Anita Spring 1-1
CHRONICLER : Anita Spring
INTERVIEWER : Meredith (Penny) Rucks
DATE : 1/15/99
TAPE : 1
SUBJECT : Washoe Ethnographers
TRANSCRIBER : Linda Sommer
AUDIT-EDITOR : Penny Rucks
Meredith (Penny) Rucks: This January 15, 1998... 1999.
R: Pjrid I'm in Dr. Anita Spring's office in University
of Florida in Gainesville6bA _A We are going to start
interviewing her on the Washoe ethnography project. And it's
always a good idea to start with first things first, so I'd just
like to ask you for a rundown of your childhood and where you
were born and.... [laughter]
S: [laughter] Just the whole story.-
S: :OK. I was born in Philadelphia. Do you need dates and
those kinds of things?
R: If you want. It's completely up to you if it's...
Anita Spring
R: -- ... ea--de. ut in ehe 1bus.
S:O Nineteen forty-two.-
-87 t >d I grew up in Philadelphia and stayed there until
1956, when my parents moved to nT yo_ t-f Los Angeles area
in California.
-Yes V -d.....
S: So....
R: ajY=ei... Lou were the oldest of....
S: Yes. I have two sisters.
S: COne is three years younger, and the other is eleven
years younger.
R: 'es-. -d I'm impressed with the fact that all three
women in that family are academicians, really.
S: Well, the sister who is three years younger really is
artistic in her temperament,...
S: ...'and was a toy designer for Mattel, was a high
school art teacher before Proposition,- ghat wac i.- ThirteenO:..
jFiwti.
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Anita Spring
&TEE^f^in California.
-nd currently teaches English as a foreign
language to international students mostly from Asia.
.S in Modesto, California.
S: The other sister is an associate professor of Chinese
language and literature at the University of Colorado..
-- Boulder. And I think that the reason all three of us
are really very much interested in this stuff is, -swel, my father
n
has a Ph.D. in chemistry4edidn't have any sons ~3-pi -
S: 4 I think it was the era for women to igr-y get a
good education.
R: We--ye .. 9e thing that's very consistent in the
oral history that was done several years ago....
S: Now, are yo- getting into the mike with/this, or does
R: -Vk. we're bck. And I wa oin to t pint that it
seems like your childhood... that your parents did place quite a
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bit of emphasis on schooling and that it's....
S: Oh, very much so. Yes.
R: I was struck by the statement you made that it never
ever occurred to you that you were not going to colle...
R: ... hen you were in high school.
S: Right. Well, at any time growing up, yes.
R: Do you recall when the first time that you knew about
anthropology or.... I'm not talking about considering it as a
career for yourself, but just, you know, were you a little girl
when you first had heard of anthropology, knew about
anthropologists, or...?
S: No. Tgg==-. I didn't know anything about anthropology
until, for some reason, between my junior and senior year
[college] I was home for the summer,...
-S_ ..don't remember what I was doing or why I decided to
take a course at the community college,..
e -And theat .
-69 < and that's when I took this P .on f the
peoples -cultures VgE- .. of-the-world i--inb class...
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Anita Spring
^ at a community college during the summer at night.
I must have been really bored or something.
R.
T_-- T l .II, I don't remember needing extra credits
or.... -treally can't imagLn-..
R: You don't remember being particularly drawn to the
subject.
S: I don't remember why I chose that. I hadn't had any
anthropology before. It just seemed interesting.
S: :Lnyfter I took that course, it just changed my life.
I went back to Berkeley...
S: ...?as a senior.
-Sf. remember going to Sherwood Washburn, the well-known
archaeologist at Berkeley, and sitting in his office and saying,
"I took this course...." He must have thought I was a lunatic. "I
took this course during the summer; I'm a senior this year. I
really think I want to be an anthropology major."
S^And he said, "No. You have to graduate in chemistry."
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R: Oh, so he said that, at. t ....
S: He not the chemistry department.
R: Right.
S: QTP iA ing a student, and I think also being female
JI
--female, especially at that point--dun' ..- didn't question very
much those kinds of authoritative and authoritarian
statements,...
t.
S-----.h especially by very senior male professors. -.iS'o I
thought I had to graduate in chemistry. There was no choice.
~ut I did sign up for two anthropology classes that
term.
R: So was this your last term or...?
S: My last year.
S4, J? And I signed up for another two anthropology
classes the following term.
S: So I had four anthropology classes. .Aad- s I recal)
tb were the Anthropology of Religion, Peoples and Cultures of
Africa, 94
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S: OK. So those must have been junior- and senior-level
classes. I don't remember which was which.
R: Right.
S: Probably religion was a three...
S..--h d... t- ousarlad...I-----Z-- hat they had. I
think hey e nr at that time. Now we're into thousans-
R: YR Ye
S: A-fr the ousnd African studies class. And then another
A
class was a culture change class that was a graduate class. It
must have been a five-hundred .-- ..a dfnd level.
R: Did you have to get special permission to get in,
or...?
S: Well, by that time I had three anthropology classes.
S: under my belt
.l- -- TesT. uood l1 i-!
S: rZ-.--K. So... and I did very well. I got A's in all of
s. 0 I cannot recall what the fourth one was...
R: Yes.
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S: ... at the present time. I probably still have the
notes from some of those early anthropology classes.
R: So do you recall that if you were drawn to those
particular aspects of anthropology at that time, or that's just
what was available that semester, or...?
S: Oh.:-. ..
R-:-WliJ k now. ....
S: WeTT7 I was interested in anthropology in general.
S.- So religion, Africa, culture change, .
.r---.~ you know, I mean, they were pretty standard, and
they would be central concerns. -
R: D -. p you think you thought at the time. .-r
,;;,A /tA4 )
t II when you're your chemistry major6 aa- I think you'ma CS-.-,
teaching chemistry in high school....
S: Yes. E.. Berkel uh to do pact
teaching.'. ( n
,S. e- -and take, I think it was two or three courses in
education if you're going to be a high school.l or if you'- Vs
going t-.:e into teaching. r..=.=. --.
Anita Spring 1-9
R: And that was your goal at the time.
S: Ai goal at the time was being a high school
chemistry teacher.
S: o I was t1ea1 J i nj i _-n doing my practice teaching
at Berkeley High School. I was taking senior level, you know,
organic, inorganic, blow-up-the-laboratory-typ lasses...
S: ... ~nd mathematics for my minor..
S: you know, advanced-advanced calculu .
S: ... ~umbers theory, as I recall, all those things. And
all of a sudden, I just got so interested in anthropology and in
the most central core stuff--ethnography and religion ande
I think... also tahi the principles of change, acculturation,
S: .7 socialization--all those kinds of processes, which
were just fascinating. A2dM .
R: As an explanation, you think, for what you were
observing in everyday life or as an opportunity maybe to look at
the exotic u?..- .I--a, d L "y, ...?
