1 00:00:01,008 --> 00:00:03,758 (dramatic music) 2 00:00:10,380 --> 00:00:15,380 - Good morning, it's wonderful to see some familiar faces 3 00:00:15,690 --> 00:00:18,720 that I haven't seen for a long time 4 00:00:18,720 --> 00:00:20,190 and people who've been here, 5 00:00:20,190 --> 00:00:25,117 many Darwin Festivals before and some not very many at all. 6 00:00:26,073 --> 00:00:29,423 Good morning and welcome to the Founders Lecture 7 00:00:29,423 --> 00:00:33,210 of the 44th Annual Darwin Festival. 8 00:00:33,210 --> 00:00:37,373 This lecture honors Philip DePalma and Virginia Keville 9 00:00:37,373 --> 00:00:39,900 two Salem State professors, 10 00:00:39,900 --> 00:00:42,150 who 44 years ago imagined a way 11 00:00:42,150 --> 00:00:45,900 to bring the evolutionary foundation of modern biology 12 00:00:45,900 --> 00:00:48,784 to life for their students in their course, 13 00:00:48,784 --> 00:00:50,913 Human and Social Biology. 14 00:00:52,200 --> 00:00:54,450 Our annual Darwin Festival is a model 15 00:00:54,450 --> 00:00:57,660 for a growing number of commemorations around the world, 16 00:00:57,660 --> 00:01:01,537 a testament to their far sightedness 17 00:01:01,537 --> 00:01:03,480 and their ability to inspire 18 00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:06,180 their students and their colleagues. 19 00:01:06,180 --> 00:01:09,390 Sadly, Phil DePalma is no longer with us, 20 00:01:09,390 --> 00:01:11,460 but we celebrate the continued support 21 00:01:11,460 --> 00:01:14,760 of Emerita Professor, Virginia Keville, 22 00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:17,086 who joins us via webinar today. 23 00:01:17,086 --> 00:01:20,823 Thank you Ginger so much. 24 00:01:25,740 --> 00:01:28,860 Today it is my deep honor to introduce 25 00:01:28,860 --> 00:01:31,470 Emeritus Professor Susan Case, 26 00:01:31,470 --> 00:01:33,537 our Founders Lecture speaker this morning 27 00:01:33,537 --> 00:01:38,250 and a prime mover in the evolution of the Darwin Festival 28 00:01:38,250 --> 00:01:42,240 as a signature event of Salem State University. 29 00:01:42,240 --> 00:01:44,307 Then a post-doctoral fellow 30 00:01:44,307 --> 00:01:48,150 at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, 31 00:01:48,150 --> 00:01:53,150 Dr. Case gave a talk at the 1980 inaugural Darwin Festival 32 00:01:53,547 --> 00:01:58,197 entitled, "Just How Different We Are From Apes." 33 00:01:58,197 --> 00:02:01,290 The following year she joined the faculty 34 00:02:01,290 --> 00:02:03,690 of our biology department, 35 00:02:03,690 --> 00:02:06,720 gave her second Darwin Festival talk, 36 00:02:06,720 --> 00:02:11,070 and after Professor Keville's retirement in 1999, 37 00:02:11,070 --> 00:02:14,310 her awesome organizational abilities 38 00:02:14,310 --> 00:02:16,773 supported the, yes, awesome, 39 00:02:19,345 --> 00:02:23,280 supported the growth of the festival for 19 years 40 00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:27,180 until Dr. Case's own retirement in 2018. 41 00:02:27,180 --> 00:02:29,070 I believe she's also the only person 42 00:02:29,070 --> 00:02:34,070 who has attended all 44 Darwin Festivals, which is amazing. 43 00:02:35,760 --> 00:02:38,497 Sponsored by the Salem State Biology Department 44 00:02:38,497 --> 00:02:41,280 and the Charles Albert Read Trust, 45 00:02:41,280 --> 00:02:45,000 I am proud to introduce my colleague and friend, 46 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:46,770 Dr. Susan Case, 47 00:02:46,770 --> 00:02:48,571 presenting her Founder's Lecture, 48 00:02:48,571 --> 00:02:53,490 "From So Simple of Beginning, the Darwin Festival at 44." 49 00:02:53,490 --> 00:02:55,803 Please join me in welcoming Dr. Case. 50 00:02:59,523 --> 00:03:01,773 (laughing) 51 00:03:08,580 --> 00:03:10,130 - Okay, good morning everybody. 52 00:03:11,163 --> 00:03:13,710 I'm gonna ask my tech person here to tell me 53 00:03:13,710 --> 00:03:15,303 how to share slides. 54 00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:21,150 This is par for the course for the Darwin Festival. 55 00:03:23,790 --> 00:03:28,790 So again, this is an oral history of sorts 56 00:03:28,890 --> 00:03:32,250 based on my experience with the Darwin Festival. 57 00:03:32,250 --> 00:03:34,230 I spoke at the first two, 58 00:03:34,230 --> 00:03:37,170 was on the committee for 18 years. 59 00:03:37,170 --> 00:03:39,630 I was the coordinator for 19 years 60 00:03:39,630 --> 00:03:41,313 and now I just get to enjoy them. 61 00:03:42,780 --> 00:03:45,720 Now, I've listed a lot of acknowledgements here 62 00:03:45,720 --> 00:03:47,550 and most of this is to acknowledge 63 00:03:47,550 --> 00:03:51,127 the people in the Biology Department over the years 64 00:03:51,127 --> 00:03:55,230 who have been important in getting this program put on. 65 00:03:55,230 --> 00:03:57,900 I've listed department chairs during that period 66 00:03:57,900 --> 00:03:59,890 'cause I can't list all the faculty, 67 00:03:59,890 --> 00:04:04,290 but the faculty and the staff are important as well. 68 00:04:04,290 --> 00:04:07,140 The department administrative assistants 69 00:04:07,140 --> 00:04:08,460 who I've worked with, 70 00:04:08,460 --> 00:04:11,313 the laboratory technicians over the years 71 00:04:11,313 --> 00:04:15,450 and I've also listed over the years, 72 00:04:15,450 --> 00:04:18,030 all of the offices that have been important 73 00:04:18,030 --> 00:04:20,962 in getting this program put on. 74 00:04:20,962 --> 00:04:23,250 And I've listed the names of the people 75 00:04:23,250 --> 00:04:25,740 that I've worked with in particular. 76 00:04:25,740 --> 00:04:27,600 For this particular talk, 77 00:04:27,600 --> 00:04:29,490 I'd like to thank Paul Kelly who got me 78 00:04:29,490 --> 00:04:32,507 the complete listing of all the speakers since 1980 79 00:04:32,507 --> 00:04:36,210 'cause I was having trouble getting it from the website. 80 00:04:36,210 --> 00:04:38,670 Susan Edwards at the archives, 81 00:04:38,670 --> 00:04:40,470 Deb Germano, our administrative, 82 00:04:40,470 --> 00:04:42,780 current administrative assistant, 83 00:04:42,780 --> 00:04:45,999 who helped me track down information about alumni. 84 00:04:45,999 --> 00:04:50,310 Nelson Scottgale, who helped me identify some people 85 00:04:50,310 --> 00:04:51,960 in a picture you will see. 86 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:54,390 Ryan Fisher, who has been my liaison 87 00:04:54,390 --> 00:04:57,240 and treats me like a regular Darwin Festival speaker. 88 00:04:57,240 --> 00:04:59,675 You know, if you're using GPS, put this address in. 89 00:04:59,675 --> 00:05:02,793 Yeah, I know where the parking lot is, thank you. 90 00:05:05,760 --> 00:05:08,670 And Al DeMaria, who has actually got me, 91 00:05:08,670 --> 00:05:13,670 who introduced me to Phil DePalma and started all of this, 92 00:05:13,710 --> 00:05:15,153 that is my tech guy now. 93 00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:18,780 So here are the founders. 94 00:05:18,780 --> 00:05:21,210 We have Ginger with her husband, Dick Keville, 95 00:05:21,210 --> 00:05:24,720 who was always helping. 96 00:05:24,720 --> 00:05:27,090 He loved to be able to pick up speakers 97 00:05:27,090 --> 00:05:30,780 and drive them to Salem or drive them back to the airport 98 00:05:30,780 --> 00:05:34,590 or whatever he said because he had 20 to 30 minutes alone 99 00:05:34,590 --> 00:05:38,340 in the car with somebody who is really interesting 100 00:05:38,340 --> 00:05:42,210 and he had a one-on-one conversation with all of them. 101 00:05:42,210 --> 00:05:44,040 And then the late Phil DePalma, 102 00:05:44,040 --> 00:05:48,783 shown here on Darwin Sandwalk in 1985. 103 00:05:50,580 --> 00:05:52,740 I'm interweaving some strands. 104 00:05:52,740 --> 00:05:56,190 The inspiration for all this started, how this started, 105 00:05:56,190 --> 00:05:59,220 but I'm gonna be making comments about Darwin's life, 106 00:05:59,220 --> 00:06:02,010 particularly about social webs, 107 00:06:02,010 --> 00:06:04,230 some about the organization and funding 108 00:06:04,230 --> 00:06:07,110 and how that has changed over the years 109 00:06:07,110 --> 00:06:09,990 and the evolution of communication and technology, 110 00:06:09,990 --> 00:06:12,723 which is still evolving as we can see today. 111 00:06:14,820 --> 00:06:19,820 But I'm gonna go back even farther to 1966 or 67. 112 00:06:21,750 --> 00:06:24,690 We have a little dispute about this actual time, 113 00:06:24,690 --> 00:06:29,574 and then 1979, because you never know 114 00:06:29,574 --> 00:06:32,820 where a connection might lead you. 115 00:06:32,820 --> 00:06:35,310 And particularly for any students who are listening, 116 00:06:35,310 --> 00:06:39,930 there are people you are meeting now who someday, you know, 117 00:06:39,930 --> 00:06:41,760 a year or two from now, three years from now, 118 00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:43,830 five years from now, 119 00:06:43,830 --> 00:06:46,203 that may end up being an important connection. 120 00:06:47,160 --> 00:06:52,160 So either 66 or 67, Al, my future husband, 121 00:06:52,470 --> 00:06:56,670 went with his older cousin Charles to visit a lab at BU 122 00:06:56,670 --> 00:06:59,880 where Charles had done undergraduate research 123 00:06:59,880 --> 00:07:03,563 and that was the day that Al met Phil DePalma. 124 00:07:03,563 --> 00:07:05,003 So we got a little web there. 125 00:07:05,970 --> 00:07:09,880 Now I'm gonna skip a whole lot of time to 1979 126 00:07:11,310 --> 00:07:14,670 and Al and I go to a holiday party at Phil's, 127 00:07:14,670 --> 00:07:16,740 and that's certainly when I met the Keville's 128 00:07:16,740 --> 00:07:20,070 and some other members of the biology faculty. 129 00:07:20,070 --> 00:07:25,070 So now we've got a much bigger web and this was a, you know, 130 00:07:25,170 --> 00:07:27,480 if you've got people who work together 131 00:07:27,480 --> 00:07:30,190 and they're at a social event, they tend to talk shop 132 00:07:31,170 --> 00:07:33,660 and one of the things they were talking about 133 00:07:33,660 --> 00:07:37,200 was this new lab that Ginger and Phil were planning 134 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:41,373 for an introductory biology course, what is now Bio 124. 135 00:07:42,390 --> 00:07:45,870 This would focus on the life, work, and impact 136 00:07:45,870 --> 00:07:50,127 of Charles Darwin and it was loosely inspired 137 00:07:50,127 --> 00:07:55,127 by graduate school Darwin Festival birthday celebrations 138 00:07:55,740 --> 00:07:57,210 that Dick Keville had attended 139 00:07:57,210 --> 00:08:00,720 at the University of North Dakota, in February, 140 00:08:00,720 --> 00:08:03,003 which he described as pizza and beer parties. 141 00:08:04,490 --> 00:08:07,075 Well, Ginger and Phil had other ideas 142 00:08:07,075 --> 00:08:09,690 and they were planning a variety of events 143 00:08:09,690 --> 00:08:11,700 throughout the week for multiple lecture 144 00:08:11,700 --> 00:08:15,273 and lab sections of this intro course. 145 00:08:16,650 --> 00:08:18,450 Phil thought that some of the work I had done 146 00:08:18,450 --> 00:08:22,560 in graduate school might be interesting 147 00:08:22,560 --> 00:08:24,573 and so they asked me to speak. 