Subject: Re: Darwin's 200th Birthday

From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:14:12 -0500

[email-masked] wrote:
 
> We believe you or your organization held an event in February, 2004, that celebrated the life and discoveries of Charles Darwin.

* as recounted at http://pinicola.ca/darwind.htm

> First, a reminder that another year has passed and it's time for all of us to begin planning for Darwin Day 2005. 

* as soon as certain institutional uncertainties are settled we'll
register for 2005.

>  As you browse the new site you may find ideas that will help you plan your own Darwin Day Celebration.

..and you can't have a celebration without a song, appropriately cast,
in this case, as an hypothesis:

IF THE OLD RELIGION IS TRUE, THEN THIS IS A HYMN TO FATHER DARWIN 

To the tune of Stan Roger's 'Took Back my Hand.' FWS, Hecate Strait to
Westbank to Chiliwack Lake, BC. June 1989 

 Father of theories, Husband of the World, 
 Barnacle Master, the lord of the Worms, 
 Stretched out on the White Goddess' altar he lay, 
 Orchid-mad, twining like plants. 

 Wonder of wonders, no longer sublime, 
 Each thing for itself he perceived in its place 
 Winnowed by chance throughout infinite time, 
 Each Beetle, each Sundew, each race. 

Father of fathers, the first in all Time: 
Husband of Emma, the first one to know 
Why your children are precious, why parents combine 
Their lives so that families grow. 
 
 Father of knowledge, Odysseus knew 
 No more of the Goddess' girdle than you, 
 Who saw her plates hinted by Andean shells, 
 Crowned islands that sink in the sea. 

 With Malthus and Pigeons and Galapagos Finch 
 A story you told that would throw down the gods, 
 A thousand times sterner than Abraham's test, 
 It stood as the cause of the World. 

 Blind as the watchmaker, cruel as the spring, 
 The Truth is the stories that offer to die, 
 For the monkey-bred brain can do no more than this, 
 Than to know when its tales go awry. 

 Father of Life, and the Husband of Death, 
 All of the others have died for our birth, 
 Ghosts of their genes and the flesh of their flesh, 
 Selection has ordered the Earth:
 Orchid-mad, twining like plants. 

see http://pinicola.ca/darwind2.htm
http://stevebriggs.superb.net/stanrogers/chords/hoo-crd.html

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
           Bishops Mills Natural History Centre
Frederick W. Schueler, Aleta Karstad, Jennifer Helene Schueler 
      RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0 
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W 
     (613)258-3107 <[email-masked]> http://pinicola.ca
------------------------------------------------------------
subscribe to the Eastern Ontario Natural History list-serve 
by sending "subscribe eobm-nat" in the body of a message to 
<[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 17:52:18 -0500

[email-masked] wrote:
> 
> Dear Frederick W. Schueler,
> 
> We believe you or your organization held an event in February, 2004, 
> that celebrated the life and discoveries of Charles Darwin. Your 
> event was described on our list of worldwide Darwin Day events at:  
> http://www.darwinday.org/dev/home/2004.html . 

* I've registered for this year, but this has resulted in a change in
the URL for the 2004 event from http://pinicola.ca/darwind.htm to
http://pinicola.ca/darwind04.htm - so I wonder if you could change this
in your listing of the 2004 events. This year's URL is again
http://pinicola.ca/darwind.htm, and will change to
http://pinicola.ca/darwind05.htm when next year's event is announced.

You say on your website that "Darwin Day was initiated in 1994", but as
we note at http://pinicola.ca/darwind2.htm "We first marked Darwin's Day
with a Phylum Feast on Haida Gwaii [the Queen Charlotte Islands, British
Columbia] in 1989, with a meal that included salvaged Minke Whale meat,
smoked Turkey slices, pickled Herring, Soft-shell Clams, commercial
escargot, shrimp, & Ostrich Fern fiddleheads, Onions, Rice, Pecans, and
Spinach." I don't know how interested in tracing the history of every
last Darwin's Day tradition, but that's the first date our family
actually got around to doing something instead of just thinking it would
be a good idea.

fred.