Friend and patron — who let a broke man live her life for a weekend at a time
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
A long-standing friend, and the person Jonathan Hare describes without embarrassment as his patron. She got him the courtesy pass to the 2005 Einstein centenary at the Aspen Physics Institute, and the all-access pass to the first Aspen Ideas Festival in 2006 — which is where he ran into E. O. Wilson on the Meadows path and resumed a conversation that had lapsed five years.
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He was broke. She had houses in Tucson, Atlanta and Aspen. All he had to do was get himself there on frequent flyer miles, and she took care of everything else — he was her plus-one at the parties, the charitable events, the hot-tub think tanks.
He records it without softening, which is the point. A great deal of what this record documents happened because somebody with money and standing decided to share both with a man who had neither, repeatedly, for years.
That is the mechanism the Catalyst Network exists to democratize — and it worked because she chose to. Nobody without a Pam Alexander gets that room.
Gell-Mann walking him into his own keynote. Brian Greene sitting down beside him at the back. Wilson on the path with Bill Joy. Lunch with Doerr and Khosla. And, at her cabin above Aspen, Dianne Feinstein.
None of it was arranged for him. He was simply in rooms he could not otherwise have entered, often enough that the improbable became statistically likely.
Courtney Love called Pam regularly while Hare was around — usually for advice on where to buy houses, or how to get out of a PR jam. Pam's assessment, as Hare recalls it: when Courtney wasn't strung out, she was very nice and extremely talented, and Kurt Cobain's death had hit her very hard. The record notes that Love's struggles of that era are extensively documented, much of it by Love herself, and adds nothing to them; what is recorded here is only that the calls happened and what Pam said.
When news of the Merrill Lynch insider-trading matter first leaked, Martha Stewart called Pam for PR advice. Pam's reply, as Hare recalls it: 'Martha, you need to be talking to a criminal defense attorney, not a PR agent.' It was the correct advice, given before it was obvious. Pam told Hare in confidence at the time, when he was crashing at her houses; Hare's stated reasoning for publishing now is that the sentence was served two decades ago and the advice reflects well on the adviser. Pam has not yet given her own account, and the ask is open.
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The commission, the foundation, and the name
Open →the Einstein centenaryProposed and named quarks; would not give up his own nomenclature
Open →met at her Aspen cabinA family friend, in Hare's reckoning — and, by San Francisco standards, a right-winger
Open →the Aspen lunchThe Aspen lunch, and passions that ran to sustainability
Open →introduced Hare toAgent and manager to stars including Courtney Love; split his time between New York and LA
Open →the festival it co-presentsWilson's magazine of choice for his excerpts; sponsor of his 2006 Aspen Ideas keynote — the path where Hare met him with Bill Joy; owned since 2017 by Emerson Collective
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-055The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-102The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →Primary source · S-162The account this page was distilled from, preserved as dictated.
Read the source →This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
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