The first missing picture intended to be posted with the first post on May 9 of last year (2013) is the picture below.
It was taken in 1957 in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as I was returning from Australia. The "snake charmer" said its fangs had been pulled so I wasn't too concerned about being bitten. But back on the bus the driver said a lady had died from a bite from one a month earlier. Then I remembered my herpetology professor, during work on my Master's degree at Michigan State University had told us about the fangs of snakes being replaced by others in waiting.
The anecdote may make you realize I shouldn't be taken too seriously, as I am, like most of us, prone to make mistakes and/or forget things. Now, with my white hair and wrinkles, it doesn't bother me too much.
With all the "selfies" people are posting on their accounts, I thought maybe I would include one from about a year before the first one above. It was in my lab in Hobart at the University of Tasmania with the Derwent River Estuary in the background. I didn't need a fellow tourist to take it, I just used a self-timer with the camera.
It is not important to you, but I went through public schools in Ionia County, Michigan, before getting a B.A. at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan; my major was Biology, my minor was English. When I graduated in 1950 the Korean Was was soon to begin. I delayed job hunting until a pre-induction physical would find me ineligible for service. But they were desperate for bodies and I was fortunate to be sent to Germany, instead of Korea, following training at Camp Pickett in Virginia. The year in Germany was accompanied by passes and leaves in which I visited about a dozen countries. Many of my friends from basic training were sent as replacements to units in Korea. The only one who contacted me after the war told me he and another buddy were wounded and another he heard of was killed.
The picture above is another self-timer one taken on maneuvers in Eastern Bavaria near the Czechoslovakian border. It shows the tents of Clearing Company, part of the 118th Medical Battalion (the approximate equivalent of a MASH unit) of the 43rd Army Infantry Division. I was discharged later that year (1952), too late to begin graduate school, got a job in a tool and die shop and liked the work so much I delayed return to school for over a year.
Most posts to follow this one will focus on the new points of evolution that I am trying to make understandable. Previous posts lacked needed illustrations; and a few were too technical in hopes my colleagues would make the needed connections of how to correct current misunderstandings of evolution.
Joseph G. Engemann May 31, 2014
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