Space and then some

Tonight, March 13, there is a show on the History Channel about Comets. Got the "heads up" from Laura Whipple, who was interviewed for this show, as her father is the famed astro-boy wonder of the Dirty Snowball Theory, Dr. Fred. Dr. Fred and I share the same Nov. 5 birthday, but he would be 99 this year if alive. He passed last year, actually, late 2004.
But we don't get the History Channel with the limited Adelphia set up that I receive - shouldn't this be part of even the most basic of available options? Guess not. And, thanks - No, I do not want my MTV. I'd be well-served with a good receptive pair of rabbit ears, but the reception here in this part of the Swish Alps is scant. Location location location.
Laura and I go back to the '60s - late '60s, Boston. Mutal friends have come and gone, but I touched base with her after reading of Dr. Fred's passing. She has sent along to me some great writing from her mon, Babette, as to Isaac Asimov and that crowd from way back that they, she and the doc, were part of in Beantown oh so long ago. Amazing stuff.
I'll go grab some and post it here.
This is a great read:

Memoir # 32
MY REINTRODUCTION TO ISAAC ASIMOV
April 27, 2005
This reintroduction to someone Fred and I had first met in the1950’s began last week on Monday, when I was moving miscellaneous boxes of my old photographs from our basement to the first floor. This portrait of Isaac Asimov, which I’ll share with you now, was taken in1975 in front of his prized bookcase -- the one with all of his 500books organized in order of their publication. After looking at this picture, which shows a leering Isaac holding a copy of his book “The Sensuous Dirty Old Man”, I scratched my brain for memories of him only to discover that they were neither numerous nor specific. What I could access was the global image of a pleasant looking man of medium height with a protruding belly who quickly became the center of attraction in any social gathering. He was always spontaneous and extremely funny. One could also count on him to zero in on and flirt with the prettiest woman in the room, finally to be unapologetically full of himself. Fred and Isaac became good friends, and, although time and other factors diminished the frequency of their face-to-face interactions, they kept in contact at least twice a year: they telephoned each other on the other one’s birthday.
Memories of Gertrude are almost entirely negative. For example, although the Boyds and the Whipples frequently included the Asimovs in their social gatherings, she never invited us to a meal in any of the three apartments they lived in while in the Boston area or in the house they bought in Newton before their divorce. Gertrude was apologetic, but unbending. She had excuses galore: she didn’t have enough space, chairs, or dishes to entertain properly. Shortly after their son, David, was born, however his proud father did invite us to meet him. It was an unpleasant occasion, as I remember it, because ofGertrude’s rigidity and over-intrusiveness. Another visit to their home took place when David was about two years old. I remember watching him disconnect several electrical cords and listening to accounts of his skill at taking things apart. He impressed me as being a quiet child, and uninterested in people. Autistic, perhaps? I didn’t and don’t know. The autobiographies indicate that he was not a normal child, and was sent away for special schooling.
As a conversationalist, Gertrude was boring. Furthermore, I disliked the way she always put Isaac down by making it clear to everyone that she considered her brother, a run-of-the-mill dentist, more worthy of esteem than her brilliant husband. In thinking back on this mismatched couple, as I saw them, I believed quite erroneously that they had divorced soon after moving to the house in Newton. I also assumed that Isaac had wanted to escape from their relationship after very few years of marriage.
It would be interesting, I thought, to Google Isaac for his autobiography. First and foremost, I wondered whether he had included anything about his relationship to Fred. Secondly, what had the real relationship been between him and Gertrude? Or should I say, how did Isaac describe their relationship? Finally, not to be omitted from my gossip gathering, I wondered: when and how did he meet Janet Jeppson, a psychoanalyst and writer who became his second wife? At times I’d wondered whether they’d met because he might have been her patient. Several days later, following my impulse to research Isaac’s biography led to my borrowing his two hefty autobiographies from the daughter of our old friends, Bill and Lyle Boyd, both of whom were science fiction fans and writers. Isaac’s account in the first book, “In Memory Yet Green – The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954”, enabled me to follow how his first interaction with Bill Boyd eventually led to Isaac’s taking a job in Boston, and to our meeting him in 1949.
