The Harbinger

February 13, 2006

Black military heroes from WWII coming to campus Thursday

This presentation is part of the Hiram College programming in honor of Black History Month.

Secret Black Military Units of WWII
Learn about the
    •    USS Mason: a Navy destroyer escort with an all-black crew that
rescued a convoy in the North Atlantic.
    •    Triple Nickels: a black parachute team that defended the State of
Oregon from an attack by the Japanese military in 1944.
    • Red Ball Express: an all-black unit that supplied Patton’s 3rd Army
as it fought across France.
    • Tuskegee Airmen: the first all-black Army Air Corp fighter group.
    • 761st Tank Battalion: an all-black battalion sent ahead of white
tank crews by  Patton to use up German ammunition.

Meet these guests of honor:
• Roy Richardson and Arthur Saunders – Tuskegee Airman
• Don Tyler and Costel Stewart – Triple Nickels
• Hose Allen – Red Ball Express
• Riley Russel – 761 Tank Battalion

Thursday February 16, 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Hiram College Kennedy Center Ballroom

Refreshments will be served.
Open to the public.

Hopkins ’69 finds the ultimate connection at Hiram

Jan Hopkins ’69 has spent more than one career connecting people with ideas as she makes the complex understandable.

She is comfortable in front of a television camera, on Wall Street, in a bank boardroom, or, now, as president of her own consulting firm specializing in marketing and communications strategies.

Where Hopkins feels most grounded, however, is where she spent last Wednesday, on the Hill of her alma mater, talking with students, faculty, and staff, and connecting those students to all possibilities in the large but shrinking world.

Hiram College, Hopkins told a gathering in Kennedy Center, remains the place that won her heart and allegiance when she was a schoolgirl in Warren. On a Sunday drive, she passed through the village and saw students on the lawn studying.
“I thought it was so idyllic,” she said.

She still does, especially for those who, like herself, are first-generation college students.

As a former CNN business reporter and anchor for 19 years, Hopkins connected viewers with the financial world that affects their lives. As managing director and head of client communications for Citigroup Private Bank, she created new ways to connect with the bank’s clientele. And now, as president of her own consulting firm she is finding new connections and strengthening old ones for clients.

“There is so much information out there,” Hopkins told the students, “and everyone is trying to stand out, that what gets lost is thinking, reflection, and the ability to finish a thought. People are searching for those things.”

She found these qualities at Hiram as a student and rediscovers them each time she returns to campus. (Hopkins served on the Board of Trustees from 1988 to 1995.)

For Hopkins, Hiram College is an old and deep connection, a place where she reconnects with the thoughtful process of examining questions and coming to intelligent conclusions.

“It’s important in a world where not much remains the same to have places where you know the connections remain,” she said after her group conversation. “I like to make connections with students. I see myself, not knowing something and asking questions.

“Hiram has been good for first-generation college students. That’s what I was. That’s what I identify with.”

In Hopkins, who also had lunch and talked with students interested in the media, the students found someone with whom they could connect, someone who would take time to look at a resume, someone who stayed until the last question had been answered, the last connection made.

SSSSH visits a nursing home in Aurora

Four Hiram SSSSH members arrived at the Anna Maria Nursing Home in Aurora last Saturday to interview six of the residents about their life story. These histories will then be transcribed and provided to the interviewees as well as to their friends and family.

This unique SSSSH project proved to be very well received by the selected residents of the Anna Maria Nursing Home. SSSSH will return to Anna Maria in about four weeks to repeat the process with a different group of residents.

SSSSH member names are omitted from the photograph to help protect their spirit of anonymity.

Quade to give reading in Portland, Oregon

Mary Quade will give a poetry reading at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, at 7:30 on February 23 as part of the school's 2005-2006 Readings and Lectures series.

Quade teaches "Introduction to Creative Writing" at Hiram College as adjunct English faculty. Her collection, "Guide to Native Beast," won the 2003 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize.

Other writers in this year’s Portland Readings and Lectures series include Mark Jarman, Noni Benegas, Lilah Hegnauer, Patricia Limerick, and Robin Cody.

Ryan exhibit to open at the University of Akron

Christopher Ryan, assistant professor of art, will be featured in a solo exhibition at the University of Akron’s Myers School of Art. The exhibit opens Saturday, February 18, and continues through March 3.

The show consists of paintings inspired by Italian art, history, and culture. Ryan taught from 1999 through 2003 at the Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy.

“The floor planes that I consider are of a particular sort – mosaic and inlaid stone floors found throughout Tuscany and Italy,” Ryan said. “Such decorative floors, usually found in sacred or revered places, recount centuries-old tales or didactic lessons through their own pictorial idiom of figural designs, patterns, and inscriptions.”

Ryan said that this flat imagery, composed and juxtaposed with the objects and debris of contemporary life – where one lives, works, thinks, and feels – results in paintings rich in metaphorical and allegorical meaning.

“This combination of old and new, public and private, establishes new dialogues and associations that touch on themes that are both autobiographical and universal,” Ryan said. “As an artist, I have long been fascinated with the ability of space and its contents to suggest strong emotional and psychological undertones.”

