Moment Magnitude

Independence Day

Independence Day takes on special meaning this Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Yes, Richard Ford's luminous touching novel has the same name, and I read it last summer. I hope to dig in to his latest segment of that so-far two-book trilogy, The Lay of the Land. I am an unabashed admirer.

Never mind that same-named throw-away film however many years ago.

Yesterday, the Colombian government somehow managed to complete a covert, daredevil ploy to free fifteen hostages held by Marxist guerrilla forces, each for several years. One is Ingrid Betancourt, who once ran for president of Colombia, and who, in the middle of that campaign, was kidnapped. A few months later, three American "contractors" were likewise kidnapped, and likewise rescued yesterday. Read it here.

There is a connection.

Some ten years ago (approximately), when I was publisher for the sciences at Columbia University Press, I attended the summer meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Boston. I was there, to first, promote our latest book, authored by Cornelia Dean, science editor for the New York Times. The book is: Against the Tide: the Battle for America's Beaches. I reference it often now that I am living in Sag Harbor and working real estate in the Hamptons.

At that meeting, in a session addressing possible hazards about transporting nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain, I met Victoria Bruce. The AGU meetings are attended by some 85% men: Earth, ocean, and space scientists. Imagine boy scouts with big brains. I don't think I need to say much more.

I was used to - and liked - being one of the few women allowed into this club.

And then there was Vicky. Gorgeous, sexy, forthright, and asking tough questions of the big science boys - on the g-forces that would pull on the proposed containers intended to transport nuclear waste down under the mountain with known underlying fault zones (hey Vic - I can still dredge up the old science verbiage). I wondered to myself: Who the hell is this?

I learned later that she has an advanced degree in earth sciences, but was (and is) ever the pistol. We became fast friends. She wrote a provocative adventure-disaster book, No Apparent Danger: The True Story of Volcanic Disaster at Galeras and Nevado Del Ruiz (Harper Collins - as a former ex-boss from the pantheon of my ex-bosses wrote recently: "We're scratching our heads" about the resignation of Harper Collins' CEO Jane Friedman. I know I am. She's tremendous.) The book's true story setting is Colombia.

While there, Vicky allowed herself to be seduced by the Colombian culture. Not long after the publication of her book, she returned to the country, and started to film footage for what would become the documentary (that she co-produced with her partner, Karin Hayes), The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt.

That film won the audience appreciation award at Slamdance, the film festival adjacent to and in the same location and time as Sundance. Later, it won the Columbia (the university) DuPont award in 2005, and was picked up by HBO to air on cable.

A few months later, Vicky and Karin made another documentary film, Held Hostage in Colombia, this time about the three American contractors who, while conducting airborne surveillance in Colombia, crashed, and were held hostage. That film aired on Public Television.

As has been exhaustively documented by the mass media in the last day, these people were held in captivity in the Colombian jungle for years.

Now they are free.

Vicky and I exchanged holy-shit-holy-fuck email messages last night.

I've been shaking my head intermittently all day today.

The eve of the Fourth of July. Where the Town of East Hampton will not have beach fireworks - lest they disturb the natural environment of the piping plovers.

Where I've run into an ex-boyfriend (from hell), done with some three years ago. And felt nothing. Except that I didn't want to be in the same particular location, and I just left.

It's all independence.

Time, rescue, maybe without fireworks.

But freedom.

Hold On To Your Ego

Once, probably two decades ago, when I was starting my career in publishing, my friend Carter Roberts met me for dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a young acquisitions editor for Prentice Hall, I was calling on science professors at Cambridge's most eminent universities, seeking new authors. Carter had completed his business degree over off Soldiers Field Road, and had secured his first job, very corporate, at Gillette (I think). I had a little crush on Carter. I think I always will. I paid close attention to anything he said to me, and remember pieces, sentences, these many years.

He asked me about my work, and I told him.

"You know," he said. "I am jealous of you. You have the best job." He has one helluva bass baritone voice, that one, and at the time a strange boyishness which reminded of a less homicidal Norman Bates.

Carter Anthony Perkins

I thought he was kidding me, in that subtle, southern, deadpan way he has.

"I talk to scientists, Carter. I think most people would find that boring."

"But it's not." his tone, soft as it was, suggested that there could be no argument.

Sometimes, the work could be boring, but in truth, I did find it intriguing, since doors to the offices of some of the world's biggest brains were open to me.

"I figure," I said," that if they can describe to me what they do, their work, in a way that I can understand it, then I think that is the first sign suggesting they can write a book."

"Don't you see? You have the opportunity to learn something new everyday. Most people don't have that."

Today, I remain astonished at the insight, the wisdom of that observation. He was right.

Many years later, I worked with Murray Gell-Mann on slight revisions for the paperback edition of his beloved book, The Quark and the Jaguar. I remember reading it, struggling through the sentences that sought to make accessible the deep ideas he had about the nature of nature, about complexity and emergence. I was often confused, and made annotations in the margins, question marks, squiggled sentences and scrawls.

This was Murray Gell-Mann, however, the Nobel Laureate in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Think quarks. I started working with him in New York. But it wasn't until I called on him at his beautiful home in Santa Fe that I understood what it meant to be in the presence of greatness, greatness of mind.

Our meetings, and our work, were not about me, much as I attempted to describe the confusion I experienced when reading through various of the passages in his book. I parked my ego at the door, and opened all my senses, because, recalling Carter's remark (as I did and have on regular occasion), I knew I would learn something everyday I was in the presence of Murray.

My mother had moved to New Mexico by then, and I would stay with her. She would tell or remind me, "Murray called," since I gave him her number, the surefire way to get me once I landed. Mom would put on her best Brooklyn accent. I think she rather liked talking to him those brief moments. It takes a New York ear to recognize another New York ear, even two time zones west.   

Here is what I learned, although my memory is faulty. I am sure I've synthesized Murray's explanations, but I own my memories, my interpretation of them. I am fond and protective of both.

I learned that some species of snake that lives in African continent is blind, but not so, for the remnant of its eyes are part of its biology. It has vestigial eyes.

That's one helluva term: vestigial eyes. Sometimes my eyes feel vestigial.

He also told me his notions of the source of my surname. He thought it might be a Middle English word, perhaps spelled "yddr." But he seemed more certain that my name was the name of a river in England, and that my name described the milder of two rivers, the ancient "yddr" meaning mild, or milder. There is a river in England that bears my name, although I have not seen it. I suppose it is a mild river. Why would I think otherwise if I had not been there and seen it myself?

Something more that I've learned since that learned encounter. Just about everybody can show me something I don't already know. If I exercise patience and careful questions, I will learn something. I kid that a back hoe operator knows more about back hoes than I will ever know.

The Tennis Pro and I chatted this week. And he said that one of his clients was a "choochberry," his word, part of his personal vernacular. I asked him what he meant by it. Instead of providing his own working definition - hey, I like made-up words almost as much as those that the OED defines with rigor - he veered off onto a tangent, about how he teaches people, many wealthy and influential, who most times are caught up in their special universes, in which they are the master, the one in charge, the operator and controller. (This is my extrapolation, tbt.)

When he has them on the court, his domain, they have to give in, give up, and allow him to teach them. In the process, he pokes around a bit, tests them. I can imagine his gentle queries. He is relaxed, but seems to be perceptive that way. Like The Savior, his particular genius is contained in his body. But he has the presence, if not the temerity, to open his mind, and learn something or other from his clients.

In that sense, we are similar. And in that conversation, I realized that we shared a common behavior. We both know when to put ourselves aside - even though he is as much an expert in tennis as I am in editing and book publishing - and pay attention. Because we like to learn new, well...stuff.