University of Arizona anthropologist and historian Thomas Sheridan is the author of Arizona: A History. Before participating in a panel on Arizona history’s impact on the state today, he sat down in the green room to talk about horses, the Southwest-and the time he was crucified.
Q. When and why did you last laugh?
A. When somebody asked me a question like that.
Q. What desert plant or animal best embodies your personality?
A. [Laughs.] I have a special affinity for the horned lizard-I really like horned lizards. I don’t know if it embodies my personality or not; I just feel kind of a bond with them.
Q. What teacher or professor, if any, changed your life?
A. I went to Brophy, a Jesuit high school in Phoenix. I had some great young teachers who were Jesuit scholastics at the time-people like Nick Weber, who started his own circus. Most of them aren’t Jesuits anymore. This was in the late 1960s, and they really pried our minds open.
Q. If you could live anywhere else in the world, where would you want to be?
A. It would have to be somewhere else in the West. I love the Northwest, but I don’t think I could take the rain. I really like New Mexico-in part because it doesn’t have Phoenix, so there’s fewer people out in the countryside. I’m definitely a westerner and a borderlander. I love living near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Q. What’s your beard care regimen?
A. Not much, as my wife will tell you. My hair stylist is a roper, and I get in to see her far less often than I should, but she trims it, and that’s about it.
Q. Where would we find you at 10:00 a.m. on a typical Saturday?
A. Either riding-we have three horses, and I do, or at least I did, three-day eventing (a horse triathlon where you do dressage, stadium jumping, and cross-country jumping on the same horse)-or mountain biking with my wife. I don’t drink anymore, so I’m no longer hungover at 10:00 on Saturday morning.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. Horses. I tell people who are thinking about buying a horse to imagine an outdoor oven you shovel money into to keep the flames going.
Q. What is the most unusual time, place, or situation that you came up with a brilliant idea?
A. I don’t know if I came up with any brilliant idea, but when I was living in Sonora doing research for my dissertation in anthropology, they actually crucified me. So sitting there, swaying on the cross, was definitely the most unusual place I’ve ever been.
Q. What’s underrated?
A. Sticking with something.
Q. Who’s the last person who asked you for advice?
A. Probably some of my students. I’ve got lots of graduate students, and I don’t know if the advice I give them is any good.
*Photo by Kevin Brost.