A portrait of a marriage as much as an interview – the Friedmans discuss history & economics.
Actually, I’ve got a sweet anecdote about the romantic nature of economics. One of my husband’s friends got a Ph.D. in Eco (I think Savings chaired it) and then, later, went to law school. He was working for the state regulatory board when he wrote the regulations for the telephone company (I think). By then his first marriage had dissolved. A woman economist was given his work to study. She said she read it closely, going again and again over it, fastening post-its, marking passages. Then she was introduced to him and found him as lucid as his prose. She had fallen in love with him for his regulatory philosophy and the beauty of his writing. They’ve been married for a dozen years or more; their smiles are caught in one of the more charming pictures from my daughter’s wedding last month. I tell this story every semester to my freshman writing students, but I’m not sure if they believe me. It is, however, true.
I met my wife in a similar way. She was doing an analysis of one of my circuit board designs and thought it made the most beautiful waveforms she’d ever seen. She’d never seen rise times so synchronous. She admitted being taken by how virely my clock pulsed. She got really hot when, working late together one night, I let her hold my scope probe. She handled it perfectly.
We honeymooned at the Jet Propulsion Lab, our balcony romantically overlooking the Low Gain Antenna. Her software was exceptional and I soon had her architecture open for exploration. And while I’d originally brought along a floppy, it wasn’t long til I needed everything my hard-drive could deliver. It was bliss.