THROWBACK THURSDAY

This is a story about a true broadcasting pioneer.

I met him when we lived in Mexico during the 1980's and 1990's.

He became my best friend in those south of the border days.

His name was Walter E. Nixon.

This picture was taken after we had left Mexico and he had come to visit us in his beloved home state of Texas.

He was born in 1922 and raised in Harlingen, Texas.

But his career in radio began in New York City.

After working for newspapers, in political campaigns (he was a Yellow Dog Democrat), and in public relations he moved to the Big Apple right around his 33rd birthday.

A friend of his from Austin, Jack Summerfield, was hired to run a new non-commercial radio station owned by the Riverside Church.

Mrs. John D. Rockefeller had put up enough money for great studios, the best equipment and the first 5 years of operating costs.

At a party, Summerfield asked Walter what he thought his new station could do that no one else in New York was doing.

Walter said what was needed was good coverage of the United Nations.

Summerfield thought that was a great idea and asked Walter to do it.

Walter said he had no experience in radio.

Summerfield responded "Good! No bad habits to unlearn!"

Walter began producing a weekly 15-minute program called U.N. Journal.

When the COMSAT satellite went up, WRVR hooked up with WGBH in Boston and a station in Washington as a mini-network providing public affairs programs.

Walter's U.N. Journal, by now a daily program, went on the network.

I figured you might be getting a bit weary of this by now so . . to break things up . . here's a picture of Walter with my beautiful wife at a party in Guadalajara.

That should hold you for awhile.

Meanwhile, back in New York, other stations began hearing about the network, wanted in and it became National Educational Radio, the forerunner of National Public Radio.

Walter became news and public affairs director of WRVR as well as a senior producer.

In 1962, Walter got about a 4-hour beat on everyone else with news at the U.N. of the settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

During the so-called Civil Rights era, a crew went down to Birmingham the day Martin Luther King announced an agreement with city leaders over integration.

They worked all night in a motel room to produce a program called "A Happy Day in Birmingham".

Walter voiced it.

They also went to a Ku Klux Klan rally where Walter interviewed then Imperial Grand Dragon Robert Shelton.

On the way back to the motel they heard about A.D. King's house being bombed and produced several more programs.

Their coverage from Birmingham won them a Peabody Award.

By the middle 60's the money was running out and Walter went back to free-lancing.

Later he decided to put his Masters Degree in Economics to use and went to work for Standard and Poor's.

He retired in 1986 and moved to Guadalajara.

Walter Nixon had been a heavy smoker much of his life and suffered from emphysema when I knew him.

I've mentioned him before on this blog as the father of the stage and screen actress Cynthia Nixon.

One year in Mexico a festive party was held at Christmas and I wrote a limerick for each of the guests and then recited them before dinner.

For Walter I wrote:

About Walter, a puzzle most vexin'

keeps my poor brain a-flexin' and flexin'.

After several careers

in New York -- 30 years!

He still sounds the same: like a Texan.

A great guy and many years later I still miss him.

HORTICULTURE CLASS

In my constant effort to identify the trees and flowering shrubs that surround us I have made a new discovery about this rascal.

This is actually on the property of my neighbors but we have one growing in our front yard, as well.

Two, actually.

On the recommendation of another neighbor who said it was a Mexicana plant, we pruned ours to within a propinquity (heh-heh) of death this spring.

But it has sprung back.

(Again, this is not it but one close by)

(As is this.)

That plant quite obviously has not been pruned back to the ground.

Consequently it is much larger than ours.

(At last. This one is ours.)

When the Google images showed a Mexicana plant to have bright yellow flowers, I searched further.

I noted the leaves with their near-Marijuana leaf shape and wondered hmmmmmmm . . .

And the flowers, as you can see, are bright purple.

And then the great gods of Google revealed the truth.

This plant is a Texas Purple Sage!

So what is it doing in Arizona?

It turns out that this is its natural habitat and that it thrives during the monsoon.

Which is now, even though we have had very little rain this season.

So we have TWO kinds of sage.

You remember the Rocketman Russian Sage, which is blooming its fool head off in the back yard.

Incidentally, all that purple foliage turns out to be a natural draw for what appear to be hundreds, if not thousands, of bees.

They move quickly but I got this fuzzy picture of one of them gorging himself.

The first time I saw the bee swarm I was nervous and backed away.

But later, armed with my trusty camera, I found that the bees are so interested in the flower pollen they have no time or inclination to attack a human.

Another fact is that the bees often share the plant with finches of more than one variety.

The goldfinches seem particularly fascinated.

So there you are, Gentle Readers.

I hope you enjoyed your horticulture lesson for the day, (I concluded, sagely.)

Heh-heh.

DRINKING

Sometimes the only thing that makes sense in this increasingly insane world is dulling the senses with vodka.

LIFE . . .

. . . is just a bowl of cherries.

(Idea and food styling by SWMBO!)

FRIDAY NIGHT PIZZA

Friday night is pizza night at my casa.

SWMBO gets the night off as I "fix dinner".

Warning to the purists: I do not make my own dough.

I buy a DiGiorno's thin crust pepperoni pizza and doctor it at home.

Last night's version featured extra pepperoni, globs of mozzarella, mixed sweet peppers and some grape tomatoes.

Topped off with freshly grated Parmesan fresh out of the oven.

Catalyst's "doctored DiGiornio's".

So it isn't P.C. (Puristically Correct)

It's still darned good.

And I've got leftovers for today!

TEARS

This Friday nothing seems funny.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Today is a day to remember for Arizona and U.S. historians.

July 7th, 1981, a mere 35 years ago, was the day President Ronald Reagan nominated a judge from Arizona, Sandra Day O'Connor, to become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

When her confirmation hearings began in the U.S. Senate the television station I was working for at the time in Phoenix sent a crew to Washington to document the momentous occasion.

Ron Talley (on the left) was the reporter and I was the field producer.

Wally Athey, who probably took this picture, was the photographer.

O'Connor was confirmed by the Senate and served 25 years on the high court, marking her spot in the history books.

Today there are three women on the court.