148 00:08:26,670 --> 00:08:29,220 Okay, so why celebrate Darwin? 149 00:08:29,220 --> 00:08:30,780 What's the big deal? 150 00:08:30,780 --> 00:08:33,630 Well, he's mostly known for evolution 151 00:08:33,630 --> 00:08:38,130 by means of natural selection and evolution is the idea 152 00:08:38,130 --> 00:08:40,620 that organisms change over time. 153 00:08:40,620 --> 00:08:42,627 And it was an idea that had been around 154 00:08:42,627 --> 00:08:45,120 for at least a hundred years. 155 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:48,663 His grandfather, Erasmus had written a poem about it, 156 00:08:48,663 --> 00:08:52,350 but Darwin in the "Origin of Species" 157 00:08:52,350 --> 00:08:55,470 sat down and summarized all of the evidence. 158 00:08:55,470 --> 00:08:57,240 So there's a, if the "Origin of Species" 159 00:08:57,240 --> 00:08:59,970 has a chapter on geographic distribution, 160 00:08:59,970 --> 00:09:02,070 there's another chapter on geology 161 00:09:02,070 --> 00:09:05,640 and another on embryology and so forth. 162 00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:07,890 But probably more importantly, 163 00:09:07,890 --> 00:09:12,843 Darwin was the first to provide a mechanism based in nature. 164 00:09:14,340 --> 00:09:16,233 And Darwin read widely. 165 00:09:17,310 --> 00:09:21,750 He read Thomas Malthus 1838 essay on population, 166 00:09:21,750 --> 00:09:26,377 an economics essay, and that caused him to start thinking 167 00:09:26,377 --> 00:09:30,660 about common observations in a totally new way 168 00:09:30,660 --> 00:09:34,473 that led him to the mechanism of natural selection. 169 00:09:36,150 --> 00:09:38,730 Now why February? 170 00:09:38,730 --> 00:09:41,970 Well, he was born on February 12th, 1809. 171 00:09:41,970 --> 00:09:44,100 Yesterday was his birthday. 172 00:09:44,100 --> 00:09:46,080 It was also Abraham Lincoln's birthday, 173 00:09:46,080 --> 00:09:47,913 same day and the same year. 174 00:09:48,930 --> 00:09:52,863 Now this winter is unusual. 175 00:09:54,270 --> 00:09:56,340 Well, it's been getting unusual. 176 00:09:56,340 --> 00:09:59,403 Once again, we have no snow pack, no snow cover at all, 177 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:03,550 but the years that we've had really a lot of snow 178 00:10:04,530 --> 00:10:07,080 and we've finished the Darwin Festival and we kind of say, 179 00:10:07,080 --> 00:10:09,576 is there some other way we can do this? 180 00:10:09,576 --> 00:10:12,580 And we would look at other possible dates 181 00:10:13,560 --> 00:10:17,199 and there aren't too many, there aren't any other good ones. 182 00:10:17,199 --> 00:10:19,340 He died in the middle of April, 183 00:10:19,340 --> 00:10:23,100 too close to the end of the semester 184 00:10:23,100 --> 00:10:25,260 and now we actually also have a week long 185 00:10:25,260 --> 00:10:27,840 Earth Day celebration so I encourage you to think about 186 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:32,325 April and Earth Days and the "Origin of Species" 187 00:10:32,325 --> 00:10:34,813 was published in November. 188 00:10:34,813 --> 00:10:38,010 That's too close to Thanksgiving 189 00:10:38,010 --> 00:10:40,680 and it's also too close to the end of the semester. 190 00:10:40,680 --> 00:10:41,910 So we would go through this 191 00:10:41,910 --> 00:10:45,100 and then we'd end up back in February. 192 00:10:45,100 --> 00:10:46,323 Good enough time. 193 00:10:48,300 --> 00:10:51,940 This was also conceived as an interdisciplinary program 194 00:10:53,150 --> 00:10:57,660 and that's because Darwin did so much more 195 00:10:57,660 --> 00:11:00,060 than the "Origin of Species." 196 00:11:00,060 --> 00:11:02,340 Now I went to Wikipedia to get a listing 197 00:11:02,340 --> 00:11:05,700 of all of the, I just wanted a list of his books. 198 00:11:05,700 --> 00:11:08,940 And I realized looking at that list, 199 00:11:08,940 --> 00:11:12,060 that Darwin was publishing a major book 200 00:11:12,060 --> 00:11:16,530 every two to three years from 1838 to 1881, 201 00:11:17,490 --> 00:11:18,850 the year before he died 202 00:11:19,740 --> 00:11:23,640 and they're on a wide variety of topics. 203 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:26,640 Yes, we have the, initially the "Voyage of the Beagle," 204 00:11:26,640 --> 00:11:29,760 but there are a couple of other books related to that, 205 00:11:29,760 --> 00:11:31,440 but there's geology, there's psychology, 206 00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:35,450 there's all aspects of biology in there. 207 00:11:35,450 --> 00:11:38,310 And as a trivia tidbit, 208 00:11:38,310 --> 00:11:41,520 his last publication, published in Nature, 209 00:11:41,520 --> 00:11:44,160 13 days before he died, 210 00:11:44,160 --> 00:11:47,133 was about the dispersal of freshwater bivalves. 211 00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:51,750 He credited the observations of a correspondent 212 00:11:51,750 --> 00:11:55,470 who had also sent him the specimens involved 213 00:11:55,470 --> 00:12:00,470 and that correspondent was the grandfather of Francis Crick. 214 00:12:00,774 --> 00:12:03,990 And if you saying that name sounds familiar, 215 00:12:03,990 --> 00:12:08,280 that's the grandfather of Crick in Watson and Crick, 216 00:12:08,280 --> 00:12:11,070 discovered the structure of DNA. 217 00:12:11,070 --> 00:12:13,743 So two generations removed from Darwin. 218 00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:20,700 So this is phase one, Ginger's the coordinator from 1980, 219 00:12:22,290 --> 00:12:24,993 at the beginning, to 1999. 220 00:12:26,310 --> 00:12:29,550 This festival arrived as a week-long event. 221 00:12:29,550 --> 00:12:32,400 It didn't build up from let's do one day, let's do two days. 222 00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:34,053 It arrived as a week. 223 00:12:35,250 --> 00:12:38,040 And as far as we can tell, as Dr. Burchsted mentioned, 224 00:12:38,040 --> 00:12:42,570 it was the first such program in the United States, 225 00:12:42,570 --> 00:12:47,160 International Darwin Day didn't begin until 15 years later. 226 00:12:47,160 --> 00:12:48,510 So Ginger and Phil's, 227 00:12:48,510 --> 00:12:51,873 their vision was way ahead of the times. 228 00:12:52,950 --> 00:12:56,910 Now this is the first festival program 229 00:12:56,910 --> 00:13:01,470 and it is literally on a piece of paper this big, right? 230 00:13:01,470 --> 00:13:03,603 The print is really, really small. 231 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:06,330 I don't know if publications did this. 232 00:13:06,330 --> 00:13:09,393 I had to get out a magnifying glass to read the program. 233 00:13:10,650 --> 00:13:14,640 And this is a photo from that, I think it's the first, 234 00:13:14,640 --> 00:13:16,590 with Phil and Ginger, I, 235 00:13:16,590 --> 00:13:20,553 and the President of the college, James Amsler. 236 00:13:22,140 --> 00:13:25,380 It was a multidisciplinary program, 237 00:13:25,380 --> 00:13:28,140 certainly we had a lot of science in there, 238 00:13:28,140 --> 00:13:30,030 but we also had history and culture. 239 00:13:30,030 --> 00:13:31,860 We had two panel discussions. 240 00:13:31,860 --> 00:13:36,860 I came the last day, but there's also a web of connections 241 00:13:37,380 --> 00:13:39,420 throughout Salem State. 242 00:13:39,420 --> 00:13:42,120 We had nine speakers from seven different departments 243 00:13:42,120 --> 00:13:44,820 and not just the sciences obviously. 244 00:13:44,820 --> 00:13:46,020 And we had connections, 245 00:13:46,020 --> 00:13:49,260 we had speakers that had connections to Phil at BU 246 00:13:49,260 --> 00:13:52,083 and to some other universities. 247 00:13:54,720 --> 00:13:56,787 Now my memories of the first Darwin Festival 248 00:13:56,787 --> 00:14:01,740 was the last day, I spoke on the last day. 249 00:14:01,740 --> 00:14:04,890 Again, my talk was about how different are we from the apes? 250 00:14:04,890 --> 00:14:07,110 And I look at that title now, when I considered that, 251 00:14:07,110 --> 00:14:09,750 I talked about the similarities between us 252 00:14:09,750 --> 00:14:13,050 biochemically and the behavioral similarities 253 00:14:13,050 --> 00:14:15,930 that we were finding in field studies, 254 00:14:15,930 --> 00:14:18,464 I probably should have used a different title. 255 00:14:18,464 --> 00:14:22,023 It should have been how similar are we to the apes? 256 00:14:23,160 --> 00:14:26,368 And speaking after me was Lynn Margulis, 257 00:14:26,368 --> 00:14:30,750 and for those of you who teach or are learning about 258 00:14:30,750 --> 00:14:33,660 the origin of the eukaryotic cell, 259 00:14:33,660 --> 00:14:36,570 she was the one who really brought that 260 00:14:36,570 --> 00:14:41,570 to everybody's attention and for years talked about that. 261 00:14:42,990 --> 00:14:45,780 And she was also a great supporter of the festival, 262 00:14:45,780 --> 00:14:47,643 speaking nine times. 263 00:14:48,518 --> 00:14:51,541 After her talk, Phil sent a student out to get, 264 00:14:51,541 --> 00:14:54,840 you know, buy sandwiches, bag of chips some tonic, 265 00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:58,650 and we spent the afternoon sitting around a table 266 00:14:58,650 --> 00:15:01,920 in the old library, on the fourth floor of the old library, 267 00:15:01,920 --> 00:15:04,713 just chatting for a few hours actually. 268 00:15:08,970 --> 00:15:10,710 So these early festivals, and again, 269 00:15:10,710 --> 00:15:14,073 I didn't really get onto the committee until 1982, 270 00:15:15,660 --> 00:15:17,430 right as I joined. 271 00:15:17,430 --> 00:15:20,343 Initially it was Ginger, Phil, and Dick. 272 00:15:21,540 --> 00:15:24,000 After that, more people were added 273 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:26,802 as new faculty joined the department. 274 00:15:26,802 --> 00:15:31,020 The department itself was actually very supportive. 275 00:15:31,020 --> 00:15:33,989 And most of the faculty actually let their classes, 276 00:15:33,989 --> 00:15:36,690 they didn't meet class during the week 277 00:15:36,690 --> 00:15:40,323 of the Darwin Festival and they had alternative assignments. 278 00:15:41,280 --> 00:15:43,170 Now, for anybody here, 279 00:15:43,170 --> 00:15:46,380 the people in the department already know this, 280 00:15:46,380 --> 00:15:50,070 but if anybody in the Zoom audience or here, 281 00:15:50,070 --> 00:15:52,350 who's thinking about doing anything, 282 00:15:52,350 --> 00:15:54,870 I got two pieces of advice. 283 00:15:54,870 --> 00:15:57,960 Think about anything under your control that can go wrong 284 00:15:57,960 --> 00:16:02,228 and have a backup plan and keep notes on what you do, 285 00:16:02,228 --> 00:16:05,160 when you did it, and who helped you, 286 00:16:05,160 --> 00:16:07,020 so that if you'd wanna do it again, 287 00:16:07,020 --> 00:16:08,943 you don't have to reinvent the wheel. 288 00:16:11,370 --> 00:16:14,310 Now, communication, identifying speakers, 289 00:16:14,310 --> 00:16:17,328 nothing has changed, nothing. 