Editor:

For a very long time, I have read the North Coast Journal's feature column "Field Notes," notable writings on science contributed to the Journal by Barry Evans.

 I first met Barry many years ago, shortly after he had returned from the completion of the walking pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. We met in a Eureka bookstore, a setting where ideas and contemplation live happily side by side.

Over the years, Barry has been writing in the language of science about our tiny Earth's wonders and incongruities. And when he has taken on the wonders and incongruities of the Entire Cosmos, for the reader's benefit, he has done so quite meaningfully and most often with easy humor.

 The depth of his curiosity coupled with his ability to explain complicated concepts to a less-sophisticated human being like me, frankly, is amazing.

 Most longtime readers of the NCJ probably know where to find him within its pages. But for the occasional reader, his column may go unnoticed. Barry's intellectual planet within the Universe of Printed Words that comprise the North Coast Journal is spinning around way out there toward the outermost reach of the very last pages of the Journal, out where the legal notices and employment advertisements dwell. 

 Readers, please, take this advice: Be curious! Look for Barry's column at the back of the Journal. Make the thinking pilgrim's journey with him. The vast universe is splendid, and he has much to say about it.

 Jere Bob Bowden, Ferndale