STARDUST IN THE GARDENS

                (As always, unapologetically unedited.)             

Santa Clara University's The Redwood - 1976 page 217

"In-yun" (Korean) suggests the interactions of people are due to their interactions in past lives.

(Authors note: After reading the account of an interaction between a dear friend of mine and the subject of this post on a Hawaiian golf course I realize that I may have given the said subject too much credit - nevertheless, we are all human - all too human. You be the judge. ~)

                                                                 *****

Okay. We all know I spend way too much time playing the old Bacon game of six degrees. Chalk it up to the leftover indulgences of my precocious adolescence, an utterly benign sense of nostalgia, or my general sense of being a nosy mother-fucker. Whatever works best for you. What can I say? I get curious. I have those damn fading images that pass through my brain which say, "What about this? What about that?" or the worst one, What ever happened to...?"  These images generally eat at me until I investigate them as much as possible or at least until I give the Hell up and go back to watching a decent soap opera on the telly.

And no, I don't have too much time on my hands so you can forget that notion. Nice try.

You should know me well enough by now to know that I enjoy the interconnectedness of things when it comes to life. It's the existential genealogist in me who's always trying to see how one person might connect to another. It's the old "what lies beneath" the surface that keeps me Googling and moving forward to try and blow a little bit more dust off the old ashes pile. And hey, I like to investigate everything within reason. There are though, a few things that I would rather avoid looking into, say for example like finding a connection to those cheesy Personal Injury lawyers you see hawking their bellicose wares on television, or worse, any connection to (in my humble opinion) useless reality TV. (Puke.)

But man I gotta tell you - I did not see this one coming. How did I not know that I was gonna eat those words?

The Redwood 1976 - page 204

It all started with Chris. Christopher Brian Nance. I'd thought about him - no more so in that I had remembered him for years. I mean he wasn't really a friend of mine, but we certainly weren't enemies. In fact, we started out together as Poli Sci majors/comrades during the turbulent early 1970s - that is until I let Plato and Aristotle steal my heart and shed any hankerings of wanting to re-hash the Cuban Missile Crisis for the umpteenth time. Chris felt differently though. He hung in there with Poli Sci, and in the end, I truly believe it worked for him. He was in some ways a natural diplomat.

We did know each other. Yet we moved in different crowds. However, there was little more than that "collegiate acknowledgment" that passed between us. You know that look of passing someone in those hallowed university halls or in the Mission Gardens. It was the one that said, I wish I had more time. Catch you in the next lifetime?  Then there was a smile exchanged and we moved on. We were too different. It was all good. It was In-yun karma if you will. It just wasn't time.       

So yeah, I thought about Christopher Nance. I saw his rather meteoric rise during our college years. He was no dummy and he was ambitious but in a good way. He was in most ways a quality individual. He was ambitious in an "I don't want to be like my ancestors" sort of way, and moved in a way that said, "I want to make the world a better place." He got there too - and yes he made his share of mistakes even during our college years but he knew what it took to succeed. Don't get me wrong. He was no Gavin Newsom or Shemar Moore  - although like those other of our alums he certainly might have given either one of them a run for their money. He had many of the talents of each. 

He just played the game differently, though make no mistake - he was good at what he did and he worked hard at it. He went on to become a solid journalist and television news weatherman for a couple of large California television stations. He worked in this field for years. It was great to watch him succeed from the vantage point of my humble periphery. After all, we didn't really know each other. We were only "Poli Sci" comrades-in-arms passing under the wisteria of those Mission Gardens from back in the day.  

And yes, maybe he had a somewhat controversial career (and life) at times. He was after all a human being. However, there is absolutely no way I am going to spend any time judging Chris. Like all of us, there were many sides to Chris Nance - not to mention the fact that he was battling something most of us never have to and was just plain old deathly sick.

     You may be able to tap the image to make it larger...                      

But like everyone else I seem to look for these days, I found out that Christopher Nance (by the time I got really serious enough to look for him) was indeed, very much quite dead. Chris Nance died from what appears to be causes related to sickle-cell anemia. My understanding is that he was one of the oldest and longest survivors of the disease.                    

