ML137998
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Mike Edwards. Timecode In: 00:00:04. Timecode out: 00:22:46. Notes: Joseph Rock. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Dual-Channel Mono. National Geographic Century Radio Expeditions Don Smith/ Mike Edwards DS 00:00:27 Identify yourself.00:00:30 ME 00:00:31 My name is Mike Edwards. I¿m a writer for National Geographic. I¿ve worked there for thirty years. DS 00:00:37 And you recently wrote a story about Joseph Rock. That¿s kind of unusual isn¿t it a magazine publishing a story about one of it¿s own writers? 00:00:45 ME 00:00:46 We¿ve done a little bit of that as we get toward the millennium just looking back on some of the people who really made a big contribution to the Geographic and Rock is one of those people. DS 00:00:57 He was important to the Geographic I guess.00:00:59 ME 00:00:59 Well Rock worked basically from 1920 to until 1949 in South Western China. He was an explorer. He was an adventurer. He was a scientist. He brought back really fascinating articles and sensational pictures of life in a very remote part of China that had never been developed. There were no paved roads. There were no automobiles. He did all his travels by horseback, big caravans. DS 00:01:35 He was kind of an interesting looking person.00:01:44 ME 00:01:45 Rock was not a big man. He was about five feet seven but he liked to dress up in local costumes and ya know, huge fur hats and silk robes that he found in that area and it was almost in a sense, going native. DS 00:02:06 He traveled in style.00:02:07 ME 00:02:08 Rock traveled in grand style. He traveled virtually in caravans because the mountains that he was passing through were infested with bandits and highway robbers and so forth. His caravan would be maybe fifteen or twenty horses and mules. He would be riding a horse um, and fifteen or twenty hired workers, servants, mule skinners and maybe a hundred or even two hundred local militia that he would hire just for protection so that he would be surrounded by this huge band of armed men. He did travel in style. He took a battery powered phonograph with him and he would play opera records when he got to some monastery. He would play opera for the monks. La Boheme, (?). He carried a portable bathtub. It was rubber, collapsible bathtub that he got from Abercrombie and Fitch and table linen, silver. He was probably the only man in that province who ate with a knife and fork but he insisted on being very proper about his camp. DS 00:03:22 You¿re trying to find that bathtub.00:03:24 ME 00:03:25 Tried to find the bathtub, the problems that we ran into was that in the village that he lived, people don¿t know what a bathtub is it was very hard to explain what we were looking for. DS 00:03:42 Go back and talk about who he was. Where did he come from? 00:03:48 ME 00:03:49 Rock was born in Austria. He was the son of a servant actually to a Polish count and he bumped around in the world a little bit, ended up in the United States, became an American citizen. Ended up actually in Hawaii and Rock was an amazingly self taught, versatile man. Something that he learned in Hawaii was botany and that was his ticket to China and to Burma, Laos, his first trip. He was looking for a tree called the ¿ (laughter aside).. Rock was looking for the Chula Mogra tree. It was believed that an extract from the nut of that tree was good for curing leprosy. And the US Department of Agriculture wanted seeds to plant in Louisiana to see if was might grow that tree. And that was his ticket, botany, plant collecting, and then in 1921 he shows up at the Geographic and there¿s a little note in the Geographic¿s archives there from Gilbert Grovenor who was editor then which says Mr. Joseph Rock called here today regarding an article about hunting the Chula Mogra plant. Ro... (Notes truncated)
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- 4 Dec 2008 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 4 Dec 2008 - Ben Brotman
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- 4 Dec 2008 - Ben Brotman