Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Kathy at Freshman 44 has been waiting patiently for me to respond to her meme invitations, most recently the Huffington one which asks us to discuss five people, dead or alive, whose blogs we would have read.  I could respond that I’m quite happy, thank you, with the blogs I read already, and that’s mostly true.  My responses below are not intended to portray myself as finding the rest of you wanting.  One possible faux pas in listing someone here is that the person has actually published extensive memoirs, and I’m too ignorant and/or lazy to find them.  Also, cleaving to the theory of one of my book club mates that authors cannot be trusted to tell the truth about their work, I’m not gonna list any.  They’re writers, dammit, and if a writer won’t write, what’re you going to do?

Okay, here goes:

• Rosemary Woods, Richard Nixon’s personal secretary, who died a month or two ago.  Who can forget (aw, shit, who actually remembers?) her demonstration, impersonating a rubber-jointed Russian gymnast, of just how she might have accidentally depressed the “erase” button with her foot while transcribing the infamous White House Tapes, thus causing the 19-minute gap?  Considering what was on the tapes, just think of all the stuff we didn’t hear.
  

  

  
  
• Roger Maris - during the tortuous 1961 season as he and Mickey Mantle chased Ruth’s 61-homer record.  He was vilified (as Hank Aaron later would be) for presuming to chase the Babe’s laurels, hated the publicity and told of having clumps of his hair fall out as the season burgeoned.  After that season, he continued to play good baseball but never approached the glory of that year.  He died of cancer at age 51.


• Chief Seattle - who as a child in 1792 saw the first Englishmen (the Vancouver expedition) anchor in Puget Sound and, as an adult, guided his people’s interactions with the founders of the city of Seattle.  It would be fascinating to know what life was like before white settlers came to this region I love, and the native’s perspective on the transition.


• My Dad - a lot of family lore died with him last fall, despite both his stated intention at one point of getting his grandmother to tell stories to a tape recorder, and my own urge to get him to do the same.  He was an only child, so he was the end point of several possible lines of inquiry.


• Warren Buffett for obvious reasons.  However, I believe I’ve read that Buffett is even a little shaky using email, so getting him flowing mellifluously with Radio Userland might take some doing.