Maximizing Minimalism

The idea of minimalism has always appealed to me in concept. The idea of making due with just the few essential items that one needs or wants and nothing more is quite attractive. I have gone through multiple bouts of organizing and decluttering, and though I am fairly well organized and have (mostly) avoided hoarding old newspapers and such, I still have a lot of material accumulation. I am not talking about valuable paintings or a garage full of classic cars, but more sentimental items that I can’t bring myself to get rid of, or backup parts for things that might get lost or need to be replaced but probably won’t. 

For example, a few years ago one of the little rubber feet for my stand mixer went missing, causing the mixer to wobble back and forth on the counter like a table in a cheap bistro. I could only find a full set of five available for purchase and though they were not expensive, I still have four left sitting in a drawer against an unlikely future in which I lose another of those feet. You know as well as I that as long as I have those spare parts, the feet are secure. The moment I throw them out, one will disappear. Of course, Marie Kondo says toss ‘em; they don’t ‘spark joy’. “If you need another, buy it again,” but my frugal side won’t permit this. 

So I have come to enjoy what I think of as short-term minimalism in the form of travel. In 1986, Barbara and I hopped on board a People Express flight ($99 D.C. to Brussels) and began a 16-month trip around the world with just a backpack each. Inside were all the clothes we would need for every kind of weather, sleeping bags and pads, a tent, a cook stove, and a set of pots. This kit took us from the sweltering heat of the Negev Desert to below freezing temperatures at the top of Mt. Kenya. 

More recently, I have been determined to never fly anywhere regardless of how long a trip with more than will fit in an overhead bin. I’ve spent a month in Israel with a carry-on bag. 

Now, as Barbara wraps up her final months of regular employment, we are beginning to prepare for the ultimate road trip and the question of exactly what we should, what we can, take with us is at the fore. 

In case you missed it, back in the summer of 2020, we were shopping for a camping solution. My old bones do not enjoy sleeping on the ground as much as they once did. Truth be told, they never enjoyed it all that much. We looked at tiny teardrop campers, Casitas, truck slide-ins, and even old VW Hippie Vans. None seemed quite right for us. We didn’t want to tow something and my conscience won’t allow me to drive something that has horrible fuel economy, even when, at the time, gas was around $2.25 a gallon. (Our Honda Civic gets 45 mpg on the highway.)

As we were preparing to drive home from a long visit with the kids in Colorado, we stopped to check out the work of a guy we’d found who converts Toyota Sienna minivans into Campers. He calls his company Oasis Campervans. One look and we knew we had found our solution. We drove home, bought a used Sienna and drove back to Colorado. Three weeks later we had our camper. 

You probably know what a Toyota Sienna is, maybe you even have/had one. It is the classic soccer mom car. But though it is roomy for a car, as an RV it is, well, compact. Our has room for us to lie down at night and for the two of us to sit at a tiny table when in ‘day mode.’ Under the rear hatch there is a ‘kitchen,’ though for safety we have to move the stove out to a table to cook. But, our ‘RV’ drives like a car, parks like a car, and it gets 27 mpg on the highway. Not as good as the Civic but also not shameful. 

So far, we have traveled the length of New York State (with Barbara on a bicycle and me following along) and to Maine and back. This summer we are planning to go a little further afield by driving to Alaska. 

Yes, it’s really far. 

The distance and the length of time we will be on the road, means we need to be very thoughtful about what we bring. We have limited space and we just can’t bring it all. Decisions must be made and many of these go to the heart of my identity. 

For example, I have decided that we will leave behind the handblown glass Chemex Coffee brewer with which I prepare my coffee every morning, replacing it with a folding silicon pour-over filter holder that can make coffee directly into an insulated bottle. Less clear is whether I can survive without a coffee grinder, and drink pre-ground coffee for the duration. It would save precious space, but pre-ground coffee? Yikes! And is it even possible to make coffee without a kitchen scale? 

And those are just the issues around coffee! Still in question is the exact make-up of the rest of our batterie de cuisine. Should we bring the cast iron skillet AND the stainless-steel pan or just one of the two? Can we manage without a whisk? How many saucepans are required? What spices are essential and what can we live without. How much Diamond Crystal Salt is enough? 

Clothes present similar questions. The number of changes of underwear determine the days one can go without finding a laundromat. But the more changes of clothing, the more space they take. We need clothes for all weather. Alaska is wet and even in the summer it can be cold. We also need bulky items like hiking boots, rain gear, day packs and, of course, assorted computers, iPads and various technology. Room must also be found for bedding, pillows, lanterns, fuel for the stove, and a reasonable amount of reading material.

