-Atlantic sailings in 1936. The Queen Elizabeth was completed two years later. It was closely modeled after the Queen Mary, but with an improved design that utilized just 12 boilers, rather than the Queen Mary’s 24, and only two funnels, to the Queen Mary’s three. Comparing photographs online, the funnels looked quite similar—huge, orange and black, and slightly tilted toward the stern of the ship.

I “knew” that we had sailed on the Queen Mary, but undeniably our trips were both on its sister ship. Had my mother mistakenly told me the Queen Mary? I highly doubt it. Apparently, at some point during the intervening decades—possibly even just before I went to Long Beach—the Queen Elizabeth had somehow morphed into the Queen Mary.

The Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary indeed looked similar. Thus it’s not surprising that my quite possibly bogus funnel memory was reinforced by seeing the Queen Mary’s funnels. But the fact remains that those weren’t the right funnels, the right decks, or the right railings that had all moved me so much. In retrospect, I felt foolish for having taken all those selfies with funnels I’d never been beneath. And breathlessly telling the fellow tourist that I took a trans-Atlantic voyage on a ship that I’d never even seen before.

This was a case of doubly mistaken recollections: First, I almost certainly didn’t have a real memory of being under the funnel of the ship that took me across the Atlantic. It was most likely implanted by photographs and family lore. Second, I associated the counterfeit memory with the wrong ship. If I’d remembered that our voyage was actually aboard the Queen Elizabeth, it’s unlikely that I would have bothered to visit the Queen Mary at all. I could have spent my free afternoon in Long Beach taking a long walk, or catching up on my reading rather than ambling around a random ship.

A question lingers: since I had no connection with that ship, where did my powerful feelings aboard the Queen Mary come from? Why did I feel so moved? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s simply that when vivid “memories”–accurate or faulty–are triggered, they activate circuits in our brain that powerfully connect us with our past. This helps us gain access to latent emotions. The veracity of the trigger certainly has little to do with the validity of the feelings it gives rise to. I emotionally resonated with something important in my life, even though the feelings had been switched on by a case of mistaken identity. Such an intense response seems just as genuine, and just as significant, as those arising from “true” memories. The main downside seems to be a little collateral embarrassment when the mistake comes to light.

I haven’t deleted the many photographs of me standing beneath the Queen Mary’s funnels, nor do I plan to do so.

7 Greenough Ave

/5 Comments/in

Back in the day, when I was in college, I started a commune. Well, with some grandiosity, that’s what I called it (this was the ‘60’s). The building I found to commune in was a big, rambling three-story house at 7 Greenough Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The landlord was Mr. Fogelman. As far as I could tell, he was a classical shyster lawyer, but still a charming guy. I used to have long philosophical discussions with him when he dropped by to collect the rent. As an aspiring doctor, I naturally felt superior to him. “The main difference between lawyers and doctors,” I smugly stated, “is that the essence of the law is confrontation–the lawyer advocates for his client, and works to discredit the opposing party.” Mr. Fogelman grunted. “Whereas in medicine,” I continued, “the doctor is united with the whole medical system in supporting the patient. The only opponent is the illness or injury which everyone is determined to defeat.” He grunted again and said, “Well, there’s actually just as much confrontation and opposition in medicine as in the law. You’ll see.” I’m not sure I ever did see, but perhaps he had a point.

I proposed the idea of a commune to Susan, a friend and classmate. She immediately signed on, and we began recruiting fellow communards with an ad in the local free newspaper. (Extraordinarily, in those days the internet had not yet been invented!) Our first respondent was a guy called Sumner Silverman. I can’t remember what he said in his letter, but we found him intriguing. Rather than coming to Greenough Ave, he suggested that we meet him in his apartment in North Boston. That seemed a bit odd, but we agreed.

Sumner was short and solidly built, with graying hair and a regulation ‘60’s beard. His diction was somehow formal and old-fashioned. He invited us to sit down on a brown velvet sofa in his dark, spacious living room. The walls were hung with Navajo tribal blankets and colorful bedspreads from India. A vague smell of nag champa hung in the air. After a bit of small talk he excused himself and went into his kitchen. He soon emerged carrying an aluminum tray, bowed slightly, and presented the contents: The tray was paved with thin slices of freshly cut blood oranges. He explained that they were drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with ground white pepper. “These are really good,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll like them. Now shall we take off our clothes and dig in?” Susan looked at me with popping-out eyes. I’m sure mine popped out just as far. I can’t remember just how we wriggled out of that invitation, but no doubt there was a lot of awkward stammering, followed by excuses that made no logical sense. But somehow, we managed to hightail it out of Sumner’s apartment with all our clothes on. I can’t remember if we even tried those orange slices. I wrote Sumner the next day with some sort of lame excuse: though Susan and I liked him very much, we felt that he just wouldn’t be a good fit for 7 Greenough Ave.

