Posted on Oct 10, 1997

“Robert V. Wells examines life through a lens of death.”

So begins an Associated Press story running this month on the national wire.

Wells, the Chauncey H. Winters Professor of History and Social Science, has spent the
last decade researching the changing culture of death in Schenectady over its 300-year
history.

“It's an important topic in terms of cultural history,” he said.
“One can see some of the basics of a culture's attitudes about a lot of
different things in how they confront death and manage it.”

As the community grew, death and funerals shifted from being public events to being
private ones. In 1858, he said, one family displayed the body of a child on their front
lawn for some 3,000 mourners, an act that would be unthinkable today.

Wells, who this year has a Fulbright Fellowship to teach American history at Odense
University in Denmark, used public records like death certificates and eight personal
diaries to provide insight into attitudes and customs about death.

Among the most unusual was the diary of Tayler Lewis, a language professor at Union,
who mourned the death of a 17-year-old daughter by translating Biblical passages in
several different languages. The Civil War-era diary of Lewis' son, Charles, gives a
chilling account of Lincoln's assassination, which the writer witnessed at
Ford's Theater.

On current attitudes about death, “Some say we are a death-denying culture,”
Wells said. “I don't think that's quite right. We have a vicarious
relationship with death,” experiencing it at a distance through television shows,
movies and the news. “We lost the vocabulary, but in some ways we are immersed in
it.”

Wells also was interviewed by National Public Radio.

Posted on Oct 10, 1997

A memorial service for the late Frederick Hartwig, former chairman of the political science department, will be Saturday, Oct. 18, at 11 a.m. in Old Chapel.

Hartwig died May 30 in Arlington, Va., after a battle with cancer. He was 56.

He worked with pro-democracy groups in Chile to help overthrow the Pinochet military
dictatorship, and also was instrumental in the early 1990s in the first-ever, all-race
election in South Africa by training voters in the electoral process.

He was a political science professor at the College for 20 years, specializing in
quantitative analysis, or polling data. Hartwig became a public opinion researcher in 1983
when he joined Peter D. Hart Research Associates in Washington. At the time of his death,
he was senior vice president of the Democratic political polling and consulting firm.

His companion, Debbie Klingender, who also had worked with him in Washington, said
Hartwig considered his work in Chile among his greatest accomplishments. “He helped
understand public opinion there before the 1988 vote that overthrew Pinochet,” she
said. “He listened to the Chileans' needs, and he developed a plan for them to
work collectively.”

He was born and raised in Elmhurst, Ill., and obtained his Ph.D. in political science
at Northwestern University.

Survivors include his former wife, Johanna Petersen of Schenectady; a daughter, Karen
Hartwig of Albany; and a son, John Hartwig of New Haven, Conn.

Posted on Oct 10, 1997

Members of the Union community are invited to participate in the College's
inaugural employee craft fair to be held on Friday, Oct. 24, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
in Reamer Campus Center. College employees who would like to sell crafts that they have
made may register for a table with Cheryl Alusow, organizer, in Becker Hall. Tables will
be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, call ext. 6580.

Kevin Ramundo '87 (MBA '90), vice president senior analyst for
Health Care Ratings Group of Moody's Investor Service, will speak on “How Wall
Street Views the Health Care Industry” on Oct. 20, at 6:30 p.m. in Reamer Campus
Center Auditorium.

Mark Walker, associate professor of history, will talk on “Do the Archives
of the Swedish Academy of Science Tell Us Why Lise Meitner Never Got the Nobel
Prize?” on Thursday, Oct. 16, at 12:15 p.m. in the Phi Beta Kappa Room of Schaffer
Library. His talk is part of the city-wide celebration of National Archives Week.

The College's entry in the co-ed team competition of the Chase Corporate
Challenge last May finished ninth of 142 teams. The four-member team of Janet Anderson,
Charlie Casey, Kristin Fox and Don Rodbell finished the 3.5-mile course in an accumulated
time of 96:28. General Electric won the division in 81:23; the state Department of Health
was second, Fleet Bank third.

Posted on Oct 10, 1997

An article by Yoshimitsu Khan, assistant professor of modern languages and literatures, “Tips for Doing Business in Japan,” appears in the 1997 issue of Global
Business Languages published by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Purdue University. His recent project “Inoue Kowashi and the Dual Images of the Emperor of Japan” has been accepted for publication by Pacific Affairs Journal
published by the University of British Columbia. His essay traces the course of
establishing and legitimizing Imperial rule in Meiji and pre-war Japan.

William Finlay, associate professor of theatre and director of the Yulman
Theatre, choreographed “Guys and Dolls” at the Park Playhouse in Albany this
past summer. He also served as combat choreographer for Shakespeare's “As You
Like It” at The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Hudson, N.Y. As the artistic
director of Proctor's Too, the professional theatre series run in collaboration with
the College, he was recently honored by Metroland magazine when the series was
given a major award as “Best Experimental Theatre” in the upstate Capitol
region.

