Items tagged with 'arts and sciences'
RUST at Radix
Coming up at the Radix Center in Albany: Regenerative Urban Sustainability Training (RUST), June 1-2. The workshop is focused on "skills for building ecologically resilient communities in today's cities." Blurbage:
In this class, Scott Kellogg and other sustainability experts give attendees a "toolbox" of techniques and knowledge usable by anyone wanting to create sustainable systems in their own communities. Through a combination of group hands-on activities and lectures, participants will learn how to build infrastructure for self-reliance that is simple, affordable, and replicable. These systems can be applied in either urban or rural environments.
The topics range from aquaponics to beekeeping to vertical farming to vegetable oil vehicles.
The cost for the workshop $150-$350, and includes meals. Space is limited.
Earlier on AOA: Startup contest update: The Radix Center
Neil Gaiman at Saratoga City Center
Award-winning author Neil Gaiman will be at the Saratoga City Center June 20 to read from, and talk about, his soon-to-be-released book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Tickets are $35 (one seat and one book) and $45 (two seats and one book).
Gaiman's appearance is being sponsored by the Northshire Bookstore and WAMC -- Gaiman will be talking with Joe Donahue for the public radio station's aptly named Book Show. The event starts at 6 pm on the 20th (a Thursday).
Gaiman's work tends toward fantasy and science fiction, and ranges from comic books (The Sandman) to novellas (Coraline) to novels (American Gods). He's won a bunch of awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Newbery.
What about the Saratoga location for Northshire? The Vermont-based book store is aiming to have its new Saratoga Springs location at 422 Broadway open by the end of July. It's currently hiring for a range of positions, according to its website.
Gaiman photo: Allan Amato
Marguerite Holloway and The Measure of Manhattan at the State Museum
Sounds interesting: Marguerite Holloway, author of The Measure of Manhattan, will be at the State Museum Thursday evening as part of the NYS Writers Institute visiting writers series.
The Measure of Manhattan is a biography of John Randel, Jr, an Albany native who laid out the street grid for Manhattan. Blurbage:
Born and raised in Albany, renowned for his brilliance, Randel was also infamous in his own day for eccentricity, egotism, and a knack for making enemies. He was a significant pioneer of the art and science of surveying, as well as an engineer who created surveying devices, designed an early elevated subway, laid out a controversial alternative route for the Erie Canal, and sounded the Hudson River from Albany to New York City in order to make maps and aid navigation. One of the many delights of Holloway's book is that it also reveals, for modern readers, the original landscape of Manhattan in its natural state before it was "tamed" by Randel's grid.
Holloway is a science journalist and heads up the science and environmental journalism program at Columbia.
The talk starts at 8 pm on Thursday (April 11) in the State Museum's Clark Auditorium. It's free.
Brian Stetler at Skidmore
New York Times media reporter Brian Stetler will be at Skidmore Monday (March 18) night for a talk: "Twenty Somethings: How are they viewed, what is expected of them and by whom?"
Stetler was one of the journalists followed in the recent documentary about NYT, Page One. He's had a remarkable (if still young) career. He started writing the TV Newser blog while still in college and got hired by the Times shortly after graduation. He's now 27.
The talk is Monday at 7 pm in Palamountain Hall. It's free and open to the public.
photo: Brian Stetler Twitter
Judges to discuss "inner workings" of the Court of Appeals at Albany Law
Judges from the New York State Court of Appeals -- the state's highest court -- will be at Albany Law March 21 for an event titled "The New York Court of Appeals: The Untold Secrets of Eagle Street."* The judges will "discuss the court's procedure and inner workings."
All of the court's current judges are schedule to participate: Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, Judge Victoria Graffeo, Judge Susan Phillips Read, Judge Robert Smith, Judge Eugene Pigott, Jr., Judge Jenny Rivera. (Rivera was confirmed just this past month.)
The event is from 5-7 pm in Albany Law School's Dean Alexander Moot Courtroom. It's free and open to the public. It's part of the Albany Law Review's annual Chief Judge Lawrence H. Cooke State Constitutional Commentary Symposium.
*Because, you know, the court is on Eagle Street in Albany. It's across Pine Street from Albany City Hall.
Albany Law advertises on AOA.