290 00:16:17,328 --> 00:16:20,228 We invite people we know, 291 00:16:20,228 --> 00:16:22,492 maybe we went to graduate school with them, 292 00:16:22,492 --> 00:16:25,710 maybe they were professional collaborators, 293 00:16:25,710 --> 00:16:28,440 maybe we heard or talked to them at a meeting. 294 00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:30,780 Sometimes people from other departments 295 00:16:30,780 --> 00:16:32,910 would make suggestions to us. 296 00:16:32,910 --> 00:16:35,155 Sometimes we'd have a Darwin Festival speaker 297 00:16:35,155 --> 00:16:38,010 who came and was so impressed they said, 298 00:16:38,010 --> 00:16:39,660 you know who you need to get, 299 00:16:39,660 --> 00:16:41,760 and they'd give us a name and we would follow up 300 00:16:41,760 --> 00:16:44,805 and sure enough, they were great. 301 00:16:44,805 --> 00:16:49,805 Sending invitations was another difficulty, 302 00:16:50,100 --> 00:16:52,378 well not difficulties, just very different. 303 00:16:52,378 --> 00:16:56,160 Now, certainly if it was somebody we didn't know, 304 00:16:56,160 --> 00:16:57,930 we'd often mail them a letter. 305 00:16:57,930 --> 00:17:01,773 And this is snail mail, you know, stamps, envelopes, 306 00:17:03,905 --> 00:17:08,905 that still happens, but if you wanted to call somebody, 307 00:17:09,150 --> 00:17:11,880 some of us were having a conversation before this, 308 00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:16,140 in the 1980s, if you wanted to make a telephone call 309 00:17:16,140 --> 00:17:20,403 off campus, you need to have permission from the Dean. 310 00:17:21,365 --> 00:17:23,880 And I'm talking, if you wanted to order lunch, 311 00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,450 you needed permission from the Dean to call off campus. 312 00:17:27,450 --> 00:17:29,370 So I have a feeling a lot of these phone calls 313 00:17:29,370 --> 00:17:33,150 happened at home, that unfortunately has all changed, 314 00:17:33,150 --> 00:17:35,250 and I'm not even gonna begin to understand 315 00:17:35,250 --> 00:17:36,933 the current phone system. 316 00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:39,603 I'm glad I missed it. 317 00:17:42,870 --> 00:17:44,973 Now, Darwin had a web of contacts. 318 00:17:46,500 --> 00:17:47,760 He was not a great student. 319 00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:49,740 He tended to go off hunting, 320 00:17:49,740 --> 00:17:51,990 shooting and collecting beetles. 321 00:17:51,990 --> 00:17:53,614 His father despaired, 322 00:17:53,614 --> 00:17:57,064 but he did join student groups, 323 00:17:57,064 --> 00:18:00,570 students who were interested in natural history. 324 00:18:00,570 --> 00:18:02,280 They'd meet, they'd read papers, 325 00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:04,591 they'd talk about what they had found 326 00:18:04,591 --> 00:18:07,770 out in their collections. 327 00:18:07,770 --> 00:18:10,560 He did have an undergraduate research experience 328 00:18:10,560 --> 00:18:14,040 and he had some, several faculty mentors, 329 00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:18,120 one of whom John Henslow recommended Darwin 330 00:18:18,120 --> 00:18:21,000 for an unpaid position on the HMS Beagle. 331 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:22,620 This is one of those contacts 332 00:18:22,620 --> 00:18:24,510 where you don't know where it's gonna lead. 333 00:18:24,510 --> 00:18:28,320 His contact with Henslow led him to getting this position 334 00:18:28,320 --> 00:18:30,360 on HMS Beagle. 335 00:18:30,360 --> 00:18:31,510 Now he didn't get paid. 336 00:18:32,525 --> 00:18:35,640 What they were looking for 337 00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:39,090 was someone who could collect specimens 338 00:18:39,090 --> 00:18:40,650 and take notes on natural history, 339 00:18:40,650 --> 00:18:44,520 which Darwin could do very well and everybody knew that, 340 00:18:44,520 --> 00:18:47,820 but they needed someone of the right social class 341 00:18:47,820 --> 00:18:52,114 to be a gentleman companion for Captain Fitzroy 342 00:18:52,114 --> 00:18:57,114 who had concerns because there was depression, 343 00:18:57,330 --> 00:18:59,970 there was history of depression in his family. 344 00:18:59,970 --> 00:19:02,670 And he wanted somebody that who wasn't a crew member 345 00:19:02,670 --> 00:19:04,470 that he could talk to and dine with. 346 00:19:06,060 --> 00:19:11,060 So that experience on the Beagle changed Darwin's life. 347 00:19:11,487 --> 00:19:16,470 When he came back, he was famous, 348 00:19:16,470 --> 00:19:19,680 because his papers, his letters back to his friends, 349 00:19:19,680 --> 00:19:21,390 were being read at society, 350 00:19:21,390 --> 00:19:24,885 you know, so scientific society meetings. 351 00:19:24,885 --> 00:19:27,690 And for the rest of his life 352 00:19:27,690 --> 00:19:31,020 he corresponded with people all over the world. 353 00:19:31,020 --> 00:19:33,480 There's something like 16,000 letters 354 00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:37,413 in the Darwin Correspondence project in Cambridge. 355 00:19:38,610 --> 00:19:40,560 And his closest scientific colleagues 356 00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:45,560 also represent an interdisciplinary group of scientists. 357 00:19:48,163 --> 00:19:53,163 Lyell, a geologist, Hooker and Gray, both botanists, 358 00:19:53,700 --> 00:19:56,370 and Huxley, who is an anthropologist 359 00:19:56,370 --> 00:20:00,153 and comparative anatomist and they'll be back. 360 00:20:01,699 --> 00:20:06,699 Now the biology department does not do this alone 361 00:20:07,140 --> 00:20:10,170 and it takes a village to do this 362 00:20:10,170 --> 00:20:15,170 and I'm sure Ginger was the one who organized the village 363 00:20:15,450 --> 00:20:20,450 and got all of our connections to all these offices. 364 00:20:21,750 --> 00:20:26,127 I've seen, we still have flyers around or posters around, 365 00:20:26,127 --> 00:20:30,480 the committee gets the schedule together, 366 00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:32,820 reserves the rooms and so forth. 367 00:20:32,820 --> 00:20:37,530 But if you want a professional looking poster to put up, 368 00:20:37,530 --> 00:20:39,270 you go to the Publications Office, 369 00:20:39,270 --> 00:20:42,900 which is now Marketing and Creative Services. 370 00:20:42,900 --> 00:20:46,014 They designed the program, the department approved it, 371 00:20:46,014 --> 00:20:49,710 we sent it to printing, they would make the copies, 372 00:20:49,710 --> 00:20:52,487 and then originally we would be sending out mailers 373 00:20:52,487 --> 00:20:57,150 to all of our alumni, to past speakers, 374 00:20:57,150 --> 00:20:59,610 other universities and so forth. 375 00:20:59,610 --> 00:21:00,840 And we, the department, 376 00:21:00,840 --> 00:21:04,650 would post things around campus and get things, 377 00:21:04,650 --> 00:21:07,050 sent information to other departments 378 00:21:07,050 --> 00:21:09,573 to let people know what was going on. 379 00:21:11,550 --> 00:21:16,293 Now, you're saying what is that building? 380 00:21:18,540 --> 00:21:23,373 That is the old library, which is gone now. 381 00:21:24,527 --> 00:21:28,350 From 1980 to 2007, 382 00:21:28,350 --> 00:21:30,570 the lectures for the Darwin Festival 383 00:21:30,570 --> 00:21:33,060 were held on the fourth floor of the library. 384 00:21:33,060 --> 00:21:35,340 The original Charlotte Forten Hall, 385 00:21:35,340 --> 00:21:40,340 which took up a half to two thirds of the top floor. 386 00:21:41,460 --> 00:21:42,900 Now we reserved the room, 387 00:21:42,900 --> 00:21:45,450 the library staff had to make sure the room was set up, 388 00:21:45,450 --> 00:21:49,290 the chairs were out, the podium was there, and so forth. 389 00:21:49,290 --> 00:21:53,940 We had to make sure that the floor to ceiling drapes 390 00:21:53,940 --> 00:21:56,310 for the windows were shut. 391 00:21:56,310 --> 00:21:59,364 And we taped them shut because they didn't hold, 392 00:21:59,364 --> 00:22:02,883 they often let too much light leak in. 393 00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:08,487 Media Services who are still with us today, 394 00:22:08,487 --> 00:22:11,760 now is Information Technology Services, 395 00:22:11,760 --> 00:22:13,920 they set up the microphones in that room, 396 00:22:13,920 --> 00:22:15,480 the various projectors, 397 00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:17,640 they recorded lectures as they are doing today 398 00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:19,914 and now they're making sure Zoom works 399 00:22:19,914 --> 00:22:23,343 so they are still an integral part of this. 400 00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:29,310 But the technology for video, for presentations, 401 00:22:29,310 --> 00:22:31,920 has changed dramatically. 402 00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:36,920 Now this is back in the old days, overhead projectors, 403 00:22:37,101 --> 00:22:39,360 we had them on carts. 404 00:22:39,360 --> 00:22:41,550 You have a clear acetate sheet 405 00:22:41,550 --> 00:22:43,530 and hopefully a washable marker 406 00:22:43,530 --> 00:22:47,130 and if you stand there, get blinded by the light, 407 00:22:47,130 --> 00:22:49,863 but the image would then be projected onto a screen. 408 00:22:50,820 --> 00:22:54,690 Most people were using 35 millimeter slides. 409 00:22:54,690 --> 00:22:56,701 So here we have a carousel projector, 410 00:22:56,701 --> 00:23:00,000 a projector with a carousel. 411 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,364 But some of our speakers, 412 00:23:02,364 --> 00:23:05,970 Lynn Margulis had some really, really, really, really, 413 00:23:05,970 --> 00:23:10,350 old slides needing a lantern slide projector 414 00:23:10,350 --> 00:23:13,377 which fortunately in the early years we had. 415 00:23:13,377 --> 00:23:15,570 This is a lantern slide, 416 00:23:15,570 --> 00:23:20,460 if you'll notice that is four inches long by about three. 417 00:23:20,460 --> 00:23:25,460 It's glass, and this is where we, 418 00:23:25,530 --> 00:23:28,530 you can really troubleshoot because we would bring 419 00:23:28,530 --> 00:23:31,710 extra markers, extra projector bulbs, 420 00:23:31,710 --> 00:23:33,990 tweezers for those really annoying slides 421 00:23:33,990 --> 00:23:36,780 that got stuck in the projector and wouldn't come out. 422 00:23:36,780 --> 00:23:39,180 And you know the speaker was getting really annoyed 423 00:23:39,180 --> 00:23:40,980 'cause we're having trouble. 424 00:23:40,980 --> 00:23:44,314 Now we bring pointers and computer adapters just in case, 425 00:23:44,314 --> 00:23:48,003 you know, somebody has a Mac and can't find their connector. 426 00:23:49,475 --> 00:23:51,780 Now attendance was required so the department 427 00:23:51,780 --> 00:23:54,810 was letting classes out so students were here 428 00:23:54,810 --> 00:23:57,510 and had to have proof of attendance. 429 00:23:57,510 --> 00:23:59,130 And I'm not sure who came up 430 00:23:59,130 --> 00:24:03,810 with the numbered tickets system, but those tickets, 431 00:24:03,810 --> 00:24:06,570 paper tickets were handed out at the end 432 00:24:06,570 --> 00:24:11,051 and this was coordinated by the department's lab technicians 433 00:24:11,051 --> 00:24:13,410 for over 30 years. 