Farewell to Sidney
Wilfred Mintz (1922-2015)—Teacher, Mentor, and Friend
I’ve done this to honor Sid before.1
Today, my grief over his passing is too fresh, raw, and intense to do it the
first way again. We chatted by phone for 15 minutes on Wednesday, 16 December
2015, 12 days before Sid left this world. That was when I, still insouciant
he hinted, called “just” a month late to wish him a happy 93rd birthday.2
Sid was in fine form, his voice strong, and his comments sharp, insightful, and
carefully articulated. He advised me to accept the fact that age had made me
wise, as it sometimes does for humans. He also mentioned sending proof
corrections for his last publication to the publisher, and expressed delight
about a 2016 trip to Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, where La Universidad de Puerto
Rico would inaugurate the Sidney W. Mintz Collection, books and article
reprints donated more than a decade earlier to a reputable institution on the
island where he had first done anthropological fieldwork in 1948. Then, he
briefly commented on the 2015 phase of a bizarre US American presidential
campaign and other worldly affairs. Last and in habitual fashion, Sid cracked
jokes and took potshots at unnamed “other bastards” he had survived.
I knew Sid for 46 years. In September 1969,
I laid eyes on him in “Anthro 20,” a four-field introduction to anthropology for
Yale University undergraduates. The award-winning course that he had by then
taught for 18 years was my first anthropology course. We met after class one
November day and began weekly chats, usually over beers. Sid became my
undergraduate advisor, inspiring and shaping my interest in anthropology,
especially the cultural/social kind, as a discipline and profession until
graduation in 1973. While I slugged through graduate work at The University of
Chicago (1974-1979), and labored over a dissertation project that took ten
years to research and write up, Sid was my steadfast extramural mentor.
Sid’s mentorship continued after my academic
career at the University of Arizona got underway in 1990. By then, I’d started
calling him “Teach.” He graciously wrote a 1998 letter of recommendation that
helped me jump the Continuing Status hurdle (a variant of the US American
Academy’s Tenure and Promotion ordeal). Sid’s letter was unusually strong
administrators tell me, a unexpected development during my months of high
anxiety, given doubts he’d expressed about writing for someone whose faculty
portfolio did not prioritize the classroom teaching he thoroughly enjoyed and
did so well.
Over the years, Sid enthusiastically played
his role as senior partner in our regular conversations—face-to-face and by
phone, or virtual by snail mail and email. We talked shop and shop talk
sometimes provoked heated arguments about anthropology (the discipline and the
profession), about the Caribbean Region (in/for itself and on the world stage),
and about Haiti (present and past) and Haitians (peasants and non-peasants,
Blacks and Mulattos, market women and producers or consumers). Anchoring the
conversations were our contrasting views of how, as anthropologists, to think
about complex relations among human inventions and, as men, to act in social
and political-economic provinces of the world human inventions created and
humans could change. Culture topped the invention inventory, of course, but
closely following it were race/ethnicity, color (the main somatic marker of
identity in “certain cultures”), class, citizenship/nationality, gender, and
power. Our arguments usually turned on whether one could or should rank
material conditions and symbolic considerations as “forces” shaping the ways of
this world, exhibiting at once stunning diversity and surprising unity. Often
enough, we agreed to disagree about matters of principle (materialism versus
realism, for instance) and the interpretation of facts.
Sid often summarized his appraisal of an
anthropologist’s or historian’s work, or a politician’s or pundit’s positions
on public issues by quipping, “He [or she] can’t tell the difference between
hotdogs and filet mignon.” I sometimes agreed with the reasons for Sid’s
appraisals, but usually poked fun at his quip by counter-quipping, “Certain
occasions call for hotdogs rather than filet mignon.” Watching US American
baseball, football, or basketball games were examples, I would remind him,
unless spectators watched games in odd yet nonetheless profoundly US American
places like Los Angeles. Sid didn’t budge; nor did I.
Riffing on Sid’s dictum and frequent
observations about the quasi-capitalism of Haiti or the Haitian peasantry, I
offer a quasi-recipe:
Boil, grill, or, roast a hotdog (preferably the Hebrew National
brand) and heat a bun with the proper consistency and saltiness with semi-sweet
undertones. Slather the hotdog, minimally, with sauerkraut, raw onion (diced),
mustard, and relish. But, if your taste buds demand it, add catsup. Eat with
gusto but slowly to avoid choking and to accommodate intermittent sips of your
favorite beverage: beer, soda, water or, yes Sid, fine French wine. All the
while, reflect on when, where, and how enjoying a hotdog is the culturally
appropriate thing—hell, the right thing—to do.
Haitian market women might say, Vwayaje
dousman nan peyi san chapo-a, Msyè Sid! (Travel sweet in the country
without hats [i.e., easily and comfortably in the afterlife], Mr. Sid!)
Farewell, Sid! Hard work during your long life produced sweet fruit in this
world and, touching many people’s lives, you made a difference. I wish you
every last good thing in the next world, if such a world exists, contrary to
our agnostic beliefs. I will miss you, “Teach,” more than these words or any
others can convey.
NOTES
1 Drexel G. Woodson, “Hoecakes, Cultural
Anthropology, and One Black American’s World: Birthday Greetings to Sidney
Wilfred Mintz, Teacher and Friend.” Invited essay for a special book of recipes
and reminiscences assembled by Elizabeth C. Dunn (University of Colorado),
Elizabeth Emma Ferry (Queens College, CUNY) and Katherine Verdery (University
of Michigan) for presentation to Sidney W. Mintz at the session, “Recuperating
the Material: Papers in Honor of Sidney W. Mintz.” One Hundred and First Annual
Meeting of the American Anthropological Association: “(Un)Imaginable Futures:
Anthropology Faces the Next 100 Years,” New Orleans, LA, 20-24 November 2002.
15 August 2002. MS, 8 pp. Available online at http://www.sidneymintz.net/recipes/texts/woodson.php
(accessed 30 March 2016).
2 Sid used the French adjective insouciant
(usually “carefree,” but sometimes “careless”) in a 1972 letter of introduction
to his friend Albert Mangonès (1917-2002), the internationally-renowned Haitian
architect and sculptor, to characterize Ira Lowenthal and me. We were fledgling
Haitianists about to catalog the Edmond Mangonès Collection, Albert’s father’s
extraordinary library, for Yale University’s Antilles Research Program, which
Sid directed. (See Ira P. Lowenthal et Drexel G. Woodson [rédacteurs], Catalogue
de la Collection Mangonès, Pétionville, Haïti. ARP Occasional Papers, 2.
New Haven, CT: Antilles Research Program, Yale University, 1974.)