Adaptive reuse of religious properties conference
Interesting, in part because it's been such a topic of discussion lately: there's a conference on the adaptive use of historic religious properties at the Carey Center for Global Good in Rensselaerville in March. It's co-sponsored by the The New York Landmarks Conservancy. Blurbage:
Re-use vs. demolition of closed religious institutions has galvanized communities throughout the state and country. Successful adaptive reuses have created jobs, boosted local economies, and rescued buildings of great importance to local communities. This conference will be the first comprehensive, state-wide discussion of why officials, communities, denominations and developers should consider adaptive use as an economic development tool.
The conference will present case studies of successful adaptive reuse projects, with an emphasis on strategies for economic development. Among the projects presented: Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Buffalo, Rochester's former Holy Rosary Church campus, the former St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Harlem, and Albany's former St. Theresa of Avila Church.
Here's the conference program. It's March 6-7. There's a sliding scale attendance fee that starts at $106.
Earlier on AOA: New lives for old churches
Gordon Parks photos at State Museum
"Street Scene: Two children walking, Harlem, NY, 1943" by Gordon Parks
Opening January 26 at the State Museum: Gordon Parks: 100 Moments, an exhibit of work by the renowned photographer and director. The collection includes one of Parks' most famous photos -- a take on Grant Wood's "American Gothic" (backstory) -- as well as images that weren't previously exhibited.
From a Parks bio at his foundation's website:
Born into poverty and segregation in Kansas in 1912, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man when he saw images of migrant workers published in a magazine. After buying a camera at a pawnshop, he taught himself how to use it and despite his lack of professional training, he found employment with the Farm Security Administration (F.S.A.), which was then chronicling the nation's social conditions. Parks quickly developed a style that would make him one of the most celebrated photographers of his age, allowing him to break the color line in professional photography while creating remarkably expressive images that consistently explored the social and economic impact of racism.
Parks would go on to become Life magazine's first African-American staff photographer, documenting many famous figures of the 20th century.
Also: he directed the movie Shaft.
The exhibit will be on display at the State Museum through May 19.
photo: Gordon Parks, "Street Scene: Two children walking, Harlem, NY, 1943" - Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress LC-USW3-023994-E
NYS Writers Institute spring 2013
The spring lineup for the NYS Writers Institute visiting writers series is out. As usual, it's full of notable/interesting/award-winning writers.
A handful of the names that caught our eye on first pass: George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Gail Collins, Manil Suri, and Eric Drexler.
Here's the full lineup...
Russell Simmons at UAlbany
As you might have heard, entrepreneur Russell Simmons will be at UAlbany October 13 as part of the university's World Within Reach speaker series at UAlbany.
Tickets for the talk are available to UAlbany students, faculty, staff, and alumni -- they're free require pre-registration. If you don't fit into one of those categories, but would still like to go, the university says you're welcome if you can get someone from the university's community to claim a spot for you while registering.
Simmons is the co-founder of Def Jam records, among many other businesses. He's also a political activist -- recently working with Dennis Kucinich on campaign finance reform efforts.
photo: David Shankbone via Wikipedia (cc)
Ken Burns at The Egg
Documentary director Ken Burns will be at The Egg November 26 for "an engaging evening" with historian and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer. Tickets are now on sale. They're $10.
Burns -- the man with his own effect -- and Holzer will be discussing Burns' life and "his passion for history," as well as his many respected PBS documentaries, including The Civil War, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, and Prohibition.
The event starts at 7:30 pm. It's a co-production with the NYS Archives Partnership Trust.
Genius visits
The MacArthur Foundation has announced its 2012 group of MacArthur Fellows, who get $500,000 grants with no strings attached (AKA, the "genius grants"). And as it happens, one of the winners will be here this week -- and another was just here.
Junot Diaz
Junot Diaz is, of course, a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. And now he's a MacArthur Fellow. (That's him on the right.) He'll be at UAlbany Thursday night as part of the NYS Writers Institute visiting writers series. From the MacArthur profile of him:
Junot Díaz is a writer whose finely crafted works of fiction offer powerful insight into the realities of the Caribbean diaspora, American assimilation, and lives lived between cultures. Born in the Dominican Republic and living in the United States since adolescence, Díaz writes from the vantage point of his own experience, eloquently unmasking the many challenges of the immigrant's life. With skillful use of raw, vernacular dialogue and spare, unsentimental prose, he creates nuanced and engaging characters struggling to succeed and often invisible in plain sight to the American mainstream.
