Bloodmobile Upcoming

The next Red Cross Bloodmobile is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 18, in the multipurpose room of the Sports Center.  Those interested in donating may click here
http://cfsrv.skidmore.edu/web/redcross to make an appointment.

Potential donors should weigh at least 110 pounds and not have donated in the past five days. Guidelines that cover recent travel, surgery, and such topics as tattoos and body piercing also have been issued. Please click here for more eligibility information

Salmagundi Conference Upcoming

Celebrated French intellectual and author Bernard-Henri Lévy will be the keynote speaker for "War, Evil, The End of History and America Now," a conference scheduled Friday through Sunday, March 24-26, on campus and sponsored by Salmagundi.

For 30 years one of France's leading thinkers Lévy, is the author of the new book American Vertigo - Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville (2006, Random House), which received a front-page review in the Jan. 29 issue of The New York Times Book Review.

It is Lévy's War, Evil and the End of History (2004, Melville House) that will be the primary text for discussions at the conference. Part philosophical travelogue and intellectual autobiography, the book reports on five currently forgotten or marginalized war zones -- Angola, Sri Lanka, Burundi, Colombia and the Sudan -- and elaborates his eyewitness accounts with philosophizing about genocide, terrorism and the nature of history, according to Publisher's Weekly.

Lévy also is an award-winning filmmaker of such documentaries as Bosnia! and A Day in the Death of Sarajevo. Other panelists at the conference will include Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago; Benjamin Barber of the University of Maryland; Jonathan Schell, a correspondent for The Nation; Michael Massing, contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review; Martin Jay of the University of California at Berkeley; Jackson Lears of Rutgers University; and Paula Newberg, dean of special programs, President Philip Glotzbach, Carolyn Forché, and Robert Boyers, all of Skidmore.

The event gets under way at 7 p.m. Friday with Lévy's address and responses from Barber and Newberg, followed by a panel discussion with all participants.

A full schedule of discussion is planned for Saturday, March 25, and a half day of talks is scheduled for Sunday, March 26. Admission is free and open to all. For details, contact Boyers at rboyers@skidmore.edu.

FYE's "Freedom from Fear" Program Continues this Month

 "Freedom from Fear:  Security Threats and Civil Liberties During Hot and Cold Wars," a program coordinated by the College's First-Year Experience, continues later this month with two public events.   They are as follows:

• Thursday, March 23, 9 p.m. Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall - Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), George Clooney's Academy Award-nominated examination of the challenge to Sen. McCarthy presented by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow.
  
  
• Thursday, March 30, 5:15 p.m., Gannett Auditorium - "An Interview with Bob Edwards," 5:15 p.m., Gannett Auditorium.  Professor Ron Seyb will conduct this interview with Edwards, who was the voice of NPR's Morning Edition for 25 years.  Now the host of XM-Satellite Radio's The Bob Edwards Show, Edwards is the author of Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (John Wiley and Sons, 2004).
  

All events are free and open to the public.

Designed to consider the dramatic shifts in American's discourse about national security, civic engagement, and civil liberties that have recently occurred, "Freedom from Fear" is exploring the 1950s and the role that Sen. Joseph McCarthy played in the climate of fear and paranoia that emerged during the early days of the Cold War.

For more information on Skidmore's "Freedom from Fear" program, visit hudson2.skidmore.edu/fye/freedomfromfear/index.html.

Mo Rocca to Visit Campus

Mo Rocca, contributor to NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno and former correspondent for Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, will appear on campus at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 30, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.  Known for his wacky, tongue-in-cheek news reports and hilarious commentary, Rocca is regularly seen on VH1's I Love...series.

Rocca's book, All the Presidents' Pets, just released in paperback, is a satirical tour-de-force of investigative journalism that blows the lid off of a long-held secret in Washington: that the presidents' pets are more than just photo ops.