So I looked a little further...

And then the news blasts started coming through the Google ether. What the heck was going on in Ye Olde News Feed? What is all this??? Christopher Nance, my old Poli-Sci comrade-in-arms from freshman year had a damn love child? (Some guys have all the luck) Some young lady named "Noella" was his daughter and she was/is all over the internet? Say what???  

The name certainly didn't mean anything to me. 

Who the Hell is Noella?          

         

What? Wait a minute. I don't watch that "stuff." (Not exactly a fan of that genre.)

Are you kidding me???

So my poli/sci comrade-in-arms from back in the day was the father of an illegitimate girl who is now a reality TV star?

Dang, who scripted this shit?                          

Well, it sure looks that way. The details are a little vague but Chris was a little "randy" back in the day and fathered "Noelle Nance" in the early eighties. Wild huh? From what I read she didn't (couldn't or wouldn't) connect with her father Chris until a few short years before his death. I guess these days the literally lovely and allegedly talented Noella is a big deal with followers and influencers and other such malarkey and her full name is now "Noella Nance Bergener."             

                      Noella bottom right

As I sat down to digest all of this information about Chris and his daughter Noella I saw that Noella's now former husband is a man who they referred to in several posts as "Sweet James." For some reason that sounded really familiar to me. It was then that I remembered the other thing that I really have no interest in researching much or in finding a connection to:     

Yeah, that's right. "Effervescent" personal injury lawyers. You know, the type we get inundated with on television sometimes one right after another. How annoying is that? I

 suppose they are a good thing if you ever (God forbid) need one but Lord oftentimes their advertisements feel like some sort of silly doggerel.

So Chris's illegitimate daughter Noella, the reality TV star from The Real Housewives of Orange County, married a famous billboard attorney and TV "ambulance chaser" (I use the term with all due respect) named "Sweet James" ? 

What the flock?

Okay, I'm not gonna go down that road insofar as all of this seems really damn weird. I mean I liked Chris well enough and can't possibly know what it must have been like to walk in his shoes - or in Noella's stilettos - or to gaze out at motorists from the eyes of his son-in-law's placard on a passing bus. 

Nah, but you know me. I wanted to know if other than all of this hoopla - if Chris and I didn't have some other connection - you know, an ancestral one that might lie just beneath the surface. I'm a big believer in that we all come and go in and out of each other's life with or for a reason. I don't think that's just because "this tale" is about me and The Weatherman that things would be any different.

I mean this story just seems like one wild ride, right?

Yet try as I might I have found no genealogical connection to Chris. And yes, I know he's Black, but I thought maybe just maybe somewhere back in my perhaps large and more disreputable root pile of possible slave-holding ilk I might see something we shared ancestrally in common - but so far if there is - I cannot find it.

So I decided to broaden my search. The rules of ancestral Karma don't necessarily exclude others in my "interconnectedness" to Chris. 

Looking at Noella's mother hasn't gotten me very far either. If a connection is there it's still shrouded in mystery. Then I realized I had better check that ambulance chaser. Could the ancestral connection that I was looking for - the one that somehow tied me to Chris be here?

And there it was. "Sweet James" the father of Chris's grandchildren grew up LDS. While I don't always 'ken' or understand their tenets and ways, the Mormon folk really do great crowd-sourcing. I mean even if they're wrong the Mormons usually give you a proper avenue to research for an ancestral connection. And there mine was to "Sweet James."

Now I'm not going to bore you with the genealogy of it all. I will only say that (according to our Mormon friends) "Sweet James" is a distant cousin of my mother's making Chris "The Weatherman's" grandchildren cousins of my own grandkids.

Isn't it weird how all that stuff works from two people just passing each other to say hello in the Mission Gardens of some California school?

 I'm not gonna say too much more about Chris Nance. I'm sure you may have a lot of mixed feelings about him and maybe even Noella and "Sweet James." But consider only that Chris left behind a whole series of children's books and I think you will get a sense of the kind of good dude he truly was.

I mean how utterly flocking cool is that?

Rest in peace, Chris Nance. Catch you on the flip side.