Category Archives: Uncategorized

Morality and Rodgers and Hammerstein Musicals

My childhood home was filled with the sounds of musicals.  My father loved them and they played  a central role in our entertainment world—especially when we lived in Turkey (1955-61).  Dad and I played the 33-1/3” records over and over … Continue reading

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The Inexplicable Menace in a Seemingly Neutral Object

Monica Wood’s suggestion (in The Pocket Muse:  Endless Inspiration), to write about an ‘inexplicable menace in a seemingly neutral object’ intrigued me.  It reminded me of my own rather extreme irritation—based on a sense of inequity, a kind of menace—with … Continue reading

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Women (and Non-White Men) at the Top (or Not?)

For two decades, I’ve been involved with the CG system—-that’s the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an umbrella body that supervises some 15 or so international agricultural research centers.  One of the Directors General (DGs) is about to leave; … Continue reading

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Spring has Sprung–at Last

We had a lovely respite, beautiful blue skies, warm temperatures, for a week in late March.  Then the winter that had never truly come hit us in April.  This pseudo-winter is only now beginning to abate. Yesterday (and today) again … Continue reading

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The ‘Sandwich Generation’, Port William and Borneo

That ‘times change’ is a truism.  It’s one that has been occupying my mind now for several months.  And some of these thoughts came back to me this morning, after reading a short article  about “late-forming families” in Anthropology News … Continue reading

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Songs and Gender

A book arrived in the mail, from Duke University Press—unrequested, probably intended as a candidate for review in the journal Agriculture and Human Values, for which I am the book review editor.  The book, Unearthing Gender, is an ethnographic analysis … Continue reading

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An Ongoing Saga – this time, dementia

A year or so after my father died in 1994, my mother took up with a man whose wife had been her bosom pal prior to her death not long after my father’s.  My mother and her partner have been … Continue reading

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The Last Few Months of a Life

Two things prompted me to write about my father’s illness and death.  A friend suggested that I share my experience of eldercare, experiences that so many people are struggling with these days; and I saw a wonderful blog ( reviewed … Continue reading

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On Traffic, Corruption and the Law

My father was a stickler for obeying the law, a trait he inherited from his equally law-abiding mother.  When she was in her 90s she railed against the impending law requiring the wearing of seat belts.  Yet when the law … Continue reading

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Life in the DRC – An Inspiration

Again, we watched Al-Jazeera over breakfast.  This time, there was a documentary on life in Kinshasa.  The Democratic Republic of Congo has not been a peaceful country of late; and Kinshasa is infamous—for crime, deteriorating (or non-existent) infrastructure, and poverty.  … Continue reading

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