3 Chapter One Talking about the Weather Radical Critical Empathy and the Reality of Communitas Rory Turner Apocalypse Thatch like a starling’s back endures That fretting weather of the years. A window frames the same intent Slow stare, devoid of sentiment, From century, and cattle break The wattles down for fodder’s sake; Winter by winter, silently, The fox, a slender cemetery, Gains by the gap, implanting in His sightless welps the natural sin. The sequence seems recurrent, tight And tarred against the gimlet tide Of change and challenge; but above Behold the bomber bringing love. —Victor Turner (unpublished poem, date unknown) My parents, Vic and Edie Turner, were remarkable people, and their legacy has been far-reaching. Here, I reflect on two aspects of this legacy, one concerning Edie’s approach to method in ethnography and its relevance to the teaching of anthropology, and one concerning communitas as it emerges in liminality in relation to the challenges of recent turns in political and social life. Linking these reflections is a strange connection, the weather. There is nothing special about this connection, perhaps mere coincidence, but I begin this reflection with the poem above, that seems troublingly prophetic, al- though it may well have been written during the Second World War. The entangled richness and enduring fibers of the scene in the poem, embedded in The Intellectual Legacy of Victor and Edith Turner, edited by Frank A. Salamone, and Marjorie M. Snipes, Lexington Books, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/goucher-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5570891. Created from goucher-ebooks on 2019-01-04 21:41:53. Copyright © 2018. Lexington Books. All rights reserved.