My uncle wrote a reflective essay today about his 51st birthday (today). It seems he’s wearing the same black sweater today that he was wearing on his eighteenth birthday, immortalized in a photo from Yosemite. Apparently that black sweater had an even longer history: it had been passed down to him from my father, who also had it as a teenager. My mother commented that “they don’t make sweaters like they used to.” I disagree whole-heartedly. I think they do make sweaters like they used to; they just don’t make consumers like they used to.