As the bomb’s birthday rolls around I won’t belabor the point that my stepfather worked on the Manhattan Project—I wrote a piece titled “Trinity” that covers some of that. Like most of us he was good and bad and we got along well enough until after my mother’s death in 1979. He remarried and the less said about that, the better. But he had a fine, interesting family and they are well worth mentioning.

 During the World War Two years I lived with his father and mother in Winchester, Kentucky and St. Joseph, Louisiana. His father, who I called Pop, was an Episcopal minister, inventor, science enthusiast, grower of exotic orchids who managed to have a small greenhouse wherever we lived, a maker of fine bookbindings, an artist and illuminator of text. His accent was very British (he was from London) and I recall that his parishioners liked to hear him speak. So did I. I was fascinated with Pop, his side ventures, and his marvelous dogs: a Scotty named Meg, and two Irish Setters, Champagne and Red.

Pop poured me lead soldiers in his detached shed full of books and scientific equipment, and we painted them in regimental colors. Microscopes, beakers, Bunsen Burners, piles of books and tins of English snacks took up table space. Coleman bought a patent of his. He made guest books for the DuPonts.

 A living relative, Pop’s granddaughter, and I have been in contact over the years; she, like my stepfather, attended college at an earlier age than most. I suspect that their family is riddled with genius genes (or IQ isotopes?). I would need an interpreter to understand her CV, so, in quite broad terms, she’s an anthropologist with a PhD. Pamela Bumsted is my step-cousin and she has been employed as a journalist, a Forest Service archaeologist, a coffeehouse manager, been on Mayors’ committees, lived with an indigenous Fijian family who collaborated with her on biocultural fieldwork, lived and worked in New Zealand, the Arctic, California, New England, the midwest, Pueblo communities, Eskimo villages, “bush” Alaska, several rural New Mexico spots and points west.

I asked her if she’d seen either the Oppenheimer or Barbie films, and she said no, but, “I met Prostitute Barbie coming out of the apartment building at 5:15 AM as the dog and I were returning from its bathroom break. Thigh-high, very pink suede leather boots with 4 inch soles and stiletto heels; very long, very platinum blonde wig; and I don't remember much else except she was polite, offering to leave the door open for me but as she was swaying so much I suggested she leave first.”

 A book I thoroughly enjoyed and will be reading again if I can find it.

Acid West, essays by Joshua Wheeler, is one of my favorites and I may have to buy it again. At the time the book came out in 2018, Wheeler was teaching at LSU. His book is worth reading just for the Trinity essay. As the Amazon description reads, “Early on July 16, 1945, Joshua Wheeler's great grandfather awoke to a flash, and then a long rumble: the world's first atomic blast filled the horizon north of his ranch in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Out on the range, the cattle had been bleached white by the fallout. Acid West, Wheeler's stunning debut collection of essays, is full of these mutated cows: vestiges of the Old West that have been transformed, suddenly and irrevocably, by innovation.” You can order it here. Guy can write!

  And a couple of Oppenheimer books, because, of course.

I’m halfway through 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant, and it’s a different perspective on the Manhattan Project; from the town side (Santa Fe) though there’s plenty about The Hill, as well. Then, American Prometheus, (the Pulitzer winner from which the Nolan-directed film was adapted) is an Oppie opus I’ve been intending to read; hefty and intimidating at a doorstopping 721 pages. I’ll be reading it in small bites.

They called them dust storms in the 30’s but now they’re Haboobs.

And Kansas City got one back in mid-July, right before a big storm knocked out power to over 200,000 KC residents. It was a week before power was restored to the entire city and energy teams from neighboring states had to lend many hands. The whole thing was preceded by an ominous wind loaded with detritus, farm dirt, flying pigs (I’m conjecturing here) and newspapers that would wind around your head and stop up your glottal orifices. It was a bitch. Or, as they say in the desert regions, haboob. Apparently, meteorologists have adopted the term, as they have hook echoes and kelvin scales. Weather in the midwest is getting weirder just like everywhere else. By degrees. By leaps and bounds. And nuclear testing probably accelerated it. (Note: just last night, another big storm knocked out power for some 80,000 Kansas Citians. As of this morning Evergy has restored power to about 60,000.)

When a good man dies, it’s cause for reflection.

There seem to be fewer and fewer of them, especially as era-defining as Tony Bennett. The news feeds and breathless media are so intensely engaged in character demolition, they don’t know quite what to do or say about someone whose whole long life was a positive object lesson in humility, talent, kindness and a calm sort of deep cool.

It was no surprise when Bennett succumbed at 96 to Alzheimer’s but it was a sharply felt loss to many who had grown up listening to him. We just assumed he’d always be there, and, in a way, he will be.

Here he performs a 1938 favorite, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which he often sang when entertaining troops in Europe after serving in the Battle of the Bulge. It was written the year I was born, and it has withstood the test of time a little bit better than I. He was also an accomplished painter. He was, in the parlance, something else. R.I.P. sir.
 

And, in closing, some Pop Art…

In paragraph two, at the start of this blog, I alluded to my step-grandfather, the Reverend William F. Bumsted, with whom I lived during the war years. I knew him as “Pop” and a multi-talented man. I mentioned he had made a guest book for the DuPonts; well, here’s one he made for his son, (who I also mentioned, as my stepfather) and his son’s wife, my mother, in 1941. The last entry in this handsome book is around Christmas in 1973, when I guess the house parties and penchant for visitors and guests had slowed somewhat, or, at least their heralding had. Anyway, Pop’s art lives on in the Wise Acres bookshelves.

Have a great August, hopefully cooler than July has been, and may we all avoid the haboobs and various other subastral or maybe even cosmic disturbances. Cheers and good stuff at you, G