- Murray Chapman, a geographer of the Pacific, passed away on the Big Island after a long career mentoring students, including many Pacific Islanders. The festschrift Oceanic Sojourns is a wonderful collection of reflective essays in his honor. Check out the picture of Chapman and the fam in the Solomon Islands at the beginning of the book.
- Marjorie Crocombe, another great Pacific scholar, passed away. There is an excellent long obit at Cook Islands News which features many great pictures. Even more striking is Nanette Lela‘ulu’s portrait of Crocombe. I don’t know what to say about it except that it reminds me of the Joseph Banks portrait except, somehow, in reverse.
- Reviews in Anthropology has useful interviews with Regna Darnell and Ray Fogelson. The Fogelson interview — conducted by Sergei Kan — is especially candid and great reading, especially for those of us who knew and loved Ray.
- My good friends and frequent collaborators Nick Bainton and Emilka Skrzypek have an editorial over at The Conversation warning about the potential drawbacks of a resurgence of mining in the Pacific.
- Karolinum Press (in the Czech Republic) is selling Leopold Pospíšil’s memoir of his fieldwork in New Guinea, Adventures in the Stone Age. Pospíšil is a remarkably long-lived man and although the book is being distributed in the US by Chicago, I recommend the ebook directly from Karolinum. No DRM and a very convenient checkout process with excellent English language options. Also very affordable.
- Election trouble continues in PNG. In Enga, the police are ‘hunting’ political candidates who allegedly tried to derail elections in order to shore up law and order in the province.
- Potawatomi scholars Raymond and Yancey Orr wonder if indigenous knowledge isn’t quite as different from Western scientific knowledge as some would like to believe. The article is about tricksters so try not to be too gullible when you read the article!
That’s it for now — have a good weekend!
Alex Golub 
