My Library

Among the media types in attendance was a delightful lady from TIME magazine. I have forgotten her name, never having made note of it, but I have some quite nice photographs which show us talking together. As I remember, we talked about fifteen minutes, and no one disturbed us because, after all, she WAS from TIME, back then still an awesome edifice to be from. To my knowledge, nothing came of this encounter. But the mere fact that "TIME magazine was at the reception" was taken by one and all as significant, in that TIME did not attend upon things there were beneath notice. At some point thereafter, a team of four from NBC News arrived unannounced at the ASPR, wishing to be shown everything, and talk to everyone. I was at the ASPR that day. The team spent a lot of time with Dr. Osis, who talked about out-of-body stuff, then with Janet Mitchell who talked of brainwaves regarding same. When my turn came, we spent the time talking about the lack of "visual material" that could pep up a TV piece, which, after all, would consist of pictures. To begin with, according to the NBC crew, the decor of the ASPR building (formerly an elegant brownstone townhouse) was in "strange taste." However, that background decor could be faded out. But that left the experimental rooms which were "ugly," the equipment was "incomprehensible" even if filmed, and charts showing this or that statistical analysis were "not NBC news material." That left only "talking heads" who said things "the public" would never understand. "Yes," I agreed sympathetically, "TV does have a problem about what to film." As the NBC crew departed, they got stuck in the ASPR’s small elevator.