Authors 
Deep ties to the Midwest, especially 
Nebraska, where she was born and 
raised, prompted Marilyn Coffey to 
write a series of essays tracing the his- 
tory of the Great Plains. These essays, 
including “The Dust Storms,” which 
appeared in Natural History , February 
1978, are to form the chapters of a 
forthcoming book, American Gothic. A 
graduate of the University of Nebraska 
with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, 
Coffey is an assistant professor of Eng- 
lish at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and 
the recipient of the University of Ne- 
braska’s Master Alumnus Award for 
distinguished achievement in writing. 
She recently received a Master of Fine 
Arts degree in creative writing from 
Brooklyn College. 
After working for twenty years in 
medical research laboratories, Barbara 
W. Massey entered graduate school in 
1970 at California State University, 
Long Beach, and changed careers. Her 
master’s thesis project was a study of the 
breeding biology of the California least 
tern. This bird, along with another en- 
dangered species — the light-footed clap- 
per rail — has been the focus of her re- 
search during the past decade. A third 
pursuit, which she tries to fit into her 
schedule, is the study of the vocaliza- 
tions and behavior of all species of the 
small Sterna terns. Massey is also a 
biological consultant in ornithology to 
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the 
California State Fish and Game Com- 
mission, the U.S. Bureau of Land Man- 
agement, and the U.S. Army Corps of 
Engineers. 
'*1t 
During the winter of 1972-73, when 
John P. Bryant was living in bush 
Alaska, he had the opportunity to ob- 
serve a “particularly dramatic oscilla- 
tion of the snowshoe hare population.” 
Since that time, his research has concen- 
trated on why hare populations do not 
recover as rapidly after a crash as do the 
severely browsed plants on which they 
feed. Bryant is currently a doctoral can- 
didate at the University of Alaska in 
Fairbanks and a research associate at 
the university’s Institute of Arctic Biol- 
ogy. When not observing hares, dog 
sledding, or building his log home, he 
enjoys traveling to more tropical climes 
to watch reef fish — “a nice break from 
the Alaskan winter.” 
Physical anthropologist Charles A. 
Weitz became involved in studying peo- 
ple who live at high altitudes when he 
was invited as a graduate student to 
participate in a research project in 
Nunoa, Peru. Having long felt an enthu- 
siasm for south Asian cultures, Weitz 
later did fieldwork among the Sherpas 
in the Khumbu region of Nepal. His 
most recent research, in the Peshawar 
Basin of northwestern Pakistan, con- 
cerns the demographic and epidemi- 
ological changes caused by the introduc- 
tion of irrigated agriculture. Weitz has 
been an assistant professor of anthropol- 
ogy at Temple University in Philadel- 
phia since 1974. 
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