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(09/17/10 9:15pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Enormously humane and generous.”Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells.From 1938 until 1962, Wells was University president. During that time IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and population that make it what it is today.“He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”Wells led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship.But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells for which he never accepted a salary.He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March 2000, the man who transformed IU passed away in his home at the age of 97.But IU still feels the effect of its 11th president.By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said.Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.”A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union and in various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze statue of Wells is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. IU’s main library is named after him, and in fall 2007, a bust of Wells was dedicated in the library’s entrance.From student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU.“He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it.Wells was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand.“Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become someday,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1938, the entire IU-Bloomington campus laid between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls, the Union and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there — north of 10th and east of Jordan.”Various buildings Wells planned as IU president remain standing, including the IU Auditorium.“He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do, and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a “University community,” as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’s main library, IU Art Museum and the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, along with the auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University.“I think by building the auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.Dance groups, singers, poets and operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to bring the world to IU.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits.“In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.”But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired.“I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said.While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropy and the student press.“He valued everyone who worked at the University, from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor, and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could grow.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.” Originally published in Orienter: June 5, 2008
(06/10/10 5:42pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jun. 15, 2009 – “Enormously humane and generous.”Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells.From 1938 until 1962, Wells served as University president. During his 25-year presidency, IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and student population that make it what it is today.“He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”The legendary man of the IU campus led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship.But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells. He never accepted a salary for the position.He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March of 2000, the man who transformed IU into the institution it is today passed away quietly in his home at the age of 97.But IU still feels the impact of its 11th president.By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said.Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.”A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union, along with various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze Wells statue is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. His constant memory and influence is still felt today by many at the University. IU’s main library is named after him, and in the fall of 2007, a bust of him was dedicated in the library’s entrance.Student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU.“He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it.Trustees critcized Wells for this action, and he was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand.“Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become some day,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1937, the entire IU-Bloomington campus lay between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls (only four at the time), the IMU and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there — north of 10th and east of Jordan.”One of the buildings Wells planned as President, the IU Auditorium, remains standing, among others.“He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a University community, as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’ main library, IU Art Museum and School of Fine Arts, along with the auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University.“I think by building the auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.For the first couple of years, spectacular dance groups, singers, poets and Metropolitan operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to transform IU into a family.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits.“In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.”But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired.“I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said.While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropic causes and the student press.“He valued everyone who worked at the University – from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor – and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could do so.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.”
(03/30/10 11:41pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Enormously humane and generous."Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells.From 1938 until 1962, Wells was University president. During that time IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and population that make it what it is today.“He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”Wells led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship.But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells for which he never accepted a salary.He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March 2000, the man who transformed IU passed away in his home at the age of 97.But IU still feels the effect of its 11th president.By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said.Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.”A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union and in various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze statue of Wells is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. IU’s main library is named after him, and in fall 2007, a bust of Wells was dedicated in the library’s entrance.From student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU.“He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it.Wells was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand.“Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become someday,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1938, the entire IU-Bloomington campus laid between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls, the Union and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there — north of 10th and east of Jordan.”Various buildings Wells planned as IU president remain standing, including the IU Auditorium.“He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do, and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a “University community,” as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’s main library, IU Art Museum and the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, along with the auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University.“I think by building the auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.Dance groups, singers, poets and operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to bring the world to IU.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits.“In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.”But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired.“I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said.While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropy and the student press.“He valued everyone who worked at the University, from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor, and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could grow.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.” Originally published in Orienter: June 5, 2008
(06/16/09 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Enormously humane and generous.”Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells.From 1938 until 1962, Wells served as University president. During his 25-year presidency, IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and student population that make it what it is today.“He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”The legendary man of the IU campus led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship.But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells. He never accepted a salary for the position.He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March of 2000, the man who transformed IU into the institution it is today passed away quietly in his home at the age of 97.But IU still feels the impact of its 11th president.By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said.Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.”A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union, along with various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze Wells statue is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. His constant memory and influence is still felt today by many at the University. IU’s main library is named after him, and in the fall of 2007, a bust of him was dedicated in the library’s entrance.From student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU.“He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it.Trustees critcized Wells for this action, and he was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand.“Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become some day,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1937, the entire IU-Bloomington campus lay between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls (only four at the time), the IMU and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there – north of 10th and east of Jordan.”One of the buildings Wells planned as President, the IU Auditorium, remains standing, among others.“He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a University community, as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’ main library, IU Art Museum and School of Fine Arts, along with the auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University.“I think by building the auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.For the first couple of years, spectacular dance groups, singers, poets and Metropolitan operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to transform IU into a family.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits.“In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.”But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired.“I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said.While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropic causes and the student press.“He valued everyone who worked at the University – from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor – and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could do so.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.”