I actually love this process. I have often said that my favorite parts of travel are packing the van before the trip and unpacking it when we get home. I am joking, of course. Somewhat. I think I am not alone in the joy I feel arriving home after a long trip. But there is something challenging, even exciting, about the process of considering what you really need and what you can do without. Each item is carefully considered. Is there something smaller that can replace it? 

Of course, we can buy anything we need on the road but to me, buying something, even something inexpensive, that we already had but left at home represents a kind of failure, even if it is just a bottle of aspirin. I wasn’t as prepared as I should/could have been.

A friend who once owned a Sienna but no longer does offered me the old roof carrier still inhabiting his garage. It is tempting. We would be able to fill it with all kinds of items that we might need. It would dramatically expand the room for ‘just in case.’ But I am trying to avoid this. A roof carrier would no doubt lower our gas mileage a bit and feels like something of a cop out. It would also slightly detract from our stealth as a campervan. 

Departure is still more than a month away and there are still many weeks to whittle away at the supplies to pack and unpack many times to see exactly where each item should go. 

Travel is the best of both worlds. It’s an opportunity to rough it. A chance to understand what possessions are most essential to your comfort and happiness, all the while knowing you will eventually return home where all your spare parts live, where you never have to commit to just one skillet, and where your coffee will always be ground just before brewing.  

Knives out. Cut Loose.

Most everyone has their own vision of retirement, financial independence, or whatever you want to call waking up and not having to rush to work. Mostly comes down to this: owning your time day after day, week in and week out. Not having to trade your autonomy in exchange for food, clothing, shelter, and Starbucks. 

So - how to use that time when it is solely one’s own? Many of my hours are spent writing these pieces, helping maintain the household (shopping for groceries, cooking, fixing stuff that breaks), and taking long walks near home or on nearby trails. These make up my ‘work’ now. But there also is more time for leisure than heretofore. For me, leisure means reading, listening to music, and enjoying the occasional movie or TV series. Here are a few things that I can recommend. 

What I am reading.

Back when I was in college, I worked summers to help pay tuition. I worked mostly in restaurants bussing or waiting tables. If I had met Anthony Bourdain in one of the restaurants where I worked, I probably wouldn’t have liked him much. I tended to disapprove of colleagues who used drugs on the job, shouted profanity at the other staff (especially me), or who threw things at servers in the kitchen. By his own admission, Bourdain did all these in his time as a line cook and executive chef before he became a famous food writer and travel show host. 

But I met him as a reader of his breakthrough memoir, Kitchen Confidential, which I read for the first time around 2001. Bourdain was a talented writer and not only is the book laugh out loud funny, it changed the way I cook perhaps more profoundly than anything else I have ever read. I am rereading the book now and reflecting on the ways in which he influenced me. Three things stand out.

Blade. Bourdain’s take on the importance of the kitchen knife inspired me to buy a better knife, learn how to sharpen it myself, and to learn to use it in such a way that I wouldn’t cut my fingers off. I am still on the journey. In the 20 years since I first read Bourdain’s book, I have  obtained a number of chef’s knives each time getting a little closer to perfection. I have bought at least five different sharpening systems before finally learning to hand sharpen my trusty bit of steel on Japanese made whetstones which range from 400 to 5000 grit and a leather strop to polish the edge. I can now achieve an edge on my kitchen knives that will push through paper with just their own weight or shave arm hair, but I still keep trying to get them sharper. A sharp knife is a joy to cook with and far safer than a dull one. If you don’t know why, you don’t cook.

Ingredients. Bourdain taught me to disdain shortcuts that diminish the quality of the end product. An example of this is garlic that is pre-chopped and sold in a jar swimming in oil. As YouTube Wünderkind Adam Ragusea and others have demonstrated, there is no substitute for fresh garlic. As Bourdain says, “You don’t want to peel garlic? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”

Butter. Technically an ingredient but deserves a separate callout. Bourdain is hardly alone here. Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and most everyone agree: there is little that can’t be improved with butter. And a small amount goes a long way in terms of flavor. Pitch the Smart Balance (you know who you are, mom, dad). I don’t know what that stuff is, but it’s not food. 

Find a knife you love. Learn to keep it sharp. Chop some garlic and mash it into butter. Bake it in some nice bread. Mr. Bourdain, with his particular and distinct voice, taught us that yes, life can be this simple.

