Betsy Blog

All the Weird Obituary Questions That Are Fit To Print

The New York Times recently solicited questions for their Obituaries editor, Bill McDonald. I submitted a question, and it appeared in the online edition. Check it out:

When the Writer’s Obit Precedes That of the Subject

Q. I recently read the obituary for James Van Allen, who died in August at age 91. I was dismayed to see the byline at the end that mentioned that the person who wrote the obituary had himself died in 1996. I understand the need to write obituaries in advance, but was there really no need to update Van Allen's tribute for over 10 years?

-- Betsy Burton

A. It's a sensible question. As it happened, we actually did update the obit with the details of Dr. Van Allen's death; they were added by an editor, in the paragraphs that preceded the byline. At least, that’s the way it was presented in the printed pages of the newspaper (see an Adobe Acrobat PDF file of that day’s page). Everything under the byline was written in the mid-1990's by Walter Sullivan, who was a prominent and well-respected science editor and writer at The Times. The Web version didn’t make the distinction clearly, and we’ll have to work on better ways to do that.

But more to your point: This was an exceedingly rare case of our using the byline of an obit writer who was himself deceased. As I mentioned earlier in response to another question, we maintain a large bank of obituaries written in advance, some of which outlive their authors, as this one did. In most cases we do not use an obituary whose author is deceased; we have it rewritten. But in some instances the author was so prominent or such an authority in his field that we feel the original obit is worth preserving. Walter Sullivan was such a journalist. Having covered the space age from its earliest days, he brought to the obit a depth of knowledge, experience and perspective that we felt was too valuable to discard.

When Bob Hope died, the obituary we had on hand had been written by Vincent Canby, who by then was also dead. But we chose to publish the obit, using a similar presentation, because Canby was one of the nation's most thoughtful and respected film and theater critics. In each case we chose to stick with the original obit not to honor one of our own but because we thought our readers would truly benefit from his words, even if we had to resurrect them.

Update from The Worst Blogger Ever

This past week marked the one year anniversary of my move to California. It’s one of those things that seems so long ago yet also seems like just yesterday. Let’s go through it month by month:

July 12, 2005: Dropped off my car at the shipping place in Durham in the morning, and was myself dropped off at RDU in the afternoon. I flew to Oakland. Home.

July: The movers arrived with our stuff, much of which was broken. My parents came to visit for 2 weeks. I missed my car more than I thought I would.

August: My car arrived. Yay! I was still unemployed, but not panicking about it yet. During the days I knit, and walked the neighborhood. I found a yarn store close to home, and started going to their evening knitting group. I met a group of women with whom I still spend every Wednesday night.

September: I was still unemployed, and starting to panic. I sent out resumes every day, and didn’t hear anything. I started an e-mail exchange with a local scientist who had just found a job. He had interviewed at a contract lab in Marin and knew they were still looking for someone. I applied and had an interview. They called me on a Wednesday and asked if I wanted to work there on a "trial basis". Um, sure…when do you want me to start? Tomorrow. My 2½ month long unemployment ended abruptly.

October: I began working at contract lab in a remote area of Tiburon. It was an hour-long commute, and the work wasn’t very stimulating, but I was getting paid. I kept applying for jobs, hoping to find something more interesting. I’ve often compared job hunting to dating, and my experiences this month further confirmed my theory. You know how they say that people in relationships are suddenly more attractive to others? Well, as soon as I had a job, I started hearing from other companies. I had phone interviews with two East Bay companies and two live interviews at one of them. I was offered a job, and gave my notice at the contract lab.

November: I started work here on November 7th. My morning commute was cut from one hour to 10-15 minutes. I quickly realized that I knew nothing about working at a biotech company. But every day I learned more, and I was happy to be in an exciting, stimulating environment.

December: Work, work, work. We spent Christmas with my brother David and his family.

January: We started to toy with the idea of buying a home. As I mentioned last year, we weren’t sure if we would ever be able to buy a home in California. But with both of us working good jobs, it started to seem like we could do it.

