Now That's A Commute

I have to realize—but certainly not like—the fact that print media is in a death spiral. I started reading newspapers and periodicals in the back of the family flower shop when I was 11. NYT, Time Magazine, The Herald Tribune, The Daily News. We also got the The Long Island Star Journal at home in Flushing, delivered the very old fashioned way by a young boy on a bike with a canvas bag draped from the handlebars. He'd collect, like all newspaper boys of the '50s, based on what his green notebook said you owed. Not everyone paid on time. For some reason, I'm amazed that we did, because my father often let bills lapse to the point of termination of service.

Because of reading The L.I. Star Journal I know who Mike Lee was and why there is a New York Bred thoroughbred stakes race named after him. Mike was a sportswriter for the paper, and he picked horses, a pursuit of many. I was too young to act on his choices, but I did read them. My guess is not many people will ever be able to tell you who Mike was. Or why the prior home of the Mets was named Shea Stadium. I'm taking it with me.

Newspapers are not particularly cheap. You still get great value with the NYT for the $3.00 newsstand price, but $4.00 for the WSJ is ludicrous. And now they're going to cleave their New York Metro reporting. Jesus. What is NYC, a farming community with no one living there? Luckily, home delivery brings discounts, but they are eroding, like saving money on MetroCards. If Arthur Miller were alive today, the title of a famous play might be 'Death of a Newspaper."

At 72 I'm hardly discouraged though. I'm sticking it out till the end, which is more likely to me than all the newspapers there are. So there.

I just saw in today's NYT that Richard Stolley passed away at 92, founding editor of People Magazine. Most people likely don't realize that People is a Time publication and was an offshoot of a section of Time magazine that was a page of bold face names, ellipses, and light gossip. I loved it in the '60s. Apparently so did many others, because in 1974 they started a whole magazine from it that's still going strong, with many imitators.

All of this is a long prelude to the value of print journalism when you can read a story like the one that appeared in yesterday's NYT Science Section about the woman who fell two miles to Earth from a plane that was crashing after being struck by lightening in 1971, who landed in the Amazon jungle, and then spent 11 days finding someone who could help her, which in part entailed having them pour gasoline into her wounds to help kill the maggots that were growing. She was 17 at the time, and is now

Juliane Returns to Crash Site

a retired zoologist, Dr. Juliane Diller.

She's the star of the long form story, but along the way we learned about vampire bats. Dr. Diller encountered all kinds of wildlife and fauna in her 11 days hike for help, and one occasion she was bitten by a vampire bat on her big toe.

Apparently, vampire bats do not usually go for humans (what a relief) but she explains, "vampire bats lap with their tongues, rather than suck. After they make a small incision with their teeth, protein in their saliva called Draculin acts as an anticoagulant which keeps the blood flowing when they feed." Holy shit. You mean the name Dracula is not some name made up by a science fiction writer? Those nasty blood suckers. (Despite similar properties, the makers of the anti-coagulant Brilinta avoid any reference to Dracula and bats. Bad for business.)

But the best part of the story, aside from reading about young Juliane's ordeal and her life afterward ,(she was the sole survivor, and her mother was killed in the crash) was reading about her father who took a job in South America and spent two years trying to get to his first day in the office. 

Now that's some commute! As bad as the LIRR was in the '70s, no one ever spent two years trying to reach Manhattan from Ronkonkoma.

Turns out, before Juliane was born, her father, Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, a German zoologist accepted a position at a natural history museum in Lima, Peru in 1948. Yeah, so. Get on a plane from Germany and fly there, right? Read on.

The reporter Franz Lidz tells us: "Getting there was not easy. Postwar travel in Europe was difficult enough, but particularly problematic for Germans. There were no passports, and visas were hard to come by."

So, if you weren't a fleeing Nazi, getting to South America for a respectable citizen was a bit of a hassle. Not the half of it.

To short circuit he paragraph on the trip, Dr. Koepcke arrived at a South American after getting to a German port, shipping out on a trans-Atlantic freighter, arriving in South America, but still not where he needed to be. No cabs in sight, and Uber's not been created yet, rentals are all gone, or non-existent, Wilhelm, being young and of a sound mind and body, sets out to walk to work. Think subway strike, and you've got part of the picture.

But this isn't a stroll waiting for lights to change green, he's got to cross a few mountain ranges, spend time in an Italian prison camp (hey, I'm a German in South America and the war's over, pisan...) after being arrested, then finally stowing away on a cargo ship bound for Uruguay hiding in a pile of rock salt. (Any story that involves you having anything to do with Uruguay certainly means a hardship was endured.)

Wilhelm finally arrives at work, two years after accepting the position and is told basically he's late, and they've filled the position. WTF!

Kinda hard to just turn around and catch the next ship back going in the other direction, ya think?  Wilhelm perseveres and accepts another position in the museum's ichthyology (fish) division. Thank God there was an opening, right?

Genetically, Wilhelm doesn't pass onto his daughter genes that specifically allow you to survive being burrowed in a pile of rock salt on a South American cargo ship bound for Uruguay, but you're that man's daughter, and when it's your time to fall out a plane and land in the Amazon jungle, you only need 11 days to reach help and have gasoline poured on your wounds to kill maggots. That younger generation. They can do anything.

What's my point? Without reading yesterday's paper you missed the story, that's what.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com