After that inauspicious start, we eventually recruited an interesting crew of about eight people. I say “about” because the number of residents fluctuated unpredictably. We were mostly students, but some residents had real jobs, while others just sort of hung around. Barbara was a graduate student in clinical psychology. One summer afternoon, she came limping into the house after taking a walk along the nearby railroad tracks. She had somehow twisted her foot between the track and a tie, and felt a soft crack. An x-ray showed that she had broken a bone which, since I hadn’t yet started medical school, I was unable to name. Her foot was casted. For some weeks after that Barbara hobbled around the house on crutches, sometimes, for some reason, without a shirt. I found this rather odd. But this was the ‘60s. Years later, perhaps inspired by 7 Greenough Ave, she established a women’s collective farm and ranch in New Mexico.

Danny was another psychology grad student. He had recently come back from a long stay at an ashram in India, where he had learned meditation and eastern spirituality under Neem Karoli Baba, known better as Maharaj-ji. Danny had heard about the ashram from another student of Maharaj-ji called Ram Dass. Ram Dass, formerly known as Richard Alpert, had been one of Danny’s psychology professors at Harvard. Alpert and his colleague, Timothy Leary, did experiments involving psychedelics, most notably LSD, and aggressively advocated their use. As a result they were both kicked out of the university. Then Leary began travelling around the country advising everyone to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Alpert travelled farther afield, going to India to study with Maharaj-ji. There he changed his name to Ram Dass, and brought his guru’s teachings back to the US. Be Here Now, based on what he learned at the ashram, was Ram Dass’ first best seller. Years later, Danny himself wrote a best-seller, Emotional Intelligence.

Another commune-mate was Meredith, a musician and a poet. She was tall, and seemed even taller since she was topped with a generous head of springy brown hair. Her father was a well-known developmental biologist. I had a special affection for Meredith, since she was one of the few people ever to write a poem about me.

Then there was Jon, who, like Susan was a classmate of mine, and Susan’s younger sister, Phyllis, who became my girlfriend. A sweet but somewhat shadowy guy called David lived there too, though I was never quite sure what he did. Andrew, a book designer and artist who I’d known since junior high school, hung around a lot. There were other Greenough groupies as well.

We took turns cooking, and ate our meals together. Sometimes they were quite intense. In the midst of some lively dinner conversation one evening, just as I was bringing a glass of water to my mouth Susan asked what the time was. I reflexively turned my arm to look at my watch, thereby dumping the full contents of the glass onto my lap. Everyone got a good laugh out of that, including me.

In the spring Danny imported a guru from India to give some lectures at Harvard. On his visit to Greenough Ave the guru offered to dispense free mantras, with which we could mediate. When my turn came he sat cross-legged on the pillow at the head of my narrow bed, while I faced him cross-legged at the foot. He intently examined me, or perhaps my aura, and after a bit of meditation solemnly presented me with my mantra. I remember it, and when I very occasionally meditate these days, I still use it. “It is very important,” the guru said, “to never say your mantra out loud, or to share it with anyone.” I treasure it, and have kept that promise.

After my mantra was bestowed, I began meditating for 20 minutes every day. In the balmy Massachusetts summer I would climb out through the third-floor hall window, cushion in hand, to the old rusty fire escape. I sat cross-legged on the fire escape platform, closed my eyes, and silently recited my mantra, over and over. It was sublime. Occasionally some passing kids looked up and noticed me. They would yell to get my attention, but I kept still, eyes closed, focusing on my mantra. One time, out of the corner of my consciousness I heard a kid say, “Hey, he’s not moving. Do you think he’s dead?” Another answered, “I don’t know; let’s find out.” So they began throwing a tennis ball at me. I steadfastly leaned into my mantra, and tried to erase the irritating kids from my awareness. But the repeated flights of the tennis ball were hard to completely ignore. Fortunately, the fire escape’s elaborate ironwork prevented any direct hits, and the kids eventually lost interest. I guess they thought I really might have been dead.

