Ralph Nader, America’s most renowned consumer rights crusader, closed Lawrence University’s celebration of Earth Week with the address “The Great Conversion: Environmentalism over Corporatism.” The Appleton Post-Crescent wrote a nice story about the visit and posted a video of Maureen Wallenfang’s interview with Nader.
Lawrence University sophomore Daniel O’Connor and senior Susanna Valleau earned first-and second-place honors, respectively, at the recent Young Artists Organ Competition conducted at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minn.
The competition was co-sponsored by the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and the Schubert Club of St. Paul.
O’Connor, an organ performance and economics major from Dallas, Texas, received $1,500 for his winning performance, that included a 40-minute audition of five works. His repertoire featured the Bach works “Toccata in D minor ‘Dorian’” and “Chorale Prelude on Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele,” Gaston Litaize’s “Prelude et Danse Fuguee,” “Organ Sonata No. 11 in D minor” by Joseph Rheinberger and the hymn “Were you there?”
Valleau, an organ performance major from Andover, Mass., was awarded $900 for her second-place honor. Her program also included Bach’s “Dorian,” as well as his “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” Felix Mendelssohn’s “Sonata in A Major,” “Joies” by Jehan Alain and the hymn “Cwm Rhondda” by John Hughes.
O’Connor and Valleau are students of university organist Kathrine Handford.
Artist Jerilea Zempel, who has created sculptures using dung, discusses her work in the address “Art and the Environment” Thursday, April 22 at 4:30 p.m. in the Wriston Art Center auditorium as part of Lawrence University’s 2009-2010 Visiting Artist Series.
The presentation, part of Green Roots’ celebration of Earth Week, is free and open to the public.
Zempel is known for uniquely integrating objects she has found in the U.S. and Europe into her art. In an attempt to alter their identities, Zempel covers ordinary objects such as cars or guns with unusual materials such as knit or crocheted yarn. One of her art pieces features a Russian tank covered with crocheted webbing and crocheted flowers.
Her installation “Laws of Nature” includes more than 35 guns covered with domestic materials such as lipstick or cornmeal. Incorporating the environment into her artwork, Zempel created outdoor replicas of master sculptors by using a more natural material — horse manure. The works were constructed with the hope that they would eventually decompose into the ground.
Along with her site-specific projects, Zempel has exhibited her work in New York galleries and museums. The recipient of numerous grants for her work, Zempel teaches at New York City’s Fordham University.
Governmental policy-making processes — national and global — will be examined in Lawrence University’s 2010 Povolny Lecture Series in International Studies “The Climate for Climate Change.”
George Wyeth, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Policy and Program Change Division, opens the three-part series Tuesday, April 20 at 7 p.m. in Thomas Steitz Science Hall 102 with the address “Change Isn’t Easy: An Inside Perspective.”
The presentation, part of Green Roots’ celebration of Earth Week, is free and open to the public.
A 1973 Lawrence graduate, Wyeth is spending Term III as Lawrence’s Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Visiting Professor in the government department, where he is team-teaching the class “Environmental Politics” with professor emeritus Chong-do Hah.
The Scarff Memorial Visiting Professorship was established in 1989 by Edward and Nancy Scarff in memory of their son, Stephen, a member of the Lawrence class of 1975, who died in an automobile accident in 1984. It brings civic leaders and scholars to Lawrence to provide broad perspectives on the central issues of the day.
Swept into office on the promise of change, President Obama has found that promise difficult to fulfill, even with the advantage of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Wyeth offers first-hand perspective from inside the EPA on how change efforts have progressed under President Obama, where change has or hasn’t occurred and what barriers have stifled change.
He also will discuss the gradual decay of the process for orderly transition from one administration to the next and its consequences for effective government.
At the EPA, Wyeth tests and promotes innovative approaches to environmental protection within the EPA, states and business as the county transitions to a “green economy.” He has played a lead role in overseeing the use of Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma strategies to achieve environmental improvement, streamlined EPA’s administrative processes and developed agency strategies to promote the use of sustainable products.
After graduating from Lawrence with a bachelor’s degree in government, Wyeth earned a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley and a law degree from Yale Law School.
Prior to joining the EPA in 1989, Wyeth spent three years as a staff member in the Wisconsin State legislature working with the Joint Finance Committee and practiced law from 1982-89 with a Minneapolis law firm.
Joining Wyeth on this year’s series are:
• Yoram Bauman, professor of economics at the University of Washington and a touring “stand-up” economist, “Comedy, Economics and Climate Change,” Monday, April 26, 7 p.m.
• Lee Paddock, associate dean for environmental studies and professorial lecturer in law at George Washington University Law School, “Environmental Change: A Legal Perspective” Monday, May 10, 7 p.m.