(11/10/08 3:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Senior Michael Sanserino said he hopes he can continue to evolve and improve the Indiana Daily Student, and although he knows everything he wants to accomplish won’t happen in one semester, he wants to at least “plant seeds” to continue growth at the IDS. The IU Student Media Board announced Friday that Sanserino will take the reigns as the spring 2009 editor-in-chief of the IDS.“Michael was a candidate who brought significant newsroom experience,” said Ron Johnson, director of IU Student Media. “He’s very realistic in what the IDS can accomplish and improve.”Sanserino, who is currently one of the IDS’ two managing editors, ran for the position unopposed. “Just because I am running unopposed doesn’t mean I’m unresponsive,” he said during his public interview. “I will be accountable to readers and respond to them.”The IU Student Media Board consists of 11 members, with representatives from the IDS, Arbutus yearbook and the IU Student Association, along with professional journalists. During the selection interview, Sanserino said he hopes to rework the IDS Web site to ensure it is constantly being updated throughout the day to give readers a reason to come back. In addition, Sanserino said he would like to foster an atmosphere that allows for more teaching so all staff members can continue to learn and improve.He said he is excited to lead a group of people in whom he has a lot of faith.“I don’t foresee any big changes, but we can always improve on what we do,” he said. “We’re never going to be perfect, but that should always be our goal.”Sanserino said one of his goals is to find a balance between what people want to know and what people need to know for the front page of the newspaper. “I want people to think big and see the forest from the trees, to see the investigations we’re missing,” Sanserino said. “Is what we’re reporting in the paper the best thing for our readers?”Another one of Sanserino’s goals is to “plant seeds” to bring diversity of opinions and backgrounds into the newsroom. “I want to try to get a better sense of the pulse on campus,” Sanserino said. He plans to do this by meeting with campus leaders and asking them to evaluate the IDS’ job and what the newspaper can do better, while also gathering a better sense of what the jobs of other campus leaders are like.Current IDS managing editor Sara Amato said she’s confident he will continue to evolve the IDS Web site. “He’s got a really strong head on his shoulders,” she said. “He has a clear vision in that he knows what he wants to do.”Johnson said Sanserino’s realistic approach to what the IDS can accomplish is a vision that will transcend the spring semester.“He’s demonstrated a mature and thoughtful management approach that shows great promise for him as EIC,” Johnson said.
(09/25/08 3:55am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Who is junior Jenny Kim? She’s a girl who loves scarves, who loves to laugh and who listens to every type of musical genre – pop is her guilty pleasure. But if she’s not wandering around with a scarf on in July or hanging out with her friends or singing along to the radio, she’s in the Jacobs School of Music, belting out her classical music tunes.Though she’s a singer, Kim says she doesn’t sing in the shower. Kim has been perfecting her opera skills for almost three years. She’s always loved singing, even as a child growing up in South Korea. As a vocal performance major, Kim’s concentration is in classical music or opera. “I fell in love with classical because it’s a different type of feeling,” she said. She also explained that a person is given the vocal cords they have, and her voice is best suited and expressed through classical music, she said.“That’s the voice I have,” Kim said, explaining that she is a soprano coloratura. Her passion for singing came naturally. Her father is known in Korea as a famous actor and her mother is a pianist. “I guess you can say it runs in the blood,” Kim said. Her first memory of singing came when she was in second grade competing in a Korean singing competition, where she won first place.“It makes you feel so alive,” she said. “I could be doing other things, but I’d rather be doing this more than anything else. ... It’s unexplainable.”When her dad’s fame began to hurt her and her brother, she moved to Long Island, from South Korea with her mother in fifth grade. It was in Long Island that she began studying classical music. In her junior year of high school, Kim said she studied once a week at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege, working to strengthen her singing skills in classical music. She knew her vision, she said, and what she wanted to do. But it’s not just her voice that drew her to classical music. Kim said she loves it because instead of just singing a song, she has to sit down and really work at it.“People can just pick up and sing a Britney Spears song,” she said. “But classical music isn’t like that.”The behind the scenes of understanding and learning the music given to her is what Kim likes best. She also needs to know many languages in order to be able to sing the songs given to her. Besides English and Korean, Kim knows Italian, French and German.Kim just finished her auditions for some of the upcoming IU operas, but she also belongs to two choruses on campus: U. Choral and U. Singers. After she graduates, Kim said she wishes that she will be able to perform for as long as she can.For Kim, performing won’t be a problem. She said she hasn’t ever experienced stage fright.“It’s weird; I should, but I get excited,” she said. “It’s more of an adrenaline rush for me. I get ecstatic and want to share what I feel.”Her good friend junior Eric Mowery can understand this feeling. Last year, he and Kim became friends in the chorus for “Suzanna,” and they hit it off.“Before I knew her, I thought she was a grad student,” Mowery said. “She’s such a people person. I’ve told my friend at home that she is one of the most charismatic people I’ve met.”Mowery said that both him and Kim share obnoxious laughs, which is how they found each other in the choir.“You can hear her a mile away,” he said. Many other students in the Jacobs School work hard, just like Kim, to continue perfecting their skills. Mowery said there is no doubt that everyone who is in the school deserves to be there.“I can’t wait to see where everyone goes,” he said, reflecting on the school’s talent.But no matter what she is singing, Kim said she just wants to, at the end of the day, be able to touch people with what she sings.“I believe people heal through music,” she said. “Convey to the audience what you’re singing about and let the audience glimpse the emotional side of music. As long as I can share the gift of music, I’m happy at the end of the day delivering that to someone.”
