News; Jeff Nicoll

I got my old friend Jeff Nicoll down to help me with computers. That is not his specialty; he was the only cosmologist i knew at the time, and Phillip  Morrison’s fair haired boy, being groomed as the future head of the physics department.

And then he became enamored of a set of equations that “proved”a steady- state universe.  Understand, he didn’t endorse them; he just thought  it was  interesting to contemplate! But  modern physics decided that was TOO heretical, and Phil cast him into the utter darkness of exile from modern physics.

Never daunted and with perfect timing, he signed up as an arms control inspector and for he next eight year or so saw more of the ‘Stans than i did chasing dogs. His trips were punctuated by flash  trips to Vienna a  for cake and coffee, and chile bouts here . He remarried, to Alice, an Anglican priest,  took another  degree, , in Theology,. and wrote a  book on Augustine. He still has as security clearances and does clandestine work- he did SOMETHING up north ((?) when he was here, He is a delightful  person who retains just a b uit of his ancestral accent and can refer without irony to “Cousin Al “(Gore) and “Cousin George” (Bush) . He is also brilliant  on computers and has left me with two possible dictation fixes (One at least seems seriously possible- at last!!) That I virtually cannot type has  been a weight on my shoulders. So far it has been hard for me te to use dictation software because of whå† PD does to my pronunciation- think Boston accent (whichI never had much of because of my schooling)  with stiff lips.

It also helps- how to say it without bragging?–  that he is one of the few people ii know who is as widely reads as  I am. We complete each others sentences . One night owe  astonished  Libby   by shouting out a quote – from  Cromwell, of all people!- together.  It was rather like the time when I finished  the Years quote from our poet- cop – rancher- houndman friend James Nance as we were driving home in th dusk . “Casta cold eye on life, on death” intoned James. “Horseman, pass by”, I answered. YES! .

Even as aged as  we  all  are, Jeff still bears a startling  rsesmblance to the serious bearded intellectual in the suit  whO stands out from the craziness of the  conspiracy theorists known as  the  Lone Gunmen on the X  Files..