Bonnie McCay

Dear Michael,

I remember a long time ago, when Anthropology was scattered around Rutgers, and you were an assistant professor at Rutgers College, on the College Avenue Campus, not far from “Old Queens,” and I was an assistant professor at Cook College.  We were the youngsters in anthropology, up against the likes of Yehudi Cohen, Helen Safa, Robin Fox.  Even so, I looked up to you.   I so admired the work you’d done in India—the message I retained was about how “high” culture might be appropriated, enacted, and reproduced by poor villagers-- and then later your ethnographic masterpiece, Coming of Age in New Jersey.  

Your retirement was a great loss to the Department, the graduate program, and to cultural anthropology.  I recall your ventures into serious bird-watching, and I expect, knowing you, that your “checklist” is very long and meticulously recorded.   God bless you, my friend.

Love,

Bonnie