Uncle Art science emotion

By Ted Trzyna

Uncle Art, my mother’s brother Arthur Giese (1905-1994), became my most important mentor. He served for decades as a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. His wife, our Aunt Raina, who was born in Bulgaria, was an accomplished painter, mainly of portraits. During summer vacations in my early teens, I took the 400-mile train trip to Palo Alto and spent a week with them at their Spanish-style house on the Stanford campus.

Sometimes Art took me with him to Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Laboratory on Monterey Bay. One of his specialties was marine life and he was full of stories. He had known the marine biologist Ed Ricketts who was John Steinbeck’s best friend and the inspiration for the character Doc in Nobel laureate Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row. My visits with Art and Raina were my introduction to higher culture and the kind of social and intellectual life that goes on around a major university. In the years that followed, I kept on visiting them as often as I could.

One summer eight members of our extended family, including Art and Raina, gathered for a week in Yosemite Valley, sleeping in tents at Camp Curry and cooking our own meals. Camp life took on a rhythm. Mornings were devoted to hikes and excursions. In the afternoons Uncle Max busied himself with making dinner; the restaurant started by his Polish immigrant father was his life’s work and preparing food was automatic. Mom and her sister Eleanor, both teachers, chatted and read novels. Each of us had sittings with Raina, who was painting our portraits. Art worked on his current book project, a text on ultraviolet rays and their effects on cells of plants and animals. Art’s and Raina’s son Ted was in medical school and usually had his nose in a textbook.

During these afternoons I liked to wander around the valley, usually with little brother Tom, and I discovered Best’s Studio. This was an art gallery and gift shop opened by the painter Harry Best in 1902. It became a kind of social center for the valley, and one of the regulars was the photographer Ansel Adams, whose work was shown and sold by the studio. An accomplished pianist, he first came to play on the Bests’ piano and then more often to spend time with their daughter Virginia. They were married in 1928. Ansel became a key figure in the conservation movement, and I got to spend time with him in the late 1960s including at a dinner party at Ansel’s and Virginia’s home in Carmel Highlands.

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Images (L-R): (1) Arthur C. Giese (Uncle Art). (2) Sugar pine cone illustrated by Paul Landacre, from Peattie. (3) Donald Culross Peattie. Natural History of Western Trees. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park [NPS]

One afternoon I was sitting at a picnic table with a copy of A Natural History of Western Trees (1953). Now regarded as a classic, it was written by Donald Culross Peattie and illustrated with 200 ink drawings by Paul Landacre. The entry for each tree species includes a section of scientific information followed by a narrative about the species’ characteristics, history, uses, and lore.

Art joined me at the table and asked what I was reading. I had the book open to Sugar pine, Pinus lambertiana. I slid it over to him. “Oh my," he said. He read from the text: “It is the king of pines, undisputed in its monarchy over all others. … Mule deer step proudly and unafraid, through the groves of the sugar pine … the Douglas squirrel dances and chitters on the boughs perhaps 100 feet overhead …”

“Too poetic for my taste,” he said. Art appreciated paintings and literature, read European history for pleasure, played flute and cello, and knew and enjoyed classical music. But when it came to his own field, biology, there were rules, and he was uncomfortable if the rules weren’t followed. Science was about facts; there was no room for emotion.

I was surprised at Art’s reaction and realized I was on the side of emotion, or rather wondering if there wasn’t a need for both the science and the emotion. I could call this an epiphany, but in truth it took a while for it to sink in. For me, as someone interested in solving problems, emotion is as important as knowledge in motivating people to act, and I am backed up by psychologists who tell us that raising awareness of facts, by itself, rarely leads to changing behavior. People often make decisions based less on what they know than what they feel and believe.

Images below (L-R): (1) Map of the eastern end of Yosemite Valley showing the steep terrain, Camp Curry near the center [USGS]. (2) Arthur C. Giese with son Arthur Theodore (Ted) Giese, photo taken long before the family gathering in Yosemite Valley. My cousin Ted (1933-2019) was a psychiatrist who specialized in substance abuse. (3) Best's Studio in the 1920s [NPS]. My "little brother" Tom and his son Alex on a visit to Yosemite Valley in 2021, [Jennie Trzyna]

The real thing: Sugar pines are the tallest and most massive of the world's pines. CC0

Uncle Art, science & emotion