A Look Back to Dan's 80th Birthday: 2007 *

When Dan turned 80 in August 2007, I arranged to get a few family and friends down to Westmoore Family Restaurant for a surprise party for Dan.  Dan thought we were just going down to meet his daughter Mary and son-in-law Dave for dinner which we often did, so he was quite surprised to find a number of folks there to celebrate his birthday.






Dan had always enjoyed limericks so I asked friends and family, even those who couldn't be at the party to write a limerick for Dan for his birthday.  I received over 80 limericks from all over the country.  It was great fun and Dan enjoyed them immensely.  Here are a few of the limericks.

Joe Richardson who was with Dan during the crocodile attack sent in several.

Many of his graduate students sent in limericks.

A friend and colleague of mine from Louisburg who himself was a great lover of limericks sent in this one.

Even my grandchildren who were then 12, 10, 8, and 6 wrote one with my help.

Patrick had fun with this.

Friends James and Virginia Tucker from Greensboro.


                     While Cruising an African loch,
                      Dan encountered a hitchhiking croc.
                      He said, "Tell you what, keedo,
                      I'll get into my Speedo
                      And race you from here to the dock."


From Sally Kendall (the Da-Bob was Bob Kendall a graduate student of Dan's.  Sally was a graduate student in botany at Duke.  Sally and Bob have now been married 50 years, and are our wonderful friends living in Maryland.




                In order to fill his life's mission
                of drilling deep lakes with precision,
                he hired Da-Bob,
                who made my heart throb.
                To me, twas his finest decision.
                   
                     
This was a really fun birthday party, and Dan thoroughly enjoyed all the limericks that were written in his honor. 


*  I wasn't blogging back in 2007, so I did a look back on this one.  Today would have been Dan's 89th birthday. 

Dan's Zebra Chair

Dan in his Zebra chair in his office with me and three of his former graduate students.

Almost thirty years ago now, I was shopping in Durham with my mother and I happened to see a recliner covered in an African motif in a store window.  I told my mom I was going to get it for Dan's birthday.  Dan's career was spent mainly in research on African lakes, and I thought the chair would be perfect for him.  At first the chair had a place in our den in our Durham house, but when we moved to Raleigh there wasn't a place where it fit, so Dan took it to his lab at Duke.  It provided a perfect place for him to rest in his office or to sit while he had tea with colleagues or students.

Lou in chair in Dan's office at Duke Lab. 

When we cleaned out Dan's lab recently, there was the issue of what to do with his chair.  Although I have fond memories of the chair, I still don't have a place for it here, and one of his last work study students had such wonderful memories of having tea with Dan while he sat in the chair and the two of them had tea that I decided the chair belonged with her. She has told me what an influence Dan had on her as her mentor while she was at Duke.  The student, Dr. Lou, is now a pediatrican at Oregon  Health and Science University Hospital in Portland, Oregon. 


It was quite an ordeal getting the chair to Portland. 

Unloading chair at UPS.

We checked around with various shipping agencies and found that UPS freight would be the best bet.  The owner of a UPS store near Duke went over to the lab and got the chair.  Dr. Lou takes a ride in the chair at UPS.

As it turned out it was going to be more expensive to send it by UPS so the nice man found a less expensive company to ship it for us.

Chair arrived in Portland.

The chair arrived in Oregon with no damages.

The Zebra chair in Dr. Lou's office.  Dan would be pleased.

And now the Zebra Chair resides in Dr. Lou's office in the OHSU Hospital. 

How I Met My Husband



June 3, 1989, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Today Dan and I would have celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary.  It's nostalgic to look back at the 43 years since I met Dan.  Folks often ask how we met.  Well, we met on an airplane.  I first heard about Dan Livingstone when I was working on my M.A.T. at Duke University in the summer of 1963.  My professor, Dr. Bailey, told the class about one of his colleagues, Dan Livingstone, who had been attacked by a crocodile a few years earlier (1960 to be exact) and how he and his graduate student escaped.  I never saw/met Dr.Livingstone that summer nor in any of my four summers at Duke.


Later in the early 70s when I was working on my Ph.D. at N.C. State University here in Raleigh I was taking an ecology course and some of Dan's publications were assigned reading.  I thought, oh that's the fellow at Duke who escaped from the crocodile.


