The College’s veterans and members of the Armed Forces were honored during a special Veterans Day ceremony Thursday, Nov. 11.
During the ceremony in Memorial Chapel, Frank Taormina ’50 told the story of “Taps,” the bugle call composed by Daniel Butterfield, Class of 1849, who rose to the rank of major general in the Union Army. Butterfield composed the haunting call while in camp at Harrison's Landing, Va., in 1862.
Rachel Finkelstein ’12 played the bugle call during the ceremony, the first formal Veterans Day observance on campus in recent memory.
The Dutch Pipers and the Schenectady Pipe Band also performed.
Internationally acclaimed songstress Christianne Stotijn and pianist Joseph Breinl have selected three American venues for their upcoming recital tour – and Union is one of them. On Saturday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m., Stotijn will appear in her second Chamber Concert Series show.
Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano
Together, in a program entitled “Dream Works,” she and Breinl will present songs by Grieg, Brahms, R. Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov.
A Dutch mezzo-soprano, Stotijn pursued her vocal studies in Metz, London and Amsterdam, where she graduated in 2003 with highest distinction. Her teachers have included Udo Reinemann, Jard van Nes and Dame Janet Baker.
Earlier this year, Stotijn won the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award for her Tchaikovsky Romances CD. She was a BBC New Generation Artist until 2007, and additional accolades include the 2008 Dutch Music Prize and the 2005 Borletti Buitoni Award. Performing oratorios, lieder and operatic roles, Stotijn has appeared in many renowned halls including the Grote Zaal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall, Musikverein Vienna and Mozarteum Salzburg.
Joseph Breinl
A frequent partner with Stotijn, Breinl has been described as a “full partner in the…success” of their performance by the Washington Post. His training in solo piano and song accompaniment began in Munich with Karl-Hermann Mrongovius and Gitti Pirner. After graduating from the Amsterdam Conservatoire in 2003 with highest distinction, Breinl continued his studies in London with Graham Johnson.
Breinl won the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition in 2003 and, with Stotijn, the 2005 ECHO Rising Star Prize. He has also worked with Mattijs van de Woerd, Michelle Breedt and German mezzo-soprano Kammersöngerin Waltraud Meier. Currently Breinl is accompanist and vocal coach at the Musikhochschule München and professor of song interpretation at the Kunstuniversität Graz.
The show is open to the public and free to members of the Union community. General admission tickets are $20, though area students may attend for $8. For a complete list of this season’s concerts, click here.
A review essay by Raymond Martin, research professor of philosophy, appeared in a recent issue of the journal History and Theory. The piece, “Let Many Flowers Bloom,” is on historian Allan Megill’s “Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice.”
Laurie Tyler, professor of chemistry, recently published a paper with student co-authors Lauren Carlson ’07,Jenna Welby ’07,Kelly Zebrowski ’11 and Matthew Wilk ’12. The paper was accepted by Inorganica Chimica Acta, an Elsevier journal dedicated to publishing inorganic research. The title of the paper is ‘Spectroscopic differences between heterocyclic benzothiazoline, -thiazole and imine containing ligands and comparison of the Co and Cu pyridine benzothiazole and imine complexes.”
Tina Lincer, associate director of Communications, will give a memoir reading at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, Monday, Dec. 12 as part of Bookmarks, a series of public group readings across literary genres. Lincer joins numerous other area writers in an evening devoted to the theme of siblings. Bookmarks is a program of the center’s Memoir Project.
Gordon Brown ’12 graduated from the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Leader’s training Course at Fort Knox, Ky. During the four-week course, Brown received training in fundamental military skills, Army values, ethics, warrior ethos, basic rifle marksmanship, small arms tactics, weapons training, drill and ceremony, communications, combat water survival training, rappelling, land navigation and squad-level operations.
Sixty-four students showed off their work at the Nott Memorial Tuesday, the culmination of their Sophomore Research Seminars.
