Just some fun writing to rid myself of the sadness seeing Dan off. Sharing but mostly for me. I am going to keep adding to it as a keepsake of this visit. So it is gonna stay unfinished for now.
Well, I got up to get the puppy out and pick up poo pads, get the coffee started and the newspaper. I haz a sad…..
Dan arrived a couple of days ago and we had a wonderful visit. But like a beautiful dream that goes pop. Dan had to go back a day earlier than he had planned as the trip back to Philly would be a long trip. Of course Dan is very comfortable driving longs ways in a truck through whatever terrain he wants to go. If ever there were wizards still alive today, Dan is surely one. Little Hobbit (me) has followed him in fellowship in search of Orthoptera for many trips. Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Lesoto. Bill of course went on even more trips with Dan before that. All the game parks in South Africa, Mali, Angola. Back in the day, there were no phones to call and let you know they were ok. Weeks went by before I got a telegram saying they were fine in some remote location.
Dan Otte pandemic piece www.dailykos.com/…
one of his lectures www.dailykos.com/...
Once they were captured by the Botswana defense force. Young soldiers came out of the bush in and stopped them in the middle of the night. The soldiers with no insignia asked them for their guns. When they opened the truck, they found lots of boxes with test tubes filled with alcohol and grasshoppers. They were like, “Where are your guns?” Dan shrugged,”We don't have any.” That story was reported in Omni Magazine.
Then the time when they were digging in a rhino wallow for a cricket and they heard a grunt and saw a lioness looking at them. They got up from there to go to the truck but had lost orientation, found it then Dan went back to find the knife he dropped there. A few day later, Dan had a horrible dream about lions. So Bill and Dan were much more careful when out at night in lion country.
On a trip to Zambia
Dr. Livingston, I presume? www.dailykos.com/…
I have known Dan a very long time. In fact, I have known Dan since I was 18! I remember attending his lectures in Ecology at the University of Texas. My schools were terrible and getting into UT was a dream come true. Then right in front of me as as I sat in the front row, right in the middle in full view of my professor. It was one of those old lecture halls with the seats went way up seating like 300 students. Then sitting in front of Dan lecturing about the doldrums, I was so shocked when I looked behind me and some students were reading the Daily Texan instead of listening to Dan. As a person who was deprived educationally, I felt so happy sitting there, I knew I was getting the “good stuff”. Not to mention, young Dan was very handsome and shy for a lecturer. I was newly married, but Dan was feeding my insect loving brain! Did I mention somehow a shy and plain girl had just married her former high school biology teacher, Bill Cade. Bill was getting his master’s under Osmond Breland, a mosquito expert. I told Bill about Dan and he came a sat for a lecture. In the Spring, Bill took a course from Dan, they hit it off. Bill decided to pursue his PhD under Dan after that. That locked us together with Dan for the rest of our lives.
Bill had a seminar that met at Bob Barth’s house (roach expert). I would go with and sit at the back. Dan attended one night and he was like, “You! I didn’t know you were married to Bill! The you sat in in the front row last term!” LOL. Did I mention I taught Bill the difference between the male and female cricket? Did I mention I was one of very few Mexican Americans at UT, this was before “Affirmative Action”. I got into UT based on my freshman year marks at St. Mary’s.
So five amazing years at UT, Bill was so excited and sharing his studies with me. Pianka! Otte, It was the beginning of SocioBiology and the study of social behavior of animals. Dan was a student of Dick Alexander. But also Dan was a systematist, the faculty failed to give him tenure. Dan is a shy person and was not inclined to fight against the forces (faculty) against him. With great sadness, Bill had to finish under another professor, but Bill never gave up on his relationship with Dan
Of course as luck would have it, UT’s great loss was a huge gain for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia! Dan became the curator of the Orthoptera collection. Now he didn't have to lecture and could get away for trips to Africa and everywhere else on his own schedule not tied to a semester.
Here is his Wikipedia Dan Otte. I actually wrote if for him when wikipedia was young, of course it has been improved on since then.
Trying to keep it about Dan. After my husband, Dan has been the most influential person in my life.
As a Mexican American kid on the Westside of San Antonio, my schools were not very good and I had a deep abiding desire to learn. I got lots of books from book mobile. Not a very social child, I buried myself in books and then discovered the insect books! My dad had bought a big lot behind our house partly to keep a sewage pond from being built there. It was a hardship for us, but it also was a great place to look for bugs, wild flowers, lizards and snakes. So I was already pinning insects by the time I was 14. Also because we hadn't have a lot of money, I never got to see Born Free about a lion that had the same name as me. Soooo, back to the library I went. As they say, the book is better than the movie. I fell in love with lions and Africa at an early age. Howard Gardener’s ideas of multiple intelligences, clearly described me in the “natural sciences” category. I loved the natural world, my brother’s friends called me a little walking encyclopedia. Moving through high school I blossomed into a big nerd! I was smart, but a year younger than my peers so socially I didn't fit. Plain, tiny, shy but proud of my brain I could speak publicly. Put me in front of the class, I could speak, social gatherings, not so much.
Omni magazine with an interview with Dan Otte.
on Page 40!
Omni Magazine February 1986 interview with Dan Otte