(09/09/08 4:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The audience laughed, cheered and clapped for best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert on Monday night in the IU Auditorium. The mostly female crowd came to hear the renowned writer speak about her writing experiences. A majority of the audience had already read her acclaimed novel “Eat, Pray, Love,” which chronicles Gilbert’s trip around the world after a divorce. Others in the audience were in the middle of or almost done with the memoir.“I really don’t read many books,” junior Katie Krieg said. But after she read Gilbert’s novel during spring break, she absolutely loved the writer. “I thought of how much I’d love to meet her,” she said. Krieg said she wanted to see Gilbert in person to learn more about her – besides what she knew already from what she read in the memoir.“Her personality was a lot of what I assumed would be from the book,” she said. “She is inspiring; she knows herself well and respects herself.”Gilbert joked with the audience while seriously examining the role of the writer in society. She explained ever since the Renaissance, people commonly have associated writers with “struggle,” whether that be an addiction or a madness.“There’s this assumption that people who chose a path of creativity will suffer,” Gilbert said, noting that this notion is not true. She argued writers go mad because they try to “create divine euphoria by artificial means,” other than what comes naturally through inspiration. “Be prepared to take inspiration when it comes,” Gilbert said. “My plea to you tonight is to work hard to be sane.”Gilbert said writers and artists need to reach out to their inspiration. “Every once in a while I do catch it by the tail,” Gilbert said. “It’s the closest I’ve come to the divine. It’s my favorite thing.”Gilbert explained that so many writers who work hard often don’t get the work they want done because they struggle with staying sane and letting inspiration come to them.“When work doesn’t get done, it is lost or missed,” Gilbert said, explaining that if someone doesn’t have the time to complete a project, it might be done by someone else.Gilbert advised everyone not to let fear prevent any inspiration from being created. “Every piece of work I’ve known creates me,” Gilbert said.Sophomore Sarah Epplin is currently half-way through “Eat, Pray, Love,” and said she loves the book because Gilbert writes with such ease – it is as if she is talking to every reader like a close and dear friend.“It’s a good thing for a writer to do because it’s humanizing the audience,” Epplin said. “In general, I feel like she is a really great mentor to young women. She writes in a way that women of all ages can relate to.”Gilbert answered questions for the audience and told devoted “Eat, Pray, Love” readers that she is currently working on her new book about marriage.She ended positively.“I like to believe that there are doors open everywhere for enlightenment,” she said. “Listen to what excites you and follow it.”
(09/02/08 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Briscoe Quad was home to more than just students Monday.Dogs gathered in the quad’s circle drive as students and members of Revitalizing Animal Well-Being gathered beneath the shade to bathe dogs while raising awareness about animal well being and the positive connection animals and humans have. For Monday’s event, co-founder and co-president Courtney Wennerstrom said the goal was to raise money for the Bloomington Animal Shelter and to raise money and awareness for the groups Eggs-traordinary IU campaign.Deborah Strickland, who also serves as the co-founder and co-president, explained that the Eggs-traordinary campaign encourages the use of cage-free eggs. The focus is to get Residential Programs and Services to switch to using cage-free eggs, in which chickens are free range, as opposed to using eggs from chickens in battery cages, which are about half the size of an 8.5-by-11 inch piece of paper.Wennerstrom said the group hopes to have a letter ready on Sept. 9 so people can sign the petition at the Student Involvement Fair. “Human and animal well-being are intertwined,” Wennerstrom said. RAW’s goal is to remind people of the positive connection animals and humans share. Wennerstrom’s dogs, Maddie and Kodiac, were the first dogs bathed. Afterward, they lounged out in the shade. More dogs arrived, wagging their tails, unsure of what treat they were in for.Wennerstrom commented that at last year’s event they had “all these dogs and not enough people. This year we have all these lovely people and not enough dogs,” which is a testament to the group’s growing membership. More new members arrived to the event to offer their help, support and interest in joining the group.Junior Riya Ghosal was one of these new members. She said she saw a poster in one of the campus buildings and because she “really really loves animals”, she decided to come out to Monday’s event in hopes of joining.“I pet random dogs on the street,” Ghosal said, adding that if people love animals and want to help they should join this group. “I love dogs. ... I love every animal.”Senior Chelsey Mulherin brought her dog Rugby to get bathed. Mulherin recently adopted Rugby from the Bedford Animal Control & Shelter. “I wanted a chocolate lab, and we were decided to save an animal in need,” she said of her choice to adopt from a shelter instead of going through a pet shop.One of RAW’s next events is the “Show off your Shelter Dog,” which is their anti-puppy mill campaign hosted in Bryan Park. The event will help raise awareness about the treatment dogs go through in puppy mills, which are breeding facilities that produce purebreed puppies in large numbers. Sophomore Kathryn Banas, a member of RAW, is a dog owner herself.“I obviously miss my dog like crazy,” Banas said. She not only joined the group because she loves animals, but because she feels the group does a great job of raising animal awareness.Since the group’s inception, Wennerstrom said besides the growing membership, the group has also developed some really close connections with the community, the Humane Society and the Deep Roots Animal Sanctuary, among others. As the only current group on campus catering to animals, Banas said she recommends this group to anyone “if you’re an animal lover or missing your dog.”
