Hi, Artie. Glen Fox’s nice tribute to Helen Hays prompts me to write a bit more about Stephen Gould, who died about 10 years ago. I think Steve’s biggest scientific contribution was the development, with Niles Eldredge, of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which says that for long periods, species stay the same, and then there is relatively rapid evolution into new forms. (Reminds me of what we pilots say about flying, which is that it’s long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror.) That contribution was helpful to people trying to interpret the fossil record. But to my mind, Steve’s greatest contribution was making science accessible to many non-scientists, hence his Natural History essays and books. Artie, this is something you do, too; how many people have you made better photographers by your examples, blogs, books, IPTs, and so on, even those of us who don’t invest as deeply in equipment and trips as others. Anyway, I was quite pleased when one of Steve’s essays dealt with some of my research. Steve also loved and wrote quite a bit about baseball, and his death was particularly untimely in that it happened just before the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years in 2004. Even though he was a Yankees fan, I think Steve would have appreciated the irony and poetic justice of that season, including the Red Sox’s historic comeback from being down 3 games to none to the Yankees in the divisional series. Living as he did in the Boston area for decades would have been icing on the cake. I wish he’d had the chance to write about it.

Many thanks David. See you on the Bosque early morning in-the-field workshop on the 20ieth. I am resting up till then :). artie

Glen, Thanks for sharing your powerful and moving tribute to Helen with us here.

I wrote an article about Helen for the now defunct Birder’s World magazine about 20 years ago. It was entitled “One Good Tern Lady.” At one point I had several hard copies but have lost track of those. I have been trying without success to find one so that I could scan the article…. Perhaps you have a copy?

best and thanks again, artie