some boring rambling.

I've been foolishly hanging around on the internet on my one day off, and (not usual for me) listening to public radio. Currently they're re-running an interview with Jamie Wyeth, and I didn't really pay much attention to it until he started telling the story of trying to paint ravens, which Eor told me about the other day. When Eor told me the story he said that Wyeth consulted 'an ornithologist' about how to attract ravens in order to paint them. Well, as I was listening to this interview, Wyeth specifically mentioned it was Bernd Heinrich, who also came up in conversation the other day, mainly because we drove by Stickny Corner, the area where Bernd Heinrich's father, Gerd Heinrich used to live. My father worked for Gerd Heinrich helping him collect ichneumon wasps, for a while. I had not remembered how to spell Bernd's name since I hadn't seen it in print since sometime in the... oh, must have been the 80s that Bernd was profiled in some magazine where they were highlighting his standing as a long-distance runner.

ETA: One of my father's stories about Gerd Heinrich was that he had flown for the Germans in WWI and for the Allies in WWII. The Wiki article states that he did fly for the Germans in WWI, but I can't find any indication of him flying for the Allies, and this excerpt from a Runners World article about Bernd seems to imply that was completely impossible:

[Bernd Heinrich] was born in Germany in 1940 to a pair of biologists. [That pair of biologist parents would be Gerd and his wife] Toward the end of World War II, the family moved to the northern German forest to escape the coming Soviet invasion. Living in an abandoned one-room hut, they survived as scavengers, Heinrich says, trapping mice, foraging edible plants, eating found carcasses. Heinrich and his sister played and ran beneath the canopy. The dense, mixed-wood environment imprinted itself on Heinrich, who, when he's had a choice, has lived in such a setting ever since. Self-reliance also seeped into Heinrich's constitution.

The Heinrichs remained in the hut until 1951, when the family moved to Wilton, Maine.

If it was toward the end of the war that they moved to Northern Germany and they stayed there until 1951 I see no way Gerd Heinrich could have flown for the Allies.

I still have no reason to misdoubt that my father was telling the truth when he said Gerd Heinrich could turn a back handspring far into his elder years, as Bernd is obviously still an athlete in his 70s.

Anyhow, the Jehovah's Witness just showed up again, and I had to admit to her this time that I was not in the least likely to be swayed by her visits, that I am a settled agnostic and happy to wait and see. We had a little back and forth about our senses and whether they were evidence of Creationism or Evolution. And while we were talking the thunder started rumbling. She seemed to think that thunder indicated she was telling me something useful and important, while I interpreted it as I need to move some dirt before the rain starts.