Archive for category: Uncategorized

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.

When I was courting my wife, one night at dinner her 5-year-old daughter asked, “Mama, why do Jewish men always stick out their pinky when they drink tea?” I immediately put down my cup. “Why do you ask, sweetie?” Annie said to Hillary, who answered, “Well, Kenny just did it, and our other Jewish friend, Alan, does it too.”

Hillary had made a generalization based on two observations. Annie and I were amused, but skeptical that a larger sample of tea-drinking Jewish men would support her inference. (By the way, I’m still not convinced that I raise my pinky when I drink tea, but who knows, maybe I do. I’ll have to remember to ask Hillary.)

We’re all guilty of faulty inductive reasoning. Recently I was in Yakima, Washington doing covid testing. Our team’s main focus was the Yakama (curiously, spelled differently than the city) Nation since they had been particularly hard-hit by the virus. With the cooperation of tribal elders, we visited several Yakama housing developments and went door-to-door asking residents if they were interested in being tested. The little houses in the first development were old, with peeling paint and an occasional broken window. The yards were rocky and weedy, and there was broken glass by the sides of the roads. Despite the sad surroundings, the residents were upbeat, and thanked us for our work. The next two developments were similar. That was enough for me to conclude that all Yakama tribal housing was poor and run down. I wondered if this “truth” extended to other Washington tribes, and perhaps even beyond the state.

Then toward the end of the week we went to another housing development on the reservation. It was totally different. The entrance was protected by a remote-controlled gate. The roads were clean and well-paved. The houses, beautifully constructed with a combination of wood and stone, were carefully cared for. And the yards had nicely mown lawns. So much for my impression of Yakama Nation Housing! I realized that based on just a few cases I’d made an unfounded inference, perhaps unconsciously invoking a pernicious stereotype of Native American reservations.

Since the time of the Greeks, philosophers have addressed “the problem of induction.” A typical formulation goes like this: I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, since it’s risen every day in memory. Moreover, there are no counterexamples of the sun not rising. Thus, I conclude that the sun will continue to rise every day. So far, so good. But among other issues, the question is how many instances do we need to be secure in the belief that the sun will indeed rise every morning—or that all Jewish men hoist their pinkies aloft while drinking tea, or that all Yakama reservation housing is run-down?

Bertrand Russell makes the point that a chicken who’s fed every day expects this pattern to continue, ad infinitum. But then one day, instead of feeding it, the farmer wrings its neck and has it for dinner. So much for the predictive value of chicken induction. But I have to say, in this case Russell’s hen was much happier with her unwarranted conclusion than she would have been had she acknowledged the uncertainties of inductive reasoning. That is, being secure in the false belief that she would be always be fed daily seems a much better state of mind than waking up worrying about whether or not some grain would appear, or considering that her neck might be wrung.

Usually, when we employ inductive reasoning we’re not trying to shield ourselves from the possibility of a grim outcome. Rather, we think we’re deriving a truth, thereby increasing our understanding of the world. But we need to use induction with great care. It’s all too easy to generalize from limited, and possibly misleading, information. This can lead to erroneous and damaging conclusions. If we’re to properly use inference we need to observe carefully, make tentative hypotheses that are subject to further testing, and avoid coming to premature conclusions. In other words, keep an open mind. I think I’ll meditate on that over a cup of tea.

Dated October 25, 1883, an item in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania’s “Weekly Notes of Cases” announces a divorce petition. It was filed by Marcus Heilbron, who wished to leave his wife, Rosa. Marcus states that Rosa “hath offered such indignities to the person of your petitioner as to render his condition intolerable and his life burdensome, and thereby forced him to expend several hundred dollars, as she, the said Rosa, demanded a trip to Europe and was bound to see her parents in Europe and other relatives, and left your petitioner alone at Homestead, in Pennsylvania, and your petitioner was forced to give up his home and break up housekeeping, and thus rendered the condition of your petitioner intolerable and his life miserable and burdensome, and the fact that she remained away and became the scandal and talk of the neighborhood of Homestead, Pennsylvania.”

The unhappy couple were my paternal great grandparents. What isn’t mentioned in Marcus’ petition is that when Rosa fled to Germany, she brought along my grandmother, Rena. I have a copy of the ship’s log of The Aller, documenting their return trip to the US from Germany. Rosa’s age is listed as 37, and little Rena was 2. They arrived in New York on February 23, 1892. The Weekly Notes says that Marcus initiated divorce proceedings on April 11, just six weeks after Rosa and Rena returned home.