434 00:24:13,410 --> 00:24:15,960 This was Patty Welch shown here. 435 00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:19,680 The lower pictures are some of our other lab technicians. 436 00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,577 I don't have pictures of our current lab technicians, 437 00:24:22,577 --> 00:24:25,770 but I understand now, 438 00:24:25,770 --> 00:24:28,548 I know now with Zoom the last two years, 439 00:24:28,548 --> 00:24:31,230 when you register for the webinar, 440 00:24:31,230 --> 00:24:35,730 that automatically gets you your attendance verification. 441 00:24:35,730 --> 00:24:38,910 And again, I wanna see how the QR codes are gonna work. 442 00:24:38,910 --> 00:24:43,353 I'm really curious, that's new, new technology. 443 00:24:45,360 --> 00:24:48,333 Another common difficulty, the weather. 444 00:24:49,264 --> 00:24:53,925 Now this is, anybody, 445 00:24:53,925 --> 00:24:56,913 this is what weather maps used to look like. 446 00:24:58,050 --> 00:25:01,387 This is Harvey Leonard from Channel Five 447 00:25:01,387 --> 00:25:03,930 on one of his first broadcasts. 448 00:25:03,930 --> 00:25:05,670 I don't know if this is the weather map 449 00:25:05,670 --> 00:25:09,125 leading into the Blizzard of '78 or not, 450 00:25:09,125 --> 00:25:11,310 but it reminded me 'cause they were doing something 451 00:25:11,310 --> 00:25:12,693 on the Channel Five news. 452 00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:16,953 This is what weather forecasting looked like in those days. 453 00:25:18,597 --> 00:25:22,710 So weather forecasting was not as good as it is now, 454 00:25:22,710 --> 00:25:26,430 we know days in advance and my phone tells me 455 00:25:26,430 --> 00:25:30,060 that the drizzle is going to end in 19 minutes. 456 00:25:30,060 --> 00:25:33,420 You know, not 22, not 17, but 19. 457 00:25:33,420 --> 00:25:34,670 I've never tested it but, 458 00:25:36,570 --> 00:25:40,113 and also school closings were not as timely. 459 00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:44,790 This is not related to the Darwin Festival, 460 00:25:44,790 --> 00:25:48,931 but my very first semester here was in the spring of 1982 461 00:25:48,931 --> 00:25:53,820 and I remember a white knuckle drive up from Somerville 462 00:25:53,820 --> 00:25:56,400 where we were living, in the snowstorm, 463 00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:58,710 and the first thing I did was go up to Phil's office 464 00:25:58,710 --> 00:26:01,290 and say, can I cancel class? 465 00:26:01,290 --> 00:26:03,360 I don't want anybody driving in this 466 00:26:03,360 --> 00:26:05,250 'cause they hadn't called class yet. 467 00:26:05,250 --> 00:26:09,178 They did shortly thereafter then I had to drive home again. 468 00:26:09,178 --> 00:26:12,810 Now we are much more sensible about these things 469 00:26:12,810 --> 00:26:16,890 and often school closures are announced the night before 470 00:26:16,890 --> 00:26:19,190 if we know things are going to get really bad. 471 00:26:21,150 --> 00:26:23,610 We also sometimes have people get sick. 472 00:26:23,610 --> 00:26:28,271 And that has happened before, not very often, fortunately. 473 00:26:28,271 --> 00:26:33,271 And what we did was we had somebody on standby with a talk. 474 00:26:33,990 --> 00:26:36,150 Now I can tell you from personal experience, 475 00:26:36,150 --> 00:26:38,190 because I was one of those people, 476 00:26:38,190 --> 00:26:41,280 as we're waiting for the speaker to arrive 477 00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:42,630 and we're pacing back and forth, 478 00:26:42,630 --> 00:26:44,130 I did lot of that all over the years, 479 00:26:44,130 --> 00:26:45,870 pacing back and forth, where's the speaker? 480 00:26:45,870 --> 00:26:47,220 Where's the speaker? 481 00:26:47,220 --> 00:26:48,723 Okay Sue, you're on. 482 00:26:50,381 --> 00:26:53,190 Fortunately we also decided later 483 00:26:53,190 --> 00:26:56,970 that maybe we should start using commercial tapes 484 00:26:56,970 --> 00:26:58,920 like Novas and Natures. 485 00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:02,250 And as we recorded more lectures, 486 00:27:02,250 --> 00:27:05,850 we had recordings of past speakers 487 00:27:05,850 --> 00:27:09,850 so we could use that as a substitute if somebody was ill. 488 00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:14,344 We could just make a substitution in the room 489 00:27:14,344 --> 00:27:16,113 and substitute that. 490 00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:20,123 There was one year we had three that we had to deal with. 491 00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:23,220 Okay, first few years. 492 00:27:23,220 --> 00:27:24,750 I don't know how the funding was handled. 493 00:27:24,750 --> 00:27:25,653 Ginger did that. 494 00:27:27,081 --> 00:27:30,570 It was the Biology Department, the college administration. 495 00:27:30,570 --> 00:27:33,480 I do particularly remember 1989 496 00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:36,857 because the President of the SGA was Peter Shearstone 497 00:27:36,857 --> 00:27:39,971 and he helped us get a very nice grant 498 00:27:39,971 --> 00:27:43,353 from the Student Government Association that year. 499 00:27:45,781 --> 00:27:49,290 And we are also deeply grateful for the support 500 00:27:49,290 --> 00:27:53,760 of the Charles Albert Read Trust since at least 1997. 501 00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:56,790 I don't have, I've tried to track this 502 00:27:56,790 --> 00:27:58,920 back through past programs that I had, 503 00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:00,873 but they didn't always show that. 504 00:28:02,070 --> 00:28:05,220 This is another one of these personal connections. 505 00:28:05,220 --> 00:28:07,590 Somebody in Academic Affairs, 506 00:28:07,590 --> 00:28:09,711 I think I knew who it was but I'm not sure, 507 00:28:09,711 --> 00:28:13,770 told Ginger about the trust which is administered 508 00:28:13,770 --> 00:28:15,621 by the city of Salem. 509 00:28:15,621 --> 00:28:20,621 One of their goals is to fund free science lectures 510 00:28:22,980 --> 00:28:27,933 and they have been a stalwart support since at least 1997. 511 00:28:28,830 --> 00:28:30,720 John Hayes contacted me over the weekend. 512 00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:35,040 He had a listing of the Geography Department speakers 513 00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:36,030 that have been sponsored 514 00:28:36,030 --> 00:28:40,380 by the Charles Albert Read Trust since 2002. 515 00:28:40,380 --> 00:28:44,484 So they also are instrumental in the interdisciplinary 516 00:28:44,484 --> 00:28:47,283 aspect of this program. 517 00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:52,650 There are of course crises along the way 518 00:28:52,650 --> 00:28:55,234 that you can't prepare for and our first 519 00:28:55,234 --> 00:29:00,234 was losing Phil DePalma who died suddenly in July of 1993. 520 00:29:02,100 --> 00:29:04,097 We hosted a memorial service 521 00:29:04,097 --> 00:29:09,097 at the end of the 1994 festival, but it was snowing outside. 522 00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:17,040 And my clearest memory of all of that 523 00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:21,240 was President Nancy Harrington and Ginger Keville 524 00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:26,163 walking off together, looking out the window at the snow. 525 00:29:27,300 --> 00:29:29,790 And a short time later it was announced the college 526 00:29:29,790 --> 00:29:34,773 would close at 3:00 PM which was at the end of the service. 527 00:29:36,420 --> 00:29:40,110 The library graciously allowed us to stay until five 528 00:29:40,110 --> 00:29:41,970 so that all of the friends and family 529 00:29:41,970 --> 00:29:46,661 and colleagues of Phil were able to socialize 530 00:29:46,661 --> 00:29:50,550 and remember and share stories of Phil 531 00:29:50,550 --> 00:29:52,350 and there were many stories of Phil. 532 00:29:55,470 --> 00:29:58,468 Now Ginger retired in the spring of 1999, 533 00:29:58,468 --> 00:30:00,363 after the 20th festival. 534 00:30:01,350 --> 00:30:04,440 Program was headlined by two scientific superstars, 535 00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:06,984 Lynn Margulis and Stephen Jay Gould. 536 00:30:06,984 --> 00:30:08,880 It was over in the theater. 537 00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:12,063 We had standing room only, we still turn people away. 538 00:30:13,530 --> 00:30:16,290 That was when the festival webpage was created 539 00:30:16,290 --> 00:30:18,480 by Kurt Keville with the full listing 540 00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,671 of the first 20 years of speakers and that is updated 541 00:30:21,671 --> 00:30:25,560 and it was at that time that the department established 542 00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:29,460 the Keville-DePalma Darwin Festival Endowment Fund. 543 00:30:29,460 --> 00:30:32,640 But we had a surprise for Ginger 544 00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:34,413 on the last day of the festival. 545 00:30:35,944 --> 00:30:39,246 We had collected letters from past speakers, 546 00:30:39,246 --> 00:30:43,470 alumni, current students, Salem State colleagues, 547 00:30:43,470 --> 00:30:44,850 and we presented her with this 548 00:30:44,850 --> 00:30:46,927 collection of letters entitled, 549 00:30:46,927 --> 00:30:48,393 "My Dear Mrs. Keville. 550 00:30:49,770 --> 00:30:53,430 Included Phil, even though he was no longer with us, 551 00:30:53,430 --> 00:30:55,930 and we channeled our inner Charles Darwin 552 00:30:57,244 --> 00:30:59,437 in this letter that reads, 553 00:30:59,437 --> 00:31:01,470 "I can hear Phil now, 554 00:31:01,470 --> 00:31:04,410 lauding your efforts year after year 555 00:31:04,410 --> 00:31:08,059 as the festival grew into what it is today. 556 00:31:08,059 --> 00:31:12,120 He would be the first among us in giving tribute 557 00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:13,743 to everything you have done. 558 00:31:14,610 --> 00:31:18,090 His sentiments on our 10th anniversary 559 00:31:18,090 --> 00:31:21,150 still hold true today and more so. 560 00:31:21,150 --> 00:31:23,096 From so simple a beginning, 561 00:31:23,096 --> 00:31:28,020 endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful 562 00:31:28,020 --> 00:31:31,770 have been and are being evolved. 563 00:31:31,770 --> 00:31:34,647 Yours very sincerely, Charles Darwin." 564 00:31:35,533 --> 00:31:37,353 She was surprised. 565 00:31:38,970 --> 00:31:39,803 Okay, highlights. 566 00:31:39,803 --> 00:31:43,263 Ugh, okay, I got a whole list of names there. 567 00:31:44,250 --> 00:31:45,183 Some of these are, 568 00:31:45,183 --> 00:31:48,993 most of these internationally known scholars. 