Dear Friends and Colleagues,

This section will not recount John's biography so much as it will share glimpses of his history and inner life - usually, as he bared these in brief writings. We have reviewed some 1.2 thousand emails to glean the topics listed below. (The list will grow as we add elements.) [Project interrupted as life went on... hoping to continue to add elements in stray moments.]

As readers you should simply scroll down this page to find an entry that captivates you. The site does not allow us to rearrange chapters once they are posted. The disorder or better, the heterogeneity reflects well John's interests.

We invite you to upload or type in your own contributions under the "Stories" tab.

Topics:

Letters to the Editor

On Being an Excellent Student

Basic (computer programming language)

Science Fiction

     A glance at the beautiful oval travertine or red marble dinner table in John's home would reveal numerous envelopes on the backs of which his boxy, elegant script appeared. These much crossed-out lines reflected his regular challenge to condense his thoughts into a single-sentence letter to the Editor of the LA or NY TImes.
     He was published quite often and would always lament that the Editor had again betrayed their intimate correspondance by sharing his letter with 6 million people.
     The following is a selection of letters dating from the time that John began to use online submission facilities (or reminded his e-mail correspondents of past, published letters). Dozens of others exist. Before 1982, while in Washington and working for the federal government, JMM had submitted under the pen name of John Jervis. Some phrases remain in memory, like this one from a letter playing on the synchronicity of a fundamentalist initiative to reduce funding for the arts and an ordinance forbidding the use of topless waitresses: "undraped living displays of God's sculptural handiwork in the cafés of the nation".

     I remember his great pride when first was published a letter under his own name, after his retirement. I believe that letter may have been the following, in response to reports of maritime difficulties encountered by the British sovereign (from memory; dating from early 1980s):
"Aphrodite, angered by Queen Elizabeth's interference in Prince Andrew's dalliance with Koo Stark, persuaded her father Zeus and uncle Poseidon to plague Her Majesty's voyage with lightning bolts and storms at sea."
     Claire
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Published in the Los Angeles Times, December 1994

William F. Buckley, Jr. must know that there are many who find requiring children in public school to say, "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee, and we beg thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country " unacceptable, if only because they are not sure there is a God, almighty or not, or that we are dependent upon a God, or that a God listens to prayers, or having heard prayers responds as begged rather than doing nothing or the opposite of that begged, or that such a blessing would have any effect, positive or negative - leaving aside such questions as whether the student on a given day is favorably disposed toward classmates, parents, teachers, or country, or whether government's establishing such religious beliefs is consistent with our Constitution.
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Published in the Los Angeles Times,  January 2000
Now that NASA has failed twice to land an explorer on Mars, using first English and then metric units, it is time for them to use Martian units.
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Published in NY Times and International Herald Tribune
July 6, 2001

Maureen Dowd reports that President Bush said in the Jefferson Memorial, ''I'm a proud man to be the nation based upon such wonderful values.'' In so saying, Mr. Bush is in the great tradition of an earlier leader, Louis XIV: ''L'état, c'est moi.''
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February 12, 2007

RE: U.S. makes case that Iran arms flow into Iraq

It sounds as if any Iranians bringing weapons into Iraq are illegal immigrants, in which case we should bring to bear the expertise we have developed in stopping such illegal entry at the Mexican border, including the volunteer vigilantes.
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May 28, 2007
Animal lovers everywhere were much heartened when the last two great races, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, were won by horses, but their hopes for a triple crown were dashed today when a horseless buggy won the Indianapolis 500.
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June 2007

Re: "Investment house to buy Hilton Hotels":

Will the sale of Hilton Hotels include everything, or will the Hilton family still be able to say, "We'll always have Paris"?
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Published in the LA Times 2008

We can be very pleased that a study shows that 50 years after Buckley's God and Man at Yale, spiritual elements are still not included in college courses,  while students are still able to go to church, join religious clubs, and take courses in the history of religion and ethics, and philosophy.
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November 14, 2009

Re: The mission that plunged a rocket into the moon's surface last month detected about 25 gallons of water in the form of vapor and ice -- enough to inspire hope for a lunar colony.

