Dr. Braithwaite, Dr. B., Lee (...I ever know what to call you now...),
I had the great fortune to be involved in three of your summer marine biology field courses - one as an undergraduate and two as a masters student. "In those days" you took your classes to the Friday Harbor Labs of the University of Washington.
During one field trip to Eagle Point, San Juan Island, you told us to look for as many kinds of invertebrates as we could find along that rocky shore. Since this is a stretch of exposed coast there were many large logs that had been tossed up onto the rocky shore.
While navigating my way among large and small boulders on my way back to the vans, I looked up and saw you standing on one end of a huge log that was balanced just right. When you flexed your knees that was enough to make your end of the log dip down, and when you stood back up, your end of the log rocked back up. After watching you on this natural one-man teeter-totter for a number of cycles of ups and downs I called out to you, "Dr. Braithwaite...What are you doing!?"
Without batting an eye or cracking a smile, your deadpan, stoic reply was, "Having fun."
Thanks for the fun!
Alan Holyoak
(Alan Holyoak earned a PhD in Biology from UC Santa Cruz '92, taught for 10 years at Manchester College, IN, and has been a member of the Biology Faculty at BYU-Idaho since '02.)
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