569 00:31:50,196 --> 00:31:52,770 For those of you who know history of biology, 570 00:31:52,770 --> 00:31:54,943 you will recognize a lot of these names, 571 00:31:54,943 --> 00:31:56,793 others you may not. 572 00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,020 I will note the two at the bottom of that list, 573 00:32:01,020 --> 00:32:03,480 Charles and Al, are those people 574 00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:08,463 at that very first 1966, 67 beginning for me. 575 00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:12,750 We had our first Nobel Prize laureate, 576 00:32:12,750 --> 00:32:17,400 Carleton Gajdusek, who shared his, 577 00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:19,209 he shared a Nobel Prize for his work 578 00:32:19,209 --> 00:32:22,593 on diseases caused by infectious proteins. 579 00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:25,590 And I'm not quite sure how our, what our connection was, 580 00:32:25,590 --> 00:32:27,240 I think I remember the connection 581 00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:28,800 but I'm not sure about that. 582 00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:32,730 We had three alumni speakers during this period 583 00:32:32,730 --> 00:32:35,010 and I thank Deb for finding, 584 00:32:35,010 --> 00:32:36,960 sort of confirming what years they graduated 585 00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:38,730 because I didn't know these people. 586 00:32:38,730 --> 00:32:40,980 It was was a little, a little before my time. 587 00:32:43,470 --> 00:32:44,893 Donald Johanson, 588 00:32:44,893 --> 00:32:49,620 the co-discoverer of the fossil known as Lucy, 589 00:32:49,620 --> 00:32:53,283 who is 2.9 to 3.9 million years old. 590 00:32:54,330 --> 00:32:58,710 She represented the first evidence that we had, 591 00:32:58,710 --> 00:33:02,220 that walking on two legs, walking upright, 592 00:33:02,220 --> 00:33:05,013 long preceded having a big brain. 593 00:33:05,910 --> 00:33:07,569 I'm gonna note parenthetically, 594 00:33:07,569 --> 00:33:10,950 on Saturday on the BBC website 595 00:33:10,950 --> 00:33:15,496 there was a report of 2.9 million year old stone tools 596 00:33:15,496 --> 00:33:20,496 with hominid remains from a genus known as paranthropus, 597 00:33:22,050 --> 00:33:23,973 which is sort of the cousin to Lucy. 598 00:33:26,250 --> 00:33:28,650 But when I emailed Susan Edwards, 599 00:33:28,650 --> 00:33:30,233 I wanted a picture of the library 600 00:33:30,233 --> 00:33:33,480 'cause I knew most people don't remember that library. 601 00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,390 She said, "I found this picture in the files. 602 00:33:36,390 --> 00:33:39,417 Do you know who these people are and when it was taken?" 603 00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:45,680 You bet, here we have Phil and Ginger with Donald Johanson. 604 00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:50,160 And since I have a detailed schedule, thanks to Paul, 605 00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:55,160 this was taken on February 9th, 1982. 606 00:34:01,020 --> 00:34:04,800 I vaguely remember them being shuffled off 607 00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:06,570 to have their picture taken. 608 00:34:06,570 --> 00:34:09,510 I'm not sure I ever saw this picture, 609 00:34:09,510 --> 00:34:11,926 so I don't know if it was ever published anywhere, 610 00:34:11,926 --> 00:34:15,243 but now it's here and we can all share in it. 611 00:34:17,700 --> 00:34:18,963 Well, Ginger retired. 612 00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:24,660 I had been working with her for 18 years on this festival. 613 00:34:24,660 --> 00:34:26,310 I became coordinator. 614 00:34:26,310 --> 00:34:28,770 Okay, so the committee gets bigger. 615 00:34:28,770 --> 00:34:29,880 Thanks to Alan Young, 616 00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,433 Salem State was granted a service mark 617 00:34:32,433 --> 00:34:34,713 on the name Darwin Festival. 618 00:34:35,820 --> 00:34:38,040 We began using finally, you know, email had come in. 619 00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:40,500 So we're using email to invite people. 620 00:34:40,500 --> 00:34:41,760 That's a lot easier. 621 00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,740 I developed some driving directions 622 00:34:43,740 --> 00:34:48,080 because it's still pre GPS, pre-cellphone, and I, 623 00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:51,246 we would lose speakers who would turn into South campus 624 00:34:51,246 --> 00:34:53,510 and have no one to talk to 625 00:34:53,510 --> 00:34:56,640 and couldn't figure out where they were. 626 00:34:56,640 --> 00:35:00,390 So I gave them really detailed driving directions. 627 00:35:00,390 --> 00:35:04,110 And somewhere in this period people began using PowerPoint 628 00:35:04,110 --> 00:35:08,910 and video projectors for their video presentations. 629 00:35:08,910 --> 00:35:10,920 We had more sources for funding 630 00:35:10,920 --> 00:35:13,145 because number of student groups and others 631 00:35:13,145 --> 00:35:17,250 were sponsoring lectures at the Darwin Festival 632 00:35:17,250 --> 00:35:19,953 and then there were some sometimes special funding. 633 00:35:21,623 --> 00:35:25,200 But the Darwin Festival was also instrumental 634 00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:28,290 in bringing Jane Goodall to the Salem State 635 00:35:28,290 --> 00:35:31,800 Speakers Series in 2002. 636 00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:36,540 And I've got here the people who were involved in this. 637 00:35:36,540 --> 00:35:40,740 So person number one is actually not on the faculty at all. 638 00:35:40,740 --> 00:35:44,970 This is Lynn Gale, the sister of Dr. Gwen Scottgale 639 00:35:44,970 --> 00:35:47,970 and sister-in-law of Dr. Nelson Scottgale. 640 00:35:47,970 --> 00:35:50,460 And she in the past made recommendations 641 00:35:50,460 --> 00:35:53,333 about people who might be interesting to have speak 642 00:35:53,333 --> 00:35:55,830 and we'd followed up and they'd been very good. 643 00:35:55,830 --> 00:35:57,630 And she had suggested to them 644 00:35:57,630 --> 00:36:00,903 that maybe we should think about Jane Goodall. 645 00:36:01,770 --> 00:36:03,330 So Nelson comes down to the office, 646 00:36:03,330 --> 00:36:04,973 I'm person number four there, 647 00:36:04,973 --> 00:36:08,340 I says, "what do you think?" 648 00:36:08,340 --> 00:36:12,870 Well first of all, I say we can't afford her realistically. 649 00:36:12,870 --> 00:36:16,020 He says, "Well what if I just write and ask, you know, 650 00:36:16,020 --> 00:36:17,670 what their terms would be?" 651 00:36:17,670 --> 00:36:20,280 I said, "Okay, worst that can happen 652 00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:22,470 is they're gonna ignore us and the second worst thing 653 00:36:22,470 --> 00:36:24,360 is they're just gonna say no." 654 00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:28,110 But you know, we're just writing a letter. 655 00:36:28,110 --> 00:36:31,560 So he mails off the letter and we don't hear anything. 656 00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:35,010 But a few weeks later, person number five, 657 00:36:35,010 --> 00:36:37,770 Dean of Arts and Sciences, Anita Shea, 658 00:36:37,770 --> 00:36:39,540 formally of the Biology Department, 659 00:36:39,540 --> 00:36:42,750 comes up to the office and I don't quite remember 660 00:36:42,750 --> 00:36:44,887 the conversation but it was something to the effect of, 661 00:36:44,887 --> 00:36:46,633 "Sue, what did you do?" 662 00:36:46,633 --> 00:36:48,157 What do you mean? 663 00:36:48,157 --> 00:36:49,500 "Did you write Jane Goodall?" 664 00:36:49,500 --> 00:36:52,350 I said, well, yeah, Nelson just asked, said, 665 00:36:52,350 --> 00:36:54,870 don't do anything. 666 00:36:54,870 --> 00:36:58,593 The Speaker Series is interested, they'll take it from here. 667 00:37:00,736 --> 00:37:01,686 Okay, fine with me. 668 00:37:02,790 --> 00:37:07,790 And so she spoke at Salem State in March of 2002. 669 00:37:07,830 --> 00:37:09,480 We had the opportunity to meet 670 00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:11,670 and have our picture taken with her. 671 00:37:11,670 --> 00:37:14,862 And so the Darwin Festival web, 672 00:37:14,862 --> 00:37:17,160 people one through five are there, 673 00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,320 as well as Sharon Garrity who is the President 674 00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:24,063 of the Biological Society and Dean Shea's son Daniel. 675 00:37:26,610 --> 00:37:31,410 But this was another crisis we could not plan for. 676 00:37:31,410 --> 00:37:33,360 And this was a campus-wide crisis. 677 00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:35,130 And I'm not gonna go into all the details 678 00:37:35,130 --> 00:37:38,523 'cause this was a major, major crisis. 679 00:37:38,523 --> 00:37:43,200 When we got an emergency message in November of 2007 680 00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:46,347 from the Executive Vice President Stan Cahill, 681 00:37:46,347 --> 00:37:48,097 it was like 4:30 and said, 682 00:37:48,097 --> 00:37:50,297 "If you have anything in the library 683 00:37:50,297 --> 00:37:53,460 from faculty offices in particular, that you need, 684 00:37:53,460 --> 00:37:56,297 it needs to be out by six o'clock tonight." 685 00:37:56,297 --> 00:38:01,297 Okay, there's a lot there were lot departments in there. 686 00:38:03,900 --> 00:38:05,430 There were academic support programs, 687 00:38:05,430 --> 00:38:07,200 there were faculty offices as well as 688 00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:08,797 the books and the journals. 689 00:38:08,797 --> 00:38:11,430 That building never reopened 690 00:38:11,430 --> 00:38:13,597 and it has since been demolished. 691 00:38:13,597 --> 00:38:16,530 You do recognize some of the walkways, 692 00:38:16,530 --> 00:38:18,150 now that staircase is gone, 693 00:38:18,150 --> 00:38:20,430 but you can recognize some of the walkways 694 00:38:20,430 --> 00:38:23,553 are still here on the other side of the learning commons. 695 00:38:25,994 --> 00:38:29,250 Now the Campus Center here helped us relocate 696 00:38:29,250 --> 00:38:31,503 some of our lectures to Vets Hall. 697 00:38:32,340 --> 00:38:33,510 Some we had to, for that year, 698 00:38:33,510 --> 00:38:36,030 had to move into Meyer Hall as well, 699 00:38:36,030 --> 00:38:39,180 but this room in particular had some advantages. 700 00:38:39,180 --> 00:38:41,273 It seats a larger audience. 701 00:38:41,273 --> 00:38:44,220 Both this room and Slater Lecture Hall 702 00:38:44,220 --> 00:38:49,220 already had built in video projector systems, 703 00:38:49,650 --> 00:38:52,950 which was a lot easier than wheeling over a portable one 704 00:38:52,950 --> 00:38:55,458 and running the cables and so forth. 705 00:38:55,458 --> 00:38:58,170 And it, we had better light control. 706 00:38:58,170 --> 00:39:00,420 We didn't have to tape any drapes shut. 707 00:39:00,420 --> 00:39:02,403 So we've been very happy here. 708 00:39:04,140 --> 00:39:07,803 Now I've got three parts to my highlights for this period. 