Marc Manganaro

Michael,

I hope you are comfortable and at peace.  I have been thinking of you much these past days, a period of travel for me,away from home. In airports, in hotel rooms, amidst strangers,  I've been thinking of all of the wonderful times and days we shared together,

especially back in the 1990's, in Highland Park and at Rutgers.  I recall how you took me under your wing when we first met, counseling me on the ways of RU, and I fondly recall our debates about postmodernism and its place, or non-place, in anthropology.  You were always dogged, sharp, erudite, but fair in those discussions, and always, always possessed your rich humor.

But most of all I recall how you took to my family, took them as your own, and especially the three kids, then kids Anthony, Thomas, and Rania (all now grown, with tremendously fond and redolent memories of you).  I never did take it as an offense that you were actually more devoted to the kids than me (as devoted of a friend you were and are to me). I recall the first time we made the trip to your family home in Glastonbury--we arrived very late one rainy night and you immediately showed us our rooms.  The next

morning I woke early, ahead of the rest of the family, and walked into the kitchen and utterly surprised your mother, whom I had never met.  After I identified myself and she recovered herself, she told me she wasn't expecting me.  All Michael mentioned to me, she

said, was that he was bringing three wonderful children to visit!

I recall our camping trips to High Point with the kids, and indeed we owe to you what became a family tradition, the several times yearly visits to High Point. No birder myself (I left that to you and George), I so fondly recall our trips to hawk sanctuaries.  I also remember, and we talked about this with Thomas when he and I visited you, Pam,

and the boys when I was in NC a year ago, the time you went to Thomas' preschool to talk to the kids about birds and birding, an experience you said was one of the more terrifyingly uncertain pedagogical moments of your life (!), and how you launched into the "who cooks for you" cry of the Great Horned Owl, a call you recreated for us in your living room in Chapel Hill over twenty years later, last year, the last time I

saw you.

Dear friend, know-- well you do know-- what light and love and laughter you have given to us and so many of your life-friends over the years.  What a gift you have been, you are, to us.

Your devoted friend,

Marc