AN ODD DUCK 

Oscar was an odd duck in addition to being a heavy drinker and a frequent dispatcher of ironies. To wit he named his 28-foot sloop The Titanic. As fate or irony would have it Oscar hit an outcropping off Catalina Island, and his Titanic sank as did the unsinkable 1912 Titanic that as you know sank in the North Atlantic on that fateful voyage. 

Soon after he purchased another sloop. This one larger and named Maine. He said he was going to sail it to Cuba and asked me to come along. Do you remember the fate of the USS Maine? 

I told him that I would rather put an apple on my head and have the neighbor kid play William Tell. 

I was in the audience many years ago when Margaret Mead addressed an auditorium packed with college students. I went on the read many of her accounts in the South Pacific among native tribes as the anthropologist that she was. She embedded herself in the culture of these tribes and observed the rituals, gender roles, superstitions, social mores etc. She, along with Ruth Benedict, laid the ground for the establishment of anthropology as a legitimate field of research and study,