(06/08/08 10:49pm)
In 2005, Verlon Stone, the coordinator of the IU Liberian Collections Project, was in Liberia at the estate of the country’s longest-serving president, when he and some others pulled out some photos that were in “pretty bad shape” along with other papers from the statesman’s collection.\nThe photographs are historic images from former Liberian President William Tubman’s records, taken during the time of his presidency. The photographs were of meetings and conferences Tubman attended and of leaders Tubman met. They represent a part of the history of Liberia during the African pre- and post-independence era.\nBut due to a lack of funding, some of the photos had to be left behind upon returning to IU, Stone said.\nThe Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library recently presented the Liberian Collections Project with a $76,750 grant to conserve, organize and digitize the 6,500 photographs in Tubman’s collection. The photographs will be made available to the public on the Internet.\nStone said the papers and photographs recovered are the property of the Tubman family and will be returned to the family in Liberia after the conservation and digitization process is complete. \n“We were only allowed to bring materials here because they are in such bad shape,” Stone said. \nIU will keep the digital copies of the photos and copies of the papers on microfilm, Stone added.\nNow, Stone said, the first step is to begin scanning the photos that were first brought back. Other photos that are not as dirty as the first set of photos will be separated out, cleaned and prepared for digitization.\nWhen the digitizing is complete, Stone said, the digital library program in the Herman B Wells Library is developing a Web application that will allow scholars to describe and categorize larger-than-thumbnail-size photographs, which will then go into the digital library program’s largest repository.\n“People anywhere in the world can search for the photos,” Stone said. “The scholarly duty is to make sure these photos are properly described and are made available to as wide an audience as possible.”\nTubman served as Liberia’s 19th president from 1944 until his death in 1971. His presidency was marked by changes in the economic, political and social environment of Liberia, a Western African nation of about 3.3 million people.\n“He was involved in a lot of West African diplomacy and opening up the country to modern development and beginning to expand social and governmental access to the indigenous residents of Liberia,” Stone said. “He was also very important in the diplomacy in both the pre and post colonial period and key in setting up the Organization of African Unity.”\nStone said that adding more photographs and papers of Tubman’s to the Liberian Collection Project “fits well with our work and the Liberia archive collections.”
(06/05/08 10:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Enormously humane and generous.”Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells. From 1938 until 1962, Wells served as University president. During his 25-year presidency, IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and student population that make it what it is today. “He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”The legendary man of the IU campus led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship. But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells. He never accepted a salary for the position. He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March of 2000, the man who transformed IU into the institution it is today passed away quietly in his home at the age of 97. But IU still feels the impact of its 11th president. By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said. Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.” A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union, along with various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze Wells statue is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. His constant memory and influence is still felt today by many at the University. IU’s main library is named after him, and in the fall of 2007, a bust of him was dedicated in the library’s entrance.From student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU. “He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it. Trustees critcized Wells for this action, and he was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand. “Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become some day,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1937, the entire IU-Bloomington campus lay between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls (only four at the time), the IMU and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there – north of 10th and east of Jordan.” One of the buildings Wells planned as President, the IU Auditorium, remains standing, among others. “He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a University community, as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’s main library, IU Art Museum and School of Fine Arts, along with the Auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University. “I think by building the Auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.For the first couple of years, spectacular dance groups, singers, poets and Metropolitan operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to transform IU into a family.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits. “In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.” But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired. “I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said. While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropic causes and the student press. “He valued everyone who worked at the University – from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor – and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could do so.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.”
(06/04/08 8:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Enormously humane and generous.”Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells. From 1938 until 1962, Wells served as University president. During his 25-year presidency, IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and student population that make it what it is today. “He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”The legendary man of the IU campus led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship. But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells. He never accepted a salary for the position. He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March of 2000, the man who transformed IU into the institution it is today passed away quietly in his home at the age of 97. But IU still feels the impact of its 11th president. By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said. Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.” A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union, along with various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze Wells statue is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. His constant memory and influence is still felt today by many at the University. IU’s main library is named after him, and in the fall of 2007, a bust of him was dedicated in the library’s entrance.From student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU. “He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it. Trustees critcized Wells for this action, and he was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand. “Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become some day,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1937, the entire IU-Bloomington campus lay between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls (only four at the time), the IMU and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there – north of 10th and east of Jordan.” One of the buildings Wells planned as President, the IU Auditorium, remains standing, among others. “He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a University community, as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’s main library, IU Art Museum and School of Fine Arts, along with the Auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University. “I think by building the Auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.For the first couple of years, spectacular dance groups, singers, poets and Metropolitan operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to transform IU into a family.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits. “In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.” But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired. “I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said. While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropic causes and the student press. “He valued everyone who worked at the University – from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor – and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could do so.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.”
