One Foot Candle

Oakland, 2016

This weird candle was a gift from Zena Kruzick, who photographed the objects in this book. Zena is an art appraiser and tribal arts dealer, and knows how to make even humdrum items pop to life.

General Electric made these novelty feet to promote a new line of light bulbs. They’re a pun on a “foot candle,” a now defunct unit of light intensity. (One foot candle is the amount of light cast by a standard candle at a distance of one foot.) Bright daylight equals about 1,000 foot candles; the full moon, only 0.01. A typical computer display with a white background might be anywhere from 50 to 75 foot candles.

But GE does not make computer displays—or computers, for that matter. I wish my dad had known this would happen in the late 1960s, when the company hired him to head Northeastern sales for their data processing division. Back then, GE was making some of the first computers, modems, and fax machines. But when they sold their computer division to Honeywell in the 1970s, my father was fired. Seventeen years of service, thanks so much, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Dad would have loved this candle. He delighted in physical puns of all kinds—from cocktail glasses belted with miniature jockstraps (“For Your High Balls”) to the double entendre of Pussy Galore. But his sense of humor faded after GE let him go. He was nearly 50; back then, that was old. A part-time gig teaching data science at NYU wasn’t enough to sustain him. Some of my last memories of my father see him sitting in our split-level rec room, staring at the TV, waiting for the phone to ring.

It never did. His red hair thinned, and went gray. His brightness faded. In mid-1983 I’d leave the U.S. for a two-year fellowship in Asia, and never see him again. (See Kodak Beaker story.)

Every September, on the anniversary of his death, I recite the Kaddish in his memory. His portrait reflects the glow of a single foot candle—but never this one. I wish there had been less distance between us, Dad. Less distance, and more light.