This is Your Journalist’s Brain, This is Your Journalist’s Brain On…”
Hello. I almost forgot to post today, wilted as I was after a day of gardening, window washing and electricians fixing the outlet that had burn marks on it for the last several months. My new fiduciary responsibilities clicked in as I happily clicked on the TV to Anderson Cooper’s "360" talk show style edition about the male brain and infidelity (among other things about BP with Doug Brinkley). Infidelity doesn’t excite me all that much, but the studies of the human brain does, which is the focus of tonight’s show.
Yes, so I ran to my computer to check in with you before the clock strikes midnight. So, at this 11th hour, the show’s topic reminded me of my dear friend Robert Chalmers, who Hunter adored. To be clear, it reminded me not so much of Robert, but of his book, "East Of Nowhere." There are two people on the planet who are so wicked smart, that they chose "The French Influence on Oscar Wilde" as their Ph.D. dissertations: Shelby Sadler, dear friend and one of Hunter’s editors, and Robert Chalmers, also a friend and fellow journalist who was a welcome addition to Hunter’s Owl Farm when Ralph Steadman introduced the two men years ago.
Before the clock strikes midnight here, I will post a tease to Robert’s book, "East Of Nowhere." And check in with you tomorrow or Monday.
When he looked back on that morning, as he did, time after time, he could never understand how he’d forgotten to be discreet. Adultery had become a discipline to Miller, in the pursuit of which he’d learned — like a seasoned assassin, or a bomb disposal expert — that brief moments of precious intensity were best secured through scrupulous attention to detail and diligent forward planning, and that impulse was his enemy.
That Wednesday, though, some new instinct settled on him. It happened abruptly, in the way that a man might walk along the same clifftop path every morning for twenty years then, one day, for no reason, glance down into the void and step off.
It happened — every time he thought of it, the memory horrified him more — in the office. And not just in the office, but in Bowker’s Cupboard. He’d worked with Charlotte, his temporary assistant, for two weeks without really noticing her at all. But that morning, just before seven, as he settled behind his desk, sifting through a pile of irregular expenses claims, she was stretching up to reach some box files on the far side of the room, with her back to him. He watched her. It was the first of May, and she was wearing a beige cotton jacket and a cornflower-blue skirt that finished just above her knee.
He stopped scrutinizing journalists’ invoices for first class flights, luxury hotels and other privileges he had prohibited on the morning he took over as editor, and instead found himself staring absentmindedly at her calves…
Okay, it goes on in scrumptious detail. Hope you get the book. I gotta run (well, more like swagger bc of my big blue and white striped slippers) back to see Anderson Cooper interview the researchers of the human brain.
Toodaloo. your faithful friend in Woody Creek,
Anita Thompson
