Ed “Doc” Ricketts was a marine biologist, philosopher and Renaissance man who worked in Monterey, California, (where he still remains a local hero!) back in the 40s. His accomplishments in the study of the tidal ecology of the northern California coast were monumental (“Between Pacific Tides”), but he is best remembered today for his semi-biographical appearances in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row”, “Sweet Thursday” and “Log from the Sea of Cortez”. He was an intellectual, a man of action and affairs, and a poet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Ricketts

Ricketts, although primarily a scientist and entrepreneur, was at the center of the little group of artists and intellectuals that collected around him in the Monterey, Big Sur and Nepenthe area after WWII–a group that nurtured and educated people like Steinbeck, Henry Miller, and Joseph Campbell.

It was a community very much like the Habitable Zone, at least, as it was when when I first arrived here.

I felt very fortunate to meet the man.

But we never exchanged names, and we addressed each other by our Zone handles. I remember he initially introduced himself by his nickname, but I’ve forgotten what it was.

Moscow Rules.