Bedford and Biology

Today, I'm turning my attention to our neighboring town over the river, Bedford, MA (not to be confused with New Bedford, MA).   I lived there in an earlier life for longer than I've ever lived anywhere.  And I still spend a lot of time driving through it, shopping, etc.

If you follow the link given, you'll certainly read about Bedford being the home of the oldest flag in the United States.  And a few other interesting tidbits, especially regarding the nation's first narrow-gauge railroad, the remarkably short-lived Billerica and Bedford Railroad.  The kids called it "Deadford" but that's a bit unfair, I think.  It's actually a fantastic town to grow up in (as my two did).

But there is no list of famous sons (or daughters) of Bedford.  No Presidents (or even Vice-Presidents) were born there, no notable politicians, entertainers, sports figures.  At least none that are mentioned, or that I know of.

Meanwhile (I'll connect) ...

Knowing how much I love to read Richard Dawkins books, and how much I love to listen to recordings in the car, my son Will gave me for Christmas a recording of the latest Dawkins volume The Greatest Show on Earth.  In it, he makes the case for evolution according to natural selection, by examining the evidence.  As he admits, his earlier books have all just assumed the fact of evolution.  But there is a growing (yes, growing) number of people in the civilized world who don't believe in evolution.  Forty percent (!!!) in the United States, according to various polls. 

It's scandalous!  Yes, Americans are famous for being bad at mathematics and geography, not to mention spelling, but biology? Well, of course, we know that it's all political.  There are some people who, like the Catholic church for the last two millenia, have tried to pull the wool over our eyes in order to line their own pockets.  I have to admit that it was a smart tactic, at least before old Gutenberg screwed things up.  Keep the masses ignorant and live a nice comfortable life.  There are people here in the U.S. who are spending lots of money (someone else's money, presumably) doing essentially the same thing: try to stop the ordinary people from finding out that we are the result of three and a half billion years of evolution, rather than having been created in a puff of smoke 4,000 years ago.  And they're doing quite a good job of it apparently.  They only have another 60% to go and we'll all be back in the dark ages.

Anyway, Dawkin's book is his answer to these whackos.  He's laying the case out like a detective novel.  The book is great of course, although I'm not 100% sure that switching voices between himself and his wife, Lalla, is really all that helpful to the listener.

In any case, the first chapter has reminded me what a debt we all owe to that great evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr.  I admit to being appallingly ignorant of the details of this great man's life.  I didn't know for example that he lived to be 100 years old and certainly didn't know that, get this, he died in Bedford, MA just five years ago.  Who knew?

This discovery reminded me that in researching Igor Stravinsky years ago for the program notes that I write for SPM, I read that he (Stravinsky) had married his wife in, you guessed it, Bedford, MA.

All of which points back to that Wikipedia page.  Someone needs to go in there and add a few famous names.  If there are any, apart from the two I've mentioned who are, admittedly, a little incidental.