“The Climate for Climate Change” lecture series is sponsored by the Mojmir Povolny Lectureship in International Studies. Named in honor of long-time Lawrence government professor Mojmir Povolny, the lectureship promotes interest and discussion on issues of moral significance and ethical dimensions.
In collaboration with Green Roots’ Earth Week celebration, award-winning author and cultural historian Rebecca Solnit presents “Swimming Upstream in History: Hope, Disaster, Utopia” April 20 at 11:10 a.m. as part of Lawrence University’s 2009-10 convocation series.
Solnit’s address in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, 520 E. College Ave., will be followed by a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. Both events are free and open to the public.
An activist for ecological and human rights issues, Solnit is the author of 12 books, among them “Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities,” “Wanderlust: A History of Walking” and 2004’s “River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West,” a historical tour de force that has been hailed as one of the best books of the past decade.
In her most recent book, 2009’s “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster,” Solnit offers an investigation of human emotion in the face of catastrophe. She explore the common citizen responses of empathy, spontaneous altruism and mutual aid, which turn out to be more typical than the conventional perception of violence and selfishness, in the face of such disasters as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina.
A contributing editor at Orion Magazine, the San Francisco-based Solnit has been recognized with two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction. She has been awarded grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Solnit serves as contributing editor to Harper’s magazine and writes for the “London Review of Books” and the political website Tomdispatch.com.
David Hawkanson, executive director of Chicago’s award-winning Steppenwolf Theatre, discusses the challenges facing arts organizations and his efforts to strengthen the arts in urban communities Monday, April 19 at 4:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center.
A 1969 graduate of Lawrence, Hawkanson presents “The Business of the Arts: How a Non-profit Arts Organization Navigates the Business and Government Sectors.” The event is free and open to the public.
Hawkanson has spent more than 35 years in arts management, including the past seven as executive director at Steppenwolf Theatre. In 2008, Steppenwolf’s production “August Osage County” won four Tony Awards, including Best Play.
Prior to joining Steppenwolf Theatre, Hawkanson spent six years as managing director of Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater. His distinguished career includes positions as managing director at the Hartford Stage Company, which received a special Tony Award for outstanding achievement in regional theatre during his tenure and managerial posts with the Arizona Theater Company and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater.
Hawkanson also has served as artistic advisor to the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, a program committee member for the National Arts Stabilization Fund and a panelist and advisor to both the Ford Foundation’s Working Capital Fund and the Minneapolis Foundation’s Working Capital Reserve Fund. He is a former senior staff member at the National Endowment for the Arts and a former chairman and panelist for the theatre program of the NEA.
Lawrence University Musical Production, in conjunction with the Lawrence Theatre Arts department, presents “Hope/Who’s Waldo,” two one-act musicals presented within a single show.
The musical will be performed Friday, April 16 at 8 p.m. and Saturday April 17 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Lawrence’s Cloak Theatre in the Music-Drama Center, 420 E. College Ave., Appleton. Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for senior citizens and students, are available at the Lawrence Box Office, 920-832-6749.
The new work written by senior Nikko Benson with stage direction by junior Andi Rudd, explores opposite ends of the musical theatre spectrum.
“Hope,” the first half of the show, follows the struggles of a group of refugees as they attempt to escape a genocidal government. Removed from any specific historical or cultural context, the story explores the darkness of the human experience, calling into question the purpose of hope itself.
“Who’s Waldo,” is a contrastingly lighthearted story about the title character. An amnesiac, Waldo embarks on a journey of self-discovery as he travels the world of classic literature, meeting other characters along the way.
As the second half of the musical, “Who’s Waldo” raises the question of comedy’s role and placement in a production. The story wants the audience to wonder whether comedy exists to help us forget tragedy or to give us the hope we need in order to face it.
For someone who is not a composition major, Lawrence University senior Garth Neustadter keeps drawing attention for his scoring talents.
Neustadter added to a growing list of honors by being named one of 37 national winners of the 2010 ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.
Established in 1979, the program grants cash prizes to young concert music composers up to 30 years of age whose works are selected through a juried national competition. This year’s competition attracted 730 submissions.
Neustadter submitted a 15-minute composition written for full orchestra and choir based on a Spanish text entitled “Oh llama de amor viva.”
“It’s an incredible honor to be recognized with this award,” said Neustadter, a violin and voice performance major from Manitowoc. “In addition to the score, the judges were particularly impressed with the recording, which featured members of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir. That serves as a testament to the high level of music-making going on in the Lawrence community.”
Neustadter and the other winning composers will be recognized at the annual ASCAP Concert Music Awards at The Times Center in New York on May 27.
