10/21/2016. Happy birthday to me from the Internet. A few days late, but hey. For years, I've looked for any recording -- audio or video -- of Loren Eiseley. I had no idea what he sounded like. Tonight, the net finally gave me one. Thank you.

 

https://archive.org/details/primates_201511

 

 

10/27/2016. I got around to watching the entire episode of "Animal Secrets" that I linked to last week. There's a shit-ton about baboons in it. And the score can drive you bananas. Here's a transcript extracted from Eiseley's closing narration:

All the back aches, flat arches, those stabs of pain from the vestigial appendix are reminders that we are still experimenting with an upright posture... These defects are the scars that evolutionary change leaves in our bodies. Men are like old manuscripts written and scrawled over continuously by the inexorable hand of the ages. Each one of us is both a palimpsest of the past and the oncoming future.

 

Damn! That's from an NBC weekend nature series. How many times can you find "vestigial" let alone "palimpsest" in a telescript of the last 20 years? Take THAT, Marlin Perkins.

 

In July 2018, a visitor (Daniel C.) found this page and wrote...

I came across your blog searching for an audio recording of Loren Eiseley,
so thanks for pointing me to the Animal Secrets video.

I wanted to return in the favor in case you hadn't come across this
lecture of Loren's that was discovered in PSU archives:

https://soundcloud.com/portland-state-library/pdx-lsta-hs-0082-access

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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