So know the starfish...

The title of this blog is from John Steinbeck's The Log from the Sea of Cortez, the account of his 1940 collecting expedition to the Gulf of California with marine biologist Ed Ricketts. In his narrative, Steinbeck blends an account of the six-week voyage on board the Western Flyer with his musings on the life in the ocean, and life in general.

A favorite passage of mine (and, I believe, of many biologists) is the one in which Steinbeck recounts a discussion about the differences between "true biologists" and those that he refers to as "dry-balls", the ones who, for whatever reason, seem more concerned with sucking the fluid out of life than with understanding and appreciating its vitality.

"He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities. And we have known biologists who did proliferate in all directions: one or two have had a little trouble about it. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics."

There's a lot of truth there. I'd like to think I'm one of those true biologists. Maybe I'm flattering myself. Admittedly, I don't sing very much, but I'd like to. I've certainly done my share of proliferating. Had some trouble, too. But I think that to study life, you have to live. Right now, I fear the dry-balls are winning the day. This will be a dry-ball-free zone.

For the record, I'm a professor of biology, a field biologist, at a little university buried very deep in the very rural South. I've spent thirty years trying to pass on some of my love of life and living things to an army of students. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Regardless, this is for them.

Considered "Easy to Kill" as a title as well. But I thought that might be tempting fate.