Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

1) I shot some photos of Frank with Roland, Guy, and Rob just at the moment before they started.

But I left the camera cable upstairs, and now I can’t go tromping up the stairs get it because the “So, what is a quark?” phase of this interview has started. Footsteps in the background would not be a good thing.

In fact, I’m pinned down in the kitchen, eavesdropping and (of course) typing this. Thank heaven for Airport wi-fi!

2) Roland wants some still photos on his camera also, for newspaper ads. I’m willing to take them–but Amity’s would be much better! And she has been darn nice about all the interruptions to her graduate work, over the years, when Mom or Dad suddenly needs a photographer.

Of course, a quick call to her cellphone failed to reach her, and the crew should be finished and out of here in an hour…so I sent her an email and (one more desperate measure), I’m blogging this call for help.

Frank is sitting in the dining room chair, getting lit for the camera.

“More schmutz,” says Guy. Schmutz turns out to be two pieces of
waxy-looking paper he hangs in front of a light that is shining on
Frank.

“Why is that schmutz?” I ask.

“That’s just what we call it,” says Guy. “The real name, the brand name for it, is actually Opal.”

Something with a pretty name like Opal gets nicknamed “schmutz”? It must be a guy thing, Definitely, a guy thing.

Three very nice young tv-crew-men are downstairs getting ready to
interview Frank, so of course I decided it would be fun to live-blog
this unusual event.

Roland, the interviewer from Sweden, is young and tv-good-looking–he has already
interviewed two US Nobel laureates before he came here–visiting Minneapolis and
Santa Barbara.

Guy, the cameraman who also does lighting, lives in Wellesley. Rob, who does sound, is also a local freelancer.

They’re setting up lights and cameras and microphones all over our
house’s familiar spaces, while Roland and Frank chit-chat about physics
and travel.

Rob dangles a huge microphone in a thick fur sweater (a “Rykote windscreen”) over one of our dining room chairs.

Guy pulls down the shades in our dining room so that he can take full control of the ambient light.

More soon….

Stockholm University students have their own Nobel tradition–new
laureates are invited to a December 13 ball, then inducted into “The
Supreme Order of the Ever Jumping and Smiling Green Frog.”
Their actual paper snailmail invitation contained no email address or
URL. For information about this unique event, it had to be Google once again to the
rescue!

The guest of one 1987 Nobel-winner describes a banquet with drinking-songs followed by “hi-jinks.”

From a detailed diary of 1996 Nobel-guest adventures kept by David Mermin: “between midnight and 1 the
culminating event of the week takes place… details of the lunatic ceremony are lost in the
fog, but somehow it manages to culminate in all six of the
1996 Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry lined up together and
uttering cries of “Rivet, rivet” while squatting on their haunches and
yumping up and down. A fitting end to a can-you-top-this week.”

Stockholm University science students explain the frog insignia: “The Frog is made out of an alloy of lead with
bismuth, frog-ish green and tied in a very special way. The Insignia is
supposed to be weared with tail-coat for the gentlemen and
evening-dress for the ladies. When a Frog-member dies, the relatives
are asked to send the Insignia back to the Order or to destroy it.”

Frog-members also get to drink
pea soup with brandy in March–the group’s only other official event.
Thank you, Google–jumping and smiling will be on Frank’s Nobel week
schedule!

In the summer of 1969 or thereabouts, I drove to Alaska with my brother
Kevin. We lived on honey and peanut butter sandwiches for three months,
sleeping on a plywood-and-foam-rubber “bed” we’d rigged up in the back
of a Jeep station wagon. Nobody had heard about seatbelts way back
then–if we picked up more than a single hitchhiker, one of them would
have to ride flat on the bed.

At night, in the pine woods, the northern mosquitos were huge. We
carried yards and yards of mosquito netting to slam in the car doors
before falling asleep. One night, Kevin slept with his arm against the
netting–it swelled up to the size of a big hock of ham.

It was one our way north–in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory–that Kevin
met a girl from San Francisco. She was beautiful and sweet and kind of
crazy. Her name, she told us was Strawberry. Strawberry what? Just
Strawberry, she said. She gave him her address, and on our way back we
detoured all the way down to Haight Ashbury to find her. She’d moved on
elsewhere but we stayed a week with two childhood friends who were running a candle store…

Now, back to Alaska–up near Mount Denali, we fell in with a bunch of
glacierologists. None of us could sleep through the sunlit midsummer
nights–the world was just too exciting and too new. We talked for
hours, hiking through gravel-strewn landscapes past moonlit boulders,
eating gigantic pancake meals topped off with our peanut butter and
honey. (We started off with a full gallon can of each, and had some left even when we got home in August.)

