Category: People & Human Interest

From the San Francisco Bay View, “Ritual of Death”, a first-person story of the hours before execution.

Link via Brian Flemming’s Weblog.

“[R]etirement is often a special hell for super achievers. As they’re suffering for success, it seems like an oasis in a dessert of demands and sacrifices. But, for many, when they get there, the cool refreshing water is an illusion. They long for the old rat race. And especially the company of their fellow rodents.”

Thomas Boswell in today’s Washington Post

NewMexiKen of course knows that government (and life) are never this simple, but why do we have money to go to Mars but not enough to help this young lady? Read 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner Colbert I. King’s fine piece about Craiyana Henderson.

Renowned neurologist and author Oliver Sacks has an essay in the current The New York Review of Books entitled In the River of Consciousness. As NewMexiKen understood the piece, our senses operate in much the same manner a movie works; that is, as a series of stills. To me this was a new and rather fascinating concept.

Ever seen the spokes of a wheel appear to move backwards when watching a western movie? We understand that is because the frames of the film catch the spokes at various positions and not continuously. Sacks notes that he can sometimes see this same phenomenon with the blades of his ceiling fan (as can most of us). Our mind works much like the frames of a motion picture.

NewMexiKen must stop before he further corrupts your understanding of consciousness. Check out the essay.

Thanks to the belated administration of anti-biotics, for the first day in more than three weeks NewMexiKen feels terrific.

Yucky as I felt at times, I guess my misery was mild compared to this poor soul (found on Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish).

Dude, I’m 53 and this is the sickest I have ever been in my life. I’m in my 7th day and just starting to feel a bit better. I live alone and had to have everything: box of tissues, jug of water, TV remote (not that I had a clue what was on, I was semi-delirious for 2 days, sat up in my bed and thought I was sitting at my computer at work (then I woke up hours later on the floor) but I digress, had to have everything in the bed cause I could not even make it to my nightstand on the other side of the bed. I got 2 hours at work Wednesday and they sent me home, and 2 hours in today wanted to make sure they signed my time sheet, I’m a contract worker so I’m screwed next payday!
Funny thing; friends and family would call and ask if I needed anything. So from time to time they’d arrive at my door with a few bottles of ginger ale or some such and I’d be yelling “leave it and go”, not wanting to contaminate them. It started sounding funny, I began to feel like a hideous character in a Poe novel “leave it and be on your way!! You’ll not see me in my shame!!!!”. Like I said, I’m semi-delirious.

NewMexiKen understands loneliness well-enough, but—even so—can’t help wondering about the possible incongruity between the self-described attractiveness of the individuals in these personal ads and the need to seek partners by advertising. Some examples from the current The New York Review of Books:

A RARE TREASURE. Naturally pretty girl-next-door with sleek, playful, athletic twist. Long blonde hair, high cheekbones, heart-melting smile—think Emily Procter (from West Wing, CSI Miami). Fine-boned, slim, confident. Patient and passionate. Unafraid to laugh, believes in hopes and dreams. Gentle, honorable, light of heart. Known for strong aesthetic sense. Never tires of art, music, hiking, running, tennis, snowshoeing. Vermont resident, drives to Boston at drop of a hat. Good traveler, not lugging past baggage. Loves Southern France, northern Italy, dogs, reading, daisies. Seeks kind, divorced/widowed man, 49-65.

TOTAL STUNNER. Could be stand-in for Michelle Pfeiffer. Slender, lean body, knockout smile. Sweet-natured, approachable, successful entrepreneur, author, physician. Divorced, 45. Half French with European flair plus NY humor and vibrancy. High profile, funny, genuine. Adores savoring an active life: tennis, cultural and charity events, red carpet openings, evenings at Le Cirque, La Goulue. Recharges by playing piano, gardening, travel: Hawaii, St. Bart’s, or biking Provence inn to inn. Enjoys art, photography, science, history. Seeks lasting relationship with bright, upscale, successful, well-mannered, 5’9″+, 46-59 man of quality, depth, character, ready to appreciate a classy, loyal, independent, beautiful woman.

SMASHING LOOKS AND A SMILE that lights up a room. Sensual romantic eyes, beautiful dimples, high cheekbones, and appealing figure. Jewish widow, 5’8″. Successful entrepreneur; stunning, elegant, Wellesley/MIT Sloan grad. Articulate conversationalist with expansive mind, enjoyable to be with, delights in laughter and having adventures. Contributes to the community, travels, paints; passionate about music, the arts, photography, Paris, Nantucket. Seeks dynamic, healthy man, 59-72.

