Yevette came back just now to say she had Googled by ol' Dad and it came back with pages and pages of links. I smiled and said, "Yah, he really was famous."
It's as hard for me to believe as for you and I was right there watching it all.
She said she even saw about his TV show but actually there were at least three of them.
"Doorway to Knowledge" was one and he must have been about thirty-five for this one, looking all professorial with his bushy beard, and he looked like the ultimate stud. It was a science show for women due to its daytime hour and they ate it up because he did not patronize them. That's why I'm often aghast at Sagan, deGrasse Tyson, and their gee whiz antics. That's not science but fucking Hollywood.
"Science in Closeup" was another and this was an evening show. That one went up in smoke when he walked out because censors wouldn't let him broadcast a childbirth and this was pre-1962. I don't think American television went near that one until twenty years later.
There was another show for kids and I don't recall the specifics of it which may be a bit unusual since I was a kid at a time. I do remember being in a recovery ward with other kids after getting my appendix yanked and being heartbroken because they wouldn't show my ol' Dad's program and instead ran a Western or some such. I don't think I liked the nurses after that (larfs).
It was the most incredible thing as he really was a celebrity and I don't push that out all that much here since it really is kind of hard to believe even for me when I saw the whole thing.
In fact, there's a picture of the family as kids along with the original Butch the Dog who was the best boxer a kid could ever know and I have posted it a few times. The pic came when the press came out to do a bit on the family. Normally we didn't see the flash bulbs and whatnot as my ol' Mother would rather eat live scorpions than attend such an event so we knew of the celebrity in newspaper clippings and there were scrapbooks full of them. He fookin' loved the lights (larfs).
Note: no chance my ol' Mother would have allowed her pic. She was incredibly shy. The girls may be watching a television but Lotho is at the top studying what the hell is happening. He turned out later to be a great fancier of chess.
Whoa, Lotho isn't scarred or doesn't seem to be and he was injured so horribly in a kitchen accident which caused extensive scarring. Today you would never guess but I thought it happened when he was younger and already it seems to be fading. That was one of most nearly miraculous things I ever saw and there's such amazement the body is capable of fixing itself like that.
For my ol' Dad, this was the prime stud period and bag this Justin Bieber stuff playing for children as ol' Dad seriously had the chicks. The reaction to "Doorway to Knowledge" was spectacular and the audience was largely comprised of women.
He went all the way around the world three times on lecture tours after he broke out with his theories on the engagement of computers in dealing with the extremely complex mathematics in describing population genetics. He demonstrated how these principles could be used for modeling population genetics on a computer and no-one else had done it previously so, zoom, to the Moon.
Genetics research today wouldn't even get out of the gate without Big Compute Power and there's my ol' Dad at the bottom of it, looking kind of quizzical at the immense reaction.
He often flew on a Vickers Viscount which is almost identical to the Douglas DC 4. He spoke so casually about, oh, yes, we lost an engine over the Indian Ocean but this bird can fly with three. Of course, of course. These aircraft were all but wiped out with the advent of the Boeing 707 but some seem to be in service to this day.
Cat and I were talking this morning about Caracas and how it may be the most dangerous city in the world now due to the number of murders. That triggered a memory because my ol' Dad lectured there at least once, sometime in the late-fifties.
She knows someone who was there relatively recently and he said there were some times when he was alerting for danger but mostly his report was of the beauty of the place.
As kids, we really didn't know what he was doing beyond sciencing somewhere but he would be away for quite some time and he always brought stuff when he came back. On return from America, he brought a full-size Lionel train set and I remember my brother and I, greedy little bastards such as we were, clutching the locomotive or cars to our chests because they were so huge while we stumbled through the airport in Sydney after he came home. It was so big it took the whole garage to set it up.
There's some temptation as the eldest to measure relative accomplishment and I don't know if sibs particularly feel that but the presence exists for me. That my own life wasn't such a star-studded spectacle isn't a particular regret since he was far more gregarious than maybe anyone else in the family ever was. I may have done more artistically but that's ridiculous to measure because, well, you can't and his passion for it was immense but didn't manifest until later in life.
Maybe you ask if he was famous then why wasn't he rich but that wasn't his purpose and he acquired immense wealth in the science of what he discovered. Besides, those who dream only of wealth rarely dream of anything else and they're not such interesting people whereas my ol' Dad was endlessly fascinating, if more than a wee bit overbearing at times.
(Ed: overbearing? He was a fookin' tyrant!)
Yah, sometimes he was but he was also never simple and a one-word summary wouldn't ever do. If there's any single use I would use for him, it would be passion in its broadest sense.
It was touching that Yevette did this and I'm not sure what motivated her. I'm not sure anyone I have ever known did that before. The ooh wow way she described it was extraordinary in part because it gets me looking back at the round-the-world spectacle of it and maybe it's even more fantastic as in beyond belief after having seen it and I still come away incredulous.
Maybe interesting in how the family split down the middle on who will be globetrotters and who just isn't interested that much. I want to see everything and always have so it's tough to understand when that doesn't draw someone else but, as Hendrix said, different strokes.
It's as hard for me to believe as for you and I was right there watching it all.
She said she even saw about his TV show but actually there were at least three of them.
"Doorway to Knowledge" was one and he must have been about thirty-five for this one, looking all professorial with his bushy beard, and he looked like the ultimate stud. It was a science show for women due to its daytime hour and they ate it up because he did not patronize them. That's why I'm often aghast at Sagan, deGrasse Tyson, and their gee whiz antics. That's not science but fucking Hollywood.
