DEBORAH CROMBIE: Jane Goodall has been much on my mind since her passing on October 1st. As a teenager, I first read about Jane in the copies of National Geographic Magazine that I shared every month with my grandmother.
Those articles in Nat Geo sparked an interest in Africa and in animal behavior. I read Louis Leakey, the Kenyan-British paleontologist, anthropologist, and archaeologist who first sponsored Goodall's work in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Tanganyika as it was then,) books by the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who is considered to be the father of ethology (animal behavior,) and those articles and books led me to read Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle and The Origin of Species. (I think I still have my tattered paperback copies of both of those books.
I found it fascinating that Jane, a young woman of twenty-three from Bournemouth, had accepted an invitation to visit a friend's family's farm in Kenya. Once there, she got a job as a secretary and on an impulse, telephoned Louis Leakey, with whom her friend was acquainted. She wanted to talk to him about animals. He wanted a chimpanzee researcher. Leakey hired her as his secretary, but he had another purpose in mind. Three years later he sent her to Gombe Stream National Park, where her groundbreaking work would establish her as the first of the great female primate researchers.
In 1971 Jane Goodall published In the Shadow of Man, the story of her time in Gombe. At the time, I was nineteen and had already failed spectacularly in my first try at university, where I'd enrolled as a history major. But reading about Jane, some spark was lit and I began to wonder if I could, in some small way, follow in her footsteps. By the time I transferred a year or two later to the college that would become my alma mater (go Roos!) I'd decided to major in biology, specializing in animal behavior.
Even though a career in zoology was not ultimately to be my path (another story!) I did graduate with a hard won bachelor of arts in biology, and even more importantly, a very good liberal arts education. It's this I credit with any degree of success I've had as a writer of detective novels. It taught me to think rationally and critically, to love research, and to stick with projects. Some of my journey, however winding, must trace back to that teenage girl pouring over Jane's accounts of her adventures.
Dear Reds and readers, has there been someone in your life who inspired you to take a road you might not otherwise have followed?
P.S. Speaking of research, I went down a serious rabbit hole reading about the Leakeys–Louis and his son, Richard. What wild and adventurous lives they led–I highly recommend looking them up!
It's inspiring to read Jane's book and the many articles written about her . . . what a fascinating life she had . . . .
ReplyDeleteAs a teen I read Konrad Lorenz but not Jane Goodall beyond the National Geographic articles. I am timid by nature and stories of young women off the jungle were too intimidating to me to consider in terms of myself. I needed to have an immensely strong identification even to strike out of my cozy life in Connecticut! In college I read a little paperback book called KEEPING A FAMILY COW by Joann Grohman and a large one called COUNTRY WOMEN: A Handbook for the New Farmer, by Jeanne Tetrault and Sherry Thomas. Both these books grew out of the back-to-the-land and early feminism movements of the 1970s and both were hugely influential for me. Today they seem quaint and hippie-ish (I was never the slightest bit of a hippie), but they both taught me that a woman could follow a farm dream on her own. I was 45 before I was able to buy my land and get my cow but those women long ago had made me think I could do it. (Selden)
ReplyDeleteHelen Nearing had that kind of effect on me, Selden, when I was aspiring to be an organic farmer (although not with animals).
DeleteEdith, I had and have the Nearings' books and admired many things about them, but their decisions against children and animals meant I couldn't ever truly relate. (Selden)
DeleteWhat a cool story Selden!
DeleteSelden or Edith, did you subscribe to Harrowsmith magazine - I know it was published in Canada, but I think it was available in the US. We read it cover to cover to learn great things about Back-to-the-land farming and gardening, particularly organic, when that was a thing that only 'weirdo's' did.
DeleteMargo, of course I did! :) And bought all their books, the latter of which I still own. (Selden)
DeleteThat's an inspiring story of finding yourself, Debs, inspired by Goodall. I've not yet read her, although I've known about her for much of my adult life and as a linguist I was always interested in chimps and communication.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of my long-ago career, a linguist named Robin Lakoff wrote a book in the early seventies about women and language. It inspired me to go to graduate school and finish with a doctorate in linguistics. I didn't end up specializing in the area (long story) of women and language, but I read widely in it.
My specialty as a musicologist had been in operas and librettists (17th century), whereas my husband had begun archival work back in 1976. In 1990 he made an archival discovery that pertained to my work, and we "just wondered" what else might be there. So, with no experience or expertise, I dove into archival work in the Venetian State Archive. My husband gave me some advice along the way, but basically I had to train myself in a new field, one which continues to inspire me. Luckily my recent work has led me back to the interpretive libretto work, but the archives remain my passion. I've been able to at least partially "construct" the lives of some female singers of the 17th century, and other figures important to the opera business. It's work that requires persistance, and acceptance of constant disappointment (I so rarely find what I hope to find). But the hunt is exhilarating, and I am fortunate to have "fallen into" this opportunity.
ReplyDeleteThis is another astonishing story! thanks for sharing.
DeleteLuckily the "not finding what one wants" provides a larger context to both the sources and the community at large, so the time spent is not wasted. But it can be frustrating.
DeleteDebs, I wanted to add that your inspiration by Jane Goodall through university and a degree in biology is impressive to me. Such focus and discipline. (Selden)
ReplyDeleteI have been very aware of Jane Goodall, David Attenborough and Dian Fossey all my life, so I guess somewhere in my DNA there is a love of wildlife and nature. I remember not reading Charles Darwin then, but wondering in the ‘70’s why some people did not believe in evolution and how the world was changing – albeit at that time slowly. It seems to be churning much faster now.