ALLURINGLY ATTRACTIVE, slender, savvy photographer—completing book. Also accomplished professional—infectious laugh, wry humor, and dose of irreverence. Unafraid to explore new things, new ideas. Open, honest, gently sexy, divorced. Great dimples, long legs, generosity of spirit, inquisitive mind. Very visual, keenly perceptive. Fun with great sense of adventure. Equally comfortable at Ritz or favorite neighborhood Italian dive, opera or Red Sox games, Arizona Biltmore or Italian pensione, New York or Boston. Passions for museums, reading, cooking, art, philanthropy, dogs, movies. Biking, tennis. Seeks smart, interesting/interested, attractive, financially comfortable, 5’8″+, 47-60, man of character. Intelligence, humor count for a lot.

There’s many more. The relatively few “man seeking woman” ads are not nearly so extravagant.

NewMexiKen was pleased to see he’s not alone in finding the world too complex. In a Christmas letter a colleague wrote:

Sometimes the routine can be confusing. One morning last month, Lauren was juggling kids, the cordless portable phone, and her Starbucks coffee (carefully bought the day before and refrigerated). She punched 30 seconds into the microwave to warm the coffee, started to glance at the paper, saw her coffee on the counter, and became the first in our family to smell microwaved phone. Which leads to the question—what was more expensive, frying the portable phone, or the week’s previous purchases at Fourbucks?

NewMexiKen was met by local TV crews and photographers last night as he came down the concourse from the gate at the Albuquerque Sunport. I assumed they wanted to hear about my grandchildrens’ Christmas.

Alas, all the attention was for someone else.

Acquitted Counterterrorist Reunited With Wife, Sons

The Ethicist in The New York Times Magazine has this interesting take on underage drinking.

At a restaurant, I was seated next to two young ladies who ordered beers. As soon as they produced their I.D.’s, I knew they were fake. Having worked in the bar-nightclub business for 15 years, I am adept at spotting fake I.D.’s. Should I have informed the waiter or, as I was not working, minded my own beeswax? Glenn Price, Stamford, Conn.

Your coming forward is permitted but not required. Here’s one guideline: will doing so thwart serious imminent harm to a particular person? In this case, no. If you mind your own business, a couple of young women — not toddlers, clearly, but old enough to pass for 21 — will have a beer. Why is that bad? Until about five minutes ago, it wasn’t even illegal, assuming they’re 18. (And assuming they want only a beer with dinner, not to go on a drunken spree or pilot a 747.)

The unfortunate consequences of your keeping silent? The restaurant is at legal risk, and the law — not just this law, but all law — is slightly eroded by the customers’ flouting it. Set against the innocent pleasure of a tall cool one with dinner, I’d not have it in me to rat out the customers.

From the Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

Age-old problem: Paul Newman, a guest on “Late Show With David Letterman” this week, said he is still driving in endurance races.

“How much longer are you going to do this?” asked Letterman.

Newman, 78, said, “I’m not worried about the racing, I’m worried about getting in and out of the cars.”

The Bleat makes a trip to Target amusing. “We’re in that difficult time of the year where you want your paper towel to have a seasonal theme, but nothing explicitly Christmas.”

“Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy.”

— Author Cynthia Nelms, quoted in United Press International

“Ned Flanders decides to open his own business called the Leftorium, a store that sells tools and products aimed at left-handed consumers.”–“The Simpsons” episode description, “When Flanders Failed,” original airdate Oct. 3, 1991

“In a communist country being overrun by capitalism, Ma Bo may be the most enthusiastic leftist of them all. Ma, 56, an entrepreneur in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, has opened what the official Xinhua News Agency bills as the country’s first shop for left-handed people.”–Associated Press, Nov. 5, 2003

From OpinionJournal

Interesting, informative article by Lisa Belkin in the The New York Times Magazine on women’s choices. “Wander into any Starbucks in any Starbucks kind of neighborhood in the hours after the commuters are gone. See all those mothers drinking coffee and watching over toddlers at play? If you look past the Lycra gym clothes and the Internet-access cellphones, the scene could be the 50’s, but for the fact that the coffee is more expensive and the mothers have M.B.A.’s.”

