It is important… if only to myself. To admit this is a big step. Some people I have known at different stages in my life insist that I am entirely self-centered. I hope this is not true. It may well be true, but we can never really see ourselves from a perspective outside of the […]
Native
What is native? I thought about this question several times as I drove around Indiana last summer. Native species versus invasive species. I grew up digging dock, uprooting plants. that were invasive in our fields. It was definitely considered invasive by my father. I had not thought about the plant in a long time, until […]
Mobility
It only makes sense that someone who studied mobility and pastoral nomads should continue living a rather mobile life herself even as she navigates into her 90s. Myrdene Anderson maintains her ethnographic study of the Saami of Finoscandia that began in the early 1970s when she was a graduate student at Yale. Space, Time, Motion, […]
Liminal
The liminal is the between. What no longer really is, but not yet fully something else. It is after the the old no longer fits, but before the new has been comfortably fitted. The transition can not always be defined, but it can be felt. It is multidimensional in that it can be space, place, person, or status. Most often it is marked by ritual and a status change; a redefinition emerges. And when you are in the between state you can become unmoored in a myriad of ways – it can transition into a time of danger in an instant.
Kith and Kin
Trained in anthropology, working in information nodes (university libraries) and in cultural repositories (museums) and successfully raising a child in this maelstrom, I suspect I have as good of a perspective and grounding in change in our society as anyone.
Jerks
My 50th High School Graduation reunion had both ups and downs. Finally, after many, many reunions there were finally two versions of the reunion this past year. There was a Friday night gathering at a local Elks Club. There was the “real” gathering at a golf club in a banquet room the next night.