My first cousin G and I, born two years apart, were named
after the same great-grandfather.
Except for that, we had very little in common as children; at the time I
thought we couldn't be more unlike.
What a difference sixty years can make!
I remember the young G mostly as a baseball aficionado who
could quote every imaginable statistic about players, particularly those on his
team, the New York Yankees. I wasn't all that much into baseball, but
perversely didn't root for the same team as he. There were then three teams in New York City: the Yankees,
the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was a Dodgers fan.
I particularly recall one of the infrequent instances when
we were together—probably at some family holiday function—lying on the floor in
G's living room listening to a radio broadcast of a game in the 1941
Yankees-Dodgers World Series, each rooting for his own team. It had an ending for the books. The Yankees—ahead 2-1 in the
Series—were behind by one run in the ninth and at bat with two outs and two
strikes. One more strike would tie
the Series. A swing and a miss,
which should have ended the game; but the ball got away from the Dodgers'
catcher, Mickey Owen, allowing the batter to reach first base. To my outrage, the Yankees went on to
win the game (and later the Series).
(In those days, real-time commentary on a game was
distributed nationally by teletype, which announcers at each station used as
they simulated the excitement of the actual play with exuberant voices—not
against a background of roaring fans, only of a clacking teletypewriter. In a game like the one I just
described, it could still be electrifying; I can even now hear the announcer
screamingly reporting Owen's error.)
I'm sure G remembers the young me mostly hunched over the
radio equipment I was constantly constructing, particularly after the War, when
amateur radio was again allowed and I built and rebuilt my station, W2QKU. I was more concerned with contacting at
least one amateur in each of the then-48 states and in as many countries as I
could, than in conversing with anyone nearby. Morse code was my preferred medium of communication. I think the word "nerd" was
coined with me in mind.
The last time G and I saw each other as youngsters was when
I was going off to college in 1947.
He was finishing high school.
Now fast-forward to early 2011, about a year before I
started blogging. G and I were
brought back into contact in connection with a long-standing family matter
which required a decision. By
then, mirabile dictu! the two of us were
professors emeriti, limping into our eighties. I had retired from UC Berkeley as a professor of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science.
G had retired from a prestigious eastern university as a professor of
English. I soon discovered that he
is a world-renowned scholar of the culture of Victorian England—not only of its
literature per se but how its
literati and scientists interacted and the effect their interaction had on
literature, science, philosophy and society at large. Still vastly apart in interests, I thought.
Never the less, when I started this blog I included G in an
email notice to friends and relatives, linking to my first posting and asking
whether they wanted to receive further notices. G opted in, which started a voluminous, wide-ranging email
correspondence between us, often triggered by one of my postings. At some length, we discussed religion,
cosmology, philosophy, metaphysics, evolution, free will and consciousness, politics,
education, the internet and its effect on society, and also our family circle
when we were young and what we each had learned from it. Being academics, our tone was usually
abstract; yet when writing about our common family it was very nostalgic and
personal.
Our correspondence was of course touched by the vast
difference in our careers. G is an
expert on literature and on how science has influenced it and society; I am an
engineer, with a dilettantish passion for expounding on anything and
everything, as those who follow this blog know. As might be expected, we have divergent views on some
matters, but surprisingly few. I'm
impatient with abstract philosophy, particularly when tinged with metaphysics;
philosophy is part of his professional bag of tricks. He was atheistic a lifetime before I was, though neither of
us is militantly so. He has a
niggling yearning for a secular understanding of a First Cause; I am content
with an emerging model of a multiverse that has forever been spawning new
universes in big bangs, which for me obviates a need for a first instant or
First Cause. And our mental data
banks must be vastly dissimilar.
Still, here's what G and I find most astonishing: Despite
having had little to do with each other as youths, having spent more than 60
years out of touch, having had such different careers, and not having precisely
the same stance on such minutiae as First Cause, our mind sets are so alike
that we now think of ourselves as intellectual twins. There is almost no disagreement on the very broad array of
topics about which we corresponded. So, very strangely, we arrived at nearly identical world
views via enormously different paths.
It must be that genes and a common early family experience trumped our
disparate professional careers.
Not many unexpected bonuses crop up for an
octogenarian. This was one for
me: finding a long-lost cousin
with whom I can carry on extensive correspondence. It is a windfall that has exhilarated me beyond all
expectation.
They say blood is thicker than water. If so, G's and mine must be as good as coagulated.
They say blood is thicker than water. If so, G's and mine must be as good as coagulated.