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Name: Edgar P. Spalding
Title: Associate Professor
Place of work: Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin
Research area: photomorphogenesis; membrane transport and electrophysiology
Member since: 1985

1. Has being a member helped you in your career? If so, how?
   If it hadn't been for the Society's annual meetings, I don't know where I would have learned how to explain my work and perspective to the leading experts in my field. If you can't explain yourself to them, you won't have much of a career.
2. Why has membership in ASPB been so important?
   There is an important social aspect to science, a heavy dependence on reaching consensus through give-and-take between people. I think of ASPB as an institution that fosters that process of calibrating our ideas and perspectives through its activities, awards, and journals. Without ASPB, our branch of plant biology would not be in its present advanced state.<
3. Was anyone instrumental in getting you to join ASPB?
   Nobody twisted my arm. I was aware of and interested in the Society as an undergrad, but I didn't join until a graduate fellowship reversed my cash flow situation.
4. What would you tell nonmembers to encourage them to join?
   Not "would," but "do." I tailor my argument to the person I'm trying to persuade. To other professors I point out that ASPB lobbies to protect USDA from budget cuts. To new graduate students I'm more likely to say things like I said above. And then I mention the free beer at the mixer.
5. Have you gotten a job using ASPB job postings or through networking at the annual meeting?
   I can't say there was a direct link between the two jobs I've had and the ASPB postings or meetings, but it is certainly fair to say that the experience I gained at the annual meetings helped me get those jobs. I don't like the word "networking" as a verb; it sounds a bit base.
6. Do you still read print journals? Where do you usually read them: work, home, library, in the car, on the bus?
   Certainly not in the car! I often eat lunch at my desk, and that's a good time to read my paper copies of The Plant Cell and Plant Physiology.
7. What do you think is the next "big thing" in plant biology?
   I have no idea what the next big thing will be, but I think the time is right for the drug discovery business to make more use of plant biology. Sometime soon a plant biologist will demonstrate that human disease models can be engineered in plants in a way that advantages highthroughput screening for new drugs. Maybe it will be me!
8. What person, living or dead, do you most admire?
   There are a few people in that space I reserve for high admiration. The one I'll mention now is Jean Henri Fabre, the late- 19th-century amateur entomologist who wrote about insect behavior in a humanistic, narrative fashion. He earned a meager living as a country schoolteacher in southern France while dedicating himself to studying the instincts and peculiar life histories of insects. When he left the school after 20 years of service, his salary and title were exactly the same as when he started! (I try to remember that fact every time something doesn't go my way.) He joyfully "retired" to a small, stony, arid property that was his laboratory and continued writing marvelous accounts of his observations and experiments. He received little recognition until he was "discovered" late in life and called "the consummate observer" by Darwin. Fabre was very old and nearly blind before the government gave him an award and bought him a microscope.
9. What are you reading these days?
   I'm nearly finished with The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand, but it's not been exactly easy. Before that, I thoroughly enjoyed McCullough's John Adams. Anyone who thinks they aren't getting what they deserve should read the story of John Adams's life.
10. Do you have any hobbies?
    I have been an avid birder since childhood. Bird photography spun off from that. More recently, I have become hooked on butterflies, and now it's dragonflies, too. Shoeboxes full of slides and chigger bites are the result. My wife and I like to garden, and I play ice hockey in the winter.
11. What is your most treasured possession?
    A dear friend of my grandfather bequeathed me some fairly rare, old bird books such as Wilson's American Ornithology. I'd say they are my most treasured possessions. The black dog in the picture did her best to get sent back to the pound by chewing on some, but I've forgiven her.
12. What do you still have left to learn?
    Patience is one.