Herbert p ginsburg biography of donald

So after this long period of argumentation, and debate, I was better prepared to face critics who said, “Don, I think there really are two species in the collection, and you’ve made a mistake. I think the big ones are one species and the little ones are another species. What do you think about that?” I had already prepared my list of answers before that question even came up. We scientists, even though we think that we live in this ivory tower of truth, have to be prepared for the unanticipated. We have to be prepared to alter our views, to change or ideas, to make major changes in the way we view our own discipline. That was an extremely important learning experience for me. To this day, for example, I strongly believe that we have a pretty good idea of what the human family tree looks like. I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I’ll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.

So you not only have to take a lot of risks, but you really have to force yourself to be open-minded, and not be married to any one way of seeing things.

Donald Johanson: Absolutely.

I am very struck in reading about your achievements over the last 15 years or so, how early they came, relatively speaking, in your career. When did you first realize that you wanted to pursue anthropology? Did someone in particular help pique that interest?

Donald Johanson: In fact, there was one individual who became my mentor very early on. My father died when I was two years old, so I had no strong male image or personality in my life.

As a young boy, at about age eight, I met an anthropologist, who was out walking his dog. He was teaching at a theological seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. And, as I often jokingly say, his dog introduced me to him. And I became introduced because of that to anthropology. Something that probably most of us don’t eve

American poet and writer (1926–1997)

For the American businessman, see Alan Ginsburg. For the serial killer who was born Allen Ginsberg, see William MacDonald (serial killer).

Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.

Best known for his poem "Howl", Ginsberg denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. San Francisco police and US Customs seized copies of "Howl" in 1956, and a subsequent obscenity trial in 1957 attracted widespread publicity due to the poem's language and descriptions of heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made male homosexual acts a crime in every state. The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, asking: "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

Ginsberg was a Buddhist who extensively studied Eastern religious disciplines. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in apartments in New York City's East Village. One of his most influential teachers was Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac S