5 Minutes of Biography: Jeanne Calment

According to Bible tradition, the oldest person who ever lived was Methusaleh, who enjoyed 969 years before giving up the ghost, to use another Biblical reference. His lifespan has given rise to the phrase “as old as Methusaleh”. 

The officially confirmed and recorded longest lifespan is that of Jeanne Louise Calment, who was born on 21 February 1875 and died on 4 August 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days.  In later years she commented that she competed with Methusaleh.

“All babies are beautiful.” 

- Jeanne Calment 

Calment was born in Arles in 1875 where she lived her entire life. The daughter of a shipbuilder father and a mother who came from a family of millers, she inherited good genes: her older brother François lived to the age of 97, her father to six days short of 100, and her mother to 86. 

“I took pleasure when I could. I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I’m very lucky.” 

Jeanne Calment at age 20 

In 1896, aged 21, she married her double second cousin. The paternal grandfathers of she and her husband were brothers, the paternal grandmothers were sisters. As a result she did not need to change her name, her husband was named Fernand Calment. Being married to a wealthy storeowner meant that she did not have to work to earn an income so she devoted her time to leisure pursuits: tennis, cycling, swimming, rollerskating, piano and opera. 

At age 22 

“Not having children is one less worry. Children are a worry!” 

Jeanne and Fernand had a daughter, Yvonne, two years after marriage. She had a son, Frederic, in 1926, but sadly Yvonne died in 1933 from pneumonia, from which time Jeanne raised Frederic. Fernand died in 1942 aged 73 after eating a dessert prepared with spoiled cherries. Grandson Frederic became a doctor but died at age 36, in 1963, in an automobile accident. 

At age 25 

At age 40 

“In life, people sometimes make rotten deals.” 

When aged 90 Jeanne Calment entered into a deal with lawyer Andre-Francois Raffray. He bought her apartment on a contingency contract: he would pay her 2,500 francs a month until she died, title passing when she died. It seemed like a reasonable deal at the time but lawyer Raffray had not counted on her living to 122. He died in 1996, aged 77, after paying her the then equivalent of $180,000, more than double the market value of the apartment. After Raffray’s death his family continued the payments, his widow commenting after Jeanne Calment’s death ''She was a personality. My husband had very good relations with Mrs. Calment.'' 

At age 60 

“Always keep your smile, that’s how I explain my long life.” 

Jeanne Calment rode a bicycle until she was 100 and walked all over Arles to thank those who congratulated her on her birthday that year. 

In 1985, aged 110, she moved into a nursing home.  She complained that the nursing home food tasted like baby food and that it always tasted the same. 

At the age of 115, she fell and fractured two bones, and her memory began to fail but she retained her wit and sense of humour. When somebody took leave by telling her, ''Until next year, perhaps,'' she retorted: ''I don't see why not! You don't look so bad to me.' 

At age 113 

At age 116 

“I’m interested in everything but passionate about nothing.” 

Jeanne Calment came to international prominence in 1988, when she was aged 113, on the occasion of the 100 year anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s visit to Arles. She told reporters that she had met van Gogh in 1888 when he had come to Arles when she was a 13 year old girl. He had come to her uncle’s fabric shop to buy some canvas. She described him as “dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable,” adding that he was ''very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick -- I forgive him, they called him loco.'' At the age of 114 she appeared briefly in the 1990 film Vincent and Me, the oldest person to ever appear in a motion picture. 

“I have legs of iron, but to tell the truth, they’re starting to rust and buckle a bit.” 

At age 117 

At age 117

Her tip for remaining youthful up until the end was olive oil on both her food and skin. She also had a diet consisting of port wine and one kilo of chocolate a day. In addition to her diet she smoked two cigarettes a day from age 22 to age 117. 

“I don’t like mundane life.” 

''I dream, I think, I go over my life. 'I never get bored.'' 

At age 121 

On her 121st birthday, she released a CD ''Time's Mistress.'' It featured her reminiscing to a score of rap and other tunes. 

“Death doesn’t frighten me; now I can think peacefully of ending a long life.” 

Jeanne Calment died on 4 August 1997 aged 122. Though blind, nearly deaf and in a wheelchair, she remained spirited and mentally sharp to the end. 

On her death the mayor of Arles commented that ''She was the living memory of our city. Her birthdays were a sort of family holiday, where all the people of Arles gathered around their big sister.'' 

''She was a little bit the grandmother of all of us,'' said President Jacques Chirac. 

Andre Pons, a local baker in Arles, said ''It's a bit of our heritage that went away today.” 