(06/04/08 8:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Enormously humane and generous.”Those were the first words Chancellor Ken Gros Louis used to describe the University’s “Man of the Century,” former IU President Herman B Wells. From 1938 until 1962, Wells served as University president. During his 25-year presidency, IU expanded to include the streets, buildings and student population that make it what it is today. “He had a deep love for the University,” Gros Louis said. “He believed deeply in higher education.”The legendary man of the IU campus led the University in his vision for education to transform IU into an internationally recognized center of research and scholarship. But even after Wells retired from his presidency, he did not leave the University. The IU board of trustees created a lifetime chancellor position for Wells. He never accepted a salary for the position. He remained the University’s chancellor from 1962 until 2000, continuing to pour his passion and dedication into IU. In March of 2000, the man who transformed IU into the institution it is today passed away quietly in his home at the age of 97. But IU still feels the impact of its 11th president. By the time Wells left the presidency, he had transformed a “good but not really well-known” university into an internationally known campus, Gros Louis said. Under Wells’ leadership, the size of the student body grew from 11,000 in 1938 to more than 31,000 in 1962.“When the incredible opportunity came for me to serve Indiana University, my personal ambitions became ambitions for the University’s greatness, for the realization of the University’s full potential, including the wish that every student, undergraduate and graduate, could enjoy as exciting and stimulating an experience as I had,” Wells wrote in his 1980 autobiography, “Being Lucky.” A large painting of Wells can be found in the Indiana Memorial Union, along with various other campus buildings such as Owen Hall. A bronze Wells statue is located in the Old Crescent across from the Rose Well House. His constant memory and influence is still felt today by many at the University. IU’s main library is named after him, and in the fall of 2007, a bust of him was dedicated in the library’s entrance.From student to visionary“From the very beginning, I fell in love with Indiana University,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” He came to IU as a student in 1922 after spending a year at the University of Illinois. Wells then spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to IU. “He had an enormous vision for expanding academic areas but also a sense of how the campus would grow long after his presidency,” Gros Louis said. The land where Assembly Hall now stands used to be a farm, but Wells bought it for the University years before anything was built on it. Trustees critcized Wells for this action, and he was questioned for purchasing land the University would “never use.” But as IU’s population grew, the land Wells bought allowed the University to expand. “Wells was able to look into the future and know how big the campus would become some day,” Gros Louis said. “It is one of the reasons why IU is one of the few public institutions in the Midwest that is self-contained.”In “Being Lucky,” Wells wrote that when he assumed the presidency in 1937, the entire IU-Bloomington campus lay between Jordan and Indiana avenues on the east and west and 10th and Third streets on the north and south. All the buildings, residence halls (only four at the time), the IMU and all other facilities were situated in a quadrangle.“The time seemed to me appropriate for planning an orderly extension of the campus,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “We knew we had to move north and east because most of the undeveloped land lay there – north of 10th and east of Jordan.” One of the buildings Wells planned as President, the IU Auditorium, remains standing, among others. “He told me that he wanted to make a statement of what a public education could do and the symbol of that was the Auditorium,” Gros Louis said.The results of Wells’ planning allowed for a University community, as he referred to it in “Being Lucky.” The campus’s main library, IU Art Museum and School of Fine Arts, along with the Auditorium, are situated between the housing and classroom areas of the University. “I think by building the Auditorium, Wells wanted to say to young people in Indiana, especially to rural (residents), that the world was available to them on this campus,” Gros Louis said.For the first couple of years, spectacular dance groups, singers, poets and Metropolitan operas graced the stage, further contributing to Wells’ mission to transform IU into a family.Loving the crowded streetsGros Louis described Wells’ good sense of humor as one of his outstanding personality traits. “In the course of my journeying, I have witnessed a remarkable evolution in travel,” Wells wrote in “Being Lucky.” “I can remember a time when a gravel road in Indiana was considered a good road.” But Wells’ good humor wasn’t the only quality people who met him admired. “I think what people treasured most in him was how much he respected and cared for people’s opinions and really got to know them, not superficially, but in depth,” Gros Louis said. While at the University, Wells defended the controversial research at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction and helped create scholarships so more students could attend IU. He advocated the causes of civil rights and desegregation and supported greek philanthropic causes and the student press. “He valued everyone who worked at the University – from staff members who worked in the residence halls to the most senior professor – and he treated them all with respect,” Gros Louis said.Wells had a vision, Gros Louis described, that IU would become a large place long after his presidency, and he made sure the University could do so.“He was always interested in registration in the fall, and he loved that the streets were crowded,” Gros Louis said. “He would see the long lines at the bookstores and say, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ He had an enormous interest in everything that happened in the University.”