At the podium, Rocca delivers his uniquely informed commentary on current news events and the coverage of them by the "mainstream media," and takes audiences behind the scenes of America's most popular news satire program with never-before-seen clips from The Daily Show and his other television appearances. He also provides the inside story of the pivotal role that presidential pets play in politics, and shines a klieg light on the complacent Washington press corps that missed that hot story.

Rocca began his career in TV as a writer and producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning PBS children's series Wishbone. Rocca went on to write and produce for other kids series, including ABC's Pepper Ann and Nickelodeon's The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, a series for pre-school viewers that combines the whimsy of Seuss characters with the magic of Henson puppetry.

A regular panelist on NPR's Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, Rocca is also a frequent commentator for Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Larry King Live, and the Fox News Channel.

Rocca holds a B.A. from Harvard University and resides in New York City.

Guest Artist Kenneth Fearn to Perform

Pianist Kenneth Fearn will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 26, at in Filene Recital Hall.  Admission is free and open to the public.  The program features Drei Klavierstücke (D.946), by Schubert, Les Jeux d'eaux à la Villa D'Este and Vallée d'Obermann by Liszt, and Sonata in C Minor, Op. 111, by Beethoven.

Fearn received his musical training at the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University, the Yale School of Music, and the Manhattan School of Music, where he was a pupil of Dora Zaslavsky.  He has also worked with such diverse musical personalities as Ruth Slenczynska, Eckart Sellheim, Orazio Frugoni, and Bruno Canino. 

From 1969 to 2005 Fearn was on the faculty of Smith College, where he combined an active career as both performer and teacher.  He has performed extensively the music of our own time, including the first New York performance of Bernd Alois Zimmerman's Monologe at New York's Alice Tully Hall with his colleague Monica Jakuc.  He has also given numerous first performances of works by American composers, most recently that of Curt Cacioppo, whose Contrapuntal Fantasy on John Newton's "Amazing Grace" has been issued on Capstone Records as part of the composer's Keyboard Fantasies disc.

Fearn also has had a lifelong interest Beethoven's music, which he continues to perform both here and in Europe on modern and historical instruments.  Since retiring from the Smith faculty, he continues his long-standing project of recording the complete piano sonatas. A compact disc including the 'Eroica' Variations is available from the independent label Harrison Digital Productions (HDP-237).

David Porter to Perform April 2

David Porter, president emeritus of Skidmore, will give a piano recital in Filene Recital Hall at 8 p.m. Sunday, April 2. His program will include Mozart's Rondo in A minor, K. 511, considered by many to be among Mozart's finest works for solo piano; the massive first movement, "Emerson," of Charles Ives' famous Concord Sonata; and Franz Schubert's Sonata in Bb Major, perhaps the most haunting of the three great piano sonatas that Schubert composed late in his career, and that were published only posthumously.

Porter is currently the Harry C. Payne Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts at Williams College, where he has taught since 1999.  Among his musical activities at Skidmore in recent years have been performances of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations in 2002 and of Schubert's song cycle, Die Schöne Mullerin, in 2004, with tenor Rand Reeves.  Porter also participated in two series of performances at the Tang Teaching Museum, Satie-Cage Tango in 2000, at the time of the Tang's inauguration, and Mak 3 in 2004, an ambitious performance piece built around George Crumb's Makrokosmos III, for two pianos and percussion.

Before coming to Skidmore in 1987, Porter taught classics and music at Carleton College for 25 years and served as president in 1986-87. He has given recitals and lecture-recitals throughout the United States, in Great Britain, and on radio and TV, including programs in recent years at Williams College, Bennington College, Drew University, Whitman College, and at the Intermezzo Chamber Music Festival in Salt Lake City.  Porter is the author of books on Horace and on Greek tragedy and of two monographs on Virginia Woolf, and editor, with Gunther Schuller and Clara Steuermann, of a book on pianist and Schoenberg colleague Edward Steuermann.

The April 2 concert is free and open to the public.

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