Apparently, the time apart didn’t cool the passions on either side. In the petition Marcus goes on to complain that after she came back from Germany, his wife displayed “many outbursts of temper, not confined to bad language and threats, but accompanied by acts of great violence, and are scarcely denied by the respondent herself.” Marcus further states that “She admits that she broke a glass door in his store, and interfered with his customers; that she broke dishes and threw them down the stairs, threw hot coffee on the girl, and on two occasions, when her stepsons complained of the dinner, she brought in slop and threw it on the table.” It certainly appears that my great grandmother had a fiery temper, no doubt provoked by Marcus’ abuse. I’m sure he made it clear to one and all how much he loathed his wife, and wished to leave her, and thus Rena as well.

I also have a copy of a ship’s log for a voyage taken almost exactly 59 years after Rosa and Rena returned from Germany. Joyce Klein, age 33, and her son Kenneth, age 2, are listed as traveling in tourist class on the Queen Elizabeth. It sailed from New York on February 16, 1951. My mother was taking me to Germany so we could meet up with my father, who had left home some weeks previously to do research in the laboratory of a German scientist in Berlin. This was less than six years after the conclusion of WWII, in which my father had fought the Germans for five years. My father had lost relatives in the camps on both Rena’s side and his father’s side of the family.

Perhaps even more remarkable than that my father chose to work in Germany so soon after the war was that by going there he left my brother, who had been born just months previously. More amazing still is that my mother too left her infant son; when she and I boarded the Queen Elizabeth, Doug was a mere four months old. Years later, after I became a parent, I asked my father how he could possibly have left Doug at such an early age. He blithely replied, “He was so young, he didn’t know the difference.” And how could my mother do so? “Your mother was very strong-willed. She really wanted to come to Europe while I was there.” And who took care of my brother while the rest of the family were in Europe? “We found a lady from the Salvation Army.”

The recent discoveries of Marcus’s divorce petition and the ships’ logs has created an even deeper bond between me and my grandmother. At the age of two, our mothers took each of us across the ocean to Germany. Both voyages were triggered by our fathers: Rena’s mother was fleeing from her abusive father, while my mother was taking me in tow to reunite with my father. But even though the motives for each trip were different, Rena and I both must have felt apprehension, confusion, and fear.

My grandmother was no doubt a front-row witness to the tense and violent relationship between her parents. From the divorce petition we know only Marcus’ side. But family lore has it that he deserved everything my great-grandmother served him—broken dishes, slop, and all. And though my mother was taking me to–not away from–my father, I must have been very aware that my baby brother had been left behind. He was abandoned first by my father, and now by my mother. Though she chose to take me along this time, what guarantee was there that it wouldn’t be Kenny who would be left with the Salvation Army lady on the next trip?

So as my grandmother walked the decks of The Aller in 1892, and I walked the decks of the Queen Elizabeth 59 years later, I doubt that we were carefree children enjoying our ocean voyages. More likely, we were each anxious about the family dynamics, and worried about what we would find on our return home.

I don’t remember being consciously aware of my parents’ abandonment of my brother. And I wouldn’t be surprised that after the divorce my grandmother repressed her awareness of her parents’ mutually abusive behavior. But she couldn’t ignore her father’s absence; after the divorce he left, and cut all communication with his family.

When she was about ten, in an act of tremendous courage my grandmother found out where Marcus was living and went to his house. He refused to talk to her, or even acknowledge her presence. Thus, repressed or not, her early childhood memories of rejection were resurrected and reinforced. And when, just before I turned fifteen, my mother died of cancer, her death reverberated as the ultimate abandonment of not only my brother, but of me.

The trolley problem is one of the most famous thought experiments in ethics. You are asked to imagine that there’s a runaway trolley racing down the line. It’s headed toward a group of five people who are tied to the tracks with no prospect of escape. From your vantage point in the trolly yard you have access to a lever that can divert the trolley onto another set of tracks, on which a single person is tied. The question is, would you pull the lever? Numerous surveys have found that about 90% of people would do so.

In a variant of the trolly problem, you’re on a bridge watching the trolley barrel down toward those five tied-up people. Standing next to you is a man. You know that if you push him off the bridge, his bulk will stop the trolley, saving the people bound to the tracks. Not surprisingly, even though the outcome is identical to the first instance–sacrificing one life to save five others–far fewer people would push the man off the bridge.

We’ve got mice in our garage. Lots of them. They gnaw into bags of stored food, poop everywhere, and for all I know promiscuously spread hantavirus. They’ve got to go. But the idea of poisoning them, or even setting up kill traps, is abhorrent to me—they’re simply cute, furry innocents doing what mice are supposed to do. So, I’m using a “live trap.” The critters are lured by peanut butter into a little plastic cage, which captures them without harm. Each morning I check the trap. If a mouse has been caught, I drive it to a nearby forest and release it beside a decaying tree stump. Most often, little Mickey frisks out of the trap, sniffs the air right and left, then rushes right into a hole in the base of the stump. I’ve been very pleased with myself for this arrangement.

