The waterfall

Hawk's Cave

Prescribed burn at Ferne Clyffe State Park

Along the trail

Four articles from Language in Society from 2006, they'll form the core of a week of readings in my linguistic anthropology graduate core seminar (Meek, Barrett, Samuels, and Innes). It's odd to realize they'll be twenty years old in 2026

The first readings for my intro to ling anth graduate seminar are these two pieces by Franz Boas; On Alternating Sounds is arguably the first linguistic anthropology paper (and critiques earlier work), the Introduction still a useful framework for approaching languages

In the creek

One of my favorite UT Press books from the 1980s, Joel Sherzer's Kuna Ways of Speaking (and not just because he was my dissertation advisor, but because it was a singularly important work in the ethnography of speaking tradition)

Pleasant place

Shadows and tall trees

Sunday it was 8 degrees, today it's pushing 60

One of my favorite articles about Mead, partly because my mother read Redbook The Public Anthropology of Margaret Mead: Redbook, Women’s Issues, and the 1960s Paul Shankman

Little Grand Canyon

Happy Birthday Margaret Mead. There are many ways to enter into her work, this is still a fascinating read

"In the 1870s the terms Aryan and Semite embarked on new ideological and political careers outside philology and physical anthropology, but often referring to those disciplines for legitimacy. Vague and incendiary as these terms were, they continued in widespread use until 1945"

"For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep."--William Stafford, A Ritual to Read to Each Other

I've said it before, but the influence reading Chomsky had on me when I was young was to encourage me not to go into linguistics, which seemed dehumanizing and boring, but rather to follow the more interesting and humane path of linguistic anthropology--honestly, Chomsky or Keith Basso?

Port Aransas

Perhaps because I'm an anthropologist, and I've read a fair amount of anthropology, I just roll my eyes at these kinds of claims. I'm always amazed to see people non-ironically talking about humanity and "hardwired."

Mike Pence is from Indiana

Anthropology, or at least language centered anthropology, at its best, is an attempt at understanding other ways of being in the world, not as an abstraction, but on an intimate scale, in and through conversation, that strikes me as a humane goal, not evil

I had no idea Time magazine was still a thing

BREAKING: Indiana Senate Republicans reject new congressional maps in defiance of President Trump’s redistricting push.

"Reformers, scientific, moral, educational, political, passed in succession, each answering a question of Gryllus. Gryllus observed, that so far from everything being better than it had been, it seemed that everything was wrong and wanted mending"--Thomas Love Peacock

The lake below

The view from above

In the cove

Light

Just when you think evolutionary psychology might not be an anti-intellectual pseudoscience, something comes along to remind you it's garbage all the way down

The first paper I read by Robert Brightman was his article, Tricksters and Ethnopoetics, a very fine dismantling of Howard Norman's Wishing Bone Cycle. Saddened to hear of his passing.

The calm of the cove

40 degrees, 20mph winds, thought that since the winds were coming out of the south they wouldn't have the bite of a northern wind, I was mistaken

One chapter from Swann and Krupat for my ling anth graduate core, by Sherzer. I prefer this version to both the original article (lacks the Guna original) and the later version in Verbal Art in San Blas (Guna is presented at the end, and because it's in a book, framing parts are cut)

December

Back to their roots: a brief history of trees – in pictures

Two chapters from this book edited by Basso and Selby will be part of the syllabus for the linguistic anthropology graduate core, one by Basso and one by Silverstein.

New Mexico State University professor Brandon Hobson, a Guggenheim Fellow and National Book Award finalist, has published his sixth novel, "The Devil Is a Southpaw."

I don't read blogs or substacks, so I'm not going to read this, but I'm genuinely curious when that golden age in academia was? Already by 1980, Anthony Wilden was criticizing academia for treating "knowledge" as a commodity and allowing for no real time to think deeply or differently

I know the whole point of these grifters is to foment outrage, and that means never doing the required reading. If you is interested in ethnomethodolgy, one could do worse than beginning with Harold Garfinkel. Also, this frustrates me because I don't want to defend ethnomethodology.

For my linguistic anthropology graduate core, we will read two chapters from this book, one by Keith Basso and the other by Alton Becker

Cold day on the lake

"Behind the abstract talk of liberties and freedoms in much of 21st century neoliberal and libertarian discourse lies a much grubbier story of hunting and gathering, primordial beginnings, & adamantine differences. Only by understanding this can we understand the mystique of evolutionary psychology"

Indiana University To Discontinue More Than 100 Academic Programs www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

Just found out that the anthropologist Richard Preston had passed away in January of 2025. His book Cree Narrative was a big influence on my thinking. He also edited a festschrift for Richard Slobodin and was also the recipient of a festschrift. Good stuff.

Always useful to read Anthony Wilden on academia in the 80s

Gearing up for teaching the linguistic anthropology graduate core class in the spring, and who wouldn't want to read about the linguistic anthropology tradition at UT Austin, exemplified by these two articles by Sherzer and Woodbury

Last night I was talking about ice fog and called it, a la Geertz, a blurred genre. The semester can't end soon enough.

Today is the last day of my undergrad class on Native American Verbal Art, and we finish the class discussing the poetry of Ofelia Zepeda. I tried this the last time I taught the class and it went very well, so I decided to try it again. They've been a good group, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

That's Benjamin Lee Whorf's brother Richard Whorf

Tower festivities