LIPSCOMB

In early 2005 I was visiting the campus of University of Kentucky with my wife Kathy Shen...........showing her around and doing some research at the UK chemistry-physics library. Hoping not to be seen by faculty I knew there because I was undeservedly embarrassed about how things ended with my thesis advisor there after I had gotten an MS degree in 1988 and left for a job in Ohio. At this time in 2005 I came across a poster-flyer announcing that William Lipscomb would be visiting UK in March, 2005 and would give a public lecture about his work in chemical biology. At the time I was aware that Bill was Roald's thesis advisor at Harvard University back in 1962 and that they were both famous people. So I picked up a poster-flyer then and I exclaimed to Kathy Shen that this was a lecture that we had to go to because this guy is a famous chemist connected to RH. Then in March, 2005 I attended the lecture with Kathy Shen next to me..........but I failed to wear nice clothes and looking back I must have looked very, very poor (as I was and am). Some of the UK chemistry faculty were at this talk (well dressed) and Carolyn Brock came over to me and greeted me and my wife before the talk began and she was very pleasant and professional. Lipscomb spoke for an hour in a crowded and large lecture hall. He spoke about chemical biology and nothing about boron at all (the poster showed drawings of various boron hydride molecular structures). He mentioned several famous discoveries in chemical biology that were connected to his research group........but never mentioned the work of Thomas Steitz or Roald Hoffmann. In any case the lecture was completed and there was a question-answer session in which some people from the audience asked him about boron..........he told one person that the structures and stoichiometries of the crystalline substances of B and various metals were "intractable" or beyond his level of understanding. After the question-answer session was completed he stayed around to greet the audience for a few minutes. It was at this time that I, dressed very, very shabbily, and my wife Kathy Shen went up to the stage and greeted Professor Lipscomb. I told him right away that I had done a thesis with RH and he exclaimed in a surprised and startled voice......"what was your thesis on?" I told him I worked on carbon. He was interested in me and what I said but he had a number of other people to greet then and he just told me....."good luck". This lecture was delivered in March, 2005 at UK...........at the exact time I was then living in Somerset, KY for 10 months where I took a job at a community college.......but I walked off the job within 2 weeks because they expected 70+ hours of teaching combined with driving around KY to remote locations to do the teaching.......all for $15/hour. It was about the time I met Lipscomb that I began sending manuscripts down to Argentina to get them published..........and Kathy Shen went back to California where her brother got her an interview and a job at Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in San Diego. It was in the summer of 2005 that Kathy Shen began working at GIA and just before this time we drove across the USA from Somerset to Oceanside where we moved. Had Kathy Shen abandoned me in Somerset I would not have published very much and I would have faded away at 41........ However it is what happened after moving to Oceanside that makes this story really, really strange. We got to Oceanside by July, 2005 about 4 months after I had met Lipscomb in March, 2005 at University of Kentucky. The Oceanside Public Library, which I discovered right away, was a world of difference from that poor Somerset Public Library I had started my lifelong project at. OPL had about 20 computers and a scanner and a few printers and a fax machine and ample time available to library patrons.........while at Somerset Public Library they had just 4 computers and no scanner and 1 printer and a fax machine........and limited user time available. But what made the situation go from being better to being bizarre was what was cemented in to the walkway along Nevada Street in Oceanside next to the Oceanside Public Library-Computing Center, where I had continued my work begun in Somerset Public Library, and expanded on this project greatly. What I am talking about is that 4 months after meeting Lipscomb at UK in person, I moved to Oceanside and discovered next to the OPL that the name "Lipscomb".......evidently a cement contractor in Oceanside circa 1920's.......was written in to the sidewalks at Nevada and Sportfisher and Nevada and Civic Center Drive (twice) and Nevada and Mission.......all 3 corners within a block or less of the OPL-Computing Center and the OPL itself. The situation is bizarre I am telling you now, and every day here in Oceanside when I walk to the OPL (which was dramatically upgraded in 2010 to its current state) I walk past and over "Lipscomb" in the sidewalk at the corner of Nevada and Sportfisher (I live partly at Sportfisher and Horne Streets) and I walk past "Lipscomb" in the sidewalk twice at the corner of Nevada and Civic Center Drive........always on my way to the OPL. And I have wondered about this coincidence many, many times over the past 9 years especially, and my feeling about it is that it is decidedly strange especially given that Lipscomb passed on in 2011 and I just happened to make contact with him 6 years before that in 2005......MJB