For confirmation that I was doing the right thing, I Googled ‘the most humane way to rid your house of mice’. I was startled to read that, overwhelmingly, the advice from animal advocacy groups is that quick and certain death with an old-fashioned snap trap was the way to go. How could that be? Well, it turns out that the kind of mice that end up infesting houses don’t do well in the wild, especially when transplanted far from where they were trapped. They can’t adapt to the new environment and perish due to starvation, disease, or predation. Yikes!

Even so, after reading this thoughtful advice I’ve persisted in “humanely” trapping the mice and transporting them to what is apparently certain sylvan death. In other words, I’ve continued to pull the lever rather than push the man off the bridge, thus distancing myself from directly causing their demise. Even worse, as opposed to the trolley problem, where the two modes of death are equally sudden, it appears that out of cowardice I’m opting for the more inhumane mode of exit.

Well, of course, the rationalizations came flooding in: Maybe the forest wasn’t all that far from our house, or maybe these particular woods harbored plenty of rodent-friendly food and water. Maybe the previous releasees had been able to set up house in the hole in the stump, so the new arrivals would be welcomed into a thriving colony of their former housemates. Maybe these environs weren’t rife with rodential predators. But on the other hand, if there were predators, and the mouse was going to die anyway, wouldn’t it be better that it served as nourishment for the resident eagles and foxes and owls rather than being thrown in the trash after getting whacked by a snap trap? Finally, in any case, even if the released mice had only a slim chance of living a full woodsy life, wouldn’t that be a better alternative than certain death in our garage?

And yet… All the organizations associated with animal welfare were clear: they strongly advocate a quick and painless death as the most humane alternative–my rationalizations were fooling only me. But, I must admit, I still haven’t changed my practice. The fact is, it’s so much easier to pull a lever than to push someone off a bridge. So, so sorry, my little furry friends.

My parents’ passions were pretty much all in their heads. My father’s life was science. Making new discoveries and getting them published was his highest aspiration. Based on the time he spent with each, it seemed clear to me that he loved his lab more than his family. As for my mother, she wanted to “have it all” decades before that became a term. Having children was part of it, but mothering seemed less important than the work part of “all”. She ran a social work agency. She was president of the local Hadassah chapter. She was a university professor. As I was growing up, she got a PhD. In fact, my recollection is that she nurtured her thesis more than she nurtured her sons. When I was ten she required me to help her proofread her dissertation, a long and agonizing undertaking. My reward was a complicated game called Brainiac that never seemed to work right, and that I never enjoyed.

Such cerebral passions were hard for a kid, even a nerdy one like me, to accept. But I vividly remember two instances of physical passions, each of which made a deep impression because they seemed so out of character. One time, armed with plastic pails, we were all gathering blackberries. The pails quickly filled with shiny, jewel-like fruit. Except for my father’s. Why not? He put virtually every berry he picked into his mouth. Soon his hands were stained purple, as was his white shirt (he almost always wore white shirts). He had a goofy grin and vocalized crudely—mostly “umm, umm, umm!” I found his visual and audible display of blackberry passion more upsetting than endearing.

My mother’s physical passion also involved eating. She loved corn on the cob. She would slather it with butter, then shake pepper over it until it nearly turned black; the corn looked like it was crawling with ants. But what impressed–and disturbed–me most was not the peppery excess, but the intensity with which she applied it, and the lust with which she consumed the corn.

Although it didn’t increase my sense of being nurtured, seeing my parents experience such pleasure from food reassured me that they were at least somewhat normal. But at the same time these behaviors seemed undignified and embarrassing, in fact almost carnal. My reaction recalled the time, while rummaging through the top shelf in my parents’ bedroom closet (they were, of course, both at work), I discovered a big red box of Trojans. Yikes, my parents actually did it! How unexpected, and how gross!

My childish feelings toward my parents are an example of how we tend to reduce people to a few salient features. In other words, we make them into cartoons. This can be useful since it gives us a handle on who they are. But it’s way too simple: though my parents were indeed in their heads much of the time, they were more complicated than that. Their heads were connected to their bodies. And these bodies were passionate about certain foods, almost certainly enjoyed other sensory experiences, and yes, even made love.

If we can avoid reductionistic views of people, we can more fully appreciate them in all their contradictions and complexity. I aim to try to do so in all my relationships. Enjoy those berries, dad, and have another ear of corn, mom!