Another lunch with Joe

We again got together to finish off watching the family videos.  We lunched first at my Buranda haunt. During lunch and after the videos we had chats about various things, mostly secret men's business!

One thing I went to some length about was to tell Joe that the only ambition I had for him was for him to be happy.  I believe he will do well as an academic but I would think no less of him if he did not.

I once said to Ken that I didn't care if Joe earned his living as an academic or by playing piano in a Jazz dive.  To Joe's amusement, I told him what Ken said in response:  "That sounds wonderful!"  So Ken thought that being a Jazz pianist was at least as good as being an academic.  Joe and I agreed that Ken's view was as good as any.

We also talked a bit about my biography and the skim milk diet I went on in the 60s.  In my Psychology IV class at that time (1967) we had lectures from the very popular Prof. Butz Olsen (formally Otto Egede Budtz Olsen), a professor of physiology.  Prof. Butz liked to ramble a bit  -- which was part of his popularity -- and one thing he told us was that the liquid diet being given to American astronauts at that time had a very similar composition to skimmed milk.  He therefore had been living on skim milk for some months to try it out -- supplemented by a daily glass of beer and a daily glass of orange juice.  Plus some whole milk for the fat-soluble vitamins.  So Butz really was a lovable eccentric.

I told Joe that I had done the same for about 6 months and had bought a 56lb sack of powdered skim milk from the local South Brisbane milk factory for the purpose.  It was a very cheap way to eat and so I lived on about 60c a week at the time.  Joe is very interested in diet so took a keen interest in all that.

There is actually a video of Butz talking about his life here.  There is also a very brief bio of him here