EDITOR ‘s NOTE: We never saw the boy.
VIP
March 20, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
This almost fractured me. Our tickets arrived marked “VIP.” No fooling. I thought “VIP” was just an idiom-but swelp me, our tickets are so marked. I laughed until I was hoarse.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In early 1969, an invitation came from the Brazilian government to attend a film festival to be held in Rio de Janeiro. All expenses would be paid by that government-we would be guests. The only payment would be that Robert give a talk.
Robert wrote this as a P.S. to Lurton in a business letter. His talk was given at the theater at the French Embassy.
As I recall, this was the only free trip Robert ever accepted; it even included courtesy of the port-no customs or immigration needed. The return to New York was another matter!
APPRAISAL
November 21, 1968: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Did I tell you about the appraisal on my donation of mss., et al. to the U of California]? If not, I must-for I am astounded. The appraisal was made by Robert Metzdorf of New York and Connecticut, and the IRS has been fidgeting about the long delay in getting an appraisal. But the university librarian wanted this appraiser and no one else, because of his high prestige and his past successes in making his appraisals stand up in court. So at last Metzdorf had a couple of other jobs out this way and did my small job while he was here.
What he appraised was just the fraction of the total gift which is now actually in the university’s library, to wit, about two-thirds of my mss. plus a couple of boxes of foreign editions and some [paperbacks] in English. The valuation he placed on this fraction was $30,230.00 —
-and I was flabbergasted.
Sure, Ginny had placed a guesstimate of $25,000-plus on the whole gift-but that was for all mss., plus our entire library, plus several valuable paintings, plus several other things. Since the IRS permits deductions for gifts of chattels only after the physical property is delivered, I had been fretted that the valuation on what I had been able to deliver (some mss. plus a few not-very-valuable books) might be less than the cost of appraisal-i.e., leave me with a net loss in cash and much loss of professional time spent in cataloging and preparing the stuff for the library. I never thought of my old mss. and notes as being worth much-hell, to me they were simply papers that cluttered up my files but which I did not dare throw away for business reasons. As for the foreign editions and paperbacks, for years I have been giving them away to anyone who would take them.
I still expect the IRS to scream about the appraisal. I’m very glad-now-that we got the number one appraiser. If the IRS won’t accept it, I now feel safe in taking it to Tax Court.
EDITOR ‘s NOTE: The IRS did not object to the valuation placed on these papers.
CATS
January 12, 1957: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Pixie is dying…uremia, too far gone to hope for remission; the vet sent him home to die several days ago. He is not now in pain and still purrs, but he is very weak and becoming more emaciated every day-it’s like having a little yellow ghost in the house. When it reaches the stage of pain, I shall have to help him past it and hope that he will at last find the door into summer he has looked for. We are pretty broken up about it…we have become excessively attached to this little cat. Of course, we knew it had to be when we first got him and I would much rather outlive a pet than have the pet outlive us — we’re better equipped to stand it. Nevertheless, it does not make it any easier…
March 23, 1959: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Polka Dot had her kittens on St. Patrick’s Day-like this: Ginny and I had been standing almost heel and toe watches as Pokie has not been at all well during this. About one o’clock in the morning I was up, Ginny had just gone to bed. Pokie comes dragging herself into my study, all cramped up in labor. So I held her paw for about an hour, whereupon she had one tortoiseshell female-Bridey Murphy. For the next three hours she has lots of trouble, so we get her vet out of bed and he comes over. He gave her a shot of pituitary extract; shortly she starts to deliver another one-a black and white male (Blarney Stone); poor little Blarney didn’t make it…hung up in delivery, dead by the time we could get him out, although as lively as could be as he came part way out. And Ginny got her hand terribly bitten (Ginny screamed but didn’t let go…and the cat didn’t let go either). About dawn the three of us and Pokie went to the hospital and she had a Caesarean section for the third and last (Shamrock O’Toole, another tri-colored female, a close twin of Bridey). About 8 A.M. we fetched mother and daughters home, Ginny having had only a nap and myself no sleep at all. All three are doing fine now and the kits have doubled in size or more in six days. The thing that impressed me the most about the whole deal was the surgery-aseptic procedure as perfect as that used on humans, utterly different from animal surgery of only twenty years ago.