When I graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in anthropology, it was time to go out and do some fieldwork. To an anthropologist this means traveling to exotic places to record the daily lives of strikingly unusual people. So I did that. I put on a three-piece suit and got a job in Providence.

My new position involved driving all over Rhode Island to “develop relationships with other businesses” for my company. This activity got me into every city, town and hamlet in the State of Rhode Island. I was then able to employ the participant/observer technique that is central to cultural anthropology fieldwork. My three-piece camouflage worked perfectly. I’m sure none of the natives had any idea that they had an anthropologist in their midst. I researched every detail, every nuance of their lives—the bizarre foods they ate, the odd form of the English language they spoke in a dozen or more dialects which are almost unintelligible to other Homo sapiens. I surreptitiously acquired this information, and more, over a six-year term.

Since 1982 I have been publishing the results of my fieldwork in the form of “cartoon collections”… My Rhode Island means a lot of different things to me. But, mostly, my Rhode Island is funny.

Don Bousquet, Bonnet Shores, 2003

Don in 1982