From The Atlantic:

Restaurant servers who leave a piece of candy with the check make 18 percent more in tips than servers who don’t. (Leaving two pieces of candy increases a tip even more.) Building on—believe it or not—more than thirty years of research on tip enhancement (which has established that “briefly touching one’s customers, squatting during the initial contact, making additional nontask visits, and displaying a maximal smile when introducing oneself to one’s customers have all been associated with increases in tip amounts”), four sociologists undertook two studies in an effort to determine which of several competing theories most accurately explains why “unexpected food treats” produce larger gratuities. Does the treat increase the “perceived friendliness” of the server? Does it increase the customer’s identification with the server? Or does a “positive affect” produced by the treat make the customer’s assessment of the server rosier? Actually, the authors conclude, writing in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, it’s none of the above; what generates the larger tip is the “norm of reciprocity.” The unexpected treat from the server makes the customer feel obligated to respond with a “friendly gesture” in kind.

By NewMexiKen [1998]

You’ll be pleased to hear that all of your government secrets are in drug free hands. Yup, today was the day I got called with 53 minutes notice for my random drug urine test. Illegal search and seizure if you ask me, but I had to sign a waiver and give up my rights when I got a security clearance. My attorney advises me that this has probably already been litigated, so I went and did my thing for a drug free U.S. federal workforce. Hope Centrum Silver doesn’t set off any alarms.

Actually, I can state unequivocally that I have been controlled substance free, so the test was more annoying than anything. Too bad, if I failed I would have had my security clearance pulled and been given a probationary period doing nothing for the same money for months, as happened to at least two guys in our office last year. Poor bastards really suffered.

Highlight of the experience. I said to the person administering the test, “this must be an unpleasant job.” “Best job I’ve ever had,” she replied. Whoa! In this job she is called a “Collector”. Can you even imagine her other jobs?

And for those who’ve never had this little indignity, no they don’t watch. They just don’t let you take anything in with you and they check the temperature of the specimen to make sure it is body temperature. Of course, they may have a camera in there and I may be action news “film at 11.”

Or in my case, perhaps “America’s Funniest Videos.”

James Lileks

“[W]ith his ebony-dyed hair and mustache, dressed in his signature attire–black pin stripe suit, red breast-pocket handkerchief, diamond stick-pin, watch and fob, silver-trimmed gambler’s hat, and black cowboy boots–he cut a remarkable figure.”

Indeed, John Alexander Carroll was a remarkable figure. Recipient of both a Purple Heart and a Pulitzer Prize, he invariably dressed just as flamboyantly as described above. His lectures were works of art — intent on telling a story; equally intent on making the story entertaining. His seminar supplied lessons I still use, among them, “Never be satisfied with the first draft of anything more formal than a postcard.” He required that a bibilography be listed in chronological order — an alphabetical list had no value other than the mere happenstance of the author’s name.

Jack Carroll’s graduate students were his colleagues, welcome at hotel room parties to mingle with the elite of western history; willing listeners to his ribald jokes, or stories of dinner with Margaret Mitchell, or his pre-war tour of America on an Indian motorcyle.

In 1968, after accepting me as a Ph.D. student, Professor Carroll fell into disagreement with the University of Arizona and departed suddenly for other interests. I never saw him after that year — and I always wanted to. He died in 2000.

For a brief essay on the remarkable John Alexander Carroll, see In Memoriam from The Western Historical Quarterly.

Engrossing, bittersweet profile of Gary Coleman in the The Washington Post.

“I would be working in Kmart, or — what was that five-and-dime called? — Ben Franklin,” he says. “And I would be happy.”

Instead, Coleman became one of those exotically unhappy California citizens who live up to or down to a permanent condition of striving, a carefully cultivated limbo called former child star.

Unplugged: “True story: Several years ago, when Bethesda lost power for several days due to an ice storm, a highly educated lawyer discovered to his astonishment that a neighbor had made a cup of coffee. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked. She said she boiled water. But how did you boil water? he asked. She said she had a gas stove. Stunned, he said he had a gas stove, too, but noted that it had an electronic ignition to create a spark. She said, ‘I used a match.’ In a state of nature, this man would be eaten alive by field mice.”

Mark Jenkins has a fine essay in Outside on Aron Ralston — the hiker who ultimately had to amputate his own hand to survive — and on what survival requires.

It’s not being dead that scares us. The most frightening thing is being a witness to our own death. Watching it come, knowing we are trapped, alone, with no one to call for help. Perhaps most of all, though, fearing we may have a choice but may lack the courage to fight, or the resolve to tell death to go screw itself — whatever the cost.

Great. My washing machine — so carefully selected in January — came in 16th out of 16 in Consumer Reports rankings. At least the dryer was fifth (of 20).