Anita Spring 1-10
S: Well, eL ad this.. Oh T know, T kw w.. li f he
y\pother courses was. t .wa .. although maybe this mrtnot have
been an ant. 1 might have n; -t
sL.--I-waes a course on prehistoric people .
S: .and all the cave art...
S: ... of Europe.
S: They had a visiting scholar from the University of
-A .---. who had written a book called On the Track of
Prehistoric Man.
: igz-=. .That was the fourth course.
: Yes,
S: 1 A hen I had this notion that I would go and see
all those caves,...
ipx S.
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---. which I did.
R: Oh, that's wonderful.
S: I had this notion that I would go to Europe after I
graduated a- a a arthistory courses, too--not
U Id had take a his Jry
only do a lot of the art museums, but also see all the
A QAe5 / &
prehistoric.., as many as I could, and I really managed to see a
A
large number of them...
S ...in France and Spai
S: southern France and northern Spain in the Pyrenee and
Lascau and all these great archaeological finds of that time
era ..
s.
i r ^ s e -e v e ^ J- -
SS: ... c.-saEt=-f-the dawn of prehistc-rc. t1/- 0,
R: So this was hPb i after you graduated from
Berkeley...
R: .iand before you went to San Francisco State?
S: Correct.
R: Sg-p.- So you that set up a goal, and you
followed .Ct-
Anita Spring
S: Yes. AaPd en I followed through. I actually have
followed through on almost all my goals. That's sort of a
consistent pattern. I mean, OK, you know, I wanted to be a high
school chemistry teacher. Now, some people have said, "OK. Well,
Ol]a.i. rT she only taught at Berkeley High School." But I lx4
taugb chemistry at Berkeley High School.
S: ... for a term; decided that I did not like it. OK. So
then I still was into chemistry....
R: Now, what didn't you like about it?
S: I don't have a real good recollection of...
S: ... hat, except that I thought that... I just
decided it really wasn't that interesting...
S: ... to do as a profession. It's not that I didn't like
it.
R: Right.
S: I just moved to other things. I wanted to.. ...
t was a goal; I tried it. I found it mildly interesting.
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Anita Spring
R: Right.
S: But I thought, "I don't think I want to do this."
R: Were there challenges.., do you think that there were
challenges that you overcame personally to become a chemistry
teacher, and then n h. once you'd done it and it
wasn't that stimulating for you anymore, that you moved on? I
mean, do you think it was partly the ...
R: ... achievement that drove...?
S: ... it was art of the achievement thing. I mean, for
example, there were tw females...
S-5-----. -nd four hundred males in my chemistry classes!
r- ... _-_i .... J
S: -niEeiani and-~me of those were premed -w
rwe- e. T n-mean.-a people were so cut-throat
.: /Berkeley has one of the preeminent chemistry
departments on the planet, ...-e...in. ly of American
universities.
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Anita Spring
-S an, you know, it was a challenge all the way through,
although I must say I never thought of these things at that time.
R: But at the time do you think maybe, ;tjqErgf- that as
people were... I mean, because it must have focused quite a bit
of attention on your abilities that were unusual because you were
a girl, too. .
-"P-----...must li~v been. ...
t-----es.
S: Yes. Definitely. So -E.- that was my goal. I
had.
--- .. only male chemistry teachers in my own career, and
almost all the chemists I knew were men,...
S: .. "like my father and all his...
S~.--... colleagues.
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Anita Spring 1-15
R: Yes. Now, was your father particularly support i.'_or
R: ... ou being a chemist?
/t
S: Well, he liked the idea of my becoming a high school
chemistry teacher, I think. M'1i..
S-xr t was sort of, you know, teaching, the feminine,
female... a career for women.
R: Yes.
S: And the chemistry... well, that was pretty neat...to
follow in his footstep
ed: io it's a pretty safe,...
R: Right.
S: ... nice thing...
.. for a daughter.
j -__.. to pursue. So it was sort of a combination of his
-FOS (f&<) 6-YD,
technical interest on the one hand and then kind o f-, l'd
4
always been in industry, although he did occasionally .taket.. 6-
Anita Spring
teach a courser-a.Tr .
->e once or twice taught a course (I don't know what
happened Ihat was...
_____ .- before my time. But teachingea profession for,.,~a
Srwomen.
R: Right.
S: An lTs-- I thought of high school chemistry teaching
as something exotic,...
S ..? because I'd only seen men in that position. It's
not true, I don't think, and especially today. But at that time
period, it seemed...
: true, at least in my very limited experience of
having only seen male chemistry teachersg. anad nainy....
S: Once I started doing it, I didn't really find it all
that thrilling.
R: Yes.
S: OK. I didn't give up chemistry completely...
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Anita Spring
-&----... and worked as a quality control chemist after I
graduated, in the laboratory to see what that was like..
R. Yes.
:&-= .and found that very unthrilling.
R- Yes. Yes.
S: I found it... I mean, the idea of quality control still
is something that intrigues me conceptually.
R: Yes.
d A shCM' /Y
S: OK. So, you know, an anthropology paper should have a
A
certain quality control,.
S-- .. the way the print looks on the page, the
paragraphs, the content, et cetera, et cetera--that is, the same
as testing a liquid or a powder for consistency of color, odor,
-y.S.ic, pH...
R: Well, the consistency of data is important, too, isn't
it?
S: The consistency, yes. So it
1-17
S: ... .JS tied together. It's just that I thought that
working in a laboratory by oneself and then s-a=f dealing with
A
these kinds of colleagues.... I also did not like the other
w- t_ cq-^'
people so much--the people in the industry. They had a different
A
perspective...
... that didn't really turn me on. .A^/
R: Can you think of an example, tke--..
JR- ... o describe what you mean of that?
S: Well, I-.- e~F- i w. Having spent, .y..ri;w, so much of
my life as an academic, like, when I go home...
<- ...? don't turn on the television
R 1 _ig______________
S: don't race off to the game.
R: Yes.
S: I don't kind of go to bars and drink a lot. I see young
'10 -,(I htf
people and older people who work in industry, ,aer- I'm involved
Si intellectual processes. They work in industry: they come home;
the television's on; they're going to the bar; they're going to
the game.... It's a different lifestyle.
Anita Spring
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Anita Spring 1-19
S: adL-I found that a lot of these colleagues who were
doing other jobs in the plant,...
-;- ... even in the laboratory, it was just a job.
A
R.
S: It wasn't a career.
R: Yes
'P ~uft i, i^.4-F a vocation?
S: Yes. ,E at that level.- -.
S: ... obviously,. i~ my father, as for instance, who
was an executive in the company,..
S: ... although he ran the laboratories ...
S: ...it was a career.
R: Right.
S: But as a bench chemist, as a chemist in the laboratory,
which is what you can do pretty much only...
B.---ga.
Anita Spring
S: ... .wrhat-y --e n do with a bachelor's degree,...