709 00:39:08,820 --> 00:39:11,983 One is Matt Tocheri who spoke at the festival 710 00:39:11,983 --> 00:39:16,920 about the wrist of a new fossil 711 00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:18,690 that had been nicknamed the hobbit. 712 00:39:18,690 --> 00:39:19,523 It's very short. 713 00:39:21,450 --> 00:39:24,420 And afterwards they were setting something else up 714 00:39:24,420 --> 00:39:28,350 in this room, we moved across the hall to a conference room, 715 00:39:28,350 --> 00:39:30,930 and he pulled out his laptop and showed us this picture. 716 00:39:30,930 --> 00:39:33,030 And I'm sure Dr. Burchsted remembers this. 717 00:39:33,930 --> 00:39:35,820 What you see here on the bottom 718 00:39:35,820 --> 00:39:37,370 is the upper leg of the hobbit, 719 00:39:38,497 --> 00:39:42,030 just above that is the lower leg, your shin, 720 00:39:42,030 --> 00:39:44,423 and then there are two views of the feet. 721 00:39:44,423 --> 00:39:46,650 And I would just point out to everybody 722 00:39:46,650 --> 00:39:51,650 how big the feet are relative to the lower leg. 723 00:39:52,110 --> 00:39:54,030 And you can just think about your own foot 724 00:39:54,030 --> 00:39:55,958 and where that would put your, 725 00:39:55,958 --> 00:39:58,443 how big that would make your foot. 726 00:40:00,459 --> 00:40:03,153 So we were all just, this is great. 727 00:40:06,540 --> 00:40:09,330 I think this may have been before, 728 00:40:09,330 --> 00:40:11,580 it'd gotten the nickname before Lord of the Rings, 729 00:40:11,580 --> 00:40:14,853 but before anybody knew how big its feet were. 730 00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:19,720 I also do want to bring up Paul Epstein 731 00:40:20,610 --> 00:40:25,230 who spoke both in 1995 and in 2006, 732 00:40:25,230 --> 00:40:28,143 both times on health and climate change. 733 00:40:29,100 --> 00:40:31,230 Now the following year in 2007 734 00:40:31,230 --> 00:40:32,770 there was a Nobel Peace Prize 735 00:40:33,870 --> 00:40:38,233 and that year it went to former Vice President Al Gore 736 00:40:38,233 --> 00:40:43,043 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 737 00:40:44,460 --> 00:40:47,370 and we had, see here, Vice President Gore 738 00:40:47,370 --> 00:40:49,413 and the chair of the IPCC. 739 00:40:50,700 --> 00:40:53,280 What I did not know until a few years ago, 740 00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:55,920 after I had retired, 741 00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:00,360 that Paul Epstein was an advisor to the IPCC. 742 00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,097 And he was recognized for his work 743 00:41:03,097 --> 00:41:05,370 by the Nobel Prize Committee 744 00:41:05,370 --> 00:41:08,940 for that 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 745 00:41:08,940 --> 00:41:12,735 Unfortunately, Paul passed away in 2012, 746 00:41:12,735 --> 00:41:16,143 so we no longer benefit from his work. 747 00:41:18,420 --> 00:41:21,710 2009 was a triple anniversary here. 748 00:41:21,710 --> 00:41:24,173 This Vet Hall was full. 749 00:41:24,173 --> 00:41:28,070 I let the biology faculty see if they can pick out Ginger 750 00:41:28,070 --> 00:41:29,283 in the audience there. 751 00:41:30,630 --> 00:41:33,157 And this is Richard Primack, 752 00:41:33,157 --> 00:41:35,023 who is speaking, one of our speakers that year, 753 00:41:35,023 --> 00:41:38,121 talking about the impact of climate change 754 00:41:38,121 --> 00:41:42,480 on Henry David Thoreau's Concord. 755 00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:47,010 Thoreau kept detailed natural history records. 756 00:41:47,010 --> 00:41:49,890 When did a specific kind of flower bloom? 757 00:41:49,890 --> 00:41:52,583 When did a migratory bird first show up? 758 00:41:52,583 --> 00:41:57,009 His format apparently is very much like a spreadsheet 759 00:41:57,009 --> 00:42:00,450 and makes it very easy for Primack and his students, 760 00:42:00,450 --> 00:42:03,150 they have gone back to Concord, you know, 761 00:42:03,150 --> 00:42:05,910 a hundred years, 120 years later, 762 00:42:05,910 --> 00:42:08,896 and are looking at the effects of climate change on 763 00:42:08,896 --> 00:42:13,053 when flowers bloom, when migratory species arise. 764 00:42:15,630 --> 00:42:18,300 We also had a dramatic presentation that year, 765 00:42:18,300 --> 00:42:23,300 for the second time, a play, it's a two-person play, 766 00:42:23,347 --> 00:42:26,070 "The Sandwalk," which represented 767 00:42:26,070 --> 00:42:28,857 a crisis for Darwin in 1858. 768 00:42:28,857 --> 00:42:33,540 And this crisis is what led to him finally sitting down 769 00:42:33,540 --> 00:42:36,027 and writing the "Origin of Species." 770 00:42:37,064 --> 00:42:41,460 So in 1858, Alfred Russell Wallace sent a letter 771 00:42:41,460 --> 00:42:44,117 and a manuscript to Darwin for his comment 772 00:42:44,117 --> 00:42:46,860 and it was on natural selection. 773 00:42:46,860 --> 00:42:50,070 Wallace had basically came up with the same idea 774 00:42:50,070 --> 00:42:51,790 that Darwin had. 775 00:42:51,790 --> 00:42:55,650 Now, this was the time of turmoil for the Darwin's. 776 00:42:55,650 --> 00:42:57,600 Three of their children were sick 777 00:42:57,600 --> 00:42:59,400 with three different things. 778 00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:02,780 Their youngest child died during this period, 779 00:43:02,780 --> 00:43:07,677 but the play focuses on the turmoil that all of this caused. 780 00:43:07,677 --> 00:43:12,677 And there were two big points of turmoil. 781 00:43:12,890 --> 00:43:16,500 Darwin was wondering if he was gonna lose priority 782 00:43:16,500 --> 00:43:19,380 for his ideas on natural selection. 783 00:43:19,380 --> 00:43:22,140 Now his closest friends knew what he had been thinking, 784 00:43:22,140 --> 00:43:23,190 maybe not agree with him, 785 00:43:23,190 --> 00:43:25,980 but they knew he had written it all down, 786 00:43:25,980 --> 00:43:30,390 a summary in 1842 and put it away with instructions 787 00:43:30,390 --> 00:43:34,204 that it be published only in the event of his death. 788 00:43:34,204 --> 00:43:36,810 And so a lot of this was because he knew 789 00:43:36,810 --> 00:43:40,980 how much his scientific ideas upset his wife, Emma, 790 00:43:40,980 --> 00:43:42,183 who was quite religious. 791 00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:46,080 He consulted his closest scientific colleagues. 792 00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:49,250 They came up with a way to present Darwin's work 793 00:43:49,250 --> 00:43:52,410 in a short paper, followed by Wallace's work, 794 00:43:52,410 --> 00:43:57,410 so that both men received public credit and then they said, 795 00:43:58,170 --> 00:44:01,203 you gotta write the book, which he did. 796 00:44:04,890 --> 00:44:08,820 Then we had 2014 Jeremy DeSilva, 797 00:44:08,820 --> 00:44:11,490 just back from South Africa talking about 798 00:44:11,490 --> 00:44:12,704 Australopithecus sediba. 799 00:44:12,704 --> 00:44:17,704 But at the end he talked about this Rising Star Cave system 800 00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:22,863 that had just been described and deep in that cave, 801 00:44:26,100 --> 00:44:30,720 in the very, the Dinaledi chamber of the far, 802 00:44:30,720 --> 00:44:35,720 it's, you're right, they found a whole lot of bones, 803 00:44:35,790 --> 00:44:37,912 almost complete skeletons. 804 00:44:37,912 --> 00:44:39,720 And it's a new species, 805 00:44:39,720 --> 00:44:43,500 a small brained homo that actually a couple years ago 806 00:44:43,500 --> 00:44:46,290 was just, at the time they said it's like 807 00:44:46,290 --> 00:44:47,940 a million to 2 million years old. 808 00:44:47,940 --> 00:44:51,810 It's just been redated to 350,000 years old, 809 00:44:51,810 --> 00:44:55,050 which means human beings, modern homo sapiens 810 00:44:55,050 --> 00:44:58,113 and these guys were walking around Africa at the same time. 811 00:44:58,980 --> 00:45:01,651 But this figure also gets me really claustrophobic 812 00:45:01,651 --> 00:45:04,512 because the narrowest parts of the climb in 813 00:45:04,512 --> 00:45:06,393 are 10 inches high. 814 00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:12,633 So I would just go running, screaming away, myself. 815 00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:19,083 And then 2017 we had our third Nobel Prize laureate, 816 00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:25,830 William Campbell, who shared the 2015 Nobel Prize 817 00:45:25,830 --> 00:45:29,190 in Medicine for the discovery of ivermectin, 818 00:45:29,190 --> 00:45:31,389 which is used to treat river blindness 819 00:45:31,389 --> 00:45:34,650 and is caused by a parasitic worm. 820 00:45:34,650 --> 00:45:36,660 Now this is not him at the Darwin Festival. 821 00:45:36,660 --> 00:45:38,962 This is him receiving his Nobel Prize. 822 00:45:38,962 --> 00:45:40,489 I don't think we took, 823 00:45:40,489 --> 00:45:43,293 we're not good at taking pictures for these. 824 00:45:45,690 --> 00:45:50,690 So we get to 2018, Darwin Festival continues. 825 00:45:52,980 --> 00:45:54,720 Lynn Fletcher and Ryan Fisher 826 00:45:54,720 --> 00:45:56,952 are sharing coordinating duties. 827 00:45:56,952 --> 00:46:01,952 It's, you know, 2019 to this year and on. 828 00:46:03,739 --> 00:46:06,540 But when I retired in 2018, 829 00:46:06,540 --> 00:46:10,152 I had been working on the festival for 37 years. 830 00:46:10,152 --> 00:46:14,283 I admit to not being good at delegating. 831 00:46:15,989 --> 00:46:20,100 If I know something needs to be done, I tend to just do it. 832 00:46:20,100 --> 00:46:22,110 And certainly after 18 years with Ginger, 833 00:46:22,110 --> 00:46:23,880 I had it all in my head. 834 00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,670 So, you know, I, yeah, you know, on a Saturday afternoon, 835 00:46:26,670 --> 00:46:29,370 I know something needs to be done, I just do it. 836 00:46:29,370 --> 00:46:30,900 But the committee, the rest of the committee, 837 00:46:30,900 --> 00:46:33,176 were sort of looking like deer in the headlights. 838 00:46:33,176 --> 00:46:36,963 Like how are we going to do this? 839 00:46:37,830 --> 00:46:40,440 And I took a page from Anita Shea, 840 00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:42,780 who had been chair of our department and left, 841 00:46:42,780 --> 00:46:45,960 actually she left me 'cause I followed her, 842 00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:48,750 a detailed listing month by month, 843 00:46:48,750 --> 00:46:50,220 things that the chair needs to do. 844 00:46:50,220 --> 00:46:51,630 And there's things that faculty members 845 00:46:51,630 --> 00:46:53,970 wouldn't know about necessarily. 846 00:46:53,970 --> 00:46:55,680 And that was a godsend, 847 00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:57,330 particularly that first year of being chair, 848 00:46:57,330 --> 00:46:59,430 you're a deer in the headlights. 