May 11, 2019:

He's a snob. He puts down my girlfriend for not reading the same texts currently in academic fashion which he endlessly name-drops. He puts down my former girlfriend for not being good for me, as though that were his call to make. He puts down everyone, with the implied claim that he's not only the smartest person in the room but also the smartest person in the universe.

He tries to tell me what to do. Unforgivable mistake. No-one tells me what to do, and if he doesn't know that he's failed to pay attention the last ten years. Hardly surprising. Basic physiology suggests that when one's mouth is open one's ears are shut. At what point have we ever found him without his mouth open? None that I recall.

He puts down the astronomers at Mt. Palomar, he puts down the people who don't put down the astronomers at Mt. Palomar. Seemingly he's forgotten that the woman who's influenced me more than any single person in my life is the daughter of astronomers at Mt. Palomar. Seemingly with his mouth open and his ears shut he fails to notice that I don't put down the astronomers at Mt. Palomar.

Back home at the ranch — that'll be the national office of the organization we belonged to at that time — the folks in charge suggest, "He has a big ego." Coming from them that's seriously saying something, 'cos they have the biggest egos apart from his that I've ever encountered. The import being he'll never have a position in the national leadership, no matter how strongly he feels he's necessary if they're to be sorted out.

That visit was the last nail, for me. From there forward I never took him seriously. For example in December of 1990, when he argued knowingly that "there won't be a war," 'cos, it's all merely bluff. Therefore we all, one and all, should continue with our parochial work as if nothing else were a priority.