(05/14/08 11:19pm)
In addition to six projects currently under construction on the IU campus, the IU Board of Trustees approved plans for six other construction projects earlier this month with approval to begin site plans for a seventh.\nThe ongoing and planned construction for the campus is the most the campus has experienced for a long time, according to a press release.\nRight now, intensive work is going on in planning the projects, said University Architect Bob Meadows. \nAlthough campus is undergoing many construction projects at once, Meadows said the construction is the campus’ “responsibility” and something dealt with all the time.\n“The procedure will be exactly the same,” Meadows said, adding that the construction plans approved will most likely not begin until some time early next year. \nThe estimated cost of the 13 projects is about $340 million, with endowments paying for some of the costs, according to the press release.\nAmong the approved projects include an International Studies building, which will house many of IU’s international centers and other cultural programs. Student trustee A.D. King, who sat in on the interviews for potential building architects, said the structure will promote collaboration between departments that are currently spread out all over campus.\n“It’s expected to be a pretty iconic building that will help catapult (IU) into a new level of international studies in higher education,” he said.\nA Jacobs School of Music studio building will replace the round music building adjacent to Merrill Hall, which will offer up more practice rooms, classrooms and offices. The IU Auditorium will be renovated and will include plans for a University Cinema for the study of film. A total of 837 new bedrooms for Ashton housing will be constructed in Residential Programs and Services’ five-year plan to revamp and upgrade facilities, an addition will be added to the Auxiliary Library Facility to increase library storage space and a campus office and classroom building will also be constructed to provide space for academic programs.\nTrustees approved the site plan for a business incubator as well. with the building to run parallel to 10th Street. The $10 million facility will house start-up businesses and related organizations, according to the press release. \nConstruction in Bloomington is already underway at the $51.7 million multidisciplinary science building, a $30 million data center, the $3 million Hutton Honors College, the $55 million project at Memorial Stadium’s north end zone, along with the basketball player development facility and a $3 million optometry clinic, according to the press release.\nKing said IU needs more buildings like Simon Hall, which was dedicated on Oct. 16 and houses research labs and offices.\n“Those are the types of buildings research universities like Indiana need to build to stay competitive,” he said.\nMany of the projects, including the University Cinema and the International Studies buildings, line up with objectives IU President Michael McRobbie set out for the University his inaugural speech last October. \n“I am especially pleased that nearly $100 million of this investment is going to projects that will enhance many of our educational programs in the arts and humanities,” McRobbie said in the press release.
(05/08/08 1:57pm)
Aracelis Girmay cooks up and offers a collection of poetry that will leave anyone who reads it thirsty for more of her words and inspiration. Her collection “Teeth” is composed of many poems that have the power to speak universally to everyone if one takes the time to feel her words. \nA collection of poetry is just as equal to a novel, I believe, as the poems that make up the collection are arranged in a way to tell a story. While the story may not be linear, it is a story through words as the poems tell stories through each other.\nGirmay’s poetry collection is full of soul and song. With repetition of words throughout some of her poems, she is able to build a beat that lasts long after the poem is finished. \nIn her poem “Here,” the title word is repeated numerous times through descriptive imagery. The poem reads almost as a stream of consciousness, filled with different thoughts and feelings.\nThe poem is emotional, as the opening line of the poem, “Because I wanted to write a poem that would make me / push away from the table and say Damn,” is filled with a mysterious force that is driven by the desire to release the energy within it. \nBut the poem ends on a beautiful and brilliant vision of hope and preservation through struggle as she writes, “Here is a god to make you sing and pray to, / oh, good and wrecked and here and here and here.” \nThis isn’t the only poem of Girmay’s that offers hope at the end of misfortune. Others, such as “Epistolary Dream Poem After Finding a Schoolbook Map,” offer not only hope, but unity through cultures and a strength that is found through these ties.\nThe first poem in the collection, “Arroz Poetica,” deals with the reality and raw emotion of suffering, death and cruelty in the world in response to war, but the concepts within the poem are universal. She writes, “and although it is my promise here / to try to open every one of my windows, I cannot / imagine the intimacy with which / a life leaves its body” –a line filled with a deep connection to the emotions of the world.\nGirmay connects to the audience with her universal concepts about life, love, death, suffering and cruelty – but her poems always come back to tell the story of how life survives because of hope to prevail and the endurance of love throughout all of this misfortune.\nPoetry collections offer many stories, similar to novels. Unlike novels, poetry’s language is more playful, more discrete when it comes to its message, but both fiction and poetry offer stories to the world. \nIf you haven’t read poetry before, try Girmay’s collection of poems telling stories of survival and of hope. By the end of reading her collection you’ll not only be inspired to try reading other books of poetry, you’ll also want to push away the table and say Damn.