849 00:46:59,430 --> 00:47:00,840 So to ease the transition, 850 00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:04,128 I left a six-page itemized timeline and to-do list 851 00:47:04,128 --> 00:47:07,050 with copies of documents and names of contacts. 852 00:47:07,050 --> 00:47:08,448 This is just page one. 853 00:47:08,448 --> 00:47:12,480 And it proved very useful because the committee 854 00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:16,214 could sit down and see what needed to be done 855 00:47:16,214 --> 00:47:19,950 and the things that they were comfortable doing. 856 00:47:19,950 --> 00:47:21,300 So, you know, it's always easy to say, 857 00:47:21,300 --> 00:47:22,530 well I can do this little piece 858 00:47:22,530 --> 00:47:24,570 and I can do that little piece. 859 00:47:24,570 --> 00:47:27,238 I don't know how many people are on the committee now. 860 00:47:27,238 --> 00:47:28,410 It's somewhere between nine and 12. 861 00:47:28,410 --> 00:47:30,633 It seems to keep,`it changes, that's okay. 862 00:47:32,430 --> 00:47:34,083 Our funding diversified again. 863 00:47:35,370 --> 00:47:37,170 Peter Shearstone, class of '89, 864 00:47:37,170 --> 00:47:41,278 former SGA President is now at Thermofisher Scientific. 865 00:47:41,278 --> 00:47:45,870 And in spring of 2020 he contacted the department 866 00:47:45,870 --> 00:47:48,900 about providing support for the festival 867 00:47:48,900 --> 00:47:50,670 and for other things. 868 00:47:50,670 --> 00:47:54,180 He finally got to meet in person with Ryan Fisher 869 00:47:54,180 --> 00:47:57,243 and some of our students in July of 2021. 870 00:48:00,930 --> 00:48:04,320 But we all know that there was a crisis coming 871 00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:08,133 and I remember news reports from late December, 2019. 872 00:48:10,076 --> 00:48:13,620 Just remember the news reports. 873 00:48:13,620 --> 00:48:15,540 And there was a global crisis 874 00:48:15,540 --> 00:48:17,090 that we have all lived through. 875 00:48:18,270 --> 00:48:19,800 And for the Darwin Festival, 876 00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:22,113 we needed to adapt or go extinct. 877 00:48:23,010 --> 00:48:24,710 We, I was retired, what can I say? 878 00:48:25,740 --> 00:48:28,050 But you remember I was here in February, 2020, 879 00:48:28,050 --> 00:48:30,150 for a regular Darwin Festival. 880 00:48:30,150 --> 00:48:34,878 In March, this is the Thursday, March 12th, 881 00:48:34,878 --> 00:48:38,130 Covid outbreak is now a pandemic. 882 00:48:38,130 --> 00:48:40,740 Next day the headline from the Globe was "Shut down," 883 00:48:40,740 --> 00:48:43,110 with a whole listing of national, you know, 884 00:48:43,110 --> 00:48:45,690 all the sports teams were shutting down and so forth. 885 00:48:45,690 --> 00:48:48,390 And that Monday, the first Monday of spring break, 886 00:48:48,390 --> 00:48:51,180 Governor Baker shut everything down in Massachusetts. 887 00:48:51,180 --> 00:48:53,160 I was supposed to come up and have lunch with friends 888 00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:55,428 on that Monday 'cause it was the Monday of spring break. 889 00:48:55,428 --> 00:48:57,442 Well, that didn't happen. 890 00:48:57,442 --> 00:49:00,003 It still hasn't happened, right? 891 00:49:01,020 --> 00:49:02,103 We're being cautious. 892 00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:06,960 Okay, well, so the festival had had limits 893 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,428 for its first 41 years. 894 00:49:09,428 --> 00:49:13,304 We had limited funding for travel expenses, airfares, 895 00:49:13,304 --> 00:49:16,742 a lot of mileage, hotel expenses and so forth. 896 00:49:16,742 --> 00:49:19,110 And out of state speakers, if, I mean, 897 00:49:19,110 --> 00:49:21,240 if they were coming from New Hampshire, that was one thing. 898 00:49:21,240 --> 00:49:24,870 If you wanted somebody from Wisconsin 899 00:49:24,870 --> 00:49:26,850 or somebody from California, 900 00:49:26,850 --> 00:49:29,880 they had to take two to three days out of their schedule 901 00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:32,820 to fly here, you know, probably the day before, 902 00:49:32,820 --> 00:49:35,130 give a talk and then fly home. 903 00:49:35,130 --> 00:49:37,253 Then you had to deal with the weather as well. 904 00:49:38,850 --> 00:49:43,168 We have also always been free and open to the public, 905 00:49:43,168 --> 00:49:46,892 but people outside Salem may not have the time 906 00:49:46,892 --> 00:49:49,020 or the means to get here. 907 00:49:49,020 --> 00:49:50,970 This is not an easy place to get to, 908 00:49:50,970 --> 00:49:55,620 even if you're driving and even people elsewhere on campus 909 00:49:55,620 --> 00:49:57,153 couldn't always get up here. 910 00:49:58,230 --> 00:50:01,440 And a third thing that was important for the Read Trust, 911 00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,870 we had no way to identify people 912 00:50:03,870 --> 00:50:05,520 who were coming from off campus. 913 00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:08,422 They really wanted to know about community involvement. 914 00:50:08,422 --> 00:50:12,750 We had no way to tell unless somebody came up to us 915 00:50:12,750 --> 00:50:15,353 and said, you know, we actually did have, 916 00:50:15,353 --> 00:50:19,590 for two years we had two visitors who had come from Canada. 917 00:50:19,590 --> 00:50:20,423 But you know, 918 00:50:20,423 --> 00:50:22,128 if somebody is coming from a school system 919 00:50:22,128 --> 00:50:25,020 or somebody's just coming in from another university, 920 00:50:25,020 --> 00:50:26,120 we had no way to know. 921 00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:31,755 Well, you know, if you have lemons, make lemonade, 922 00:50:31,755 --> 00:50:36,755 and Zoom made the ability to have speakers 923 00:50:36,900 --> 00:50:39,660 from all over the country easier 924 00:50:39,660 --> 00:50:43,773 because it avoided all those time and travel related issues. 925 00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,030 And I looked at the last four years of speakers 926 00:50:48,030 --> 00:50:50,250 and just where they came from. 927 00:50:50,250 --> 00:50:55,242 So the first two, 19 and 20, are in person. 928 00:50:55,242 --> 00:50:58,020 Most of our speakers are from Massachusetts 929 00:50:58,020 --> 00:51:00,810 or from neighboring New England states, 930 00:51:00,810 --> 00:51:02,973 a few, a little farther afield. 931 00:51:04,200 --> 00:51:07,680 If you look during the pandemic when it was all virtual, 932 00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:09,510 We still have Massachusetts speakers 933 00:51:09,510 --> 00:51:12,390 and local New England speakers, 934 00:51:12,390 --> 00:51:16,470 but most of our speakers are from much farther afield, 935 00:51:16,470 --> 00:51:19,590 coast to coast, international. 936 00:51:19,590 --> 00:51:21,363 So that was a big change. 937 00:51:22,905 --> 00:51:26,220 It also increased our audience, 938 00:51:26,220 --> 00:51:28,820 I thank Ryan Fisher for getting me this information. 939 00:51:30,330 --> 00:51:32,280 In 21 and 22, 940 00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:36,360 we had participants from six to nine other countries. 941 00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:38,580 Some of them are our alumni. 942 00:51:38,580 --> 00:51:42,220 We had people from, anywhere from five to 20 states, 943 00:51:42,220 --> 00:51:45,600 19 to 20 other universities, 944 00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:48,510 nonprofit and government organizations, 945 00:51:48,510 --> 00:51:50,673 tuning into our talks. 946 00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:54,390 And most of the mailings that we used to do 947 00:51:54,390 --> 00:51:57,270 is now replaced with emails and webpages 948 00:51:57,270 --> 00:51:58,760 that look stuck on, because it was, 949 00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:00,000 it was the last thing I added. 950 00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:01,250 I gotta put it somewhere. 951 00:52:02,700 --> 00:52:05,190 Now, my highlights for the last three years, 952 00:52:05,190 --> 00:52:08,610 we have had more alumni speaking. 953 00:52:08,610 --> 00:52:10,350 And I would point out Webb Camille 954 00:52:10,350 --> 00:52:12,510 is one of our alumni speakers. 955 00:52:12,510 --> 00:52:14,070 He will be speaking this Friday. 956 00:52:14,070 --> 00:52:16,453 So I encourage you all to attend. 957 00:52:16,453 --> 00:52:18,630 But we also had Nina Jablonski 958 00:52:18,630 --> 00:52:22,920 whose work on human skin color, I've taught for years. 959 00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:27,920 Bonnie Bassler, who we had invited long time ago, 960 00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:30,630 we never could get the schedule to work. 961 00:52:30,630 --> 00:52:33,570 The first year we invited, I talked to her on the phone. 962 00:52:33,570 --> 00:52:36,329 She was going off for sabbatical in Australia. 963 00:52:36,329 --> 00:52:38,700 I think the second time she had just been elected 964 00:52:38,700 --> 00:52:41,433 chair of her department and I offered her my condolences 965 00:52:41,433 --> 00:52:45,210 because I know how it feels. 966 00:52:45,210 --> 00:52:47,989 And Jim Costa was here for the third time 967 00:52:47,989 --> 00:52:51,930 talking about his book, "Darwin's Home Experiments," 968 00:52:51,930 --> 00:52:55,920 things that he did with his kids and and their friends 969 00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:58,440 and his nieces and his nephews on, 970 00:52:58,440 --> 00:52:59,850 and this experiment, 971 00:52:59,850 --> 00:53:03,353 well because I have a picture of Emma Darwin's piano here, 972 00:53:03,353 --> 00:53:08,310 but they were wondering if earthworms could hear. 973 00:53:08,310 --> 00:53:10,900 And so his grandson played his penny whistle 974 00:53:10,900 --> 00:53:13,017 and the earthworms totally ignored him. 975 00:53:13,017 --> 00:53:16,689 And the son played his bassoon and he ignored that. 976 00:53:16,689 --> 00:53:20,100 And Emma played the piano and the earthworms ignored that. 977 00:53:20,100 --> 00:53:21,929 Darwin apparently would sneak in in the middle of the night 978 00:53:21,929 --> 00:53:24,453 and go banging on the piano and they just, 979 00:53:24,453 --> 00:53:28,230 but when they moved the container of the earthworms 980 00:53:28,230 --> 00:53:30,810 and put it on the piano, 981 00:53:30,810 --> 00:53:34,530 if they started playing, down into the dirt they went. 982 00:53:34,530 --> 00:53:37,803 So it was the vibrations, not necessarily the sound. 983 00:53:40,740 --> 00:53:44,433 So the Darwin Festival is one of a kind. 984 00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:49,500 Among our speakers we have three Nobel Prize laureates, 985 00:53:49,500 --> 00:53:51,600 10 MacArthur Fellows, 986 00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:54,390 five National Medal of Science recipients, 987 00:53:54,390 --> 00:53:56,610 and over 80 distinguished authors 988 00:53:56,610 --> 00:53:59,313 and I'm sure I missed a few in going through the list. 989 00:54:00,720 --> 00:54:03,287 Our speakers may be early in their careers, 990 00:54:03,287 --> 00:54:05,751 they may be well established. 