A trip to Berkeley
Sep. 20th, 2005 20:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillWell, now that I got sound capture working on my computer, I figured there was no more reason for delay... I called up Bob Raabe and asked him whether he was free sometime this week. We agreed that I'd come in Friday morning.
I've been meaning for some time to visit him (preferably on a regular basis) to do a sort of living history project. He's in his seventies, I suspect, and getting kind of creaky, but he's gotten to be more and more the beloved old curmudgeon. He's also one of the best plant pathologists in the state, and I learn more just by standing next to him for an hour than I could in a month at school. He's dropped tidbits from time to time, like the fact that he helped do growouts on the well-known Wisconsin 55 tomato variety before its release in 1955, that make me think he has a lot of interesting history, too.
There were several setbacks, but I think getting audio cap working was the last of them. I can get a morning free from time to time, and I plan to see whether I can get him talking with a few questions and then just go for an hour or two. He's a professor emeritus, mucking about in his office and the greenhouses most of the time and teaching only one day a week, so he's got some time to spare. He seemed willing to do this, too, if a little bemused by the idea.
I'm also thinking of asking him if he would help me with a research project next spring -- he can pull strings to get a little space at Oxford Tract, and I don't need much. Bugs aren't his thing, but if I can show that there is something that can wipe out greenhouse whitefly more effectively than what we've got now, I think he'd be interested.
This should be fun. If I can get a CD of compressed audio, I can think of at least one other person who would be fascinated, too... I can always stand to have a few more brownie points with Bethallyn.
I've been meaning for some time to visit him (preferably on a regular basis) to do a sort of living history project. He's in his seventies, I suspect, and getting kind of creaky, but he's gotten to be more and more the beloved old curmudgeon. He's also one of the best plant pathologists in the state, and I learn more just by standing next to him for an hour than I could in a month at school. He's dropped tidbits from time to time, like the fact that he helped do growouts on the well-known Wisconsin 55 tomato variety before its release in 1955, that make me think he has a lot of interesting history, too.
There were several setbacks, but I think getting audio cap working was the last of them. I can get a morning free from time to time, and I plan to see whether I can get him talking with a few questions and then just go for an hour or two. He's a professor emeritus, mucking about in his office and the greenhouses most of the time and teaching only one day a week, so he's got some time to spare. He seemed willing to do this, too, if a little bemused by the idea.
I'm also thinking of asking him if he would help me with a research project next spring -- he can pull strings to get a little space at Oxford Tract, and I don't need much. Bugs aren't his thing, but if I can show that there is something that can wipe out greenhouse whitefly more effectively than what we've got now, I think he'd be interested.
This should be fun. If I can get a CD of compressed audio, I can think of at least one other person who would be fascinated, too... I can always stand to have a few more brownie points with Bethallyn.
