WHY GO ON A TUEDAY? “It is dangerous traveling back,” says the poet Pablo Neruda, “because suddenly the past becomes a prison.” But what if return to a place of discovery and contentment many years ago could serve to pull you back up into life? Prominent anthropologist Maryanne Fort sets out to revisit the Mexican village where she and her husband first began fieldwork 40 years ago. In the crystal air of highland Chiapas she rediscovers old friends, Mayan-speakers and gringos alike, who are warmer to her than are her own skeptical offspring at home. Especially important is reconnecting with longtime pal photographer Janice Metz, who fled the U.S. in the Red Scare of the 1950s. Acerbic and wise, Janice is also working her way forward in the new territory of widowhood, having lost her “sweetie” of 40 years, the artist Lois Shapiro. Other encounters with people from long ago prove more troubling, especially when their moth-eaten gossip threatens Maryanne’s idealized picture of her late husband. About the Author Carter Wilson comes from Washington, DC. As a young man he lived in Mayan communities in southern Mexico, learned enough Tzotzil Maya to get by, and wrote and produced a documentary film called "Appeals to Santiago" about an eight-day Mayan religious festival, "Appeals to Santiago" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKG94SRJtg4). Later he studied Quechua people's use of coca leaf in Peru on a grant from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.He has published ethnographic fiction and non-fiction, including two books about Mayan Mexico, a children's novel about Netsilik Inuit of Canada, and a fictional account of the discovery of Machu Picchu in Peru seen through the eyes of a photographer who is discovering he is gay at the same time. His first novel, CRAZY FEBRUARY, widely adopted in college anthropology courses, has been 53 years in print and now is available in Spanish as FEBRERO LOCO. A gay activist, Wilson wrote the narration for two Oscar-winning documentaries, "The Times of Harvey Milk" (with Judith Coburn) and "Common Threads." He received the Ruth Benedict Prize from the gay section of the American Anthropology Association for his "Hidden in the Blood". He taught at Harvard, Stanford, Tufts University, and for 34 years at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