I wish I’d had the chance to have him throw something at me after all. 

What I am watching. 

If you have access to Apple TV+, try the new series, Severance. This darkly humous take on “work/life balance” is part science fiction and part Orwellian dystopia. It reminds me of several places I have worked. Lumon, the fictional company at the center of the series, has developed a technology that allows workers to completely separate their work life from their personal life. Office workers voluntarily undergo a procedure called severance in which a chip is inserted into their brain. From that point on, their memories are bifurcated. While at work, they can remember nothing of their personal lives. When outside of work, they recall nothing that happened there.  The work personalities are called “innies” and the outside personalities are “outties.” Why would someone agree to have this done? Mark Scout, lead character played by Adam Scott, lost his wife in a car accident. Severance offers him the chance to completely immerse himself into his work every day and not have to think about his loss. The other characters have their own reasons. One can’t help but reflect on the place in our lives that work fills. How it can distract us from the pain of living. How it intrudes on or contributes to our happiness and how much or little it is central to our identities. 

How often have we heard that we should leave our personal lives at home when we go into work or been told the corollary, “Get your love at home.” The advent of email, text, and portable technology has meant that work and personal life have been bleeding together for decades. And pandemic life has accelerated the trend this by eliminating even the geographical line between work and home. Severance asks us to consider if there should be a psychological line and where exactly and how firm a line it should be. It also seeks to answer the question, “Hey kids, what’s for dinner?”

What I am listening to.

When I am at home or driving, I usually stream either WRUR Rochester or WXPN Philadelphia. Both are public radio stations that play a lot of interesting and diverse music. It was on WXPN that I recently heard a track from the OG Rapper MC Lyte. She was big in the 1980 and 90s. I like rap, but embarrassingly, I was not familiar with her. The song I heard was “Cha Cha Cha” from the 1989 album, Eyes on This. I downloaded the whole album on Apple Music and have been loving it. 

Here is a sample of lyrics from “I Am The Lyte.”

“I just thought that I should mention 
'89 is the Lyte year 
Now's the time to roll like a rhinoceros 
Step to Lyte, that's preposterous

I'm heavyweight, though I'm lightweight 
My looks the hook, my rhymes the bait 
And when I throw the line you proceed to take 
The goody, the treat that I hand you

That you couldn't refuse 
Damn, I cram to understand you 
Your love is to Lyte to lose.”

Check out this video of her performing at the White House on January 10, 2016 for President Barack Obama, the last commander-in-chief who didn’t need to be told to clap on the back beat. 

As different as can be is the other album I am enjoying. It’s an album of Bob Dylan covers sung by Emma Swift titled, Blonde on the Tracks. Even if you (as I do) consider Bob Dylan to be the greatest American songwriter who ever lived, it is not out of the question that you might occasionally weary of his voice, particularly in its more recent manifestations. If so, this album may be for you with its fresh and melodious takes on Dylan from classics like “Simple Twist of Fate” to the more recent, “I Contain Multitudes.” Swift’s simple interpretations allow one to focus on the genius of the songwriter without the irritation of having to defend Mr. Zimmerman’s vocal stylings to family and friends. I only wish she had recorded twice as many songs.   “Going Going Gone” is particularly lovely. For totally different take on Dylan try also, Bettye LeVette’s album, Things Have Changed. Like the Swift album, LeVette also ends with “Going Going Gone.”

It makes sense. 

“I been hangin' on threads 
I been playin' it straight 
Now, I've just got to cut loose 
Before it gets late 
So I'm going 
I'm going 
I'm gone.”

Me too.

Decrypting Crypto

I have been intrigued with cryptocurrency since I first heard about it. Even the story of how the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, came to be is shrouded in mystery and drama. Created in secret by a still unidentified developer known as Satoshi who unleashed it to roam the world without further intervention of the creator, Bitcoin, like Frankenstein’s monster, is its own beast. The way fortunes were created from nothing and lost again (sometimes literally lost in a dumpster), has all the makings of B grade movie. I am thinking of something along the lines of Bride of Tulipomania Meets Bladerunner.

Then there is the powerful underlying technology which has potential to disrupt the financial industry as we know it, by eliminating middleman institutions like credit card companies and banks. 

But like any new concept or technology, it is hard to understand and see its potential until someone else has really made it ‘work.’ Crypto doesn’t quite work yet. 

