This post is part of a discussion held yesterday and further chewed upon last night, and from it also emerged a long-overdue homage. This is it. I love my cousin. Walter William Johnson, who is almost-not-quite one full year older than I am. Since we were kids, we were close. I knew him then as Bill, or Billy. His mom, my Aunt Helen, and dad, my Uncle Walt, were probably my favorite aunt and uncle—his sister, Janet, was…’elegant’ is the first word that comes to mind. From when we were little, there are still pictures extant of Bill and I dressed in cowboy outfits with Fanner 50s and vests and cowboy hats. But early on, from when Bill was 10 or so and I was 9 or so, we each recognized similarities in each of us. Bill gave me a book when I was 10 that I still have, Herbert L. Gold’s Anthology entitled ‘Mind Partners’, which introduced me to science fiction that enticed the mind. Stories by Cordwainer Smith (real name: Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, and look him up for a story of a Life Well Lived), ‘The Lady Who Sailed the Soul’; and R.A. Lafferty, “Snuffles’; ‘With Redfern on Capella-XII’, and a hilarious Keith Laumer-like story called ‘The Stentorii Luggage’. We used to watch ‘creature feature’ if we had the chance and I remember first watching ‘Them’ starring James Whitmore, and a pre-Fury, pre-Mission Impossible Peter Graves, with Bill. We grew up—Bill was/is at least as bright and quick as I am, at least as quirky a sense of humor, plus a daunting ability to focus on ‘the beyond’ in terms of intellectual parameters. As I have spoken of my dear and close friend-circle through the years, Bill had his own in those days: Bill Link, Bob Dunas, Dennis Darling, Vaughn Frick, Robbie Dennissen(?), and dear Dan LeSeure. I actually was in a Boy Scout troupe with several of these plus Bill, but it was short-lived, as I HATED hiking in 95-degree temperatures at age 13 as much as I do NOW, no matter what merit badges were earned. In junior high and high school, Bill and I shared similar intellectual environments, some of the very same teachers, most of the same challenging curricula, although I was a year behind him. He ended up graduating from Springfield High, with honors, while I did the same from Southeast, and during many of those years from 14-19 we did not see as much of one another, except at family holiday gatherings. But, when we did get together, we shared that love of science fiction, and oddly, we both loved political novels, although I’m not sure I will forget (forgive?) his introducing me to Allen Drury novels. Both of our early college years were, what would be the words? ‘Fraught with controversy’ comes to mind, as neither of us lived up to those ‘damned ol’ expectations’ as expected. But we both found our way—we had occasion to share two apartments over about a 15 month period in 1972-73. We met some great people; Lewis Parks, Guy Romans, Ken Slauf, Maureen Madix, Kay Morse, Suzanne Croteau, et al. We loved watching the Watergate hearings, and cursing that damned, damned Nixon and cronies ‘Ehrlich-t-man’ und Haltder-mon’, were overjoyed when John Mitchell came crashing down, and Sam Ervin used the POWER of the Senate hearings to effectively end Richard Nixon’s career. We went on. I moved to Baltimore, played for a couple of years in Ocean City, then finally began my career, which for the most part has been deeply satisfying and successful. Bill married well. He got his B.A., then his Master’s, then his Ph.D., then worked ultimately at NASA-JPL and developed theories, techniques and papers based on perception, aimed towards assisting both our space exploration, and the human response to conditions wherein our pilots, astronauts, and others could be placed in harm’s way. Though we are now separated by a continent, and by 20 years since last being in each other’s presence, I sense that there is still a closeness between us, a recognition of ‘value realized’ in each. I hope so. Bill’s post concerning identifying physical areas of the brain wherein ‘decision-making’ may occur was fascinating to me. Although I attempted initially to treat this somewhat cavalierly, somewhat humorously, the reality of it is that I ended up staying up until 2:00A.M. thinking about the theoretical construct as Bill discussed, but also WHY the concept of ‘decision-making’ is in part, in my humble opinion, related to a ‘meta-consciousness’ of ‘making our own reality’. Through the years, I have learned to trust Bill’s logic, and in some ways to distrust, and discard, my own. He has his own strengths in this area—mine go more to the sense of ‘the poetry of life’ and a concept of ‘will’ that drives our ‘choices’. That is what I was trying to get at with the comments on both ‘phenomenological’ method and ‘spontaneous responses’, as well as to what we hope to bring into existence WITH our choices, with our WILL. NOT very scientific, I freely admit, but with Bill, the saving grace to ALL of his excellent science and his brilliance, is that he has always, ALWAYS, allowed for the ‘answer’ not being all of the answer. Sort of like, Patti Page’s ‘Is that all there is?’ skepticism and hopefulness. I hope that Bill’s skepticism and hopefulness always continues alive within him, and within his sons, as well. And that any ‘disagreements’ or differences we have are those of ‘nuance’ and not that sense of wonder awakened long ago.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 10:03:49 +0000
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