The exhibition will be hung in the Projects Gallery of Folk Hall. The Myers School of Art is located at 150 East Exchange Street in Akron. The gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, with extended hours to 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. Additional gallery information can be obtained by calling 330.972.5950.

Barbara Thompson short fiction award winners announced

The winners of the 2006 Barbara Thompson Award in Short Fiction have been announced. Entries were judged by Quinn Dalton, author of the novels "High Strung" and "Bulletproof Girl." Place winners and honorable mention winners are listed below. Congratulations to everyone!

Winners

• First Place: "Ballerina Blues," by Nicole Richmond
• Second Place: "From Wichita to Detroit," by Brittany Stone
• Third Place: "Sing the Soul," by Eli Walker

 
Honorable Mentions

• "The Anniversary Pig," by Daniel Brown
• "Blueberry Penance," by Alana Christlieb
• "The Doctor’s Wife," by Torrie Ohlin
• "Gerald," by Jessica Graves

Please make plans to join the award winners at a public reception honoring their work. The reception will be held on Wednesday, March 22, at 4:15 in the Writing Center (Hinsdale 217). Award recipients will read from their work and refreshments will be served.

Health Fair offers something for everyone

Want a massage? Need your blood pressure checked? Care to have your fat analyzed?

These are but a few of the opportunities that will be presented to participants of the Hiram College Health Fair, which will be held in cooperation with University Hospitals Health System’s Geauga Regional Hospital.

The fair begins at 11 a.m. on Thursday, February 23, and continues until 2 p.m. in the Kennedy Center.

There will be doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals from Geauga Regional Hospital to answer the questions of fair attendees.

With nearly 40 community organizations, businesses, and health-related vendors on hand, fair-goers can:

•    Chow down on healthy food
•    Find out how to do the same in the dorm at night
•    Learn aerobics/pilates if you fall off the healthy-snack wagon
•    Talk with a pharmacist about what to take for indigestion
•    Find out why tobacco stinks
•    Investigate moderation in use of alcohol (mocktail, anyone?)
•    Find out from the Hiram police if moderation is observed
•    Talk to people who know where babies come from
•    Listen to Piano Magic
•    Get the density of your bones checked (heads not included).

Those who attend the fair also will have the opportunity to win door prizes, including an iPod, and to take home (or back to the dorm) an armload of giveaways.

Sugar Day is a sweet piece of Hiram history

From 1856 until the 1970s, Hiram College celebrated Sugar Day, with students visiting the Udall sugar camp (over the generations George Sr., Frank, and George Jr. were hosts).

The Udalls would haul out an old iron kettle to boil down sugar from maple trees tapped on campus. Like today, the promise of refreshments always drew a crowd. The day signaled the promise of spring.

On Thursday, Hiram students will again celebrate Sugar Day. In recent years, this day of fun, bonding, and providing service to the community has been referred to as Campus Day. It was reborn in 1994.

Sponsored by KCPB and Student Senate, the revived Sugar Day will begin with a Midnight Pancake Breakfast at 11 p.m. on Sugar Day Eve, Wednesday, February 15. With classes canceled, the traditional Faculty/Staff Brunch will be served on Thursday, February 16, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Miller Dining Hall.

On prior Sugar Days, Hiram students crowned the Sugar Queen. Things change. This week there will be a “Sugar Daddy” competition, as well as a quiz bowl tournament, a scavenger hunt, a triathlon, and other activities.

If this day goes as it historically has, it will be a sweet day.

Quick hits…

Hiram College chef Chuck Hoskin may not be able to restart hearts, but he might be able to keep them from stopping in the first place. At noon on Wednesday, February 15, Hoskin will demonstrate in the KC Café how to prepare a heart healthy Japanese meal. The recipe will be provided to take home. For those who want to dine on the just prepared meal ($7), RSVP to 330.569.5187 by today, Monday, February 13.

Ellen Walker, professor of computer science, will present the Library Forum at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday, February 15, in the Pritchard Room of the Library. She will speak on “How Flat is the Silicon World? A Perspective from the Semiconductor Industry in Asia and Europe.” Refreshments will be served.

The Dreisbach Ensemble and Friends, featuring the Celtic group Top o’ the Hill, will present a concert of Renaissance, Baroque, and Irish music Friday, February 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Frohring Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public, and a reception will follow.

Forested Landscape, an exhibition of creative works from the Hiram College Creative Field Studies Program, will conclude Friday, February 17, in the Frohring Art Center. The participants in the show, which will move to Kent State University, are: Linda Bourassa (pinhole photography); Britain’s Chris Drury (spore prints; prints of sculptural installation); Hiram College senior Kristin Galewood (drawing); Kim King (quilting); A.D. Peters (painting); Annie Peters (sculpture); Australian John Reid (environmental banknotes); Lee Renninger (ceramic sculpture); Jeff Schmuki (ceramic sculpture), and Anderson Turner (ceramic sculpture.

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