I am what is called an ‘early adopter.’ (euphamism for ‘person who wastes money on unproven technology’) I had one of the early cassette recorders in the early 1970s when many were still rocking reel to reel if they had a tape recorder at all. I talked my mom into buying the first Macintosh computer in 1985 (I couldn’t afford to buy one myself) and I had one of the first Newton MessagePads (the precursor to modern smart phones) back in 1995. I bought one of the first iPhones. Likewise the iPad. I bought the first Apple Watch sight unseen from behind the firewall in the Apple Store where I worked at the time when it went on sale at 3:00 a.m. in March of 2015. 

I buy these things less for what they can actually do, since early models often don’t do very much, but more to understand how they work and what their potential might be in the future. That is to say, I like to play with toys. 

It was that kind of curiosity that led me to buy some cryptocurrency in 2017.  I did not buy it because I thought it would be a good investment. On the contrary, I expected that it might well become worthless and that I would, or at least could, lose every penny. 

I had wanted to own some Bitcoin for a while but what pushed me over the edge was the formation of a new kind of company, the ‘crypto bank.’ Previously, owning crypto meant needing to store your crypto in digital form on some kind of device. Preferably a hard disk or thumb drive that was not on a computer connected to the internet and ideally physically secured in a fireproof safe. If someone could gain access to the code that represented your crypto, they could steal it. It all seemed a bit too fussy for me and I was pretty sure that I would misplace the drive or lose the key to the safe.  

That changed when crypto banks created the equivalent of a brokerage account that could hold ones crypto in a password secured online account. One account could hold multiple currencies the way a Charles Schwab account can hold stocks in multiple companies. Yes, that account could be hacked just as any online account can be but I figured a big company would probably be better at managing security than I. They at least seemed like they knew what they were doing. I opened an account and bought:

•  $200 of Bitcoin

• $250 of Etherium

• $250 of Litecoin

Today there are dozens or even hundreds of cryptocurrencies, but in 2017 those were the big three. I figured if I actually owned some of the currencies I would be more likely to pay attention to what was happening as the technology changed and developed and perhaps even be able to explain it to others at some point. Here is my attempt to do just that. 

Cryptocurrency uses something call blockchain technology, which works something like this. When a transaction or a transfer takes place with bitcoin, that transaction is recorded over the internet on tens of thousands of computers at the same time. That makes it almost impossible to falsify or ‘counterfeit’ a crypto transaction. In the Bitcoin model, the same process that records and verifies the transaction also ‘mines’ or creates new crypto for the computers doing the verification, thus incentivizing the owners of those computers to do the necessary work of recording the transactions. The fewer computers doing the work, the greater the chance of success each individual processor has of earning more Bitcoin. This tends to keep the level of processing high enough to sustain the system. 

Currencies other than Bitcoin may use different systems but the basic idea is the same. The fact that the transactions are recorded publicly means that it is virtually impossible to falsify them. This has a huge advantage over paper money, which is relatively easy to duplicate. Those issuing paper currencies (governments) are constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters as printing technology gets continually better and cheaper. 

Blockchain technology can substitute for the ‘trust’ institutions that we pay large sums to use. Credit cards are an example. When I walk into a Starbucks to buy a coffee, I have two choices. Pay now or pay later. There might be many reasons I might want to pay later. Maybe I don’t have any cash on me or maybe I don’t have any money until next week when I get paid. 

But Starbucks could be reluctant to accept an IOU backed by the full faith and credit of the Bank of Cherrytree. Also, it would be a huge pain to have to make the rounds on payday and settle my debts at establishments all over town. Enter the credit or debit card. This bit of plastic assures the seller that there is an institution standing behind me that will ensure they will be paid for the goods they are handing over to me. In exchange for this assurance, the seller pays a fee of around 2.5% of the transaction, which ultimately, I pay as it is factored into the cost of what I buy. Additionally, if I choose not to pay my balance in full every month (God forbid!) I pay interest on the balance of between 13-25% annualized. Needless to say it is an extremely profitable business for the credit card issuers. 

Blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt this business by providing real time assurance that the money has been received for the goods at the moment they are handed over and at a very low cost per transaction. The seller knows instantly that they have been paid, and I walk out the door with coffee in hand. No cut for Mr. Visa or Ms. Mastercard.  The money saved should theoretically end up back in your pocket in the form of cheaper goods. 

But like the widely mocked Newton MessagePad, in 2022 block chain technology is not quite ready for prime time as cash. Nor does, crypto does not stand up to scrutiny as an investment into which any sensible person should invest a meaningful portion of their assets. 

Let’s tackle the “Is it money?” question first.  Well, what is money? 

