2/13/2002


To darwinday.org:


You might find this article interesting, I did. It is from a book named
"Tenements of Clay: Medical Biographies of Famous People by Modern Doctors"
edited by Arnold Sorsby, M.D. 1974 Charles Scribners Sons - New York.
Section "14. Darwin's health in relation to his voyages to South America" by
A.W. Woodruff p. 215.


There is also you may know a site on line which tongue-in-cheek gives out
"Darwin Awards" to particularly stupid human actions and responses to
dilemmas. I submitted one after translating a Mexican artist's article where
he stated that the arts of Mexico potters were disappearing as large numbers
of flower pots were being made in the wild next to trailer truck boxes and
shipped to the US. He was concerned about the art, myself about the burning
of vital habitat, some of the smoke actually perhaps smelled by the current
President of the US when he was Governor of Texas. Imagine US citizens
having all these flowerpots while all the "flowers" disappear up in kilns in
Mexico, and their arts, a misdirected consequence of unrestrained
capitalism.


You might also want to know that the famous "father" of the Hudson River
School, artist Frederick Church had a copy of Darwin's work in "Olana"
(Arabic "place on high") his famous now NY State Historic site where I saw
it on his shelf there a number of years ago, near Hudson, NY.


It's a shame Charles Darwin, of immense humor I have read, never got to read
the unopened book from Gregor Mendel (on the genetics of peas) he had just
received before passing on. Perhaps he would have made even further
discoveries in the natural world and the Spencerism of "the survival of the
fittest" never would have gotten "off the ground." Thanks for being here. I
am an anthropologist by schooling and work in archaeology.


George Myers