As psychology students, Danny and Barbara were reflective, and “self-aware.” At one point they both began advocating not just mindfulness, but avoidance of a focus on the self. Thus, they took down all the mirrors in the house, telling us that we shouldn’t be looking at ourselves so much— “look inward, not outward,” or something like that (this was the ‘60’s). Ha, I thought, easy for them to say! They were both not only self-aware, but self-confident and very good looking. What about the rest of us, I fretted, who were much less secure, and needed to make sure our hair was combed and that we didn’t have any bits of lettuce between our teeth before we went to class? I was pleased that before too long the mirrors went back up.

One momentous day Ram Dass paid us a visit, or more accurately paid Danny a visit. Recently back from India, he had a long, grayish beard, and was sheathed in white robes. A string of sandalwood beads hung from his neck. He sat on a stool in the kitchen, placidly drinking the tea that Danny had prepared for him. Those of us lucky enough to be home when he arrived clustered expectantly around him. Ram Dass told us a few stories about life in Mahara-ji’s ashram, but mostly talked about how it felt to be back in the United States, particularly how annoying certain things were. What I remember best is his complaint about his white Jaguar, which had apparently been given to him by an acolyte. “It drives really well,” Ram Dass allowed, “but it’s not very reliable. The damn thing is always in the shop.” This somewhat lessened my awe of him. But maybe he was trying to demonstrate that even while living a deeply spiritual life one mustn’t lose sight of the practical side of things.

During our time together at Greenough we did some moderately weird things—this was the 60’s. One Saturday evening, for example, “we had an idea of mine for dinner,” as I put it later. This is what dinner was like: I lined 28 small paper bags with 28 plastic ones and filled each with bite-sized portions of a different food. Thus, one bag contained chunks of avocado, another cookies, and another, oysters. There were bags of carrots, walnuts, cucumbers, dates stuffed with cream cheese, cubes of bread, banana slices, figs, swiss cheese, and eggs, to name a few more. All my housemates were there, and we invited lots of others, including my cousin Carole. Each person got their own bag. Next, we closed the curtains, turned some music on and the lights off. Then the fun began.

Like dust motes in a shaft of sunlight, in the pitch darkness people began randomly circulating around the room. When two came into contact, without saying a word each was to grab a piece of their bag’s contents, then find the mouth of the other person and feed it to them. So, I might suddenly find a prune in my mouth, while I would feel for the mouth of the prune-bearer and feed it a brussels sprout. When a pair had exchanged bites, they separated, and the Brownian motion continued. The result was that at the end of the evening we had each experienced an unpredictable juxtaposition of textures, smells, and tastes. And of course each person’s order of ingestion was quite different. Some found dinner rather horrifying, while others discovered unique and surprisingly tasty combinations. Subsequently, some of these unusual fusions showed up in Greenough Ave meals.

Just a few weeks ago I came across the poem that Meredith had written way back then. That inspired me to track her down. With the magic of the internet, I found her within five minutes. I learned that she had become a published poet and a composer. Her email address popped up too. I wrote her: “Hi, Meredith, this is Ken Klein. As you recall, long ago we lived together with a bunch of other people on Greenough Avenue in Cambridge…” Then, to jog her memory, I mentioned her poem. Here was her response: “Dear Ken, I did live in a group house with Dan Goleman and others in Cambridge—is that what you’re referring to?” Obviously, she had no memory of me, despite my poetic prompt. Deflated, but undeterred I wrote back and reminded her that I had started the commune with Susan. Then I briefly told her about my family and where I was now living. Her reply made it clear that she still didn’t remember me. Nevertheless, she told me about her work teaching children with learning disabilities via Zoom, and that her youngest daughter had gone to art school in Seattle. She concluded, “I have been a certified teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique since 1971—inspired by meeting Dan Goleman so long ago! Thanks for organizing that home, that shifted my life’s trajectory in a wonderful way.” Though she didn’t remember me, I at least had a role in shifting her life’s trajectory. I guess that’s no small thing.

Significance or Coincidence?

/8 Comments/in

A few days ago, I accidently dropped my vitamin D pill on the kitchen counter. It bounced a few times, rolled, and came to rest on its edge rather than on its side! Incredible, I thought. What were the chances of that?

My wife, Annie, says that when she looks at a digital clock, she’s surprised how often the time is 11:11. Very perplexing—why should this special time come up more frequently than other times?

We recently bought a box of Maldon Sea Salt. According to the manufacturer, this special salt is composed of “soft crunchy flakes”. It’s been made in Maldon, a tiny town on the Blackwater estuary in Essex, England, for four generations. Shortly after buying the salt, I got a birthday card from a good friend who lives in Portland. The card featured a lovely painting of the very same Maldon! Entitled “The Promenade,” it included a church, and a glimpse of the waterfront where the boats that collect the salty estuary water that’s turned into those soft, crunchy flakes are moored. When Diane called to wish me happy birthday, she told me she bought the card many years ago during a trip to the UK. For some reason, she felt impressed to choose it for my birthday this year. Amazing that she had held on to it for all those years, and finally sent it just after we bought some Maldon salt! How likely was that?

