A letter to the great Dick Alexander
This is a letter that I wrote to Dick, one of my mentors in graduate school, in 2014. Characteristically, he wrote me back at length, in his usual style, full of logical surprises, and also sent me a draft of a book of poems he was working on. My god was that man brilliant, and prolific, and diverse in his interests.
February 20 (& June 6), 2014
Dear Dick,
I am writing to you from the Tiputini Biological Station, in the Ecuadoran Amazon. I sit here, a hemisphere away from you, and also from Bret and my family, night falling, sounds that I do not know how to identify crescendoing and fading nearby. I have with me 20 undergraduate students, students from Evergreen, where Bret and I both have jobs. And I think of you, and all that you did for me — for both Bret and me, but he’s not here, so I speak only for myself, although I know that he feels similarly.
I am writing to tell you how many of the things that I do, and think, and know, were directly gifted by you to me, or indirectly transferred to my world view without, perhaps, either of us knowing it at the time.
I learned from you how much fun evolutionary logic is to apply, and more importantly, how universally applicable it is. I had begun to appreciate these things before I met you, through Trivers, but Bob, while wonderful…