February: We started going to open houses on the weekends, trying to get an idea of what we could afford. Early on, we visited a house less than a mile from our apartment that Jeff loved. It was down the street from a neighborhood restaurant called Fat Apples, so we nicknamed it Fat Apple house. I wasn’t sold on it, and thought it was a little overpriced, so we continued to look.

March: We found a house. It had been purchased by a contractor and totally remodeled. The price was high, and we were warned that there would be several bids, which would jack up the price even higher. We made a bid. The whole process was very nerve-wracking, and at one point I said to our realtor, "I think my biggest fear is that they will accept our offer." Complete insanity. The sellers came back and asked for even more money, we politely declined, and they sold the house to someone else. We were disappointed, but also strangely relieved. While we were waiting to hear the outcome, Jeff suggested that if we didn’t get the house, we should go back and look at Fat Apple house again, since it was still on the market. I said to him, "You know, if they reduced the price on Fat Apple house by 10%, I’d make them an offer." When we called our realtor to set up a visit, we found out that they had reduced the price by 10% just that day. So we made them an offer, and it was accepted. Within three weeks we had closed escrow and were homeowners again. Yahoo!

April: We were still living in the apartment, and working on the house. We went straight to the house everyday after work, and were there until 10-11 pm every night. We ripped out the carpet, and had the floors refinished. We had the electrical system updated. We replaced light fixtures. We painted every room in the house, including the baseboards and the kitchen and bathroom cabinets. It was a lot of hard work, but it was all worth it, as the house really began to look great.

May: We finished up work on the house, and moved in May 12th. Once again we realized that we own too much stuff, but now we have a garage to store it all! The cats began to adjust to the new place. Floyd took to it right away, but Elsie was a little freaked out. She spent the first few days under the covers of our bed. Eventually she came out and realized that she could sit in the windows and look out onto the world, and she was happy. At the end of the month, we took a much needed weekend trip to Santa Cruz/Monterey to celebrate our anniversary.

June: More unpacking. Yes, it took a long time. It’s still not done.

July: And here we are. We have a house, 2 cats, jobs we love…life is good.

When my parents were here for Easter, my dad asked me, "Did you ever think you’d live in California?" No, I didn’t. Sometimes I’m still surprised to find that I do. Aside from the insane cost of housing, it’s really great here. There are so many cool things going on here that we can now be a part of…like this and this and this. And I get to be close to these people, which is the icing on the cake. It’s been a pretty exciting year, despite the lack of blog entries. I promise I’ll try to do better in the next year.

Hey now, you're a Coinstar!

As I was packing the house before I left Durham, I began accumulating all the loose change we had around, so I could cash it in before leaving town. The last time I had done this, I had gathered all my change and taken it to Wachovia, only to be told that particular branch didn't have a coin sorting machine. After carrying several pounds of change around in my car for a few days, I ended up taking it to a Coinstar machine at the grocery store. If you're not familiar with Coinstar, here's the description of their coin counting service from their website:

Coinstar's patented self-service kiosk is easy and fun to use. Just pour in your jar of mixed coins and watch them add up. The Coinstar Center accurately counts up to 600 coins per minute, saving you the time and effort of sorting, rolling and taking them to the bank. When you cash in, you'll get a voucher to redeem for cash at the store checkout or apply to your purchases. Check your voucher for special promotions or sweepstakes that Coinstar may be offering. In the U.S., the fee for our coin counting service is 8.9 cents per dollar counted (9.8 cents Canada).

I hadn't realized before that Coinstar took such a big cut of your total, but I didn't feel like calling every Wachovia branch in town and asking if they had a coin counting machine, so I gave in to the lure of Coinstar. It was unbelievable to me that I couldn't simply take my coins to my bank and have them counted, as I had done at banks in both Iowa and Colorado. But I bought into Wachovia's excuse that not all the branches had a coin sorter, and vowed to find one that did for my next coin counting venture.