According to widely accepted definitions, money has three characteristics.

1.  It serves as a medium of trade and is widely accepted in exchange for goods and services.

2. It serves as a store of value and can function as a way of holding the value of my work or productivity for the future when I need to use that value to buy things I need like food or clothes or to pay the guy who mows my lawn. 

3. Finally, money serves as a unit of account so that we can measure the relative worth disparate goods. Using units of currency, I can compare the price of a share of Apple to the earnings of the company. Or I can compare the cost of a pound of rice to a pound of potatoes, or precisely answer the question,’How many hours do I need to work to buy 100 grams of saffron?’

Major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are increasingly being accepted as a medium of exchange. Though far from universally accepted, if you are determined you can pay for some things with Bitcoin. Likewise, as there is an exchange rate for cryptocurrencies, you could value anything you wanted in whatever currency you like. 

But, the big problem with crypto as money is that it is much too volatile to serve as a store of value. Even with inflation running at 8%, the US dollar is far more stable than Bitcoin. Even the Russian ruble, as beaten down as it is now, is more stable than Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin is just too volatile to be super useful as money right now. 

But is it a good investment? First of all, I am probably the wrong person to ask this. Over the course of my investment life, almost every decision I have made to invest in an individual stock has been a poor one. Just once, I made a good decision but that must be chalked up to pure luck. So, to determine if crypto makes sense as an investment let’s turn to someone who could probably lay claim to being the greatest investor of all time, Mr. Warren Buffet the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffet says that crypto is a poor investment because it has no underlying value. It produces nothing and is only worth what someone thinks it is worth at a particular moment. 

If you invest in a farm or a factory, for example, you can evaluate the value of what those things produce. Not to say, that the value can’t change over time, it certainly will but you can evaluate that value at the time you invest and decide if it is worthwhile or not. 

When you buy crypto (or a tulip bulb) as an investment you are counting on ‘the greater fool’ theory for your profit. Crypto has no value in and of itself (even a tulip bulb at least has a nominal value). Rather, your profit depends on you finding someone who is a greater fool than yourself to buy it from you at a higher price than you paid. Sooner or later, the world may run out of fools and someone will be left holding the bag. It might be you. 

Buffet and his partner Charlie Munger have notable reputations as Bitcoin haters. Both in their 90s, it would be easy to dismiss them as cranky old men who don’t understand the 21st Century. But to be clear, the Oracle of Omaha has never said that the technology that runs Bitcoin isn’t useful, only that Bitcoin itself is not a smart place to invest any money that you aren’t prepared to lose. 

Gold, incidentally, is an asset a lot like crypto. It has very little intrinsic worth. To be sure, it has some industrial uses and is valued as jewelry and ornamentation. But it produces nothing and it doesn’t really appreciate. In real terms an ounce of gold has about the same purchasing power today as it did in ancient Rome. (Warren doesn’t buy gold either.) But at least gold has a track record of being valued by people that goes back thousands of years. Cryptocurrency and its bastard cousin the non-fungible token don’t have that history and you can’t make either into a pretty chain to wear around your throat if the price goes south. In addition, mining Bitcoin takes heaps of computer power which uses tons of energy most of which is being produced with fossil fuels. So unlike gold which doesn’t tarnish, Bitcoin is tainted with the environmental damage it is causing. (Mining gold causes huge damage to the planet also.)

So crypto doesn’t work well as money and it’s not a sensible investment. It isn’t even much use as a toy unlike my 27 year-old Newton Message Pad, which still works! So, what is it good for? 

As of now, cryptocurrency and NFTs simply serve as a proof of concept for these innovative technologies. When the World Wide Web appeared around 1994 most of us couldn’t have begun to imagine how this technology would transform the way we shop, learn, and consume news and entertainment. 

A digital currency issued by the US Government or the EU could one day solve some of the problems related to money in its current form. It could eliminate counterfeiting, dramatically reduce the cost of transactions, and allow central banks like the Federal Reserve to respond with more agility to recessions and to inflation by changing the money supply more quickly. 

The US Treasury is looking into developing a digital currency but the day when all our money is truly digital could be years away just as my MessagePad proceeded the iPhone by nearly 15 years. No doubt there will be incredible applications of this technology that my poor imagination cannot begin to fathom. 

Meanwhile, as of this writing I can, according to current prices, sell the crypto I purchased for $750 to a bigger fool for $6,859. But I have no plans to sell. I am holding on to hope that there is a still bigger fool right around the corner.