R Y---M
S: ... it was a job.
R: Right.
i,9.- nsea. of....
R: Had you ever played with the idea of going on to
graduate school in chemistry?
S: In chem... no.
S: 'I did not like it...
S: .. that well. And once I saw anthropology, there was
no way chemistry could ever get me back.
R: Yes. I -ju wih you rn1ild really nrp m an a-it
iy--be---. r~ybe it is just serendipity, but what itgss that got
A
you to go to that first....
I... know, I wish I coul!d-7--o..
4f4- Y0. Ycs .
S: I probably... -a- do remember the book. I believe I
still have it [looking at book shelves in office]
R: Oh, that's great.
S: Elman Service's book.
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R: Yes.
S: I'll dig it up in a few minutes, but I'm sure it's
still on the shelf. I would never let go of it. eI ~vr ht ..
it was only a used copy. ['t3her
7I was so unsure of.
S'... of the topic.
S: .Aad-7LT was literally just ethnography...
S: ... f this group and that group, ~pr I just found it
wonderful!
L-YYes.
S: Wonderful, wonderful. I don't remember why that
summer.... I would have to look back. It may have been the summer
that I was running day camps for the Easter Seal Society of Los
Angeles...
w.
S: .I and working with handicapped and retarded children
during the daytime to get them in a play group situation, that I
needed something to relax myself...
Anita Spring
S: .;. from thinking about that. And that's maybe a reason
why I took that course.
R: Now, tell me about that work. Was that... is this
something that you had grown up with in the house? Is it an
example of...
R: working with'.
R: ...'people on social issues?
S: Oh, I see what you're sayi g.
S: it's really funny.
R: I mean, where did that come from?
S6.I s no
R
S: ...n -i.' I always had this notion that I could teach
people, and at first it was focused on children---. SI~Tf T'I
fact, there was an early newspaper article dk=t. I A -
doubt if I still have it. But I think when I was fourteen or
thirteen or something like that, I ran a day camp in...^ig_
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Anita Spring
Oh, m.
S in Philadelphia (I must have been thirteen) in my
basement for children of the neighborhood, in which I did arts
and crafts i storytelling d music and those kinds of things.
SO-
And I just thought it was a very easy thing to do to run these
kinds of things.
R: Was this part of being an older sister, too, do you
think?
S: Possibly, although ..
S: .. siblings will tell you that I was a terrible
sister; I...
ter]
S: ... pulled their hair or whatever I did. They have all
kinds of stories which I have no recollection of, of all the bad
things I did! The .
J^T s-/-- '
S: ~..they'd chronicled them.
R:- [laughter]
S: [laughter] They have a whole list. It's like, you know,
"Do you remember when you spilled orange juice on my hair?"
I sg, "What? I don't remember spilling orange juice on your
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Anita Spring
hair!"
R: Oh, that's great.
S: But they remember those things. ,4B anyway, e-mt
one summer I did that for at least a dozen children.
R: Yes. And you must have liked it.
S: And liked it
S: That was still in Philadelphia. That was the summer
before I left. The summer I first got to California,..
S: .. spent collecting and categorizing butterflie.
S:: next summer =-ran a. I was a day camp counselor at
a camp, and the next summer... oh, it was the next summer after
that. So I was younger. I must have only been sixteen or se...
no, I must have been seventeen th~f--an.. it must have been
between my freshman and sophomore year...
S: ... tat I ran the day-care centers, the camps,..
S: for the...
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S: ... LA Easter Seal. I have the letter thanking me for
it.
R: And you're saying between your freshman and sophomore
year of college, right?
S. .. .ne....
R: ou were young. Yo-- wern-o -e T m Ya, 'ou graduated
at sixteen.... ^
S: Sixteen. 1o. I wa.. couldn't bave benmore rthan--
A
five:ntcnr..
R:
S: -
S.- But it seems to mc I was you1ger when ran Lue tLw'
R: Now, which grade... do you remember which grades you
skipped to get through school that fast?
S: Oh, yes. .- just skipped the last part of the
twelfth grade.
R: Cg Because you were taking classes....
S: Because in the eleventh grade.... Well, actually, I
S: Because in the eleventh grade.... Well, actually, I
Anita Spring
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mostly just played bridge, .. 1!gsfhtcr]
.R: [1aughte-
S: ." as I recall. And we formed very delinquent social
clubs got ourselves out of class, because it was so easy I had
straight A's,...
S: ... and I played bridge...
S: ... for a term.
S: And then I thought, "This is ridiculous. Why don't I
just get out of here?"
S: And I had enough everything to get out.
R: =, =K. So you actually graduated early.
S: j I actually accelerated...
S: .7 .and got out, because I thought, "Another term of
playing bridge--I can't take it."
R: Yes. So did you... when you're combining these ideas of
being a high school chemistry teacher.... well, actually, I can
see that that does combine, the desire, you know, to teach....
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Anita Spring
S: o. So it was a natural format/ion iL the teaching
part....
S: Oh, by the way, my after school job or my job when I
was a student at Berkele..
X: --yes'i-rs
S^ .was to run playgrounds for the city of Kensingto
S: /after school,...
S: .. h3ias a part-time jo,
u kgw, to help pay for college. e'L .-
R: Is that like administering the parks? I mean, when you
say "run the parks," was....
S: Wellf> 'it- I would go to the school, and ad-zi=h .
I would prepare a whole program for all the kids who stayed there
after school.
R: I see. So you'd actually do... yes, do the program.
S: Yes. So I did all those programs.
Yes. Yes.
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S: So, you know, the day camps, the after school
S: ... T oeat < ,t was so easy and natural, and it
just was something I could do so easily.
S: t was relaxing.
R: Yes. Ae.ad!g but then the actual teaching of
chemistry was just not going to fill the bill?
S: It was in the same rank, Itik-... ow, LhaL -o ..
OK. I'll go out on a limb on this. I think that maybe it was
like, "Oh. Well, it's sort of like the same, isn't it?"
e.
S: ,-AN I wanted this to g a career for life,..
S: ... nd it just didn't cut the mustard. In other wprds,
I would not have been content t- s aj kindergarten school
-" kindergarten...
_j -ea^
S: or elementary school teacher...
S: ... at that point,...
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S: ... -Pevef igi I was very good at it.
R: Right.
S: My family saw it as a very appropriate t 1 g...
S: ... for daughters ..
S: ... d for women....
R ---Yes.
S: to do.
S: fI just knew that it wasn't going to be satisfying
enough. WA 1I think the chemistry thing sort of fit a little bit
into that
s.
S: 7And that once I got to see it and do it, it just wasn't
it.
R: Yes. It wasn't hard enough or challenging enough or
different enough or....
R: s.Or g
S: Or glamorous enough or...
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Anita Spring 1-30
S: ... anything.
R: Did ye-a E~f --- you want to travel, also? I mean,
has that always been something that you wanted to do?