ReplyDeleteSince like the ever-changing wheel, life does not follow a straight line, my economic life did not really involve nature, but you can be sure it was always on the fringe.
When we moved back to Cape Breton 25 years ago, we came face to face with my younger cousin Mary (she who just died in July). She had just retired from the Oceanography Institute in Halifax, and was bored. She had practiced her economic life in guess what – oceanography, in particular plankton. Together with her husband they decided to take up bird watching – ho hum. (This is before we took up monarch monitoring – also probably ho hum to a lot of people.). That was all she talked about, and because she was acquainted with a lot of the scientific community, she became involved with a computer programme called I-Naturalist (I-Nat).
Then the nagging began. “This weekend is community challenge. Go out and take as many pictures as you can of nature in your area – birds, bees, fungus, lichens, snakes (not me!), fish – whatever. Dead or alive. Post it on I-Nat. If you don’t know what it is, don’t worry, the programme will fill it in.” Over and over again, the cry would come out.
Being generally lazy, and not willing to travel over ‘ell’s ‘alf’ acre’ we said we would do from her driveway to our driveway – they run parallel – and that was all. Ok. So, we started. It was August 2019. How has it affected us? We now watch the birds all the time. We can identify those that habit our area. We post on I-Nat. We use the programme to go back and see the difference in sightings from one year to another. We compare what we see to others in our geographic area. We watch behaviour of the species interacting – did you know that the sea gulls and Eddy the Eagle have a playdate every day at about noon, and again mid-afternoon? Eddie sits on the tree, shrieks for a while, the gulls turn up and bomb him for about 15 mins while he fakes trying to catch them never leaving the branch, and then they ruffle their feathers and both go away until the next time. We listen with Merlin that doesn’t know the difference between something - maybe a nuthatch and a cardinal (we don’t have cardinals). We now can identify more than just a crow (and the difference between a crow and a raven).
At her memorial, which was a beautiful day in September, there was a crow walking about the area and squawking. There was a family chorus of “there’s a crow. Take a picture and post it to I-Nat!” Mary will never die.
What a nice post Margo.
DeleteWhat a lovely tribute, Margo. Birds give us such a richness to nature.
DeleteMy sister and brother-in-law and my husband are very much into birdwatching. My sister recently got hearing aids - she couldn't hear the birds anymore. We had a hawk in our yard recently. Pretty exciting.
DeleteMargo, I adore watching wildlife. My husband, who is ignorant ("a Tweety-bird!" he will say), knows how I love it and since our living room has large glass doors looking out over our fields he will call me from my office if he sees something he thinks will please me. Usually it's deer or turkeys or woodchucks, with the occasional variation.
Delete"Sel, there's a fox in the yard!" he exclaimed yesterday morning. I ran out. We have a gray fox but I usually only find its nighttime tracks. This was a coyote but I was happy to see it. (Selden)
Like you Debs thanks for this interesting topic. I too wanted to know a bit more about her and of course there's always Google as a place to start where I found some interesting facts about her.
ReplyDelete"Goodall stated that dogs, and not the chimps she studied, were her favorite animal.
She married Derek Bryceson, a member of Tanzania's parliament and the director of that country's national parks. Owing to his position in the Tanzanian government as head of the country's national park system, Bryceson was able to protect Goodall's research project and implement an embargo on tourism at Gombe (Africa).
When she was a child, Goodall's father gave her a stuffed toy chimpanzee named Jubilee as an alternative to a teddy bear. Goodall had said her fondness for it sparked her early love of animals, commenting, "My mother's friends were horrified by this toy, thinking it would frighten me and give me nightmares." Jubilee was still on Goodall's dresser in London as of the year 2000."
scratch the "like you"...
ReplyDeleteI had always so admired Jane Goodall. She radiated quiet grace and strength. It seems we’ve just lost so many figures who I admired ( Robert Redford and now Diane Keaton). But Jane leaves a lasting legacy of animal conservation
ReplyDeleteAnd now for something completely different ... when I was a little girl, I admired Joan Rivers.
ReplyDeleteI can hear y'all cringe from here: "Oh, no, Rhonda! Not Joan Rivers!?"
Back in my little girl days, she was the only female standup comic on TV. Back then, she wasn't an insult comic, except to her husband whom she dubbed "Fang."
She was bold enough to get in front of a mic in front of a TV camera, sometimes right after the good ole boys who came up in vaudeville, and then tell jokes about being a woman and a wife. Those afternoon TV talk shows like Mike Douglas were where I'd see her.
She helped my mom and the other homebound ladies feel seen. And gave a little girl an idea that if Joan could stand up and get people to laugh, what could I choose to do?
Jane Goodall--what a life she had! As an undergraduate anthropology major, I took every physical anthro class Ohio State offered and did the same as a graduate student. It was a toss-up whether I'd go with prehistoric archaeology or physical anthropology. And to this day, I avidly read any articles about animal behavior that I come across. I cheered as Jane--this slight, young woman--made discoveries that turned the old vision of animal behavior on its head--and cheered on our own young female grad students who ventured out into the world to do the same.
ReplyDeleteFlora, above.
Delete