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#164524 12/27/06 11:55 PM
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Hey Gretel, I would just like to confirm that the boy, the young man, and the man wearing the jaunty hat are all Doctor Bills. I knew him only through this board but a picture is worth a thousand words and the three pictures that you chose for his website are him. Given ten thousand photos to rummage through I would have picked out those three, plus one more.

Good show.

Milo

#164525 12/28/06 12:16 AM
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Of course, I would be thoroughly remiss (and I'm sure Dr. Bill would take me to task for it) if I didn't add a few of his more (ahem! ) ribald (albeit always informative) classics:

SUBJECT: Mycobacterium smegmatis

Dear David:
A girl in my class in med school was a good bit older than the rest of us,
because she had had a tyrant mother who would not let her
go until she (the mother) died. She had been a secretary,
and so was very proficient at shorthand, which made her notes
vastly superior to mine. But like many of the other students,
she had the idea that if she let anybody see her notes, it
might help them get above her in class standing. However,
in bacteriology, she kept asking me to tell her what it was
she was seeing in her microscope. So I would look, and then
in her book find the place telling about it.
Then she woulf run up to the prof and tell him what she
had learned, just to make brownie points with him.
He was a friend of my uncle, who just a year
previously had been on the faculty.
But she still
wouldn't let me look at her notes, even though she sat right
in front of me, and there was no chance of their coming to
harm.
When we did cultures of specimens from our own
throats, we first touched cotton swabs to our
tonsils and smeared them on nutrient gelatine media
in Petri dishes, and put them into incubator for a
couple days. When little colonies of germs appeared,
we with platinum loop scooped up a colony,
smeared it on microscope slide, fixed and stained it.
When Annie had made her slide of organisms grown
from her throat culture, as usual she asked me to
come tell her what was on the slide.. Without
any previous plan, something snapped, and I knew how to pay
her back. I looked, and said admiringly;'Why,Annie, you have
the Mycobacterium smegmatis in your throat culture!"
As always, she trotted up to tell the prof about it..
I knew he had noticed what she was doing. He looked like
Groucho Marx, and enjoyed imitating him. So, just as I knew
he would, when she told him she had the Mycobacterium
smegmatis in her throat culture, he tipped his head sidewise,
flutted his bushy black eyebrows, and with a Groucho leer,
asked her if she were inviting comment
concerning her extra-curricular activities. His tone told
her she had been had. She slunk back to her seat, and
looke up the Mycobacterium smegmatis. Suddenly the back of
her neck and ears got very red. That organism is ordinarily
found only on the glans penis and the clitoris.
Annie never bothered me again.
So I was a rat, but I felt it would help her try harder to
help herself. What's your verdict? Bill


[please note: I'm pasting all of Bill's correspondence completely unedited, including any typos]

#164526 12/28/06 12:19 AM
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...and here's a real blusher:

Dear WO'N: When I was small enough to be bathed in the dishpan, and my mother was teaching me to retract my foreskin, she called my penis my "bottee". Only farily recently did it dawn on me that it was a diminutive from a word for "sausage".
Perhaps you have read that Louis XVI had severe problem from phimois (inability to retract foreskin) that at fist prevented his duty to produce an heir. He apparently had painful balanitis (pain in the glans,the marvelous acorn).
Good to have the board livening up a bit. Bill

#164527 12/28/06 04:26 AM
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BANNING DDT. KILLING AFRICAN CHILDREN

Dear Milo:

Here is a letter I just sent to my daughter.
It might amuse you. What is status of chigger control
now that DDT is banned?
_________________________________________________

Dear Wilma:

After finishing Basic Training, I was sent to
Lawson General Hospital, outside Atlanta,GA for a course
in laboratory technology.The afternoon that I arrived
I went up to the PX (post exchange,including sales of all
kinds of small things, including ice cream and candy.)

I was just finishing an ice cream cone, the a truck backed
up to the loading platform near me, and a little old driver got
out to unload some large boxes of merchandise for the PX.