S: Actually, quite the contrary.
S: s -iw-- ee er- en my family
moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles,..
R: Yes.
S: ... was so afraid to fly that my parents got these
ttEe stateroom tftg, whatever you call them, on train.... *
do 't think..- ---
S: o-- that the family wg,& fAross country .
S: .. on the train..
S: ... n... with these 4ij==e compart...
or rooms, whatever they were,...
R.
S: .. because I was too afraid to fly.
R: Yes.
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S: Ad hen I crossed the country twice more by train.
S: [laughter] Aid=-theirfter that, E!9. that was the end
of that. I got _9 it.
R: But you really loved Los Angeles, didn't you? I mean,
you....
S: Did I like it?
R: Yes.
S: At the time. It was a big relief after what I thought
the rather narrow views of the Northeast.
S: ?lus, the climate was a lot bette
S: o I thought that... and maybe it was just the schools,
but, you know, kids can be very pigeonholing. In other words, you
get put in a...
R: Stereotype.
S -T.. stereo...
R.-----'s".
S: Yes, the cliqu
S: Ar~ hat's how I saw that whole f.-.e f scene that I
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was in in Philadelphia. When I got to California, none of that
was there. So that was fun. And it was like a,..
S: .nyn k ,-n opening-up. Plus, things took place
outside, ..
d the climate was so, VE s, amazing.
R: Do you think it. especially for young women...? I
mean, do you think it had more of an impact on you as a young
woman in those years of the differences?
S: Yes, I think so.
R: You saw more opportunity?
S: Many more opportunities.
S: Yes. The Northeast, I thought, was very confi ing.
S: -''ve always felt that way ever since, that the West had
just a whole lot more openness in the way the people interacted
Anita Spring
with each other and saw things.
R: Yes, you speak of that, also. I was very struck by the
fact that you spoke of that, too, when you went back to Cornell.
I mean, you go back East to go to Cornell.
R: You're again struck by a rather flat and cold
atmosphere,...
S: Yes, very much so.
R--,--comparatively.
S: Very much so. Yes.
R: Even though you say it enabled you bury yourself in the
library.
S: [laughter] Right.
R: and do very well...
S: You're rig
S- .. but -ent-. let me just say one thing...
... ::bout the chemistry, a1 thia -- ---nd all that
science and math. In a way I don't regret having..
S: ... finished in chemistry,...
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Anita Spring
S althoughh it probably slowed me down a couple of
years, ct k in terms of anthropology, but, you know, not
more than a year or two. asf~ r htlesha sbi ydujkyi
ufeent fo\matem But the focus on science, the scientific
method, the nature of data collection, the nature of proof, and
then subsequently this quality control business that I just went
through...
UF- YP^ Yes.
S: .-. are things that I think have always put me in good
standing in anthropology. I recall professors at San Francisco
State University, where I went for the master's degree after
those four anthropology courses at Berkeley, commenting on my
papers that they read the first term, [lawht-r] it dissolved
a~tearthb batathat they sounded or te-read like chemistry
experiments.
-"----Oh-' rca!y
a -ay .
S: .. i _n .ke -1 ag... w at that meant is, there was a
clear statement of the problem,..
S: ... there was the methodology laid out' the tfw how
0T
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do {A auE-
you're going to yQ- know--.,-whf.-t=a hrer.. what',the data, and
then there w t au-be-uff on the results. Well, we call ~4the.et
articles at the present time. And... laughterr_
R: Yes. Yes. rlaughteh1 That' right-, that's rght.
S: OK. But it really... the stauf i2gSreally laid ou ...
IL-----------"--^^
S: ... n that methodology.
R+--es .
S: And the methods worked P well for anthropology
papers.
S: ^'A^ I remember writing, ai w. one ahe papers
we- 2*-ma s4 "What is the nature of theory, and the
nature of theory in anthropology?" So-~ r-i mnw,---ad to specify,
4
what is a theory? How does one deal with it?
S: hat is a hypothesis.
j^- Yes.
S: ow does one use data? desi t was all this
very logical..
S: ... treatise with objectives a goals
1-35
Anita Spring
methodologies.and the data and then the results and a
-5
discussion...
RP: Ye .
S. ... tbe-. And so Whas. yattTR, I didn't have to
be taught that..
... within the discipline of anthropology.
R: And some people are never taught that. [laughter]
S: Oh, yes. Indeed...Indeed.
S: So in that sense, I mean, that was very grounde..
S: ... n the scientific methodology, and I just applied
it to anthropology. It always was useful. And then the chemistry
and the math was always useful because of handling qua1ia..
-faF quantitative data in anthropology. n Attd summer
seminar in quantitative anthropology that was funded by the
National Science Foundation,.. I don't know how many applicants
they had, but they took twelve of us, and put us in a mansion in
Williams College in Massachusetts, connected us to the computer
aAA
at Dartmouth, brought in all kinds of interesting people. There
were, I think, five instructors for twelve students--really quite
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amazing.
s.
6 2Andbr)ught in guests like George Peter Murdock, for
god's sake,...
R: Gosh.
S: ... and so forth.
R-.---"Te-s.
S: And-...
S: __ gave us, .yrndow, early training TiT predat-
k7-- 4flg:-
reast a lot of the early computer. They taught us programming,
a--!littl- bit of programming-, ...
S: ... a-nd- that ind of stuff-M I remem... Jack
Roberts (J n ohn Robertswas one of the people involved in getting
that grant. And -tg .really keen on having somebody
coming out of a background in chemistry and math.
S: And, you ]kow, -rt using tedet in the service
of social science, so that really was intriguing.
R: Yes. So you a-tley. .. I- Lfea, Iyi-1- j-lly feel, to a
large extent, that background gave you a...
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Anita Spring 1-38
R: ... huge advantage...
R: ...to get into that...
S: It did.
R; .- h' t .
S: And it still does.
R, ... program, which io wondeliful.
S Well, that... yes, thai- prgrm t-no_
R: That MFI must have been a terribly enriching
thing. To have come from a scientific background, get exposure to
the anthropological field like that, and you had done your Washoe
work prior to the...
S_^- What waa d of thLt Yes, I think, i '
~etZ-- -.... .-= t1rnei off, then backor]
R: -j3--. 'r ba.k. And you h-I said for the
first year, anyway, that your teachers at San Francisco State
were thrilled because your papers read like chemistry
experiments, but you had indicated that it didn't last. And I
just ...
R: wondered what you meant? [
R: wondered what you meant? [j.lgh*ea .
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S: Well, I... they were a little cut and dry,..
------ as chemistry experiments can be. Whereas,
anthropology I don't really think is so cut and dry.
R: Right.
Rf. So what it really did was sort of evolve into more the
anthropological style..
S 7, of writing....
*
End of Side 1, Beginning of Side 2
*
-. TheT-e only open till f-ive.