In the summer of 1973, I was attending the International Biological Congress in Boulder, Colorado, and was flying out of RDU heading to OHare in Chicago and later on to Boulder.  These were the days before assigned seats, and the plane wasn't very full.  I was sitting in a middle seat, with someone next to me in the window seat, when this gentleman sat down beside me in the aisle seat.  After we were airborne, I took out my program for the Boulder meeting to peruse, and this gentleman in the aisle seat looked over and said "Oh, you're going to the same meeting I am.  "I'm Dan Livingstone from Duke University."  My first comment to him was "Oh, you are the fellow who escaped from the crocodile!".  So it was ten years after I had first heard of this guy that I finally met him.


I had just finished my Ph.D. at N.C. State and had worked on a systematic study of grasses for my dissertation.  Dan told me about his work studying pollen in the sediments he had taken from African lakes and how there were grass cuticles (leaves) in the mud, and he wondered if they could be useful in reconstructing the past vegetation and thus the past climate of Africa.  It seemed like an intriguing possibility.


Later that fall Dan invited me over to Duke to take a look at the grass leaves in his lake sediments, and sure enough when you looked at these fossil leaves with a scanning electron microscope, you could see microscopic features on the leaves that made them identifiable.  By the next summer he and I had submitted a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation to get money to support me in the summers to do research in the lab there.  Sixteen years later after a long friendship and many years working together in the lab, we were married.  And the rest is history, and I might add what a wonderful history it was. 


Dan passed away in March of this year, and his death has left a huge hole in my heart, but I have wonderful memories that will comfort me  for the rest of my life.

June 3, 1989 in Halifax, Nova Scotia on our wedding day.

 Happy Anniversary my dearest Dan, I wish you were here.

Annual Dinner Honoring Distinguished Professors of Duke University

Our table at the Dinner.

Each year in April, Duke University honors its Distinguished Professors with a dinner--usually held at the Washington Duke Inn.  Dan and I enjoy this event---the food is always delicious, we treasure seeing old friends, and we like to meet the new inductees.  Dan was inducted as a James B. Duke Professor of Zoology in 1980, and that year the inductees were actually presented with a physical chair. 

Dan's JBD chair.

Before dinner I was admiring CT's beautiful and unusual necklace.

Lovely lady with lovely necklace.

Lump Crab Louis with Grilled Romaine, Golden Beet Puree & Grapefruit Caviar

Grilled Spiced Filet Mignon, Yukon Gold Potato, Local Asparagus

White Chocolate Pistachio Cheesecake with Raspberry Coulis and Pistachio Brittle

My distinguished professor and me.

Glad to have a reason to carry my favorite clutch.

March Madness My 2012 Bracket

I become consumed with basketball this time of year.  I'm mainly a Tarheel fan (my kids and grandkids have Carolina Blue blood coursing their veins), my husband is a retired Duke professor (but not a big basketball fan), I have a master's from Duke, but my Ph.D. is from NC State.  So I could pull for the team that is winning among these three, and all three are in the NCAA tournament this year. 

Final four and final from my bracket this year.

Each year I enter my son Michael's office pool, Trust Company of the South.  Usually I end up on the bottom (in which case I get my $5.00 back), but last year I was number 27 out of 38.  My granddaughter, Grace, picked teams based upon the outfits of the cheerleaders last year, and she came in second. Perhaps I should get some advice from her. 

I wonder who Grace is picking this year (Photo by Meredith Palmer).

I'm picking Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Michigan State and Carolina for the final four with Carolina and Kentucky playing for the championship and Kentucky winning. I think it is going to be a very good tournament.  So basketball fans enjoy, and let the fun begin!

Alexander Calder at the Nasher

Calder’s Chat-Mobile (Cat Mobile), 1966

(Credit: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago)

An afternoon at the Nasher Museum on the campus of Duke University, is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, especially when there's an exhibit of mobiles: Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy.  The exhibit includes 34 pieces by Calder and works of seven contemporary artists who were influenced by Calder's work.  Two of my favorites are Calder's Cat Mobile and his Performing Seal.

Calder's Performing Seal.

 The mobiles themselves are beautiful, and I was fascinated by the shadows they cast on the walls and the floors.  The movement of some of the mobiles are so subtle as to go undetected. A number of Calder's stabiles as he called his stationary sculptures are also included in the exhibit.  

Calder's stabile, Three Bollards.

Kristi Lippire Hanging Garden, 2006. (Lippire, one of contemporary artists influenced by Calder).

I've always liked Calder and this exhibit was fun!