Sailor Bill was one of our hitchhikers–quite a bit older than most, he
seemed ancient to us. (He was probably ten years younger than I am
now.)  Sailor Bill had spent many years as a hobo, and told us he
know how to ride the rails. When he saw how tempted we both were by his
stories, he told us about one boxcar misadventure.

He had been partying with a woman who wanted to go with him as he
hopped a train. He knew a crossing where freight trains slowed way down
and hobos could climb aboard. They’d ride in a boxcar for a couple of
days–she even brought a suitcase along for the ride. But after the
train slowed down and they both hopped on, he discovered something wrong
with the car. I don’t remember what the problem was–maybe I didn’t
understand it back then, but it was serious. They would both be killed
if they didn’t get off the train, fast, but now the train itself was
speeding up. And the woman couldn’t understand what he was trying to
tell her–she didn’t want to jump off, and the train was going faster
and even faster. “Thank god for the suitcase,” Sailor Bill said.
“Arguing was no good–but when I threw her suitcase off the train she
finally gave up and jumped off herself. Boy, was she mad at me–and I
just saved her life.”

He probably saved my life with that story of his. Thank you, Sailor Bill, wherever you are.

10. I’ll no longer be getting five phone calls a day from phone-bank volunteers who want to know my political views.

9. I’ll no longer be getting six phone calls a day from phone-bank volunteers who want me to become a phone bank volunteer.

8. I will be able to park near a Catholic church without having my car leafleted with photos of partial-birth abortion.

7. I will be able to park near a Baptist church without having my car leafleted with photos of gay men tearing up Bibles.

6. I will be able to park near a school without having my car leafleted with photos of Osama Bin Ladin threatening my children.

5. Kerry won’t get blamed for the messes Bush made in his first term. (Clinton will have to keep on taking the blame.)

4. The prayers that made George Bush a “miracle” President might
bring us miracles that I’d like too.  (Peace in the Middle East
would
be
really nice…)

3. I’ll get another $600 check in the next round of payback tax breaks for millionaires.

2. Jokewriters would be so lost without George Bush.

And the number one best thing about this election:

1. Millions of Democrats around this country are hugging and kissing to
make each other feel better–so nine months from now, we’ll have
millions more Democrats!

“First of the nation” NH voters have spoken.

In 2000, these two tiny very Republican towns gave Bush 38 votes vs Gore’s 18…

Their 2004 votes were all in and counted minutes after midnight. Bush got 34 and Kerry got 22, so Republicans are trumpeting this as a Bush “victory.”

But think about it–four Republican voters in Republican neighborhoods
decided they wanted to vote for Kerry instead. Now multiply that choice
in towns all over this country.

NH has spoken, and this election is OVER.

Michigan voters in African-American neighborhoods are getting strange automated phone calls–one of them taped the message for reporters:

Republicans say they don’t know anything about these phone calls, or
about other robocalls to the same neighborhoods telling people their
polling places have moved.

On Halloween, Fort Lauderdale churchgoers waiting in line for early voting got
bottled water, folding chairs, and candy from various activists–plus
sign displays from young Republicans pretending to be far-left
Democrats. Joshua Bearman talked with the ringleader, who had a big Kerry/Edwards sign topped with an even bigger sign proclaiming “Support gay adoption.”

Yeah, right. This is *exactly* how gay activists talk. [End sarcasm]

Once Bearman started photographing these “Democrats”, they quickly gathered their signs up and ran away.

Thanks to Joshuah Bearman for a great story and to Atrios for the link.

Tomorrow, enthusiastic but inexperienced Rob Republicans and Don
Democrats will show up to monitor polling places in swing states.

Rob has been warned that Democrats plan to “steal” the election from Bush by sending fraudulent voters to the polls.

Don has been warned that Republican plan to “steal” the election from
Kerry by using challenges and intimidation to discourage legitimate
voters.

We’ve been listening to Rob and Don on the Internet, for months now,
and all of us have higher blood pressure as a result. (Lisa Williams blogged about this in a way worth reading.)

Thank heaven, the real world isn’t the Internet. I saw this with my own
eyes in NH yesterday, as Bush supporters outside a Kerry rally and
Kerry supporters encountering Bush supporters on the street treated
each other with good-natured decency.

In the real world, Rob and Don look at each other and see human beings.
OK, maybe Rob looks like the jerk who once dated Don’s sister’s
roommate, and maybe Don sounds like Rob’s least-favorite-ever guidance
counselor… but Don doesn’t sound like a guy who wants to do
partial-birth abortions on live two-year olds and Rob doesn’t look like
a guy who would murder Iraqi babies to get their oil fields.

At least, that’s how I’m hoping this will turn out. I’ll be so glad when this election is over.