(05/02/08 12:18am)
This summer, besides reviving our energy after a draining spring semester, it’s time for us to revive something else: the short story.\nI realize that the semester just ended, that the chunk of money you earned from selling back your textbooks has already been spent and that the last thing you want to do is buy another book. \nBut one day when you have an extra hour or two, pick up a short-story collection. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection “Interpreter of Maladies” will hook you immediately and make you want to read more short stories. \nIt’s rare for someone to recommend short stories to read, although the annual compilation “The Best American Short Stories” has been gaining and maintaining popularity throughout the years. The “Best American” series offers up a batch of some of the most notable stories, but try reading a collection of stories written solely by one author. \nLahiri, whose collection won national recognition, helps bring awareness to the short story, showing the importance it still has in today’s literature. \nThe clarity and ease with which Lahiri transforms the individual worlds she creates in her nine stories reads with such power. She doesn’t need a huge vocabulary to spice up her writing; her language flows naturally, the stories weave together.\nThis smart short-story collection will leave you satisfied, but only for a little while. Your tongue will only be wet a little, leaving you to beg for more marvelously spun short tales. \nIn each of her nine stories, acceptance and love is sought for throughout different cultures and generations. Lahiri, who is from India, writes stories mostly about that country and culture, telling of the arranged marriages and the love that grows through them, while also telling stories of the heartbreak that also results in life and love. \nSome of her stories, such as “The Third and Final Continent,” focus on a journey to another country, but the message of finding a place to belong, a final resting place, resonates with anyone who has ever packed up and gone somewhere where belonging was difficult at first.\n“Sexy,” another story in Lahiri’s collection, tells of a woman who has an affair with a man she meets while at a department store. While told from the woman’s point of view, this story can relate to any gender, and to anyone who has ever loved before. The story is heartbreaking, and I found its message to resonant remarkably. \nLahiri’s collection proves that short stories are still alive. The collection gives readers nine different stories filled with life and worldly knowledge – just as much as a novel can offer.\nCultural and generational gaps are explored throughout this collection, but what Lahiri proves in her stories is that no matter the cultural difference or gap, the raw human emotions of love, acceptance and belonging are what we all search for, no matter who we are or where we come from.
(02/14/08 5:00am)
Jack Johnson's music is the equivalent of the beach in Corona commercials: pleasant, unchanging, anonymous and happily oblivious to the stuff of real life. Although the tropical fantasy is appealing while working in a cubicle or trudging through slush, sitting on the same beach forever becomes boring. \nHampered by his very limited vocal range, Johnson's songs have a habit of blurring together. The first track on Sleeping Through the Static, "All at Once," is a bit of an exception. It has more depth and movement than the familiar click and clack of your average Johnson white-reggae-on-Vicodin song, but the formula is already falling into place: languid, staccato half-singing over muted, primarily major chords. \nA line in "All at Once" catches: "It seems like the heart is no place to be singing from at all." The song begins to seem very similar to one by that other pop stalwart John Mayer: "Waiting on the World to Change." Both artists try to sum up the contemporary feeling -- a vague dissatisfaction with America's precarious position in the world and a sad feeling of powerlessness at doing anything about it -- in a way that's friendly enough for top-40 radio. This feeling is swooping, subtly, throughout popular music: Wilco, Feist and even Radiohead have also recently made stripped-down, tastefully restrained albums for a hyper-speed, hyper-complex, hyper-technological time. \nJohnson continues to sprinkle anti-war sentiment throughout the album, later chanting "We went beyond where we should've gone." Suddenly, the formula attempts to stretch further. Though Johnson's music is consistently inoffensive, some light political disaffection gets thrown in to keep things from becoming saccharine -- the perfect ambiance for Starbucks and Panera Bread. \nStill, to really touch anyone, even quiet, amiable music has to have some cojones. By the album's midway point, the songs are nearly indistinguishable. This is a collection of inert songs from a musician who has been remaking the same album for eight years. Like the faceless sunbathers on Corona Beach, these songs, and this album, go nowhere.
(01/31/08 5:00am)
R.I.P. Heath Ledger: \nThe death of Heath Ledger means the end to a promising and, in the end, unfulfilled career, one that never reached the potential shown in "Brokeback Mountain" and "Monster's Ball." Amid the press coverage, though, the greatest tragedy is personal and familial, so we feel a bit callous mourning a man's career instead of his life. But for Ledger, his career very much represented his life's work, and we remember him for it.\nRing, ring, ring, ring: Hamburger phone: \nWith the success of "Juno," the once-derided hamburger phone has found new commercial life. Sales have jumped 759%, which some math majors told us is a really big percentage. In a few years, everyone will be hoping to dump their hamburger phones like a bag of Beanie Babies.\nThe winner for Best Mustache goes to ... :\nThe Academy has decided to honor the most maligned grooming choice in America today: the mustache, from the mighty Western walrus of Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood" to the shifty Chevron of Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Charlie Wilson's War." Stubble of all genres has made a splash at the Oscars.\nThe WGA strike rolls on: \nAs individual studios start making deals with the WGA, the negotiations with major studios continue to drag onward. It will be hard for the studios to allow smaller groups to start making movies and TV shows again, but writers have to start reaching for compromise as well. Informal talks have started again. We're all crossing our fingers.\nThe FCC sucks: \nProving once again that the federal government sucks at regulating art, the Federal Communications Commission has proposed that ABC be fined $1.43 million for an episode of "NYPD Blue" for showing a naked woman taking a shower. Hmm, so promoting death and destruction on TV is OK, but not a naked human being? Yeah, that \nseems fair.