"Science in Closeup" was another and this was an evening show. That one went up in smoke when he walked out because censors wouldn't let him broadcast a childbirth and this was pre-1962. I don't think American television went near that one until twenty years later.
There was another show for kids and I don't recall the specifics of it which may be a bit unusual since I was a kid at a time. I do remember being in a recovery ward with other kids after getting my appendix yanked and being heartbroken because they wouldn't show my ol' Dad's program and instead ran a Western or some such. I don't think I liked the nurses after that (larfs).
It was the most incredible thing as he really was a celebrity and I don't push that out all that much here since it really is kind of hard to believe even for me when I saw the whole thing.
In fact, there's a picture of the family as kids along with the original Butch the Dog who was the best boxer a kid could ever know and I have posted it a few times. The pic came when the press came out to do a bit on the family. Normally we didn't see the flash bulbs and whatnot as my ol' Mother would rather eat live scorpions than attend such an event so we knew of the celebrity in newspaper clippings and there were scrapbooks full of them. He fookin' loved the lights (larfs).
Note: no chance my ol' Mother would have allowed her pic. She was incredibly shy. The girls may be watching a television but Lotho is at the top studying what the hell is happening. He turned out later to be a great fancier of chess.
Whoa, Lotho isn't scarred or doesn't seem to be and he was injured so horribly in a kitchen accident which caused extensive scarring. Today you would never guess but I thought it happened when he was younger and already it seems to be fading. That was one of most nearly miraculous things I ever saw and there's such amazement the body is capable of fixing itself like that.
For my ol' Dad, this was the prime stud period and bag this Justin Bieber stuff playing for children as ol' Dad seriously had the chicks. The reaction to "Doorway to Knowledge" was spectacular and the audience was largely comprised of women.
He went all the way around the world three times on lecture tours after he broke out with his theories on the engagement of computers in dealing with the extremely complex mathematics in describing population genetics. He demonstrated how these principles could be used for modeling population genetics on a computer and no-one else had done it previously so, zoom, to the Moon.
Genetics research today wouldn't even get out of the gate without Big Compute Power and there's my ol' Dad at the bottom of it, looking kind of quizzical at the immense reaction.
He often flew on a Vickers Viscount which is almost identical to the Douglas DC 4. He spoke so casually about, oh, yes, we lost an engine over the Indian Ocean but this bird can fly with three. Of course, of course. These aircraft were all but wiped out with the advent of the Boeing 707 but some seem to be in service to this day.
Cat and I were talking this morning about Caracas and how it may be the most dangerous city in the world now due to the number of murders. That triggered a memory because my ol' Dad lectured there at least once, sometime in the late-fifties.
She knows someone who was there relatively recently and he said there were some times when he was alerting for danger but mostly his report was of the beauty of the place.
As kids, we really didn't know what he was doing beyond sciencing somewhere but he would be away for quite some time and he always brought stuff when he came back. On return from America, he brought a full-size Lionel train set and I remember my brother and I, greedy little bastards such as we were, clutching the locomotive or cars to our chests because they were so huge while we stumbled through the airport in Sydney after he came home. It was so big it took the whole garage to set it up.
There's some temptation as the eldest to measure relative accomplishment and I don't know if sibs particularly feel that but the presence exists for me. That my own life wasn't such a star-studded spectacle isn't a particular regret since he was far more gregarious than maybe anyone else in the family ever was. I may have done more artistically but that's ridiculous to measure because, well, you can't and his passion for it was immense but didn't manifest until later in life.
Maybe you ask if he was famous then why wasn't he rich but that wasn't his purpose and he acquired immense wealth in the science of what he discovered. Besides, those who dream only of wealth rarely dream of anything else and they're not such interesting people whereas my ol' Dad was endlessly fascinating, if more than a wee bit overbearing at times.
(Ed: overbearing? He was a fookin' tyrant!)
Yah, sometimes he was but he was also never simple and a one-word summary wouldn't ever do. If there's any single use I would use for him, it would be passion in its broadest sense.
It was touching that Yevette did this and I'm not sure what motivated her. I'm not sure anyone I have ever known did that before. The ooh wow way she described it was extraordinary in part because it gets me looking back at the round-the-world spectacle of it and maybe it's even more fantastic as in beyond belief after having seen it and I still come away incredulous.
Maybe interesting in how the family split down the middle on who will be globetrotters and who just isn't interested that much. I want to see everything and always have so it's tough to understand when that doesn't draw someone else but, as Hendrix said, different strokes.
2 comments:
Last Wednesday, I returned to the University of Cincinnati campus for the first time in the new millennium, The inscription above the arch at McMicken Hall reads, "Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom." Your dad lived his life by this motto. The wisdom he gained and shared made our world a better place, then as well as today.
I remember you saying and how much it has changed now. I don't think I've been there in decades and it's remarkable even thinking about it.
It's the most twisted thing to be his kid and there's almost awe of what he did. I'm sure he would dig it to know there was wider appreciation of what he did than he probably knew and thank you for saying it.
I'm sure it comes to you sometimes in the same way with Things I Learned from My Dad and a monster thank you to him comes which went to the root. Some stuff pissed me off but nowhere near the lot of it. I imagine that's the same with your ol' Dad as well or anyone's really.
One really beautiful gem came from another father who let this one fly, "You don't have to take care of your father because he will take care of himself. Your job is to take care of your mother."
All at once, it's so simple and dead-center true. Fark!
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