The award is named in honor of Morton Gould, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who served as president of ASCAP and the ASCAP Foundation from 1986-1994. An eminent and versatile American composer, Gould was a child prodigy whose first composition was published when he was only six years old. To honor Gould’s lifelong commitment to encouraging young creators, the annual ASCAP Foundation Young Composer program was dedicated to his memory following his death in 1996.
This is just the latest triumph for Neustadter. In 2007, he earned first-prize honors (second place behind the grand prize winner) in the Young Film Composers Competition sponsored by Turner Classic Movies. In 2008, he was commissioned by TCM to write an original score for a restored version of the 1923 silent film “The White Sister.” He also earned four Downbeat Awards, including two for composition, while in high school.
He is currently writing a score for a documentary on the life of John Muir for Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and 1972 Lawrence graduate Catherine Tatge. The film is scheduled to air on the National Public Television series “American Masters” in April 2011.
“Garth never ceases to amaze us with his stunning array of accomplishments,” said Fred Sturm, Neustadter’s faculty composition mentor and honors project advisor. “The national recognition he’s garnered with the awards he has won as a composer sometimes veils the fact that Garth is an equally talented violinist, saxophonist and singer. And despite all of the accolades he has earned, he remains a respectful, humble and solidly grounded individual. We’re enormously proud of him.”
Neustadter will share in a $45,000 prize fund with the other Gould winners and receive music notation and production software from Sibelius Music, the competition’s sponsor.
Lawrence University, co-sponsor of the annual Fox Cities Book Festival, will host five events during the third annual celebration that runs Sunday, April 11 through Sunday, April 18. More than 60 presentations by 48 authors, including two Lawrence faculty members, are planned throughout the Fox Cities during the eight-day festival.
David McGlynn, assistant professor of English at Lawrence and author of the 2008 short story collection “The End of the Straight and Narrow,” will participate in the panel presentation “How to Get Published” Saturday, April 17 at 1 p.m. in the Appleton Public Library.
Helen Boyd, lecturer in gender studies at Lawrence, discusses her two books, “My Husband Betty” and “She’s Not the Man I Married,” Monday, April 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Harmony Cafe in downtown Appleton.
Award-winning writer Jane Hamilton, author of “The Book of Ruth,” which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction and “A Map of the World,” a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, presents “The Journey from ‘Domestic Fiction’ to Comedy” Friday, April 16 at 8 p.m. in Stansbury Theatre.
Other book festival events being held on campus include:
• “Aama’s Journey” by Broughton Coburn, Tuesday, April 13 at 7 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema.
• “Principles of Reading, Principles of Writing,” by Bishop Robert Morneau of the Green Bay diocese, Friday, April 16 at 6 p.m. in Stansbury Theatre.
•. “Logomaniacs,” a theatric performance by students from the Renaissance School of the Arts, Saturday, April 17 at 12:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema.
• “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by Wisconsin native David Wroblewski, Saturday, April 17 at 5 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.
All of the above events are free and open to the public.
Former U.S. Ambassador to India and U.S. Treasury official David Mulford discusses the state of the world economy Tuesday, April 13 in an address at Lawrence University.
Mulford will examine the ongoing economic and financial crisis in the major industrial countries and its lingering effect on the global economy at 1:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. The event is free and open to the public.
A 1959 graduate of Lawrence, Mulford was appointed Ambassador to India in 2004 by President Bush and served until February 2009. He joined the U.S. State Department after spending 11 years as chairman international of the London-based banking firm Credit Suisse First Boston, where he directed worldwide, large-scale privatization business and other corporate and government advisory assignments.
Since leaving his ambassador’s post, Mulford has returned to Credit Suisse in London as vice chairman of the bank’s international division.
Prior to his ambassadorial appointment, Mulford served in public service as a senior international economic policy official in the U.S. Treasury Department under Secretaries Donald Regan, James Baker and Nicholas Brady.
His financial experience also includes eight years as managing director and head of international finance at the Boston-based investment bank White, Weld & Co., Inc. In 1974, he was named senior investment advisor to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), where he oversaw the management and development of investment programs of Saudi oil revenues until 1983.
His work in both the public and private sectors has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including the Legion d’Honneur presented by the president of France, the Alexander Hamilton Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Secretary of the Treasury in recognition of extraordinary service and benefit to the Treasury Department and the nation, the Order of May for Merit from the president of Argentina and The Officer’s Cross of the Medal of Merit presented by the president of Poland.
After earning his bachelor’s degree in economics from Lawrence, Mulford earned a master’s degree in political science from Boston University and a Ph.D. from Oxford University. Lawrence recognized him with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1984. A football and basketball standout as an undergraduate, Mulford also was inducted into Lawrence’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000.