R No, we doI' Wc' e finL.
R: a We're back.
S: So the language of science is parsimony.
R: Right.
S: anthropology is a social science, and I
sometimes wish my colleagues would be a little bit more
parsimonious. [laughter] But it really was a transition t
SA
1-39
Anita Spring
outline form. But, 7 qtiW, when you're really writing up a
scientific experiment, you're really very direct. I mean, there's
no chitchat in it.
R: Right.
S: And when you're doing an ethnography and when you're,
E _-ii- expounding on a theory in anthropology enamethig,
S it conilhd h'ave thi rcndlition., it could be tha- way,
we could look at it that ~L 's not as parsimonious i___:st;a --
I-t.-i.- presentation. That's Ighh 1 T...-. E1itt It's not that 14-
& didn't last. The methodology lasted, but I kind of evolved
into a more anthropological style.
R: Right.
S: And, well, of course, I was reading, y~aUk w, and
taking all mumnow historyrpd theory and 3t=fe
ethnography classes ... T
S c.-~.. nd methods classes and so forth. And so I was
beting- immPering myEslf. -.I ws immersing myself in the
anthropological literature, and I began, like all students, I
1-40
think, in discipline to think and write like the astaf I was
reading.
R: Yes. Yes.
S: So it's an evolution from that other style.
R: Now, writing up... and you made this point, also, about
writing up archaeology reports is more consistent with a
scientific approach
S: Well, yes, because, see, when I first started, I was
very interested in archaeology,'..
S -: z-nd I- --iy 2frcsi Led-a. museology. Yeunw, Fhere
was a small museum, the adetJ ana [sp-] Museum of
Anthropology..
:.- .-. at San Francisco State. It wasn't called that then,
because yn Tgia-was the head of the department and very
much alive when I got there. AArdt was only named after him
after he passed away.
R: Yes.
S: But he is the one who directed all the field
excavations that I participated ing because thaf' wahat he did.
He was a California dirt archaeologist. Ytr5w, thought he
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1-41
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was like a god 4laughte-r]-
R-
S: ... at the time.
a Zou know how that is.
R: Yes. Yes.
S: And I dug a California Indian site, a mission site. You
know, he had all these sites going on. And then I got hired to
work in the museum and then eventually to run it.
.. 2Because they really didn't have a staff
y. ,Aa^-fo run it really meant doing a little bit of
curation of the collections and putting up some little exhibits,
like in cases, around the office,..
S -.-.-you know, in the hallways, that kind of thing, .
S: .. and maybe to have a special exhibit every once in a
while.
R: But it was very... I mean, the idea of a... doing an
excavation, too, is very compatible with the scientific method.
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S: Oh, very much so.
: ---oen-.
R: Setting up a problem, doing it, and writing up results.
S: Well... yes, in that form. But the other thing that we
had to do was a tremendous amount of anatomy,
EL--nh, in nhyinal--a
-r-. .2. because, yukuw, at one point I think I could
identify any bone from the body or any fragment thereof between
humans, fowl.
S: .. mammals,
S: ... yo-u know, because all that stuff we handled ,-h
NW really had to know what part of the body it came from and
whether it was human or otherwise.
R: And at the same time you are getting courses... you are
getting steeped in sort of the more theoretical, cultural theory
as well?
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Anita Spring
S: Yes. I had to take, yr6gk w, the standard program -,
m.-. .......
SYes.
ginning with a concentration in archaeology, but a~a-)
thi- y n T ry, history and theory of anthropology,...
c-----. ~ which I took from Diane Lewis .s wh4 after went
to Santa Cruz. She's retired.
R: So you did have an early instructor who was a woman...
S: Yes.
R: ... anthropologist, even though....
S: I had two.
M 7in fact, I had two at San Francisco State. I didn't
have any at Berkeley, although, of course, there were a few.
Laura Nader was there at the time and a few other people. But it
was just the luck of the draw &a-&.
,S -. Z so-4a-fth.'But at San Francisco State, Diane Lewis
was a full faculty member, and I had a course from Bonnie Keller
~6 whom -r.. I thought g was a full faculty
member; I didn't realize she was not.
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Anita Spring
R: Yes.
S: She was some kind
S: ... .diunct-i
S: (And I don't remember any other women there.
R: So at this point... while you're a student at San
Francisco State, at F=-pe--La... do you... are you aware of
any particular barriers to you as a woman in the field?
S: As a woman in the field... yes. Well, cau j.kw, those
archaeologists are....
S: Thks -rwW---thviS a very male-oriented, California
dirt
.-. because you have to really move a lot of dirt, for
one thing. These were big.-you-eno, shell mounds and..
R: Right. Right.
S ... and that ki-nd -ofsf 4 So you really were actually
shoveling a lot. [laughter]
R: Yes. Yes.
S: And I never forget, I put my pick through a skull once,
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Anita Spring 1-46
[laughter] because we were just shoveling and shoveling. Ad-you
knefy So I had to learn how to use the pick and the shovel. And,
of course, the comments from, youkow, the male faculty and male
students. You know, I'm always been a, --a knw& fairly petite
person, so...
S: ... listening to these comments. But- N 1 Tu,
never".i was so naive, I never thought of any of this stuff as
sexist
Right.
S. ... you know, harassment at that time.
R: Right.
S: I was just so happy to be doing it.
R: Right.
S: And people, I guess, weren't bothering me that much
to....
R: So, no, it must have... it sounds like that you kind
of... water off a duck's back...
S: Yes. Yes, well, it's not my fault they're crude people
or making.
*6-^ ../ those kinds of jokes. I'm interested in the topic,
Anita Spring
and...
-it's not my problem that they talk funny like tha
Yt---es.
44: -So there was a lot of that in the archaeology. I do
remember that.San Francisco Statej h l., I do not know this
for certain, because I haven't thought about it ever, but it's my
recollection that there were a significant number of female
students.
R: Yes.
S: And certainly after chemistry...-
-Y-, [ldnter]
S.---I mea ..
S: .. .with, pOow, two... T I-an, youn__.w. By the
time I got to the senior chemistry courses, t-r'T ur .er L_ s
there was me and a couple of Asian women.
R: Yes. I can believe that.
S: And that was it!
R: I can believe that.
S: They were all men. All the professors were men.
R: Yes.
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Anita Spring
S: You know. There were a few more women in the math
classes. I don't remember any female professors.
RPr-c ht. -
S: > at all. The women... the education courses was
woman professor.
S I just thought that's how it was.
R: Yes.
S: OK. So by the time I got to anthropology and, y-htW
walked into a class, and obviously there were other female
students. I don't remember whether they were 20 percent or 40
percent..
S: ---I meanIrHn. struck me as a huge number,...
.7 compared to the rest.
R: Were you picturing yourself at this point as a
professional anthropologist when you're in San Francisco State
with getting a master's degree?
S: ILt.i. I don't think so.
R: Yes.