“I’ve only got one wrinkle and I’m sitting on it.”

- Jeanne Calment

Funny Friday

When we recently drove down to Canberra, via mostly open highway, as a family for the Christmas get together, Number One son Thomas was at the wheel. I mentioned that he might be driving a little fast; he said something or other about driving like a FOP. I pointed out to him that at the speed that he was driving, we were at risk of going back in time, that if we were to do so and meet ourselves from an earlier period, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, destroying the entire universe! I granted him that that was a worst case scenario, that the destruction might be localised, limited to merely our own galaxy or possibly only Canberra. (I acknowledge that if the obliteration could be limited to only the politicians in Canberra, he would earn the gratitude of the entire Australian population). 

That, however, inspires today’s Funny Friday theme, time travel (warning: geek humour)...

Future Man tells the 50’s about social media:

"Please help me, Doctor, I keep seeing into the future!"
"Ah. And when did this start?"
"Next Tuesday afternoon."

The regular Corn Corner segment will in future be interspersed with a new one, the Limerick Spot. The limericks may be risque (the best ones often are) or not, but they will be witty and humorous.

Although the limericks will not usually be in keeping with the theme of the Funny Friday items, today's one is. It was written in 1923 by Professor Arthur Buller (1874-1944), a mycologist (a biologist who studies fungi) who liked to write limericks for amusement. Some were published in Punch, including the following one which commented upon Einstein's Theory of Relativity (warning: more geek humour):

There was a young lady named Bright,

Whose speed was far faster than light;

She started one day

In a relative way,

And returned on the previous night.

Song Spot: Summer Fly

Working in the garden yesterday with my wife, Kate, on the last day of my Christmas holidays, I asked whether she had any suggestions for the next Bytes item or as to whether there was anything she particularly wanted. She answered with only two words: Summer Fly. That song is a favourite of Kate’s and it is a bit of a pain for me because it is one of those melodies that you keep humming and singing for ages afterwards.   

Here are some comments on it. 

The song: 

Summer Fly was written by American songwriter and singer Cheryl Wheeler (1951- ), whose songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Garth Brooks, Peter Paul and Mary, Bette Midler, Kenny Loggins and Melanie. Although Cheryl tours, she has not done much recording of her own works. Her style is contemporary folk music. 

Cheryl Wheeler

Click on the following link to hear and see Cheryl Wheeler singing the song live: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGdzq4VClNU

Cheryl re-recorded Summer Fly on her 2009 album Pointing at the Sun.

The song was brought to prominence by Irish singer and actress Maura O’Connell, who recorded it on her album Helpless Heart in 1989. It was also an outstanding track on the 1993 album A Woman’s Heart. Maura O’Connell’s arrangement is similar to Cheryl Wheeler’s. 

Maura O'Connell

See and hear Maura singing it by clicking on: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1ocQGWiwH4

After Maura O’Connell first recorded the song, audiences would request Cheryl Wheeler to perform it but for a long time she declined, saying that they should listen to Maura sing it. After numerous requests she began performing it again but changed the last line of the first verse from " 'cause a pure and golden high is all that I remember" to “ ‘cause a starry sky is all that I remember.” 

Hayley Westenra has also covered the song, hear it by clicking on: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCU799vgbCI

The lyrics:

In another, younger day I could dream the time away 

In the universe inside my room 

And the world was really mine from June to September 

And if it wasn’t really so I was lucky not to know 

And I was lucky not to wonder why 

‘cause a starry sky is all that I remember 

A summer fly was buzzin’ every night when I was young 

In the gentle world my child-like senses knew 

And the world was just my cousin and the wind was just the tongue 

In the voice my lonely moments listened to 

And I look at me today, all the dreams have gone away 

And I’m where I never thought I’d be 

Seeing things I never thought I’d see happening to me 

And I lay awake at night till the darkness goes to light 

Hearing voices calling out my name 

Droning over and again the same message through me 

Cryin’ who’s your partner, who’s your darlin’ who’s your baby now? 

Who wakes up at night to pull you in? 

It don’t matter, you just make her lonely anyhow 

Don’t know why you even try to win 

Oh this’ll never fly, get out while you can 

Look into the mirror say it’s not the same again 

Every single time, things just fall apart 

Slamming door, slipping pride, sad and angry heart 

Meaning: 

The singer recalls how bright and wonderful the young teenage years were, how quickly they flew by with no cares or responsibilities. In contrast, the dreams have now gone, the singer lies awake at nights and the voices torment her, asking why even try? Sad.

