I first
met Professor Mintz in December 2010, when I was an undergraduate music student
at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins. I was wondering what to do with my
earnest, but unschooled interest in food and food-related scholarship. After seeing his name and affiliation listed on
the editorial board of Gastronomica, I
decided to send him an email asking if he would be willing to meet with an
undergraduate student. Now I can see how
this email might have come across as brazen; I had no real awareness of just how eminent he was in the field. But Sid (as he suggested I call him) was
agreeably amused by the combination of an oboe-player/aspiring food
anthropology student, and responded with such openness and generosity. I ‘officially’ became his student when he
taught me an individualized reading course during my final semester at Hopkins,
but his instruction and mentorship really began with that first email and
continued after I moved on to graduate school in food studies.
As many
know, Sid adored classical music. He
told me that an early experience brought him to realize how important sound was
to his wellbeing, and that classical music had brightened his life since
adolescence. He claimed to know little
about music, but this is definitely not true.
He had a talent for remembering composers’ biographies and details about
concerts he attended, and he often used musical analogies in his lessons and
letters. In May 2011 he wrote to me
saying he had heard the Wolf-Ferrari Oboe Concerto on the radio. He wrote:
I
figured you'd know the Wolf-Ferrari. It is simply too charming, and he too much
an in composer, for you not to have known it.
But
we amateurs out here, even though some of us have been listening for -- well, I
guess in my case at least 73 years (!), have still not come anywhere near the
end of Bach, let alone the end of anybody else, such as Mozart or even, I
guess, Wolf-Ferrari. My sister did all that she could, but even back then,
there was not enough time.
I
am reluctantly becoming aware of the inevitable -- not nearly enough time to
hear even everything that would have made me feel blessed. Oh, woe.
And then in November 2011, he wrote again about
Wolf-Ferrari on WBJC:
The
Department of Funny Coincidences requires me to report that in May, believe it
or not, I started a letter telling you about a different Wolf-Ferrari concertino I'd just
heard--apparently there were four?!--but about which I had totally forgotten.
The
Mintz theory of intelligence has it that at birth each of us is given a brain
of a particular size (or volume), that is then filled at differing rates by
learning. Since we now live MUCH longer than we're 'sposed to, some brains get
fuller than others, and everything else we are 'sposed to learn spills over the
edge (pick your own metaphor, listeners). The next time we learn it for the
first time, we forget it again. But that sure is entrancing music, and that I
do not forget..
I am so grateful for Sid’s commitment
to teaching me—it’s something I will never forget. It’s clear to me that sending that first
email was an important and consequential moment in my life. I had no idea how much he would teach
me in the coming years, not only about scholarship and anthropology, but also about
humor and joyfulness and generosity. Sid
might not have gotten to the end of classical music, nor listened to everything
he wanted to in the time he had, but I like to think he is still listening. Thank you, Sid.
