CHRISTMAS 2018

Two things I love most in this world

While Linda was alive she goaded me into writing fairly elaborate Christmas newsletters, but now that she is gone I have let the practice slip.  I have received so many welcome communications this season, however, that I want to toss off a note of my own.  I will post it on my Frivolities blog, and also email it to family and close friends.  So, anyway: Merry Christmas & a Happy New-Year!    

I guess I am doing pretty well, in view of the fact that I am 85 years old.  My brain seems to be holding up fairly well, but my body is rapidly succumbing to entropy, lapsing into a state of disorganized, non-functional ruin.  I want to avoid darkening your day, so suffice it to say that I use a walker most of the timer, swallow five prescription pills daily (his does not Include pain pills), and am on a first-name basis with half the medicos in town.  Nevertheless, . . . .

I spent a few weeks in Borrego Springs last winter, traveled to Wisconsin to visit Linda and Paul Kelly and to Cordova to see the bulk of my family.  Carolyn, Linda’s sister, and her son and family, visited during the summer, and we had a good time exploring San Juan Island.  Late summer Karen, Carolyn and I took a great trip on the St. Lawrence River, from Quebec to Kingston, Ontario.   And I continued to play golf pretty much weekly, although the way I “play” golf these days involves nothing you could call real exercise!  Of course, my Friday happy hour with the gang goes on.

During 2018 I have kept my blogs fairly active.  My serious blog has captured the attention of internet trolling ventures located in several unlikely countries, thereby bloating my “hits” count to a preposterous 56,000.  I take pleasure in the fact that 30,000 of them are from places that actually speak English.  My Frivolities blog accumulates far fewer hits, but most of them are genuine.

So I guess that’s it.  To end as usual: my monkey puzzle tree is ever more magnificent, my ginkgo is prospering, and my cat is happy.

I hope you have a wonderful 2019.

MY "FAVORITE" GRANDSON

sigh!

“Hi, Grampa, it’s me, your favorite grandson!”  I have answered the phone twice recently and been greeted in this way.  The problem is: I have three lovely granddaughters – but no grandson.  This, it seems, is a particularly clumsy, and truly ugly, scam.  Have you had a similar experience?

Both times I simple said something foul and hung up.  Next time I am going to try to string the bastard along, find out what he wants (money, surely) and, if possible, get some clue as to how to nail him.

 I am old, but my brain still operates at a near-normal level.  However there are lots of old people – with grand kids – that might bite.  It is particularly reprehensible to pick on us old folks, don’t you think?  Sure you do.

On average, we humans are not a particularly admirable species.  Most of us are okay, and a few of us are downright admirable - but there are way too many  shitheads mixed in.

DEATH OF AN ANCIENT

Linda, pretending to like Lonesome George

If you have waited until now to visit the Galapagos Islands and Lonesome George, you have waited too long.  The islands still exist, of course, but George – after at least a century in captivity – has finally gone to be with his ancestors.  George was the last of his species; continuous efforts to induce him to mate with a female of a slightly different species came to naught.  But in death Lonesome George is proving a boon to science.  There is a sub-set of geneticists that specialize in longevity, and they are studying the DNA of George, as well as of similar huge tortoises from around the world, trying to deduce the secret of their longevity.  They are making significant progress, if this article is to believed.  I see no direct application to us Homos, though.  And, anyway, would you want to spend 250 years crawling around on your belly and eating grass?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/science/lonesome-george-tortoise.html

GEORGE. GEORGE MUSTOE. NOW LISTEN UP!

Okay, George, this is your old professor speaking.  Your photographs are too valuable just to toss them out there like corn kernels in a hen coop.  Your assignment is to use them to illustrate multiple narratives.  Sample narrative titles:  Why I took up climbing instead of drag racing.  How I learned to love my ice ax.  The THIRD time I almost got killed in the mountains.  How I got Gregg Petrie to the top of Mt. Shuksan.

For an example of what I am suggesting, see my Gundelberg Cycle:

https://frivilousessays.blogspot.com/2017/07/jeremiah-gundelberg-index.html

I, for one, would be delighted if you did so.  I am sure many others will agree.

Myrl Beck

LET'S HONOR A MOST IMPORTANT WOMAN

Rosalind Franklin at Work

You all know who Rosalind Franklin was, right?  Well, the Bank of England is about to issue a new 50 pound note, and it is running a contest to determine who goes on it, and I want you to vote for Rosalind.  Whoever is honored in this way must be/have been (a), real (Not David Copperfield, for instance), (b) dead (no, you can’t nominate Michelle Obama), and (c) have done something good for humanity (thus excluding Hitler and Stalin, for example).  I suggest that you go here

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2018/11/217677/rosalind-franklin-50-pound-note

and nominate Franklin.

Rosalind Franklin took the X-ray photographs that tipped off Watson and Crick as to the structure of DNA.  She is mentioned in a dismissive way by Watson as “Rosy” in Watson’s snotty – but engrossing – little book “The Double Helix”.  Most people assume that she would have shared in the Nobel Prize but for the fact that she died, of ovarian cancer, before it was awarded.  However, given the sexist attitude of the day, that is by no means certain.