archives and angst

Went down to New Haven yesterday. First stop Malinowski's Grave with David, my dad. Got lost looking for the cemetary. When we arrived the snow was beginning to fall in large flakes glittering in the bright white of the cemetary. Dad told the story of his first visit to the cemetary in 1964. Was Malinowski's Ghost reaching out from the Grave?

After that, on to the Yale archives in Sterling Memorial Library. On our way we were rear ended by a BMW. Our van was catapulted into Dad's little Volkswagen. Kelly had whiplash and her eyes were rolling into the back of her head but we were on a mission and didn't let that sway our resolve. A small sidetrack, insurance info collected we drove on to Yale.

The archives houses a nice neat collection of M's papers, notebooks and photographs. Most of M's lecture notes were written on the back of correspondences. So, more interesting than the lecture notes were reading the letters from various friends and colleagues that were his scrap paper.

There were a few great sketches of M. A shame they are sitting in a box in the Yale archive. They really should be hung somewhere.

Lots of family photographs. Passports, . . Photos of M by Witkacy. His fieldwork from Mexico, done in the last years of his life. A torrent of images.

Remarkable was the classification by the archivists of Malinowski "before the Moustache" and "With Moustache(Mature Years)." An interesting way to date images.

Then the drive back in a treacherous snow storm but safe and ready to deal with our Papua New Guinea Visa crisis!!