Automatically, I started helping him because the cartons
were too large for one person to lift. When all of
the boxes were on the loading platform the driver took off
his hat, wiped his brow, and said:
"I thank you,son. But I can't pay you anything"
I protested that I didn't want
to be paid for a common courtesy, but he said,
"But I can give you some information that will be of value to you tomorrow. They'll take you on a 12 mile hike. Do you know what 'rayd
bugs is?" I said I did not. "Rayd (red) bugs are so tiny
you can only just barely see them. They burrow under the skin
and cause horrible itching. If you sit down in the shade
they'll get on you, and in a couple days you'll have terrible
itching. So, when they give you a rest break on the hike,
don't sit down in the shade. That's where the rayd bugs will
be. Sit only in a place where sun has been very hot".

Just as he had said, we were ordered to hike 12 miles.
At the mid point, we were halted and told to rest. I sat
down on the hot shoulder of the road. All the guys made fun
of me, so I didn't tell them why they would be sorry they
had sat down in the shadeof the scrawny pines.

But a couple days later, many of them were really miserable,
with itching ankles and waistlines, and were on sick call
to get medication.

To this day I don't know why the officers in charge were so
negligent that they did not warn the whole unit.

I had some friends of people my mother knew who lived
in Atlanta. Can't remember their names now. They had a beautiful
pine grove, but in spite of using a lot of DDT, they never
sat on the ground in it.

Now that DDT is banned, I wonder if the chiggers are bad now.

Love, Pa
__________________________________________________________

#164528 12/28/06 02:11 PM
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> I retract my use of 'curmudgeon'

well, I was the first to use curmudgeon in this thread to describe Bill. please know that I used it with only the most heartfelt love in mind.


formerly known as etaoin...
#164529 12/28/06 02:54 PM
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curmudgeon: a crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas

yup, that was Dr. Bill.

#164530 12/28/06 03:12 PM
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take out the word old, and i think most of us here qualify as curmudgeons!

I know I am full of stuborn ides, and i am certaining irascible- (cantankerous? well i don't think so.. but i am sure there are some who think so!)

and i know others here who have even a better fit, since unlike me, they persist in getting older.. (me, i am still 47, just as i was on the day i joined here. not a day older!)

#164531 12/28/06 03:41 PM
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I think I would modify the noun to an adjective. Dr. Bill was certainly curmudgeonly, but not quite a curmudgeon...in those moments when he was striving for that "badge of honor", that is. Curmudgeonly sounds more endearing to me... and that's the way I always thought of him.

#164532 12/31/06 01:46 AM
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Alas, alas; I just received the sad news in a letter from Dr Bill's family. Thinking of him now brings a mixture of smiles and tears.
As jmh said, "We never had a cross word, he was always utterly charming and a tad flirtatious with me. Perhaps he was ever thus with the ladies?" I think so, Jo.

As much as our Dr Bill loved words, and jokes, and all the other stimuli of his intelligence, clearly the thing he held most dear was his family. I cannot tell you the number of time he lovingly recounted to me how he held his baby in his hand and washed the baby's bottom with running tap water. It was a precious memory to him.

I shall miss him.

#164533 12/31/06 01:50 AM
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Just thought I’d stick my nose in here again to say how sorry I was to hear of Bill’s passing. Like most others here, we shared many fine and quirky moments over the years at AWAD and in emails.

We often chatted about words flying around the margins of chat here on the board, with Bill’s inimitable point of view given blush-free rein – for example about ‘haptic’:
Dear Mav: when I found this was medical word for
touching, I had a hunch there might be a word for
forbidden touching. After several wrong guesses,
I found it. 'Haptosis' = non-consensual sexual touching'.
Had some fun with Father Steve about that. "Reach out
and touch someone....
My vision is so bad I can
read only a couple short posts. Sob,sob! Bill


A typical quip was:
Time wounds all heels.

At one depressed point around July 05 he wrote:
… What cannot be cured must
be endured. An enlightend govt. ought to send everybody
my age a small cylinder of carbon monoxide gas and
a large plastic bag. If I had one, I'd use it.
They also serve who only stand and wait. Bullshit. Bill


But only a little later he was bouncing back and wrote:
Dear Mav: the asshole who sent you that PM about
CO in plastic bag doesn't live here any more.
Met a beautiful bright babe here young enought to
be his daughter, and is having so many laughs
he hopes to live to be 100.Bill


Perhaps it may provide some small solace to those nearest to him who miss him most just now to know that in this brave new electronic world he was able to reach out and touch the lives of many friends around the world.

We join with you now in raising a fond cheer to Dr Bill – rage, rage against the dyeing of the light.

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