(01/17/08 5:00am)
Clay Aiken, "Invisible"\nEven though he didn't win season two of "American Idol," Clay Aiken was clearly a better choice for mainstream success, and he proved that with his first single "Invisible." Aiken delivered his patented strong vocal in a simple pop song, and while the lyrics were a bit creepy ("If I was invisible then I could just watch you in your room") considering the constant rumors of his deviant sexuality, "Invisible" is the best first post-Idol single from any "American Idol" competitor. -- Cory Barker\nRuben Studdard, "Sorry 2004"\nRuben Studdard's first post-Idol single, "Sorry 2004" was mostly what people expected of him: a sappy ballad. However, the song featured "rougher" lyrics than most A.I. fans wanted, and that's why he could never recover after it. The lyrics were laughable ("It's like trying to build a new house with no roof and no doors / Damn I'm sorry"), but if you had a rocky relationship near the end of '04, this was definitely on the mix CD. -- Cory Barker\nTaylor Hicks, "Do I Make You Proud?"\nThe ultimate karaoke Idol, Taylor Hicks, made his single debut with this piece of extreme schlock and gave it his, er, distinctive stamp. After all his prancing onstage, Hicks attempted to do his best soul impression but couldn't resist his own goofiness. He can barely take himself seriously enough to slog through the lyrics. By truly embracing the karaoke aspect of the show and dumping as much faux growl and moan into his singing as possible, Hicks won the show and a No. 1 single. -- Peter Chen\nKelly Clarkson, "Since U Been Gone"\nThis 2004 single girl-empowerment anthem by the first winner on "American Idol" managed to gain the love of everyone from teenyboppers to hipsters. While it's hard to imagine the hit not being sung by Kelly Clarkson, it was originally written for Pink, after which Hilary Duff was considered. The writers of the song, Max Martin and Lukasz Gotttwald, have also noted that it is influenced by guitar jammers The Strokes. -- Stefania Marghitu
(01/10/08 5:00am)
No Golden Globes:\nNBC cancelled the awards show, after all the nominated actors from the Screen Actors Guild said they wouldn't show up in solidarity with striking writers. There's still a press conference, but now what will the 12 people who care about the Golden Globes do with their time?
(11/29/07 3:30am)
On Tuesday evening, Michael Vernon coached more than 40 members of the IU Ballet Department as they pirouetted on stage in preparation for this weekend’s performances of the classic ballet, “The Nutcracker.” But the dancers in this year’s 49th annual production of the ballet are twirling to a new set of choreography. \nFor the past eight years, IU Jacobs School of Music professor Jacques Cesbron has brought the ballet to life. This year, Vernon, who serves as the chair of the IU Ballet department, choreographed the show. He said he was approached with the idea to change the choreography of the ballet because “it’s always nice to see something new.”\n“There is nothing wrong with the old production,” he said. “But after eight years in a the small town of Bloomington, it is time for a change, a new viewpoint.” \nVernon says the concepts of the ballet will remain the same, since he believes in telling the story from a traditional fashion, but his interpretation of the classical ballet will be different. \nThe ballet tells the story of a young girl named Clara, who receives a nutcracker as a gift from her grandfather on Christmas Eve. When she falls asleep, she has a magical dream of dancing snowflakes, the Sugar Plum fairy and her toy nutcracker coming to life. The music, composed by Peter Tchaikovsky in 1892, is based on an old German fairy tale.\nWhat is most notably new about Vernon’s show is that the role of Clara will be played by an 11-year-old girl from IU’s Pre-College Ballet Program. Previously, this role was given to one of the ballet majors. Vernon said he wanted Clara to be played by a young girl to enhance the story and link Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy, who serves as the heroine, together.\nHe said that while the ballet may change in terms of dancers and steps, the classic story will always remain the same. \n“The ballet offers something for everyone,” he said. “Dancers come from all over the world. There is a battle scene with mice. There are beautiful women, strong men. It is ideal for people to come for a first time ballet and to sit back and enjoy.”\nIU Ballet sophomore Anja Hoover said that this past week the dancers have been rehearsing from about 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Prior to tech week, Hoover said rehearsals went from 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Though it’s a tough schedule, the dancers don’t seem to mind. \n“There’s nothing better than getting on stage and performing and doing what you love,” Hoover said. \nAs a dancer in last year’s Nutcracker ballet, Hoover performed under Cesbron’s vision. Despite the differences in choreography, She said she likes both productions.\nSophomore Juliann Hyde, who dances the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy during the Saturday night performance, agreed.\n“I have no preference,” she said. “Both have their similarities.” \nNo matter the different choreographers, the dancers affirm that “The Nutcracker” is still a classic holiday tradition to be enjoyed by children and families. Sophomore Jenna Sagraves, who dances the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy during the Saturday matinee performance, said the new choreography will add a different feel to the ballet, but in a good way.\n“‘The Nutcracker’ is so exciting and puts you in the holiday mood,” she said. “Watching it puts you in the Christmas spirit.” \n“The Nutcracker” opens Friday at the Musical Arts Center. Additional performances will be at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2. Ticket prices range from $18 to $35 and can be purchased at the Musical Arts Center.