Just Jake

America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Astute economists predict we're on the brink of another Roaring '20s, according to Axios.

"The economy may be close to consolidating years of technological advances—and ready to take off in a burst of productivity growth," Axios says. Those advances include digitization, AI, robotics, remote work, solar, and biomedicine.

A spree is overdue.

Although World War II drove three decades of productivity gains, that growth all but stopped in the 1970s. Despite a blip in the 1990s—attributable to computers—productivity has stagnated ever since.

But businesses have been investing in the new technologies over the past decade, and are mastering their use, Axios says. As a result, they're situated at the very bottom of a "productivity J-curve." 

They are ready to skyrocket. A survey by the World Economic Forum reveals 80% of businesses are accelerating digitization; 80%, remote work; and 50%, job automation. A big productivity leap is right around the corner.

That's just jake, as they would have said in the 1920's.

Bad Breaks

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on
in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace,
like a clock during a thunderstorm.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

While 2020 brought misfortune to so many, it was kind to me—so much so, I often felt spooked. 

The things that went well for me all went exceedingly well, while the things that went wrong were without consequence.

I often felt like Jean-Paul Sartre's fearless skier, who enjoys such complete dominion over the slopes that he glides down them weightlessly, not even leaving tracks in the snow. (He is Sartre's metaphor for the unbounded ego.)

I felt like that skier, anyway, until last Sunday, when a fall on the ice in my driveway left me with five breaks in the bones that form my left ankle.

Now I'm an invalid; in pain and facing surgery; and will be laid up in a cast for over three months.

The caregivers in the ER were all quick to point out, "Just be happy you didn't conk your head on the pavement."

They were absolutely right, of course.

I'm happy I didn't hit my head. I'm also happy for the good neighbors who rushed to my rescue; for the ambulance drivers who arrived in 10 minutes and wheeled me out of the house and into the hospital; for the doctors and nurses on duty in the ER last Sunday, and for the surgeon who's going to install plates and screws in my leg next week; for sympathetic friends and relatives; for my oldest son, who played sitter while my wife finished her last week on the job (she's retiring); and for my wife, who's playing sitter now—and will for another 12 weeks, provided I behave.

As she pointed out, given the lockdown, I picked an excellent time to break five bones. Or the excellent time picked me.

She's sleeping right now and I'm perched on the sofa with my splinted leg up on a hassock. The only sounds are those of the windchimes outdoors, an occasional car on the road, and the tick-tock of the kitchen clock.

I pray for a quiet mind in 2021. "Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace," Stevenson said.

Even a fortunate son is liable to bad breaks.

How about you?  

Above: "Clock" by John Murray.

Christmas 1779

Christmases tended to be tough on the Father of Our Country.

In 1740, George Washington's boyhood home burned to the ground on Christmas Eve. The family sheltered in the cook-house for what the eight-year-old later called "a cheerless Christmas Day."

In 1753, while stationed on the frontier with the Virginia militia, Washington spent Christmas Eve at a trading post named Murdering Town, where his troops did battle with the French and Indians.

In 1759, during the couple's first Christmas together, George and Martha Washington stayed in separate rooms at Mount Vernon, because Martha was violently ill with the measles.

In 1776, on the darkest Christmas of the American Revolution, Washington crossed the Delaware.

In 1799, only two weeks before Christmas, Washington caught a wicked head cold and died.

Washington's Christmas of 1779 was quite a bit better.

The day saw the commander-in-chief and his Continental Army hunkered down in bucolic Morristown, New Jersey. 

Three weeks before, Washington had chosen the village as his army's winter quarters, because a nearby mountain chain made it invulnerable to British attack. He summarily ordered his troops to build log cabins to live in, and threatened the villagers with martial law, if they failed to open their homes to his officers. 

A merchant named Ford loaned his home to Washington, a house so luxurious it prompted George to ask Martha to travel from Mount Vernon to the Ford Mansion, to join him there for the holidays.

On Christmas Day, the couple dined in comfort in the Ford home; and while they dined, in a tavern two blocks away Benedict Arnold stood trial for war-profiteering—a charge he'd be cleared of, but barely.

Nine months later, Arnold would betray Washington, committing the deed that still makes his name synonymous with treason: conspiring to surrender West Point to the British.

A Cunning Plan

George Washington died of a throat infection 221 years ago this week.

But he almost didn't.

Aware he was dying—and afraid of being buried alive—Washington begged his personal secretary to assure him his body would not be interred until three days after his death. 

Accordingly, Washington lay on view in the "saloon" of Mount Vernon for the three days after his last breath.

But a certain Dr. William Thornton wasn't having it.

He had a cunning plan.

A European-trained physician, Thornton had been summoned to Washington's bedside three days before, in order to save the dying president through tracheotomy. Arriving late, Thornton found Washington not in bed, but "laid out a stiffened corpse" in a wooden casket in the saloon.

So the good doctor pivoted, as he described years later in a scientific paper:

"The weather was very cold, and Washington remained in a frozen state for several days," Thornton wrote. "I proposed to attempt his restoration, in the following manner: first to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb."

Washington's relatives rejected Thornton's ghoulish plan, asking would it be right "to recall to life one who had departed full of honor and renown; free from the frailties of age; in the full enjoyment of every faculty; and prepared for eternity?”

Scorned, Thornton asked the family to consider replacing Washington's wooden casket with a lead one, so the dead president might some day be removed from Mount Vernon to the new US Capitol.

The family gave the late president his lead coffin; but the body still lays in the family vault, just a stone's throw from the saloon.

Above: George Washington's life mask.

December 1943

You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.

― Toba Beta

Think you have it rough this Christmas, snowflake?

Our forebears had it rougher.

I wouldn't trade all of 2020 for a day during 1943.

In December of that year, a planetary war was raging and America was "in the midst of fully mobilizing," says archivist Kevin Thomas.

"For families looking forward to celebrating, if such a sensation were practicable, the resources to do so were as strained as they would be for the entire war—both materially and emotionally."

In December 1943, Thomas notes, the buildup to D-Day was in full force. Americans heard the president on the radio on Christmas Eve announce that General Eisenhower would lead the invasion.

Around the country, Americans not in uniform competed for jobs and housing. Paychecks were frozen. Inflation was rampant. Unions were striking and Blacks rioting. The government had to nationalize the railroads and coal mines to assure their operation. And women had to go to work full time in shipyards and tank factories.

In December 1943, you had to use stamps to buy meat, coffee, bread and butter—and you couldn't buy a new pair of shoes, an icebox, tires, or a car. 

Often you ate meatless dinners from your Victory Garden, and your Christmas dinner likely came from a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese. You didn't dare drive anywhere for the holidays—there was no gas, your tires were bald, and the cops were on the lookout for "nonessential travelers." 

If you had any money and wanted to give someone a Christmas gift, it was likely going to be a war bond.

But you knew you had it a lot better than the millions of Americans in uniform stationed overseas—particularly those in the combat theaters.

Above: Freedom from Fear, Norman Rockwell. 1943.