So just before the move, I called Wachovia to find out which locations had coin counting machines. I dialed the number for my local branch, and got connected to a customer service representative. I asked which branches have coin counting machines. She said that she didn't know the answer, and that I needed to call my local branch. Which I had. Evidently, I had bypassed the local branch and been connected to their national customer service line. So she connected me back to my local branch, where I again asked which locations have coin counting machines. The man I spoke to informed me that none of the local branches have coin counting machines. None of them? He informed me that I could put my coins into rolls and cash them in, but I was still reeling at the idea that the bank doesn't have coin counting machines. The bank. Where they keep the money. You've got to be kidding me. I actually made him clarify it for me one more time: "Let me get this straight. NONE of the banks have coin counting machines?!?" Yep, that's right. "So my only option is to purchase coin wrappers, manually pack them up, and bring them to the bank?" And that's when he said the most incredible thing of all. The guy who works at the bank (where they keep the money) actually said to me: "You could take your change to one of those Coinstar machines at the grocery store." Unbelievable.

A dee-luxe apartment in the sky

So I've been in California for ten days now, and am adjusting quite nicely. Yesterday, I marveled at the fact that I had to wear a jacket when I went out to lunch. A jacket. In July. It was heaven.

The movers arrived with our stuff two days ago, and now our apartment looks like this. To Jeff and I, it is utter chaos; to Elsie and Floyd, it is a wonderland. It's as if we've built them an elaborate climbing gym. Elsie is particularly pleased that we finally had the sense to build her a perch to look out the window. Unfortunately, a lot of our furniture was damaged in the move, as shown here. I look forward to a long battle with our moving company over the damaged items. Good times!

Despite the chaos and the broken furniture, it's good to be here. I've been exploring the neighborhood, reading, and catching up on sleep. I'm especially happy to be back with Jeff and the cats. It's good to have the family all under one roof again.

Attack of the Killer Snails

I was in California last week visiting Jeff, and came upon a rout* of snails on a rainy walk home. There were so many of them that I had to watch every step I took so as not to step on them. I have never encountered snails in the streets before, so I was curious to learn more about how they got there. I found the following from an article at sfgate.com:

“…the local common garden snail is the European brown -- Helix aspersa. They were imported here in the early 1850s by a Frenchman who intended to sell them as food, but the market here during the Gold Rush was too unsophisticated for snails. He ended up dumping some snails, and another collection escaped. Snails are hermaphroditic, so of course they reproduced like crazy.” 

They’ve become real pests, since they feed on people’s gardens. Quite entertaining for this newcomer, though. We had a good time touching their tentacles, and watching them retract, shown here.

 

I also learned here that they're typically gone by this time of year, but with all the rain the Bay Area has been having, the snails are still out:

"Snails and slugs typically hibernate in topsoil during very cold weather. And when conditions are hot and dry, snails retreat into their shells, seal themselves off and become inactive. But with this year's plentiful rains and mild winter temperatures, snails and slugs haven't had much downtime."

Yes, these are the same snails that are used for escargot. If you go to the first link above, you’ll see how you can harvest your own snails for dinner. No thanks.

*Yes, it is too called a “rout of snails”. I looked it up. I also learned that a snail nursery is called an escargatoire. So there.

SOLD

I went out to get the mail and noticed our realtor had added a SOLD banner to the For Sale sign on our front lawn. We accepted an offer almost 2 weeks ago, but this really makes it seem official. There are several townhomes for sale in our development, so I was worried that it would take a while to sell, but it was only on the market for 3 weeks (and we didn't even need St. Joseph). It's a big relief, and the cats are very happy that strangers are no longer touring our home.

Honestly, I'm a little sad to leave our house. We've put a lot of work into it, and it will be hard to leave it behind. Since the housing market in the Bay Area is so insane (median price=$689,200), we will be going back to renting an apartment. It feels a little like moving backward, but I know it's all part of a bigger move forward in life.

Go West

Hi all! I thought I'd start with the news of our big move. Jeff has taken a position at a software company in Point Richmond, California, so we are making the move to the west coast. Jeff had to begin work last week, so he has already relocated. I am finishing up my work at Duke, and will join him out there in July. Professionally, it's a great move for both of us, and gives us a chance to explore a new part of the country. As an added bonus, we will be living near my brother David and his family. Check out the pictures of our new apartment: http://betsyphd.typepad.com/photos/apartment/