As we start thinking about distinguished Americans who should be given the honor of inhabiting our first moon colony, names that suggest themselves include Chief Republican Rush Limbaugh, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and, to provide them with daily truth, the staff of Fox News.
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December 19, 2009

Re: Yes, Virginia...  (Patt Morrison, page A-39 today)

When Groucho explained to Chico that a clause in a contract rendering it void if either party was adjudged insane was a standard "sanity clause", Chico replied, "You can't fool me, there's no Sanity Clause".  What a fine Christmas gesture it would be if Chief Justice Roberts sent the message, "Yes, Chico, there is a Sanity Clause".
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February 6, 2010

I am too old to test reader Ira Wieder's prediction that it would take almost 32 years of spending a dollar a second to spend a billion dollars, but my two granddaughters have each volunteered to try this out with your support over the next three decades.
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February 7, 2010

Re: South African President Apologizes for Illegitimate Child...Mr. Zuma, a Zulu traditionalist who practices polygamy and currently has 20 children, including the child he fathered with another woman..

President Zuma is indeed a traditionalist, in a broader context: my great grandfather Sir John Charles Molteno, first prime minister of the British Cape Colony and thus a founding father of the country of South Africa, also sired 19 legitimate children (no others).

[see Life Story chapter on Molteno heritage]
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Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 1:09 AM

It is very confusing to read, in the Times'  review of Alan Alda's TV show "The Human Spark", of the historical "gradual replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans", when we are faced  every day with the primitive antics of teabaggers and other Republican attackers.
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May 7, 2010

Re: Signs of Neanderthals Mating With Humans
We Democrats, who have increasingly wondered if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans can really belong to the same species as we, now have our answer:  Republicans are human beings with a preponderance of Neanderthal genes.
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June 15, 2010

Re: Ernest Fleischmann dies at 85; manager who guided Los Angeles Philharmonic's transformation
 
I have a very pleasant memory of Ernest Fleischmann: After a public program at the Getty Museum relating to the history of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, I approached Fleischmann on the stage and told him I had been seeking architectural precedents for Frank Gehry's unusual  design of the Disney and had found only the weird buildings in the 1919 German movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; Fleischman smiled and shook my hand when I proposed that the Disney be nicknamed The Cabinet of Dr. CaliGehry.
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January 13, 2007

Letters to the Editor Los Angeles Times   Re: Prince Harry restores the mantle of correct royal behavior in choosing to put himself in harm's way in Iraq   President Bush's daughters Jenna and Barbara could establish the mantle of correct presidential behavior, if they too, unlike their father and Vice President Cheney in their time, responded to President Bush's call for sacrifice by placing themselves in harm's way in the Bush-Cheney mess in Iraq.
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JMM was very modest about his intellectual abilities and uniformly saw greater intelligence in those around him. Talking about him in Paris after his death, granddaughter Valentine and son-in-law Marc realized that “he was not possessive of his ideas – John knew that ideas belong to everyone”.

 He read with interest, in August 2007, a NYT article about how best to help “geniuses” in the classroom, and urged us to read it, with the following reminiscence.

