Recently, I received sad news reporting the unexpected death of a former colleague, Dr. D. Michael Warren of Iowa State University. I wanted to convey my sincere condolences to the ISU community upon the loss of this visionary global citizen. After serving in the Peace Corps in Africa, Mike never lost his passion for the Mother Continent. He became an accomplished Africanist, anthropologist and ethnoscientist active in the preservation of all native peoples and their vast stores of knowledge.

Mike possessed a delightfully mischievous, and benign, sense of humor which made being around him a joy. Voltaire wrote “God is a comedian playing to an audience of people afraid to laugh.” Both Mike and God have harvested good seed with his untimely passing. Mike will be buried in the place that honored him as a Chief, a land which would not let him go. And God will now play to someone in the front row who never misses a punch line. Mike, I pour a libation and raise to you this proverb from a Liberian parable: “Laughing breaks trouble.”

Richard A. Nisbett, Ph.D.

University of Oklahoma

Oklahoma City, Okla.