Category: People & Human Interest

September 30th

NewMexiKen’s very own grandfather, John Louis Beyett, was born in Alvord, Wise County, Texas, 130 years ago today. He died before I was born, but I met his mother, my great-grandmother when I was 8-years-old. She was born in 1865 and was just 15 when my grandfather was born; the first of her nine children. She was 87 when I met her (and lived to be 93). It has always amazed me that I met an ancestor who was born the year Abraham Lincoln died.

My grandfather was French-Canadian on his father’s side (the family in Québec for 200 years before moving to Texas); Scots-Irish from Kentucky on his mother’s. His first wife died in 1918 giving birth to their sixth child. That child died then too, but the older five lived normal lifespans, though three had no children of their own. I met my four half-aunts and half-uncle, but just a few times.

Mom and her Dad

A few years after, at age 42, my widower grandfather married my 33-year-old never married grandmother, Lulu Cook. Only she too, his second wife, died in childbirth. That was in 1925 and that child survived. It was my mother. Mom ended up being raised by her mom’s brother and his wife (Grandpa and Grandma to me growing up).

Though I’d never met my grandfather or knew much about him, I always thought how tragic (if not uncommon) to lose two wives in childbirth. What a melancholy man he must have been by the time he died of a heart attack at age 62.*

And then a few years ago, thanks to the internets, I discovered all was not as it had seemed. Just 10 weeks before my mother was born to his newlywed wife, my grandfather had another daughter born. Her mother’s name was Hernandez and it was their third child together. I had two more half-uncles and a half-aunt, Francisco, Eduardo and Ana Maria. This was in Laredo, Texas.

It’s a miracle any one of us is here at all.
_______

* My mother, grandmother and grandfather died at ages 48, 35 and 62. I don’t include them in any life expectancy charts. My dad, grandmother and grandfather died at 83, 90 and 90. I got all my genes from them.

Evolution’s Gold Standard

How evolution makes us crave. The brief essay begins:

Feeling low? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when people feel bad, their sense of touch quickens and they instinctively want to hug something or someone. Tykes cling to a teddy bear or blanket. It’s a mammal thing. If young mammals feel gloomy, it’s usually because they’re hurt, sick, cold, scared or lost. So their brain rewards them with a gust of pleasure if they scamper back to mom for a warm nuzzle and a meal. No need to think it over. All they know is that, when a negative mood hits, a cuddle just feels right; and if they’re upbeat and alert, then their eyes hunger for new sights and they’re itching to explore.

Redux post of the day

This repeat post is from just two years ago today, but this stuff fascinates me. Maybe some of you missed it the first time. Read the profile.

The playwright David Mamet and the theatre director Gregory Mosher affirm that some years ago, late one night in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago, this happened:

Ricky Jay, who is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive, was performing magic with a deck of cards. Also present was a friend of Mamet and Mosher’s named Christ Nogulich, the director of food and beverage at the hotel. After twenty minutes of disbelief-suspending manipulations, Jay spread the deck face up on the bar counter and asked Nogulich to concentrate on a specific card but not to reveal it. Jay then assembled the deck face down, shuffled, cut it into two piles, and asked Nogulich to point to one of the piles and name his card.

“Three of clubs,” Nogulich said, and he was then instructed to turn over the top card.

He turned over the three of clubs.

Mosher, in what could be interpreted as a passive-aggressive act, quietly announced, “Ricky, you know, I also concentrated on a card.”

After an interval of silence, Jay said, “That’s interesting, Gregory, but I only do this for one person at a time.”

Mosher persisted: “Well, Ricky, I really was thinking of a card.”

Jay paused, frowned, stared at Mosher, and said, “This is a distinct change of procedure.” A longer pause. “All right—what was the card?”

“Two of spades.”

Jay nodded, and gestured toward the other pile, and Mosher turned over its top card.

The deuce of spades.

A small riot ensued.

From the beginning of a Mark Singer profile of Ricky Jay in The New Yorker (1993).

The next trick described is even more fantastic. If you ever play cards (especially if you play for stakes), you should read at least the first part of this lengthy piece.

Ricky Jay portrayed the character Eddie Sawyer in Deadwood.

Niagara Falls High-Wire Walk

From an article in Today’s New York Times:

Nik Wallenda is a seventh-generation circus performer, scion of the famed Flying Wallendas. He set the world record for farthest distance traveled by bicycle on a high wire. And now he has set his sights on a new deed of daredevilry — walking the 1,800 feet across the gorge of Niagara Falls while balancing on a two-inch-diameter steel cable.

