Wednesday, November 25, 2020
My dad's loves included astronomy, classical music, American folk music, NPR, dogs, and the local New Jersey wilderness. He spent many pleasant afternoons with me, hiking through the Pine Barrens or canoeing on the Barnegat Bay, where his curiosity, wonder, and respect for nature's many beauties and mysteries rubbed off on me. I remember enjoying lengthy intellectual discussions with him on a wide range of topics during long car trips, and delighting in going together to various concerts, plays, and other live performing arts events. I am thankful to him for the healthy skepticism of late consumer capitalism that he instilled in me, and for the ways he unquestioningly supported my various interests throughout my life, usually by driving me wherever I needed to go, no matter the distance. In these and other ways, he helped me learn to thrive in the world and become a better person, and I am grateful for that. I believe that if he could tell you, the reader, just one thing, it would probably be this: "always leave nature exactly as you found it."
