>
>
> Today, as the world pauses on the birthday of one of history's greatest
> men, whose teachings continue to benefit the entire human race, let us
> join in toasting the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, and of all the giants on
> whose shoulders he stood.
>
> Jim Farmelant
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Personally, I am toasting myself, born December 25, 1942 at about 1:00a at Los Angeles County Hospital to Mary Elizabeth and Charlie Alfred Grimes, with Dr. Marks the pediatrician. I have a photocopy and it is a strange thing to look at. I looked up the address on google, out in the long avenues 4479 W.60th St. toward the beach. I couldn't believe it. The fourplex is still there and still looks pretty much the same as I remember my baby pictures. Seventy years ago.
Just the name Doctor Marks made me want to go to the bathroom with an anxiety act. Shots, stitches, more shots, poking, proddings who knew what that fucker had in mind. I dreaded it. Measles, tonsillitis, more shots. What's with the needle? Bone numbing stabs in the little skinny ass of yours truly. Then there was the maraton of shots of shots for moving to Mexico where disease ran wild into small pox and stuff I couldn't pronounce. They used the left arm for small pox so the right arm was available for everything else. Small pox vaccinations are just annoying and itch.
Tonight is memory, all memory. I went up to my kid's place, which was my English in-laws house once upon a time. I loved them. They were the old school British field scientists of Botany and Evolution, straight from Darwin down to the notebooks. I've still got their Remington portable where they typed their field notes in Guana, Costa Rica, and California. They made enough contributions to get a plant named after them.
Now I'll bore you with the grand kids who weld in their body and being, the British and Spanish colonial battles to dominate the Americas. They look Austrian, because they are Austrians, via Maximillian and the Habsburgs. Wow did I have fun tonight as Emily 9, plied her exquiste verbal skills and Ethan 6 his weasling and lovely nature to distract the grown ups... I had forgotten that nine and six year olds know how to talk Imagine a six year old who prefaced his remarks with the word, Basically, .... Where did he get that?
And guess what? They were happy in that deep contentment that seems to never reappear after a certain age.
Then me and kiddo spend a few great minutes on the micobiology of bone cells, growth, and artificial matrix technology, stuff straight out of science fiction. Bone cells work along the lines of Buckminister Fuller's principles of tensegrity ... Yes, really. They work at the microlevel on stress and load. The physical forces of a gravitational field have created our body form and it takes the rime of the ancient mariner to see it.
My present was a high class watercolour set and high end paper. I explained how to introduce it to my son for his kids. An art lesson I've always wanted to tell. Color is a universe. We exchanged ideas about the digital translation. I learned that Ansel Adams used a strong red filter on his box. It makes perfect sense for the dark sky effect that is real at higher altitude.
I told him about de Niro's Hugo a pretty and wonderful story for kids, a kind of christmas card from the goul of ganster dramas. Maybe a year or so when the kids at ten and seven when their imaginations are alight with the magic flame. Paris as a clock. The master clock of motion pictures.
CG