S: I don't think I knew where I was going at that point.
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R: Right.
S: QK eecausc t-here-w er... _ad I'll tell you the
projects I worked on. There were a number of people who had gone
to San Francisco State University who were doing various things
around the Bay Area as anthropologists, or they were using their
anthropological training--and thee wre only master's degrees
S: .../to work in social serviceso=r whatever they...
archaeology, whatever. So I really thought, we-ll.-. -yu nr w,-I
gq gssi-.w~ ,-fF1 maybe I would do something like that. I
didn't...
de really conceptualize it. I don't believe that I had
the notion that I wanted to be an anthropology professor while I
was getting the master's degree.
R: Right. Right.
S: I don't think I had conceptualized that at all.
R: Right.
S: OK. I did know that I wanted to do fieldwork. And I did
two major projects. The first one was as part of a tri-etht!. 3
this precedes the Washoe.
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Anita Spring
S: The second one was the Washoe.
-- Ye-os.n -
S: e first one was a tri-ethnic study in San Francisco
itself.
R: Now, how did you get recruited for that? 90-was hat
.t.-.-.... .....
r: bOr are we going to get to that?
S: Yes. We'll get to that. Of Anglo... or it's white,
Hispanic, and black welfare populations...
in San Francisco. And the6 e turned on the state
and 9 national 4 discussion about the roles of fathers in
these families. And were people trying to hide their presence?
Was it better for the state to give the money to the women?
Should they terminate payments if a man showed up?
R: Right.
S: I think these'...
S: .. .were very political and politicized issues.
R: Yes.
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Anita Spring
S: Well, I didn't really understand all that stuff at the
time. However,s.
a man named Jim Hi h' rE .. who
was on the faculty, was one of my advisors at San Francisco
State. Z4Ae later became dean of the... i -sschool-
or the program in ethnic studies there. Jd W was a Japanese
American. Anyway, he and his family had been interned during
World War II.
R: Did you know that at the time?
b t._---- .t ..
S-: Yes, I did.
: ---si o2 that was 4 ..
S ..
very.-R casual guy and pretty interesting.
-R : V^ ms _- -- -
S: So I got real involved in the Japanese community.
J ~htd I'd had Japanese roommates and et cetera, et
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Anita Spring 1-52
cetera.
Anyway, he had been asked by sQa .. Fred Schlamp
,a 'and another man whose name escapes me, who were the social
psychologists and sociologists who were working on the project,
if he and his students would do the ethnographic...
R: Oh, what an opportunity.
Se cvt-
S: ... side of it. That was one. 3V;, I had taken a course
and gotten very enamored with the methodology of visual
anthropology. I took the course from John Collier Jr
y w. whose father had been the commissioner of Indian
affairs.
R: That's amazing..
S: John Collier [Jr.] was teaching at the university... at
San Francisco State University. OK. And I cannot recall whether I
was taking the course simultaneously with this field research or
I had just finished the course, but I used the techniques to film
and photograph and map out hotographically the community I did
the black community at Hunter's Point, which was one of...
R: Right. I know....
S: ... the very, you know, down-and-out, I guess, sort of
ghettoized...
Anita Spring
S- area in San Francisco,...
S: ... ery low income, an obvious setting for welfare
families s-p that',..'
S__-.. i .- ut, also, tremendous violence.
S: ... within the community. So....
R: So you went into that community?
S: I went into that community and photographed and got to
know people in the community....
R: Did you do the ethnographic part of it...
S: Yes. Yes.
R: ... as well?
AR: Did you go in as teams, or I mean, how did you feel
safe doing that?
S: I never felt safe, at least at the beginning, until I
met some families. And then I would just go and hang out in their
houses. Of course, I felt safe in their houses.
R: Right.
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S: On the street, I mean, these kids had chains....
R: Yes.
S: I was very gutsy.
R: Yes, you were. I was.., yes.
S: And as I look back at these photographs, somebody like pfut
t walking into... I mean, it's really hard to conceptualizI
almost,...
R: Well, it is.
S: ... a really, rta=k=a w, down-home, urban, heavy-duty,
violent neighborhood. I just did it.
R: Just sailed in, like you assumed....
S: Tha .... L nt, aere was the anthropologist; she was
going to do this stuff.
R: Now, were you coached in any way on how to deal with a
situation that's potentially hostile? I mean, you were in a
potentially hostile...
S: Not really. Not really. See, the other people were
doing Anglo and Hispanic, and it wasn't so hostile! I mean,
it....
R: How did you get picked, or did you pick... I mean....
S: Oh, I probably picked it.
R: You probably....
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Anita Spring 1-55
S: Because I just thought that was... it really
interesting, and...
S: ...l had more interest in the. / black communities.
I don't know; I thought it maybe it was harder. Maybe I picked it
because it was harder.
R: Did you have questionnaires?
S: How did we work? Well, no, we didn't have
questionnaires at all.
R: Yes.
S: We were really using very standard techniques like
participant observation.
R:
A~ 7nd I would actually go... I wanted to do the
photographic techniques of mapping the community, which I did. I
still have thoseeLa-5 o
R: Because it seems to me...
R: ... that the photography adds yet another dimension
that's a potential... I mean, talk about not being able to
Anita Spring
maintain a low profile.
S: Oh, it does.
Anyway, yes. We did the participant observation, L'2 there's no
"we" in the sentence. I did the participant observation in the
households....
R: How did you get there? Would you take a bus?
S: No, I drove.
R: OK. You drove. And then were you concerned about where
you were parking? I mean, these are real real nuts and bolts..
R: ..- questions.
S: Oh, yes.
R: So you'd have to find a place just to park.
S: Yes.
Yes.
R: And you worked that out yourself somehow.
S: Yes.
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S:
R: OK.
S: Yes. So I just drove. I lived in San Francisco;..
S: ? I drove to the neighborhoods; I parked the car.
S: ? started out by taking photographs...
.,Pt_ yes.
S: .. and being on the street.
------es.
2I knocked on people's doors; I tried to meet them.
R: Yes.
S: You know, I realized I was dealing with really a very
different culture.
Very lower-income,..
.. African-American populations. They were very
separate. .
f .- from the rest of... from other populations,...
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Anita Spring
S: from middle-class blacks, from whites, and...
S: .- ahd. f .... And the neighborhood was down and
nasty.
R: Yes.
S: I mean,...
R: So you were able to....
S: ... the housing was substandard, and it was terrible.
R: And you did define a neighborhood.
S: Definitely.
R: Yes.
T Yesieiy.
S: And then I had all kinds of little photographic
techniques within the households and the families. I particularly
focused on one or two families. It was hard to do an entr6e. I do
recall it being very hard,...
R: I would imagine.
S: ... because re wa Lbiun g
jhe I must have been twenty-one or something like that,
and....