Bill had sent an enthusiastic fan letter to Isaac after reading “Nightfall” soon after its publication. Years later, there was an opening for a one year appointment as Instructor at Boston University Medical School Biochemistry Department, of which he had been head. Bill invited Isaac to apply for this job. By then Isaac had long since received his Ph.D. from Columbia and was currently doing research at that university. Isaac managed to send in his application forms just in time, in case his other and far more preferable job options had vanished, and he was jobless. They had by the spring of 1949. He was very sorry to be leaving Columbia after being there for 14 years, including his undergraduate studies. Publication of a few books and Science Fiction articles had, by then, enabled the young couple to save a little money. But the amount, meticulously reported, was far from enough to live on. For many years, Isaac felt very insecure financially.
So he and Gertrude, his wife of nine years, moved from their comfortable digs in New York City, his beloved and convenient home base, his proximity to publishers of Science Fiction, and his family to Boston, where they knew almost no one. The first summer they rented the top floor of small apartment in Somerville where they spent a miserably hot and lonesome two months.
The first surprise, after going to the index in Isaac’s two volumes of autobiography was to find that my name, listed as “Babbie Whipple” had several entries in both books as well as Fred’s name. Isaac and Gertrude finally, after seven years of marriage, were expecting a first child to arrive shortly after our Sandy had been born on December 6, 1949. Isaac was thrilled and felt that this was an important connection with me. Isaac’s description of his first meeting with Fred reads as follows: “Again I stayed at the Boyds’ and met Fred Whipple, a Harvard astronomer, and his wife, Babbie. Fred was tall, slim, good humored, and forty-two years old. Babbie was short, smiling, and pretty.”
Interesting enough, both men were about the same height: 5’10”, which was probably tall for men born in the early part of the 1900’s. That Isaac saw Fred as “tall”, however, probably reflects his reverence for successful academics to whom he felt inferior.
Shortly after our meeting the Asimovs, we invited them to join us for dinner at our house with “The Decadents” – an eating group to which we and ten other people belonged, and one that was a very important part of our social life during our early married years. However, since the Asimovs would not take their turn at hosting two evenings during the calendar year, they were never invited to become members. Another time the Asimovs joined us for dinner was on a night when the Sid Ceasar and Imogene Coca program, “Your show of shows” was onTV. They watched it with us and decided to buy a TV in order to watch it themselves on a regular basis. Prior to that evening, Isaac had had no interest whatsoever in owning a TV. He’d disliked that form ofentertainment and considered TV watching a real waste of time. (Insert quote here from Isaac’s account in his autobiography. Another surprise: Isaac wrote one and only ghost article which Fred had promised to the Saturday Evening Post in 1958 which would be published under Fred’s name.)
Re the real relationship between Isaac and Gertrude, I’m confident that Isaac does not, out of courtesy, let the reader know about the numerous difficulties in their marriage, which led eventually to their divorce in 196?. Nevertheless that does not explain my initial utter disbelief when I discovered that my assumption they’d had a short marriage was wide of the mark. I just couldn’t believe that he could have stayed with her as long as he did. Projection can be a powerful mechanism!
I admit that until reading his first autobiography, I was totally ignorant of numerous factors in his early childhood and his relationships with his parents, which had led him to fall in love with Gertrude on their first date (he considered her to be as beautiful as a movie star), to propose marriage less than six months later, then to become deeply devoted to and married to her for many years.
Skimming rapidly over the roughly 1,500 pages of the two autobiographical books enabled me to follow the path from Isaac’s and Janet’s first and disastrous meeting in 1956 to their later and far more enjoyable interactions when Isaac traveled to in New York to contact his publishers and give lectures. Their meetings had become more numerous (and probably more intimate) in the 1960’s. He describes one delightful reunion, which took place in 196?? when Janet happened to be in Maine while Gertrude was traveling in Europe with the Asimov’s daughter.
Isaac’s marriage to Janet in 1972 (?), presumably delayed by difficult divorce proceedings, was, I believe, fulfilling for both of them. Sadly their life together was cut short in 1991 by his fatalheart attack. I met Janet briefly in 1975 when I went to their penthouse overlooking Central Park – too briefly to get much of an impression of her or their relationship. Isaac had invited me to spend several hours with him, taking black and white pictures while he worked on a story. He always used the old typewriter his father had given him for the first draft, totally undistracted by my presence. He said that after finishing this first draft he would copy it unchanged onto his electric typewriter, then send it off to his publisher. It was his custom to spend all of his spare time writing, sitting at his desk for most of the day. Someday in the not too distant future I hope to take another look at these old negatives and perhaps find another one or two that would be worth enlarging.