Michael H. Agar, May 20 Manuel David Esquibel, May 17

MICHAEL H. AGAR

In His Own Words:

Michael H. Agar was born in Chicago right around the time of the German surrender at the end of WWII in 1945. After an uneventful childhood of dirt clod wars at housing construction sites and memorized recitations of the Baltimore catechism, he was forcibly relocated to Livermore, California, in 1956, when his father took a job at the new Lawrence Radiation Lab. He always considered it his hometown, strange mix of cowboys and science that it was. Since he was particularly good at multiple-choice tests, he was able to attend Stanford, courtesy of the then abundant - and now endangered - concept of financial aid, graduating with a degree in anthropology in 1967. While there, he arranged his own year abroad program with the help of a crypto-anarchist dean and anthropology professor Alan Beals. Mike worked in a small village in South India and then returned to enjoy the shift from beer to marijuana that had occurred in his absence. He had turned into an internationalist - and, therefore, in the eyes of many of his friends’ parents, a communist - with his experiences during high school as an exchange student in Austria and as a fieldworker in South India. Off he went to grad school at the Language Behavior Research Lab at Berkeley, leaving with a PhD in 1971. Life changed with the Vietnam War when he gratefully accepted a commission in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service during graduate school. Instead of becoming a South Asianist, with the help of his graduate advisor, Paul Kay, he turned into a lifelong drug expert, an ironic career for a 60’s Berkeley student. He taught at several universities, foreign and domestic, the most noteworthy of the foreign gigs being two stints in linguistics at the University of Vienna and several at the Intercultural Management Institute at the Kepler University in Linz. His most extensive domestic position was in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland where he helped develop and run a program to train practitioners, rather than academic researchers. By the mid-90’s he set off on his own as Ethknoworks, and, in fact, will be available as a ghost for a while on the home page ethknoworks.com.

He wrote a lot - son of a journalist and a photographer - and considered himself a craftsman who worked with ideas rather than materials. His main reward was when a student came up after a talk and thanked him for help in solving a problem in the student’s own work. His concept of "languaculture," modified from Friedrich’s original "linguaculture," had a major impact in applied linguistics, and his article on the crack cocaine epidemic helped change discriminatory drug laws. His first book, Ripping and Running, opened new directions in ethnography and helped start the field of cognitive science. The Professional Stranger served as a resource for many students embarking on their first fieldwork. There were other books - Independents Declared, Speaking of Ethnography, and Dope Double Agent, to name a few. His last was a book called The Lively Science, an attempt to show how human social research was a different kind of science. Mike also left behind a draft manuscript behind called Culture: How to Make It Work in a World of Hybrids. He received an award here and there, but those never mattered much to him, except for the Career Award from the National Institutes for Health (NIH), which bought cash to free him from faculty meetings for several years. He sought work that passed the "trinity test" - intellectually interesting, with moral value, which paid the rent. He was grateful that so much of life was filled with work that met those conditions.

Mike will miss his life partner of many years, who recently became his wife, Ellen Taylor, his sister, Mary Elizabeth Agar, his brother and sister-in-law, Tom Agar and Helene Diament-Agar, his nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews, a few friends who endured over the years, and the birds and animals who still drop by the acre of New Mexican desert that he and Ellen called home for food and water.

Mike died peacefully in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on May 20, 2017. At Mike’s request, there will be no funeral service. He would be honored by any donations in his memory to Somos Un Pueblo Unido, La Familia Medical Center, or any Santa Fe-based animal rights organization or sanctuary.

MANUEL DAVID ESQUIBEL MAY 9, 1932-MAY 17, 2017

Beloved Manuel David Esquibel- a spiritual, warm, kind, peaceful/stubborn and loving father, abuelo, brother, uncle, mentor, coach, master educator: Passed away peacefully on May 17th of natural causes. David is preceded in death by his mother Rebecca Abeyta Esquibel, father Alfredo Esquibel; brothers Richard (Dicky) and Alfredo Esquibel, sisters Elisa Rodriguez and Beatrice Randolph; and daughter-in-law Cara Esquibel. He is survived by sons David, Michael, and Albert Esquibel; brothers Belarmino, Leo, and Gaspar Esquibel; sisters Rebecca Deyapp, Connie Branch, and Maria Crosswhite; brothersin-law Max Randolph, Louie Rodriguez; sister-in-law Margaret Esquibel; grandchildren Diego and Ana Perea, Lucia and Joaquin Esquibel; honorary grandchild Alexa Chavez. David was born on May ninth, 1932 in Las Nutrias, N.M.-a small outcropping of homes that lie three miles NE off of highway 84 and South of Tierra Amarilla. It is there that a young David played in the meadows with his siblings and tended to the chores of the Esquibel ranch. When he did not feel like doing his chores, he sought refuge down-the-dirt-road at his favorite tia Luz’s home where she would pamper him with homemade tortillas, warm bread, freshroasted pinon, or hand-made fudge. At the age of nine, he was sent to Santa Fe to attend St. Michael’s boarding school and thus began a long life of learning and giving back to community. He spent some high school years in Louisiana and then moved to Managua, Nicaragua to continue teaching and coaching as a Christian brother. Later on, he worked for the United States Information Service at a cultural center teaching English as a Second Language. David returned to the U.S with his wife Nancy and three sons and began teaching at Los Alamos Public Schools. He taught Spanish and History at Cumbres Middle School and also coached football. He attended U.N.M and received master’s degrees in counseling as well as educational administration. He then went on to become a counselor and eventual principal at Barranca Mesa Elementary School. David spent his final stage in education in Albuquerque as a religious educator at Prince of Peace Parish while also doing incredible outreach work with newly released inmates. David was a proud Lobo and anti-Dallas Cowboy fan; he loved listening to the birds in the early morning, talking politics with uncle Steve Deyapp in the afternoons, and eating pralines and cream ice cream anytime; day or night. He will be dearly missed. The life of David Esquibel will be celebrated on Friday May 26, at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Services will begin at 9:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to any educational organizations that support marginalized populations.