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It all started in 1968 at a pet shop called Fish 'N' Cheeps in New York's Greenwich Village. On the way to a Jimi Hendrix concert, Patricia Wright and her husband dashed into the shop to escape heavy rain. There, a two-pound ball of fur from the Amazon captured their attention. A few weeks and $40 later, this owl monkey became their pet; later on they acquired a female as well.

At the time, next to nothing was known of the social lives of nocturnal owl monkeys in the wild. Driven by intense curiosity about what she was observing in the monkey pair, especially the male Herbie's enthusiastic paternal care when the female Kendra gave birth, Wright decided she would become the first to explore those wild lives. Her memoir High Moon Over The Amazon, published last week, describes how she made that happen.

When I read the book, I was struck by the underlying message. Like many other anthropologists, I had read and taught her work on lemur behavior and conservation in Madagascar, and celebrated her being named a MacArthur "genius" Fellow in 1989. But the back story I hadn't known — the tale of Wright's struggle early on as a single mother without a Ph.D. to be taken seriously by male academics and granting agencies.

It's a story that may speak clearly to students, perhaps most of all to girls and young women who are seized by a fierce desire to observe and help save the natural world.

I enjoyed High Moon for its blend of adventure and science, and for the questions it raises about what credentials are needed to be taken seriously as a scientist. We are primates who love a good story; the power of Wright's story lays in showing how curiosity and persistence are fundamental keys to pursuing a life in science.

So, I invited Pat Wright to join me in conversation about the book via email. I hope you enjoy the exchange.

Fans of the reclusive J.D. Salinger are in their element these days. The writer, who died in 2010, is the subject of a recent documentary and companion biography; there's word that five Salinger works will be published for the first time, starting in 2015; and now, the Morgan Library in New York is showing never-before displayed letters that a 20-something Salinger wrote, from 1941 to 1943, to a young admirer in Toronto.

For Salinger buffs, this is like a glimpse of the holy grail: seven letters and two postcards, mostly typed, two handwritten. Salinger's handwriting is slanted and spiky.

"He's writing quickly. He may have been writing this in a bar," says curator Declan Kiely. "The thing that jumps out at me is the way he forms 'I.' "

In a sea of cursives, Salinger prints his "I" — it looks like the Roman numeral one. He makes a strong vertical line and two horizontals.

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On what the Republican majority in the House wanted to achieve during the recent government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis

What they wanted was the repeal and abolition of Obamacare ... the whole reason that this insurgency took over at the time of the shutdown and at the time of the debt ceiling was over Obamacare. Had it only been about the budget I think it would have been resolvable much earlier on.

And I think the veterans, the establishment so-called, the cocktail-swilling RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] of which I have now become appointed an honorary member by the Tea Party types — if you've been around here you know that this wasn't going to work. If you control one house of Congress you cannot abolish something like Obamacare, no matter how much pressure you apply.

On the reaction to his 2011 column saying it would be counter-constitutional to use a House majority as a governing authority

Negative ... major negative, the same way I've gotten a hugely negative reaction to my opposition to the tactic of some Republicans to shut down the government or threaten to and threaten the debt ceiling over Obamacare. I mean, it's not that I think they are literally anti-constitutional. You can be a blocking element — that is exactly what Madison intended — they liked gridlock. But it's designed for minorities to be able to block, but not for minorities to be able to govern.

On a recent column urging Republicans to give up the shutdown but press the president on the debt ceiling

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