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Anita Spring
R: Well, you looked a great deal like.... [laughter]
S: Obviously, looked a great deal like that picture. And,
you know, knocking on people's doors. They just... you know. I
wasn't...
A-.t.
S: ... at all.twl~". e+p ec- -_t a r
R: Right. And that might have been the....
S: YeBn-knrnrh..- but I was very serious.
R: Yes.
S: So I ... h- cwj when tz' ... there's a publication.
I have the publication...
S: .. that's part of the book. I've never been able to
get a copy of the book, but I do have the two chapters.
R: Really? Yes. Yes.
S: I tried to track it down when I came up for tenure and
promotion many years ago. [laughter] Could never get a copy of it
for some reason.
R: So that's quite extraordinary, isn't it, and it's as an
initial student... I mean, a student in ethnographic technique...
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R: ...o actually be in the... in a field like that,...
S: Yes. I a -lly ...
R: ... is really quite....
S: I did not think of it at the time,...
R: Right.
S: ~.F- .. Maybe it... it was just pIsday
naivete.
R: Yes.
S: I do remember the first time this one kid came at me
with chain that I felt fearful.
R: Yes.
S: And I have a picture of him, of course...
S: ... carrying the chain.
K. [laugnter]-
S: [laughterj-
S: I wasn't fearful... that fearful that I didn't take the
photograph! Can you believe it? I mean, what a nut!
R: Yes.
S: You know? Think about it.
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Anita Spring
R: Well, how did you... d3 ia ^- =, h== = y --think
that you got people to cooperate with you because they understood
that this was to be...?
S: No. They didn't know what I was doing.
R: Had no idea.
a.
Right.
S: I just think that the ones who did cooperate with me
thought it was interesting. Didn't know who I was, really.
R: Right.
S: But they didn't see too many people like me coming
there. I wasn't threatening.
R: Right.
S: I would go sit in their houses. I would talk to them.
R: Right.
S: A lot of them were bored. I mean, a lot of people are
really bored, you know? And It/jy [laughter] I think that part of
the reason that anthropologists are accepted in many places is
0-
they re a novelty in and of themselves.
R: Yes.
S: You know, A people M! .1 r~wyo A J may be, you
know, shelling pine nuts. They JAUsit there and chitchat with
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you while they're shelling the pine nuts ...
S: C. it's interesting.
R: Yes.
S: It's as interesting to them as they are to you.
R: Well, and also, you're interested in them,...
S: And you're interested in them.
R: ... which is... yes!
S: Yes. And besides... I mean, they had kids, and maybe
they thought, &tAno ",here was someone who was a student, and
maybe this was a good role model for their kids,...
R: Yes.
.. o all....
R: So you didn't say... you didn't come right out and say,
"I'm collecting this data for blah, blah, blah." You....
S: I probably did.
R: Yes Ye
ro a
R: So they understood it had something to do with welfare,
you think?
S: I think tt t .tfnhya\. Vy no. I think they
understand that it something to do with San Francisco State...
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Anita Spring
.7 and that I was a student there, and I had my...
part of my work for my class was to go talk to people.
R: Now, how often did go? I mean, did you go into the
A
neighborhood? Do you remember?
S: Oh, a lot.
G ~ t.
R: Was this over the course of the semester or...?
S: *4P I don't remember at this point whether it was a
semester or a year.
R: Yes.
S: But it seemed to me that it was at least once or twice
a week.
R: Yes. And what do you remember being the most surprised
by?
S: I managed to eat dinner while flicking off the
cockroaches on this one meal. I'll never forget it.
R: Oh, so you ate...?
S: They invited me.
<',,7?And so I did,...and I'm gCi, "Oh, my god, the table
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has cockroaches on it. I'm going to eat this meal." It tasted
fine.
R: Yes.
S: That was a problem. But so I had to overcome -
R: Yes... well, that's a big one. [laughter] The food is a
big one, because af L ... it is true that if you're
offered...
S: I've now reached the point where I wouldn't do that.
But as a budding anthropologist\ ...
S: ...- thought stuff like that was necessary. Now P\&
"o
to do it or whatever, I don't hesitate.
SitAh~s.
S: 2But at that time..
/ .\s-. thought that was the thing to do.
R: Yes. You had to eat that food. My gosh.
S: Yes.
R: Well, do you remember being surprised by any of the
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conclusions, though, that came out?
S: Oh. Yes, I was surprised by a lot of things in that
householdbgein/ er f ~ag~o/ One Aj4. in particular, I
focused this one household I spent most of my time in. The woman
was blind. And I used to go and sit with her.
s -
/ and watch her interaction with her. fAQ husband
and with the children. Now, she may have accepted me beckWAshe
couldn't see what I looked like.
R: Yes. Yes.
S: And, u Iw,/?this family really welcomed me
into their home.
R: All those signals you don't know you're giving people,
too. You knows.
S: Y
/ it's a whole suite of things,...
A .< isn't it? That's very interesting.
S: They really welcomed me into their home.
R: Yes.
S: I was shocked. The father did a lot of funny things,
like there was a little girl, and I think at one point I realized
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that he kept buying her clothes because he didn't do laundry.
R: Oh.
S: And that I came across in their house a huge pile of.C/ 01
u n there must have been like fifty dresses .AAthat were
all soiled and ripped and everything,...
S: ... because he didn't know how to do laundry or didn't
want to do laundry. So...
R: Right. Right.
S: ~/jNhis.A There were a lot of really unusual kinds
photographs...
S ..-.ae. .
iat's quite...
R: ... that's quite so
S: That they're....
R: So these were black
S: I developed all the
be happy to show you the
mething.
and white? I mean, the....
photographs...
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Anita Spring
\J/ n k OY<5sa
S \ and printed them and used them as Wqar zhz
tests. I had been doing culture and personality studies by this
point, and so I was feeding the photographs back to people and
having them expound on.... I would take these.... A&It one
point I took photographs every five minutes, no matter what was
happening, of things to "AyJ record what tJAA E J/1j/
happened in daily life.
R: Yes. All right.
S: You know, they made that -~ g American Family that
was a million hours filming this one household?
R: Yes. I vaguely recall...
S: Yes. I've never really seen anything like that
S: ut it was in that vein of .
..-. -ase studies, ethnography, and using the
photographic.
S: .. technique. And then also collecting data for this
project.
R: Yes.
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Anita Spring
S: I did manage, as a comparison, to get to some white and
Hispanic households...
S. .in other parts of the city, and they were
completely different.
R: Yes.
at_-
S: It was a different feeling, ypunY, very, &yLA
different kind of scene. And that helped me put that even in
context a bit more. So that was that first project.
R: Yes.
S: And the second one was the Washoe.
R: But that's actually quite a sophisticated project for
student....
S: Well, now that I look back on it....
R: Yes. And when you said you did these photographs where
you were do....
S: Yes. I just had the idea to do all these things. Nobody
was telling me to do them.
R: So this wasn't part of John Collier's....