I do not regard myself as close to a genius. In contrast, I was always a very good student. When I arrived in Hollywood at age 9, I was soon removed from grade 5 (with Jason Robards) and placed in the "opportunity room". (Living in Malibu many years later I hoped to cross Robards so that I could say: “Wait – you look familiar… Could it be… Robers? Roberts? From Mrs. So-and-so’s 5th grade class”.)  When I reached the age of 10 I was sent to Le Conte Junior High in the 7th grade - a two year (?) skip, something which was much more common in those days I think. (Later, in 9th grade I was a classmate of child star Bonita Granville ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonita_Granville ).  I did well at Le Conte and at Hollywood High. In the middle of my high schooling my mother decided I was to be sent to a boarding school in British Columbia for some proper English discipline. However, when I wrote home that “nobody here seems to care whether I do well or badly”, my exile was brought to an abrupt close. I re-entered Hollywood High late in the fall term and remember in particular a chemistry class. I saw that I would have to work very hard to catch up in that class and I applied myself to studying the textbook. As the professor handed back final examination papers in the spring, he remarked that he did not know what to think of the fact that the best performance was by that student who had benefitted the least from his teaching over the course of the year. As I think back to that now I find it very grand of him to have voiced that doubt; he was not obliged to do so. While being an excellent student, I had none of the sort of creative activities attributed to children in the Times article. As a graduating senior at Hollywood High I was to be on stage as best student but was ill.  I was also at the top of my class after a slow start at Caltech (I realized after a mediocre first term that I had to buckle down and work for my grades) and also got all A's at Columbia graduate school.   But it turned out I wasn't really interested in physical science as anything more than textbook learning and only found my true interest when I left Bell Labs and went to Washington and was able to work at changing the world (my scientific education was essential for this).  I was very effective at shaping up both NSF education [National Science Foundation research programs] and the Office of Education (OE) from my spot in the presidential Science Adviser's office (Office of Science and Technology - OST).  My predecessor, Joe Turner, was unfortunately persona non grata with the head of OE. In contrast, I had the good fortune to work with a different head who told me to tell him if he was “doing some thing he shouldn't or failing to do something he should”.   Finally, at the National Institute of Education (NIE), which I helped to create while at OST, I was designated "Science Adviser" and cooked up various studies (often involving summer studies) leading to R&D programs.  I served briefly also as assistant director for research (support) but could muster no interest in administration and so stepped down by mutual consent after writing a highly praised  (by outside reviewers) research support program description.   

John avidly read the LA Times and the Sunday NY Times (sharing the NYT copy with his lovely Malibu neighbor Rosalie). When the Malibu house burned in 1993 there were 8 feet of ASH in the ruins. Firemen said they had never seen anything like it. The ash was John's collection of books but also, probably, of not-yet-disposed-of newspapers. (As a sign if needed of his paradoxes, recall John's fondness for Groucho Marx' statement when learning that "the garbage men are here": TELL 'em WE DON'T WANT ANY!)

In 2008 at the death of SciFi writer Arthur C. Clarke, John sent the following to Chris and Claire:

Just in case you didn't see these, and would like to:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-clarke19mar19,1,5943279.story http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/books/19clarke.html?ref=obituaries   Bibi and I took Chuck (Adam Clayton Powell's Administrative Assistant, etc.,etc.) and Louise Stone to the Carolyn Peachy Associates* opening of 2001 at the Uptown theater just down Connecticut Ave. from Tilden St.** 
Well into the picture, Chuck said out loud, "There are no niggers in this movie".  I said, equally loud, "What do you think those folks at the beginning were?"   I, like the customs agent in the LA Times obit, have never understood the end of the picture.    Isaac Asimov was a Chemistry Ph.D. graduate student at Columbia with me in the late forties.  He had already started writing science fiction stories and was questioned on one of them in his Ph.D. oral exam (he passed).    I read at least Amazing Stories magazine as a boy.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Stories   John Pierce at Bell Labs, who was responsible for realizing Clarke's satellite communication idea, wrote science fiction himself under the name J.J. Coupling, a name understood only by those familiar with quantum mechanics. http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-459821/John-Robinson-Pierce   My only remotely science fiction letter: Now that NASA has failed twice to land an explorer on Mars, using first English and then metric units, it is time for them to use Martian units.  John Mays  Los Angeles Times  January 2000.          (Their third try worked!)

* Bibi worked with Carolyn Peachy Assoc. who organized the Kennedy Center Honors.
** We lived in the house John & Bibi built at 4010 28th Place near Tilden and Connecticut.

John recounted that when he retired, before leaving his office at National Institute of Education in Washington he reviewed files of what he had done in his role.

He was proud and bemused to see that he had signed the grant order to support the development at Princeton of the simple computer programming language "Basic".