“I was at first apprehensive about taking part in a large research project,” said Keven Donohue ’13, who is interested in pursuing an interdepartmental major in math and economics. “But the research process was broken down into several steps that allowed me to gather information and organize it in a logical manner.”
Donohue studied “Drugs and Cultures” with professor Joyce Madancy this term. His project addressed how certain wars, particularly the Civil War and Vietnam War, altered the nature of opiate use and perceptions of opiate use in the United States.
Union’s Sophomore Research Seminars, small, content-rich classes, are designed by instructors from throughout the College to help students learn research and writing skills. The SRS is a key required component of Union’s General Education.
In addition to Madancy’s course on “Drugs and Cultures,” Tuesday’s poster session featured students from “The Automobile in American Culture,” with Brad Lewis; “Cuba and the Cuban Revolution,” with Teresa Meade; and “Race, Gender and Class in the American Civil War Era,” with Andrea Foroughi.
“The SRS allows students to dive into a research project and learn about the construction of an argument, the critical analysis of sources and the compilation of valid evidence,” Madancy said.
Christine Wong '13
The poster session, she noted, comes between the rough draft of the research paper and the final version. “It allows students to present their work verbally and to think of visual means of organizing their evidence. They can also see what other students are working on.”
Christine Wong ’13, a pre-med physics major in Madancy’s course, researched the legalization of caffeine and the illegal status of amphetamines.
“I wanted to know if caffeine and amphetamines were similar when it came to how they affected the body and why one was legal and the other was not. I found they were very similar in their effect on the brain. I concluded that caffeine was legal due to social and economic issues, not merely because it was safer to use.
“Doing the work was difficult at times, but it was completely worth it,” Wong said. “I got to research what I was interested in, which made it enjoyable.”
Melanny Dominguez ’13, Cuba research
For Melanny Dominguez ’13, who is leaning toward a major in political science and a minor in Spanish, the research seminar opened a window on a new world, that of racism in post-revolutonary Cuba.
“It all started with a book assignment,” said Dominguez, citing “Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century,” a biography of Maria de los Reyes Castillo Bueno by her daughter, Daisy Rubiera Castillo. “This book was amazing. It talks about the struggles Reyita faced because of her Afro-Cuban descent.”
Dominguez also was taken with a second book, “Pichon: Race and Revolution in Castro’s Cuba,” a 2008 memoir by Carlos Moore.
“Everything about Cuba was new to me,” she said. “I really enjoyed reading these primary sources. Their stories were intriguing and powerful.”
To see video highlights of some of the Sophomore Research Seminar presentations, click here.
The College’s veterans and members of the Armed Forces will be honored during a special Veterans Day ceremony Thursday, Nov. 11.
During the ceremony, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in Memorial Chapel, Frank Taormina ’50 will tell the story of “Taps,” the bugle call composed by Daniel Butterfield, Class of 1849, who rose to the rank of major general in the Union Army. Butterfield composed the haunting call while in camp at Harrison's Landing, Va., in 1862.
General Daniel Adams Butterfield, composer of “Taps”
Unhappy with the call for “Extinguish Lights,” Butterfield, with the help of the brigade bugler, Oliver Willcox Norton (1839-1920), wrote a new call.
The call became known as “Taps” because it was often tapped out on a drum in the absence of a bugle call. It was officially adopted by the U.S. Army in 1874.
Rachel Finkelstein ’12 will play the bugle call during the ceremony, the first formal Veterans Day observance on campus in recent memory.
The Dutch Pipers and the Schenectady Pipe Band also will perform.
Dick Killeen ’51, chairman of the Garnet Guard, one of the organizers of the service, will give remarks.
In addition, miniature American flags will be placed along the route from the President’s House to Memorial Chapel.
“This ceremony is just one way we can honor Union College’s veterans,” said Tammy Messercola, director of Alumni Relations. “They gave their service to our country, and this is our way of saying thank you.”
The ceremony is open to all members of the campus community. The public is also invited.