But before he can attempt his funambulist feat, Mr. Wallenda must persuade officials in both Canada and the United States to abandon their century-old aversion to “stunting” as a distraction from the majesty of the falls. So for several days, Mr. Wallenda has been attempting his own form of tightrope diplomacy, shuttling across the falls and meeting with lawmakers and parks overseers in both countries as he pleads for support.

“This is a dream of mine that I’ve always wanted to do,” Mr. Wallenda, a 32-year-old father of three, said on Thursday, sitting on the pool deck of a hotel here and surveying the waterworks in the distance. “I get chills thinking about it.”

I get chills just thinking about it too.

But I’ve been to Niagara Falls. The falls themselves are spectacular (if a suggestion of their natural self), but it is also one of the most tourist tacky places anywhere. So yes, we wouldn’t want any “stunting” to distract from the majesty.

Betty Ford

Read about Betty Ford’s Dance.

Do it.

Now.

And after that you can read my Betty Ford story.

I had several meetings with President Gerald Ford in the years after he left the White House. On one occasion I helped him go through his garage to find things for the Ford Museum.

One of the items we ran across — the garage was stuffed full — was a mover’s wardrobe holding six suits. These had been packed when Ford left his home in Alexandria, Virginia, to move to the White House when Nixon resigned in August 1974. The whole event was rather unprecedented, of course, and Ford had forgotten the suits packed some four-and-a-half years earlier. He asked that the wardrobe carton be taken into the house.

The next day we ran across another wardrobe with another six suits hanging in it. This time he was more circumspect. He asked that it be taken into the house but, he said, “Don’t let Mrs. Ford see it. She wouldn’t let me keep the suits in the other one.”

The former most powerful man on earth was nervous that his wife wouldn’t let him save some old suits. There was a whole lot of Mr. Ford’s character in that incident, I thought — qualified ego, self-deprecating humor, thrift.

And now that she’s gone I realize that there was a lot of Betty Ford’s character in that incident, too.

Fatal Distraction

While I was in Virginia a neighborhood infant there was left in the car all day. It was the last day of school, schedules were altered, routines were disrupted; the result was fatal.

Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post won the 2010 Pulitizer Prize for Feature Writing for a piece on this subject, Fatal Distraction. I encourage you to read his superlative report. An excerpt, giving the basics:

Death by hyperthermia is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just… forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us.

Two decades ago, this was relatively rare. But in the early 1990s, car-safety experts declared that passenger-side front airbags could kill children, and they recommended that child seats be moved to the back of the car; then, for even more safety for the very young, that the baby seats be pivoted to face the rear. If few foresaw the tragic consequence of the lessened visibility of the child . . . well, who can blame them? What kind of person forgets a baby?

I’ve seen our future and it ain’t pretty

Reposted from one year ago.

Last evening my friend Donna got back from Washington and we decided to meet for some pie at a Flying Star, one of the local coffee shop chain. It was nearing 9.

I had to make a left turn on the way and it required a wait for traffic to clear. Opposite me turning left from the oncoming traffic was a vehicle with its bright lights on. I tried to avoid looking at the lights, of course, but couldn’t help it somewhat as I watched the oncoming traffic in the adjacent lanes. Finally I was able to turn left, then I took the first right.

It was an unlit street and the glare from the bright lights was still bouncing around my retinas. At first I thought I was seeing things. And then I did see it.

It was an elderly man in a wheel chair crossing the street. No lights, no reflecting tape, only my headlights barely illuminating him. I slowed and went around; by the time I passed he was nearly on the dirt next to the street along a large undeveloped field. He was moving slowly, Fred Flintstone style.

I continued the quarter mile or so to the parking lot of the Flying Star, recovering from being startled and wondering what to do. There were two long-term care facilities back where the man was. One was assisted care apartments; the other what used to be called a nursing home. It might be he was fine; it might be he was not. Was it my business?

Donna arrived and I told her about it. We decided to go back and see if he was still there.

He was, just about where he’d been a few minutes earlier. We drove past and went to the nursing care facility.

I wandered in. No locks, no receptionist. But it was clean and it was nice and it was as scary as hell. (Perhaps it is hell.)

I continued back, finally seeing a nurse or orderly down the hall. I called to him, eventually got his attention and told him about the man. We ran out a back door and I showed him my apparition in the dark on the other side of the street about 100 yards away.

The attendant went and got John and wheeled him back across the street. John did not want to come this way; it was “goddam this and goddammit that”. His arms were heavily bruised and bandaged. I helped lift John, a big man, and his wheelchair over a curb. The attendant thanked me for saving the man’s life. I told him there was no need to get dramatic, but I was glad I saw him and could help. I left them there, outside the door we’d come out. The attendant called someone to unlock the door. It was raining lightly.

We had coconut cream pie.