S: No. He had suggested... W- the mapping .. .eta r~ ,n.
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Anita Spring
S: YeU-nOw, f you read...
S: pick up his book, Visual Anthropology, it's now in
a second or third edition or something, 'I- Lo ~t e
S but anyway, I can probably dig it up here.
R: Yes.
S: I'll do that afterwards. I'll make a list of some of
these things. 6i wt, % b e has all these techniques of /tAbddPhwt
systematic filming, mapping out a community, all those kinds of
things. But in a way that's all theory. You know what I mean?
R: Yes.
S: Theory and methods.
Ye
51 7ou know, you read it in a book and.
S..this and that. But I had the idea that I would do
those. iv. would put them into practice, wlae4- I think students
should have those kinds of ideas.
R: Well, sure.
R: Iut that's really the crux of what we're trying to do
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Anita Spring
here, is really bring -t.. what happens when the theory and
the methods that you get taught in school hits... the rubber hits
the road, so to speak,...
\ S.yR9 .Right.
R: ... in your first field experience.
igh
R: nd does this work, or doesn't it? And if not, why not?
And, ...
g .
-R: ... you know, what happened after that?
S: \thpJ so/a So maybe it's good to look at
that, because that precedes .
Oh es
S: ../ the Washoe
S: And the archaeology stuff, which was in the field,
digging the sites,..
Ye.
S: >. that comes first. The...the welfare study comes
... and then the Washoe stuff comes.
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R: One thing I wanted to ask about the archaeology, and it
just struck me while I was just looking at sort of a
chronology,..
... a very rough chronology of what you've done, was
that if the archaeology.., somehow you didn't find your way...
you did find your way back with your intense interest later in
symbolism,
~L4 .. because material culture... after all, that's what
archaeologists do, is try to reconstruct whole cultures and
people
R: L from these symbols that are left behind 60tLA&ewf
It seems like a lot of archaeologists don't acknowledge it, but
what they're doing is working with symbols.
R:- ... or making symbols....
S: Yes. Oh, and the other thing is that I didn't say
enough about the museum part.
R: Yes. Yes.
S: My first thought was that I would use chemical
Anita Spring 1-72
techniques to preserve artifacts.
R: Oh, great! So that's the bridge.... That's... yes.
S. 0 ....
R: at's wonder....
S: K?
R: es.
S: Th t...
R. Yes
S: ... I tried the laboratory, and then, you know,...
R: Oh, I can see that. That was great.
S: ... that was so boring..
S: d the people were, iukyJw, "It's just a job,
ma' am."
R: Yes.
S: But here was, you know, all these... of the world's
array of artifacts.
Ye
S2. and contemporary crafts and so forth. And so the
idea was to, "uA put things back together again and coat
them with things. I had this idea of, A... well, I
guess plastics were just... /AJ y. A and these clear-coating
Anita Spring 1-73
things, and so I piddled around with tA not very successfully,
bV, 'suo noy\ .. O these emersion baths that you could
preserve things is. I had that..
S: idea.
R: Oh, I can see that.
S: Yes. I had that idea.
R: That's great.
S: And that was fun. And then I got to go to the De Young
Museum...
i/*\ in San Francisco and take anything I wanted--any
thingsY ..
Y
S: .. from their ethnographic collection and bring them
back to the museum. So I took a lot of South Sea stuff and
Eskimo....
R: Now, to what purpose? Fo ?
S: To make exhibits.
R: Oh, to make exhibits. OK.
S: 1-~ didn't want the
"\Of ^Oh!
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jAA These were not on loan. They were just cleaning out
a....
R: So you got to do this? ... basic.... Oh, how great!
S: It was pretty fun.
Y .
S: Yes.
Ye
S: W fi sI really thought that I would do this
museum preservation stuff,..
S: ... a little bit of archaeology.
S:L OK. And then at one point, John Adair fwas a
professor there, and he thought that he would send me to do a
restudy of his Zuni t silversmiths.
R: Whoa! This is at San Francisco State?
S: Right. This is before the.... This...
R: OK.
S: I think it predates the Washoe...
... njust very slightly. And because I had, A"Actdd l
the museum stuff, the chemistry, the archaeology.... Of course,
Anita Spring 1-75
I....
R: How did that come about? I mean, were you taking a
class from him and...?
S:\ Yes,
R:
S: Definitely.
R:
S: d..
R: And you're still looking.., since you're a master's
student, you were looking for a thesis project ....
S: I was looking for thesis, and he.
pqA .7 thought maybe I would do the... his restud.
S': dK / f the Zuni silversmiths.
R: Yes. Yes.
S: And do you remember his more recent... his book? He had
Itlt LooiyoC-A <-(LJC/IL tj&U&l o FMklAun
done the Zuni silversmiths, and then he did.... B! a- a
@o he took me...
S: ... to this woman (I don't recall her name), her house
in San Francisco that was sort of organized sort of as a museum,
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as it were. And she had stuff from the Southwest collections--I
mean, drawers full iti t-tAl
Y
L A were looking a= th-at 1 ktnr- of do an exhibit. I
think I did some of these exhibits. I do have photographs of
these exhibits...
R:_--:-Tes es.
S: ../that I did. And so I did one exhibit on it. a3:
hien I made a trip to New Mexico to meet some Zuni silversmiths,
and I sat in....
R: Did you get money to do this, or you ju t...
^ : W ao-- o .
R: -...you just did it?
S: No. .. .J was not moey attached to that,.han I
was...
S>.. visiting a.... & friend lived there, and I.
S: ... went there and...
R:a-- ps. j t n e r .
S: .?was able to do that.
R: Now, at this point, just to interject here... at this
Anita Spring
point, are your parents going, "What is she doing?" Or are they
.w'o e-
interested in what you're doing, or what ro do they have...?
S: Well... yes, the role of the parents.
R: Yes.
S: [laughter] Well, let's see. For my undergraduate, my
parents had the idea that I needed to pay for a portion of my
education. Let me just say for the record that when I started at
Berkeley, the tuition was one hundred dollars a term!
S: d people could actually make that amount of money
very easily. [laughter]
R: Yes. Yes. Yes.
S: I mean, it's just extraordinary how things have.... -
R: It is extraordinary.
S: I realize toney/sAtyouykAo if we do tke inflation
ftg But nevertheless, you cannot get to a point where you
could easily make a0= ___1 e c"
R: Not to get an education of that quality, if you could
get in for that amount of money
S: Yes. But still, my father, in particular, had this
A s.
notion, because he had... of course, had struggled all his. u
kaew, for his education, that I had to contribute. So I had to
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Anita Spring 1-78
work in the summers, and I had to have a part-time job during the
year, which is why I ran the after school playgrounds and..
S: .:?had the day camp. It wasn't just for fun and games;
it was to...
^-zc
S: ... make money, but...
S: also...
to help pay for col%. -
End of Tape 1
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