The Diaz reading at UAlbany starts at 8 pm Thursday in the Assembly Hall on the uptown campus. It's free.
Chris Thile
A member of the Punch Brothers, Thile played The Egg this past Sunday. And it was apparently a great show. From the McArthur profile of Thile: "Chris Thile is a young mandolin virtuoso and composer whose lyrical fusion of traditional bluegrass with elements from a range of other musical traditions is giving rise to a new genre of contemporary music. With a broad outlook that encompasses progressive bluegrass, classical, rock, and jazz, Thile is transcending the borders of conventionally circumscribed genres in compositions for his own ensembles and frequent cross-genre collaborations."
By the way: William Kennedy was a MacArthur Fellow in 1983 -- and used part of the money to help found the NYS Writers Institute.
(Thanks, Tom!)
photo: Nina Subin / Penguin
Kate Bolick at Union College
Kate Bolick -- the author of the much talked about/circulated/commented/shared "All the Single Ladies" article in The Atlantic a year ago -- is coming to Union College for talk in November.
In that Atlantic piece, Bolick examines the idea of what it means to be a single woman, the changing nature of the "marriage market," and ultimately argues for more flexible attitudes about the way people decide to arrange their lives. Here's a clip:
What my mother could envision was a future in which I made my own choices. I don't think either of us could have predicted what happens when you multiply that sense of agency by an entire generation.
But what transpired next lay well beyond the powers of everybody's imagination: as women have climbed ever higher, men have been falling behind. We've arrived at the top of the staircase, finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up--and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don't want to go out with.
And here's an interview with Bolick at the Hairpin.
Bolick's talk at Union is November 6 (at Tuesday). It's at the Nott and it's free.
Sandra Fluke at Albany Law
A symposium at Albany Law School October 11 -- "From the Page to the Pill: Women's Reproductive Rights and the Law" -- will include Sandra Fluke.
The national spotlight found Fluke earlier this year after House Republicans didn't let her testify at a committee meeting on conscience clauses in health care. House Democrats then let her speak at a different committee meeting. Fluke spoke about the cost of contraceptives and the lack of coverage for them on the student plan at Georgetown, where she was a law student at the time (she's since graduated). Then Rush Limbaugh happened. Then the whole situation blew up.
Fluke was one of the speakers at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month.
The full lineup of speakers and panelists for the symposium, which is organized by the Albany Law Journal of Science & Technology, is after the jump. From the blurbage for the event:
The panelists will be divided into two panels. The first will focus on whether or not the law can and should mandate health insurance provider coverage of women's contraceptives, and the second will focus on legislation currently affecting women's reproductive rights.
The event is from 1-5 pm at Albany Law. It's free and open to the public.
NYS Writers Institute fall 2012
A few of the recent books from a few of the writers on this fall's slate.
The fall lineup for the NYS Writers Institute visiting writers series is out. As usual, it's full of notable/interesting/award-winning writers.
A handful of the names that caught our eye on first pass: Junot Diaz, James Mann, J. M. Coetzee, David Quammen, Steveny Levy, J. Hoberman, and newly-designated State Author Alison Lurie and State Poet Marie Howe.
Here's the full lineup...
Violence, Vulgarity, Lies
The Albany Law Review has a symposium on free speech issues -- "Violence, Vulgarity, Lies ... and the Importance of 21st Century Free Speech" -- coming up September 27 at Albany Law. And it looks like it's gathered a solid lineup of speakers, including:
Floyd Abrams, First Amendment lawyer, whose wins before the U.S. Supreme Court range from the Pentagon Papers to Citizens United
Dean Alan B. Morrison, George Washington School of Law, who co-founded the Public Citizen Litigation Group with Ralph Nader and who has argued more than 20 cases before the Supreme Court
Susan Herman, President, American Civil Liberties Union, and author, Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy
Robert O'Neil, former President, University of Virginia, and founder, Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression
Ronald Collins, Harold S. Shefelman Scholar, University of Washington School of Law
Robert D. Richards, founding co-director, Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, and John & Ann Curley Professor of First Amendment Studies at Penn State
Adam Liptak, Supreme Court correspondent, The New York Times
The symposium is free and open to the public.
Yep, Albany Law does advertise on AOA.
... said Dan about Albany Bagel Co.