In 1995 Lena Paahlsson lost her wedding band, which was studded with seven small diamonds. She had taken off the ring to do some Christmas baking in her kitchen in Mora, a little town in central Sweden. (By the way, coincidently—or maybe not—Mora and Maldon not only both begin with an “M,” but have almost exactly the same population.) Alas, the ring disappeared from the work surface. Lena and her husband, Ola, searched everywhere. They even pulled up the kitchen floor tiles during a subsequent remodel to look for it, but no luck. Then, sixteen years later, while harvesting vegetables in her garden the ring turned up, encircling a freshly picked carrot! Lena and Ola speculated that the ring had been swept up from the counter along with fruit and vegetable peelings, found its way first to the compost pile, and then into the garden. Perhaps just as miraculous as the ring’s recovery was that the article reporting this story failed to attempt any puns referring to the weight of the diamonds on Lena’s ring as gaining a carrot.

These four disparate stories are linked by the fact that each was quite unlikely. Does this mean that they represent four miracles? Or at least supernatural phenomena? Hmm, let’s think about it…

How many times have I dropped a pill, or a coin, or another asymmetrical object that bounced and landed, as expected, on its side rather than anomalously on its edge? Probably about a zillion. But I certainly don’t recall such droppings—they quickly fade from memory as “normal,” and not particularly interesting. But when the pill landed on its edge, it got my attention. In fact, it was so unusual that I even mentioned it to Annie. And I’ve remembered it.

And how often in the course of the day do we look at the time? I suspect that we do so quite frequently, and mostly unconsciously. (More than once I’ve had the experience of checking the time. Seconds later when Annie asked me what time it was, I couldn’t remember, and had to look again.) Thus, we don’t tend to remember when the clock says 7:34 or 12:49. But when it comes up all ones, that’s notable. In real life I’m pretty certain that we see 11:11 no more often than any other time of day. It’s just that such times stand out, and we remember their occurrence.

As for the Maldon card, its arrival might also have seemed remarkable if we’d just visited an old church, or just talked about the first snow of winter, or just got an email from friends with news about their sailboat, or just booked a flight to the UK. Any of these would have made an “amazing” connection with the card. A huge number of things present themselves to us in the course of a day. Thus, there are many potential opportunities for linking, and therefore generating significance, to two independent occurrences.

Finally, how many thousands of rings have been lost that were never plucked from a garden circled around a carrot? Or found anywhere else. I doubt that even a thorough Google search would turn up many astounding stories of lost wedding rings that were never recovered. Or of rings that somehow ended up in the garden soil where a growing vegetable nudged the ring, but pushed it aside rather than growing through it. In other words, the very unusual occurrence makes the news, but we never hear about the denominator: all the sad, lost rings that never turn up, on a carrot or otherwise.

This is in no way to diminish the delight of such stories. The pill-on-edge might not be a miracle, 11:11 may not appear more often than other times, some supernatural power may not have induced Diane to send that card (but even I can’t say for certain that this was not the case), and there might not have been a special reason why the carrot was directed to grow through Lena Paahlsson’s ring. Nevertheless, all these occurrences are sources of enchantment and mystery. Not only are they magical, they make us more conscious of the world around us, and are to be savored. More prosaically, they even provoke learning. For example, due to the Maldon juxtaposition, I was prompted to read about Maldon salt, and then salt in general. Now, I’m tickled to be able to tell people that the Maldon salt flakes are “soft and crunchy” because the water collected from the Blackwater estuary is processed in a special way so that the salt crystallizes out in pyramidal structures. And get this: there’s at least one person in the world, Mark Bitterman, who is so obsessed with salt that he considers himself a “selmelier.” He has a shop in New York City that sells 130 varieties of the stuff, including, of course, Maldon sea salt. Thank you, Diane, for sending me that wonderful Maldon birthday card—without it I would have known none of these salty facts.

At least for a few days now I’ll be more conscious of when I look at the clock. The landing of my humble vitamin D pill provoked me to calculate the chances of various other outcomes, such as flipping a penny and coming up with five heads in a row. And reading the carrot article makes me think fondly of Lena Paahlsson, who is hopefully still wearing her carroted ring as she bakes and, together with Ola, picks vegetables from her garden. Don’t take that ring off again, Lena!