991 00:54:05,751 --> 00:54:09,030 They may highlight new issues such as climate change. 992 00:54:09,030 --> 00:54:12,837 They may be exploring new solutions to old problems. 993 00:54:12,837 --> 00:54:17,160 And it has also allowed Salem State faculty and students 994 00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:19,770 a chance to interact and collaborate 995 00:54:19,770 --> 00:54:22,413 with people at other institutions. 996 00:54:23,851 --> 00:54:28,203 In 1996, I told the following story, 997 00:54:29,910 --> 00:54:33,300 several years ago I was attending a national meeting 998 00:54:33,300 --> 00:54:34,353 at UC Berkeley. 999 00:54:35,220 --> 00:54:37,890 At lunch, one of the people I was sitting with 1000 00:54:37,890 --> 00:54:39,701 noticed that I was from Salem State 1001 00:54:39,701 --> 00:54:42,780 and she asked me if we were the ones 1002 00:54:42,780 --> 00:54:46,761 who did that wonderful Darwin Festival every year. 1003 00:54:46,761 --> 00:54:48,963 Indeed we are. 1004 00:54:50,130 --> 00:54:54,330 So let's see what lies ahead for the festival in 2023. 1005 00:54:54,330 --> 00:54:55,163 Thank you. 1006 00:55:06,720 --> 00:55:07,593 Any questions? 1007 00:55:12,990 --> 00:55:13,983 The battery's dead. 1008 00:55:18,660 --> 00:55:20,310 - I think this one's working. 1009 00:55:22,026 --> 00:55:23,776 - That one's working. 1010 00:55:24,629 --> 00:55:26,931 - [Host] So for the people who are online 1011 00:55:26,931 --> 00:55:27,837 you don't need to do that, 1012 00:55:27,837 --> 00:55:29,550 but for those who are here, 1013 00:55:29,550 --> 00:55:31,710 the QR code is gonna be displayed there. 1014 00:55:31,710 --> 00:55:34,105 We have about hundred people online, 1015 00:55:34,105 --> 00:55:37,410 so if you have questions online 1016 00:55:37,410 --> 00:55:38,910 Ryan's gonna help us with that. 1017 00:55:38,910 --> 00:55:43,066 If you have a question, I'll bring the mic to you, 1018 00:55:43,066 --> 00:55:45,577 so it will be your chance. 1019 00:55:45,577 --> 00:55:47,790 Thank you so much for this wonderful. 1020 00:55:47,790 --> 00:55:49,465 - Thank you. 1021 00:55:49,465 --> 00:55:50,298 - [Audience Member] I have a question. 1022 00:55:50,298 --> 00:55:51,131 - Yes. 1023 00:56:23,924 --> 00:56:28,924 First of all, Stephen Jay Gould never let us record, 1024 00:56:29,015 --> 00:56:33,060 that was because of his other contractual obligations. 1025 00:56:33,060 --> 00:56:34,890 And so it was just no, 1026 00:56:34,890 --> 00:56:37,650 we may have recorded him and then we took the tape 1027 00:56:37,650 --> 00:56:40,428 out of the machine and we handed it to him. 1028 00:56:40,428 --> 00:56:42,300 I don't actually remember 1029 00:56:42,300 --> 00:56:45,093 if we recorded Lynn Margulis or not. 1030 00:56:46,500 --> 00:56:50,683 So some of the ones from 80 to 99, I don't, 1031 00:56:52,213 --> 00:56:54,840 I would have to go back and see who we recorded 1032 00:56:54,840 --> 00:56:56,193 and who we didn't. 1033 00:56:58,110 --> 00:57:01,663 So I'm not sure that really helps his question. 1034 00:57:01,663 --> 00:57:03,360 But for some of the more recent ones, 1035 00:57:03,360 --> 00:57:07,680 I can't remember if we were able to record Campbell, 1036 00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:12,680 but I know we have the, I know we recorded Andrew Berry. 1037 00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:16,920 I'm pretty sure we probably recorded Roger Hamlin, 1038 00:57:16,920 --> 00:57:20,250 some of the more recent ones I remember. 1039 00:57:20,250 --> 00:57:22,680 So maybe there should be a contact 1040 00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:26,130 for people who wanna know who we have recordings of 1041 00:57:26,130 --> 00:57:26,963 and hi Sean. 1042 00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:31,620 Right, right. 1043 00:57:31,620 --> 00:57:34,863 I just don't remember who all was there. 1044 00:57:36,030 --> 00:57:36,863 Yes, Paul. 1045 00:57:40,770 --> 00:57:42,420 - You didn't mention my favorite. 1046 00:57:43,590 --> 00:57:46,965 We had a crisis where a speaker didn't show up 1047 00:57:46,965 --> 00:57:48,926 and I jokingly asked a member the audience 1048 00:57:48,926 --> 00:57:51,759 if he had a talk he could give us. 1049 00:57:54,163 --> 00:57:55,913 We have a microphone. 1050 00:58:04,293 --> 00:58:06,930 - Yes, and for those of you who are interested, 1051 00:58:06,930 --> 00:58:09,900 that is the Al who got me, 1052 00:58:09,900 --> 00:58:12,210 who introduced me to Phil DePalma 1053 00:58:12,210 --> 00:58:14,973 and has been on this journey for 44 years. 1054 00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:22,640 He actually also filled in earlier, much earlier on, 1055 00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:27,930 and this was before Phil passed. 1056 00:58:27,930 --> 00:58:31,890 I have a clear memory of Phil calling us at dinnertime 1057 00:58:31,890 --> 00:58:34,350 and one of our speakers from Western Mass had called, 1058 00:58:34,350 --> 00:58:35,790 he had a fever of 103, 1059 00:58:35,790 --> 00:58:37,770 but he was still gonna try and drive in. 1060 00:58:37,770 --> 00:58:39,488 And we said no. 1061 00:58:39,488 --> 00:58:42,180 So Phil and I went back and forth, you know, 1062 00:58:42,180 --> 00:58:44,790 maybe Tony's friend so and so, and so he, 1063 00:58:44,790 --> 00:58:47,910 we got off the phone, he was gonna call Ginger, 1064 00:58:47,910 --> 00:58:49,926 and Al looks at me and says, 1065 00:58:49,926 --> 00:58:52,920 do you want me to talk about HIV Aids? 1066 00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:54,240 I give this talk all the time. 1067 00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:55,563 I can do it in my sleep. 1068 00:58:57,690 --> 00:58:58,950 Well, can you get off work? 1069 00:58:58,950 --> 00:59:03,663 Yes, so he actually, he has subbed for us a couple of times. 1070 00:59:06,076 --> 00:59:07,926 And he is here today. 1071 00:59:07,926 --> 00:59:09,783 He's my tech person now. 1072 00:59:20,550 --> 00:59:23,943 Ah, hi Kurt, yes. 1073 00:59:26,130 --> 00:59:26,963 Yeah. 1074 00:59:28,950 --> 00:59:29,783 Yes. 1075 00:59:39,990 --> 00:59:41,313 I think we're it. 1076 00:59:42,403 --> 00:59:45,993 There are more individual Darwin Days. 1077 00:59:47,730 --> 00:59:52,730 So the International Darwin Day is recognizing his birthday, 1078 00:59:53,370 --> 00:59:57,000 but I don't know of anybody else doing a whole week, 1079 00:59:57,000 --> 00:59:59,430 well maybe someplace in the UK, 1080 00:59:59,430 --> 01:00:01,473 I won't speak internationally, but. 1081 01:00:20,640 --> 01:00:25,010 Yeah and that's actually one thing that our speakers, 1082 01:00:25,010 --> 01:00:27,660 you know, they, you know, they've never been to Salem State. 1083 01:00:27,660 --> 01:00:28,493 They don't know. 1084 01:00:29,850 --> 01:00:32,340 And they come in and we have this room, 1085 01:00:32,340 --> 01:00:34,050 you know, often full. 1086 01:00:34,050 --> 01:00:36,152 I know Mondays are different now at Salem State, 1087 01:00:36,152 --> 01:00:40,675 but it's the Sunday, it's a Monday after the Super Bowl. 1088 01:00:40,675 --> 01:00:42,750 But they would come in and we, you know, 1089 01:00:42,750 --> 01:00:44,610 we'd have this room pretty much full 1090 01:00:44,610 --> 01:00:46,170 and they would just look and say, 1091 01:00:46,170 --> 01:00:48,780 if we did this at our college, our university, 1092 01:00:48,780 --> 01:00:51,060 we'd be lucky if we had 20 people. 1093 01:00:51,060 --> 01:00:55,710 So, and they've often been very enthusiastic about, 1094 01:00:55,710 --> 01:00:58,233 oh, you need to invite so-and-so. 1095 01:01:13,020 --> 01:01:13,853 Yeah. 1096 01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:19,290 Yes, because we often, so the Geography Department, 1097 01:01:19,290 --> 01:01:22,179 their students would be coming in for their speakers. 1098 01:01:22,179 --> 01:01:25,050 The Geology Department though, 1099 01:01:25,050 --> 01:01:26,430 their students would be coming in, 1100 01:01:26,430 --> 01:01:29,100 Psychology would have their students coming in, 1101 01:01:29,100 --> 01:01:30,390 Chemistry, Physics Department, 1102 01:01:30,390 --> 01:01:32,010 their students would be coming in. 1103 01:01:32,010 --> 01:01:34,830 So it's actually also more than just biology students 1104 01:01:34,830 --> 01:01:35,823 who are attending. 1105 01:01:37,456 --> 01:01:40,710 And actually probably the, well, 1106 01:01:40,710 --> 01:01:43,819 aside from Lynn Margulis and Stephen Jay Gould, 1107 01:01:43,819 --> 01:01:48,819 the talk that really filled this room to overflowing plus, 1108 01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:54,540 was a geography speaker Jeffrey Bolster I think it was, 1109 01:01:54,540 --> 01:01:57,120 on fishing in the Atlantic, 1110 01:01:57,120 --> 01:01:59,500 which was a fascinating talk about how 1111 01:02:01,740 --> 01:02:06,330 as the technology, fishing technology improved, 1112 01:02:06,330 --> 01:02:09,900 the amount of cod and other fishes that we caught 1113 01:02:09,900 --> 01:02:12,783 went up even as populations were declining. 1114 01:02:14,046 --> 01:02:18,063 And there we were literally turning people away. 1115 01:02:19,080 --> 01:02:20,197 Bruce Perry was in here and said, 1116 01:02:20,197 --> 01:02:21,870 "You can't have any more people in here. 1117 01:02:21,870 --> 01:02:23,420 The fire marshal's gonna come." 1118 01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:28,200 I think one year we had a fire alarm too during a talk. 1119 01:02:28,200 --> 01:02:30,963 But, you know, that's par for the course. 1120 01:02:38,550 --> 01:02:39,383 That's okay. 1121 01:03:02,670 --> 01:03:04,380 And actually, I'd like to add one other thing 1122 01:03:04,380 --> 01:03:07,050 because Charlotte Forten Hall, the original one, 1123 01:03:07,050 --> 01:03:11,372 which is much larger than the current one, and this room, 1124 01:03:11,372 --> 01:03:15,100 the audience is on the same level as the speaker 1125 01:03:16,110 --> 01:03:19,350 and that has always been an advantage. 1126 01:03:19,350 --> 01:03:22,953 If the speaker were up on a dais, it's a barrier. 1127 01:03:24,104 --> 01:03:28,470 On the same level, people can come up after the talk, 1128 01:03:28,470 --> 01:03:31,020 they can listen to questions and answers. 1129 01:03:31,020 --> 01:03:34,200 They might even dare to get their nerve up 1130 01:03:34,200 --> 01:03:36,690 and actually ask a question themselves. 1131 01:03:36,690 --> 01:03:41,070 But it made the interaction much easier for everybody. 1132 01:03:41,070 --> 01:03:43,830 And I know some of our students got invitations 1133 01:03:43,830 --> 01:03:45,810 to go out to visit somebody's lab, 1134 01:03:45,810 --> 01:03:48,540 here there, you know, wherever. 1135 01:03:48,540 --> 01:03:51,843 So that has always fostered that kind of interaction. 1136 01:03:55,830 --> 01:03:57,243 Oh, if that's it. 1137 01:03:58,305 --> 01:03:59,190 - [Host] Thank you, Sue. 1138 01:03:59,190 --> 01:04:00,190 - You're welcome.