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Starry Doorknobs

Unless you have been living on Mars for the last 50 years, you must have seen, or at least heard about, Van Gogh’s most famous painting The Starry Night (Dutch: De Sterrenacht). Painted in 1881, it shows the village of Saint-Remy outside his sanitarium room window. Although a night scene, the swirling sky with stars and moon was painted from memory during the day; the cypress tree and the hills were added from other locations. Don MacLean wrote about the work in  his song Vincent (aka Starry Starry Night). 

Unlike other letters to his brother, Theo Van Gogh, Vincent made little comment about the work. This may be due to his erratic behaviour at the time, behaviour that had led to his commitment. He did say that there was “exaggerations in terms of composition” and that "I should not be surprised if you liked the Starry Night and the Ploughed Fields, there is a greater quiet about them than in the other canvases."

Which is all by way of introduction to a different depiction of Starry Night, a mural by David Goldberg. In a style that has been referred to as Post-Door Hardwareism, Goldberg’s mural is located outside his Union Hardware store in Bethesda, Maryland, US. The store has sold decorative plumbing and hardware products since 1914 and, over the years, store owner Goldberg has collected second hand door knobs, levers, and back plates from Italy, Germany and the U.S. He also has items from discontinued lines. Goldberg applied 1,250 of the reclaimed and discontinued doorknobs, backplates and levers to painted PVC board, also old and reclaimed, to make a mural that I find quite impressive: 

A tradition has developed of rubbing the Italian Chrome Leaver in the centre of the swirl:

Folklore holds that the person doing the rubbing will then dine on a sumptuous pasta dinner. 

One person remarked online that the only thing that could make this mural cooler is if only ONE of the doorknobs could be turned to open a secret door to Narnia.

“There are no fans of decorative artwork in hardware. 

I need to ride on the coattails of the art world.”

“When I look at this, I see levers.” 

(Commenting on Van Gogh’s swirling brush strokes).

-David Goldberg

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New Year's Day, 2013

Sydney 2013

Oz is one of the first countries to see in the New Year. New Zealand, small regions of Russia, the Marshall Islands and Norfolk Island see it in before us. New York celebrates it 15 hours later than Sydney but that doesn’t stop the definitive image of the New Year being the falling of the Times Square Ball. I will leave it to poets to discourse on the symbolism of balls dropping and the years advancing. 

Some notes on the Times Square Ball: 

• For decades prior to 1900 there had been a tradition of people synchronising their pocket watches according to balls that descended from a pole in the town’s public space. These time balls, as they were known, were dropped at a predetermined time to enable navigators to verify their marine chronometers from ships offshore. This was important for ships to be able to determine positions at sea. In the UK the balls were dropped at 1.00pm, in the US at noon. Timekeeping was set according to when the ball began to descend, not when it stopped. 

Time ball at Greenwich Observatory 

Time ball at United States Naval Observatory, Washington. 

• In 1904 the New York Times, a US newspaper that had been published daily since 1851, moved its headquarters to Longacre Square, New York. The owner of the paper, Adolph Ochs, convinced the city to rename the area Times Square. The building housing the Times became known as One Times Square. Previous New Year’s Eve celebrations had taken place at the Old Trinity Church in Manhattan’s financial district. To celebrate the move of the newspaper, Ochs threw a New Year’s Eve party which included a street festival and fireworks display, watched by a crowd of more than 200,000. The Times Square New Year celebrations became an annual feature. 

Adolph Ochs and daughter Iphigene, c 1902 

• In 1907 Ochs incorporated one further idea into the New Year celebration: an ornate time ball that was lowered at midnight on 31 December 1907 on the flag pole at the top of One Times Square. The ball was made of iron and wood, weighed 300 kilos/700lbs, measured 1.5m/5 feet in diameter and was lit by 100 light bulbs. The dropping of the time ball also became a part of the traditional New Year’s Eve celebration, remaining so and in that location even after The Times moved to a different location in 1914. 

• By way of comparison, this year's ball was first unveiled for the 2008 drop. It is 3.65m/12 feet in diameter (double the size of balls past) and weighs 5,345 kilos/11,875 pounds. It has 32,256 LED lights and 2,668 crystals. The crowd in Times Square this year is estimated to be one million people. 

One Times Square under construction, 1904 

One Times Square completed, the second tallest building in New York when the Times moved into it in 1904.  Note the flagpole at the top used for the dropping of the ball. 

Time Square, 1908, looking south 

1942 

1955 ball 

1969 

The ball drop in 2011