Yesterday Buck Edwards (pictured here at his 90th birthday party last year) joined me for lunch at Sweet Briar House. Although I’ve met Mr. Edwards on several occasions since I arrived, I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and visit with him at leisure.
He told me he arrived at Sweet Briar in 1927, when his father assumed a faculty position. Clearly, this was a heavenly place to be a child; Buck attributed his interest in biology and specifically in birds to the hours he spent roaming the campus.
He has known all but the first two presidents of Sweet Briar; that is, all my predecessors since Meta Glass. (He told me with a chuckle that I am clearly the tallest of the group, with the exception of Harold Whiteman.) Best story about Meta Class: Buck recalls dancing the Virginia Reel with her in the far parlor at Sweet Briar House! Somehow, in all my imagining about what Meta Glass might have been like, her dancing the Virginia Reel never once occurred to me. 
(Here she is, with Cordell Hull.)
Best tip I got: according to Mr. Edwards, now that we’re haying again in some of our fields, we are likely to be re-creating favorable habitat for the grasshopper sparrow. If I keep my eyes out on the tops of fence posts near the hay fields, I might be able to see them, although I am unlikely to hear them — those of us with older ears have a hard time discerning their light, high song.
