The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Page 25
Gerstner is also the person who forced out Professor Walter Masoir shortly before I went back to school and ended up in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. Gerstner had convinced the department to divest itself of its collection of Native American artifacts. Masoir was the only holdout to this politically correct plan, arguing quite reasonably that it makes no more sense to operate a department of anthropology and archaeology without artifacts than it would to operate a department of chemistry without beakers or test tubes.
The artifacts were eventually returned to the tribes who presumably had some claim on them. At least most of them were. It was alleged that a collection of rare and beautiful pots never found its way back to the pueblo to which its designs indicated it belonged. The evidence for this was admittedly weak; namely, a statement by a now deceased resident of that pueblo claiming they never received the pots. And the probative value of that statement was devalued further by the fact that the person it was told to was Walter Masoir, hardly a disinterested party.
As I mentioned, Masoir was gone before I started my studies, but I read his work, talked to students who knew him, and always admired him. Proving that the plan he opposed was at least partially a failure would have
been satisfying. But you probably can guess that vindicating an admired professor was also not the reason I wanted to break in to Rio Grand Lofts. Neither curiosity, revenge, nor vindication incited my illicit intentions. I wanted in to steal some pots.
Watch for news of…
The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy
Coming in Fall 2009 from Dark Oak Mysteries www.darkoakmysteries.com www.orenduff.org
About the Author
Mike Orenduff grew up in a house so close to the Rio Grande that he could Frisbee a flour tortilla into Mexico from his back yard, a practice frowned upon by his mother. Like his protagonist, Hubert Schuze, Oren-duff studied anthropology but never completed a degree in that subject. He did eventually receive a masters degree from the University of New Mexico and a doctorate in mathematical logic from Tulane. While a college professor, he published a number of works with such scintillating titles as A Partially Truth-Functional Modal Calculus. In 1993, Orenduff’s second short story, Slivi, was published in the Sandy River Review. His first story was the grand prize winner in a short-story contest he entered in high school, but he believes he has now tracked down and destroyed all copies of that work. He wrote a regular column for the Bermuda Sun for three years while serving as president of Bermuda College.
He and his wife, the art historian Lai Chew Orenduff, currently split their time between south Georgia and their Greenwich Village pied-aterre which is on the same block as Bernie Rhodenbarr’s fictional Barnaget Books and Carolyn Kaiser’s Poodle Factory. And if you’re not familiar with those two establishments, you aren’t reading enough murder mysteries.