Joseph (Barnes) Bjelde

I unfortunately can't join for the memorial, but wanted to contribute two reminiscences about Barry's sense of humor:

-Barry was already sitting in Howison, scrutinizing my handout, when I came in to give my job talk, which argued that only those with knowledge can teach (according to Plato).  Barry raised his hand. There were only a few other people already there; I was a bundle of nerves. "I've been teaching for years," he said, "but I'm not so sure about the other thing."  I don't think anything else would have as effective at making me feel more at ease.

-In our first year seminar, we were all in awe of Barry (somehow Richard Wollheim seemed like a softy in comparison, for all his talk of "Freddy"), and his comments did nothing to dispel that awe.  A (possible apocryphal) story circulated among us about Barry's comments. The story went that, on a paper which followed a lengthy Quine quote with the claim "it's not clear what Quine means by this," Barry had commented "He means this," followed by an arrow pointing back to that quote.