FALL 2012 | St. Lawrence University Magazine 5
On Campus
Sidereal Days: The History of Rock and
Roll, A Romance
(
Tammy Norie Press,
2012),
by
Earl B. McElfresh ’72
,
is a
four-part novel available on Amazon.com
and smashword.com. It’s 1960 in a small
town in upstate New York; a band forms
and meets success, even playing on the
stage of the Ed Sullivan Show. The series
follows their bumpy career as they meet
and mingle with music legends. Hidden
amid the fiction are some rock ’n’ roll
facts. McElfresh owns a map company,
has lectured for National Geographic and
has published
Maps and Mapmakers of
the Civil War
(
Harry N. Abrams, 1st ed.,
1999). —
adapted from smashword.com
In a world often driven by the bottom
line,
Hundley (H.A.) Thompson ’56
gives readers a refreshing perspective with
Do Something Scary: Get Undressed for
Business
(
privately published, 2012). This
fast read is filled with anecdotes about
managers and companies who focused on
the critical details of success: caring about
people, their jobs and their businesses.
Their profit? Better employees, a stronger
company, loyal customers and a deep
sense of personal satisfaction. Thompson
tells light-hearted tales that inspire those
looking to try something new but who
aren’t quite sure how to get there, while
also reaching people wanting to reflect on
how they can be doing what they do now,
only better.
—
MSB
For several years, retired St. Lawrence
administrator
PeterVan deWater ’58
wrote a column for the
St. Lawrence Plain-
dealer
,
Canton’s weekly newspaper. He
called it “Rural Living II,” in tribute to the
name his father, the late John Van de Water
’35,
gave to his earlier column in the
Water-
town Daily Times
.
Now he has compiled
those columns in
This is What I Thought
at the Time
(
self-published, 2012). The
book also contains sketches by his grand-
son Jay Kepes, who is also the grandson
of Emeritus Professor of English Richard
Kepes. Topics range from politics and
religion (the controversy surrounding the
teaching of evolution, for example), to life
on a small farm and in a small college town
(
St. Lawrence turns up, of course), to the
natural world. The observations are keen,
the opinions trenchant. —NSB
The author of two previous books,
Philip Zwerling ’70
has compiled
The
CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic
Freedom and the National Security State
(
McFarland, 2011). The selections
examine the ramifications of the fact
that, in the words of the publisher, “the
Central Intelligence Agency has poured
tens of millions of dollars into universities
to influence research and enlist students
and faculty members into its ranks. (The
anthology) provides a wake-up call for
students and faculty” through its expose
of “the subversion of academic indepen-
dence.” Zwerling is an assistant professor
of English at the University of Texas, Pan
American.
—
NSB
A
Roundup of News
from Campus. For
more, go to www.
stlawu.edu/news.
North Country Public
Radio’s
Brian Mann
has been awarded a 2012
Na-
tional Edward R. Murrow Award
for Best Radio Documentary for "The
Road from 9/11: How the war on terror
changed one North Country family."
The documentary, produced for the 10th
anniversary of the terror attacks, garnered
the seventh Murrow Award for NCPR.
Listen to the documentary at t.co/VKG-
MUggl.
Short films documenting the effects of
climate change on two remote villages
in Alaska, made as senior projects in en-
vironmental studies, are available on the
Alaskans Sharing Indigenous Knowledge
(
AKSIK) project website, aksik.org
.
Jona-
than Ignatowski '12
created
Aksik
,
which
details the impact of climate change on
the subsistence culture of the village
of Savoonga, on St. Lawrence Island.
Silageetuq
,
written and directed by Mera
Kenney '12 and featuring original music
by Stephanie Milton '12, highlights the
effects that increasingly violent storms
have had on the Bering Seacoast village of
Shaktoolik. AKSIK is a multi-year science
and advocacy project headed by Associate
Professor of Environmental Studies Jon
Rosales.
Professor of English
Bob Cowser partic-
ipated in a National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH)
Summer Seminar for
Faculty at SUNY Potsdam, on "Woody
Guthrie and the American Folk Revival."
Folksinger-songwriter-activist Guthrie
was born 100 years ago, and the seminar
focused on his life and legacy through
readings about and recordings of Guthrie
as well as examination of folk music in
social movements and the continuing
influence the artist has had on other writ-
ers, poets and musicians.
A CD of music on the
1926
Estey pipe
organ
i
n Gunnison Memorial Chapel
is available through Brewer Bookstore,
www.brewerbookstoretext.com
. The
music, from Bach to contemporary
composers, was recorded in June by
Organist-in-Residence Sondra Goldsmith
Proctor with engineering and production
by James Wildman. They worked around
visits and sometimes vocal critiques by
pigeons and bats, Goldsmith reports.
—
MD and NSB
Laurentian • ia
What well-known campus
building is discussed here?
“
The Italianate style be-
came popular in England
soon after 1800, because
a dignified façade remi-
niscent of the great palaces
of Renaissance Italy could be achieved
without expensive classical pilasters or
columns. The central cupola reflects
actual Italian Renaissance villas. The
Italian Villa style, complete with wide
eaves embellished by cast iron brackets,
and window lintels also of cast iron, a
‘
new’ and progressive material, could
be easily carried out in America thanks
to designs published in contemporary
pattern books.”
Answer on page 68.
fyi