Robert Baker, professor of philosophy, has published “Crisis, Ethics and
the American Medical Association: 1847 and 1997” with Arthur Caplan, Linda Emanuel,
and Stephen Latham, in the July 8, 1997 issue of Journal of the American Medical
Association. He also made three recent conference presentations: “Doctor
Chase's Patent Truss and the Origins of American Medical Ethics” (with Dana Katz
'97), at the annual meeting of the American Association of Historians of Medicine;
“History of the Goals of Medicine” at The Goals of Medicine: Priorities for the
Future Conference in Naples, Italy; and “Revolutionizing the Researcher-Patient
Relationship: A Historical Analysis,” at the annual conference of the European
Society for Philosophy, Medicine and Healthcare in Padova, Italy. Also, he was
commissioned to co-edit, with Prof. Laurence McCullough of Baylor College of Medicine, a
925-page multi-authored volume, “A History of Medical Ethics,” for Cambridge
University Press. The volume will be the first history of medical ethics published in
English in the 20th century. Anticipated publication date is 2002.

John M. Spinelli, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer
science, has published a paper “Self-Stabilizing Sliding Window ARQ Protocols”
in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. The paper discusses ways to improve the
reliability of communication protocols such as those used on the Internet.

Posted on Oct 6, 1997

Schenectady, N.Y. (October 6, 1997) – Anthropologist and nature writer Richard Nelson will give a talk titled “Deer in Modern America: An Ecology of Heart and Blood” on Wednesday, October 22 in Union College's Reamer Campus Center Auditorium at 4 p.m. Nelson's talk will be based on his book Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).

Deer came close to extinction at the turn of the century in many parts of the United States, especially the northeast, Nelson explains, but since then deer have made a phenomenal comeback, adapting almost too well to the modern mix of wild, rural, and suburban environments. Throughout the country, people struggle to live harmoniously with deer that inhabit neighborhoods, seriously damage farm crops, overbrowse natural preserves, and carry lyme disease ticks. In his talk, Nelson will address the often controversial relationship between people and deer, with particular attention to hunting issues.

Of Heart and Blood, Jim Harrison wrote: “I can't imagine a more splendid volume on a single species than Richard Nelson's Heart and Blood. It is frankly an incredible book, and I suspect that it will be widely read by hunters and anti-hunters, environmentalists and politicians, and anyone who cares about what's left of the natural world in America.”

Nelson is a writer whose work focuses on human relationships to the natural world. He has spent many years studying the Eskimo and Athabaskan Indian people in Alaska and based on those experiences wrote Hunters of the Northern Ice, Hunters of the Northern Forest, Shadow of the Hunter, Make Prayers to the Raven, and The Athabaskans. His work has appeared in Life, Harpers, Outside, Orion, Audobon, Wilderness, Pacific Discovery, Northern Lights, and others.

His book The Island Within — a personal journey into the natural world surrounding his home — received the John Burroughs Award for nature writing. He was also granted a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was a recipient of the 1995 Lannan Literary Award for creative nonfiction writing. Nelson was voted “least likely to succeed” upon graduating from high school.

Nelson received a bachelor's and a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; he earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from University of California, Santa Barbara.

The lecture is free and open to the public. The sixteen-sided Nott Memorial is located at the center of campus and parking is available on campus and on nearby sidestreets.

For more information, call 388-6131.

Posted on Oct 1, 1997

Union College is host to the first concert of the inaugural tour of the Spoleto USA Festival featuring artistic director Charles Wadsworth and violinist Chee-Yun on Friday, October 17 at 8 p.m. in Union's Memorial Chapel.

The program is to include Suk's Elegie for piano trio, Bartok's Contrasts, Schubert's Fantasy in f, D. 940 for piano 4-hands, Poulenc's Clarinet sonata, and Smetana's piano trio.

Charles Wadsworth created the now-famous Mid-Day Chamber Music Series at the Spoleto Festival in Italy in 1960. In 1977, he established Spoleto/USA in Charleston, South Carolina, and now is launching a tour of the festival. The artists performing with the group are all soloists in their own right, and include director and pianist Wadsworth, violinist Chee-Yun, clarinetist Todd Palmer, cellist Andrés Días, and pianist Stephen Prutsman.

Artistic Director Charles Wadsworth has had a long and distinguished career as a champion of chamber music and in January received the 1997 Chamber Music America Award. He was founder and director of the world-famous Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for 20 years and introduces each piece in the program with wit and humor.

Violinist Chee-Yun is a world-renowned soloist and has an exclusive recording contract with Denon Records. She has performed with such leading ensembles as the Atlanta Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the National Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic, among others.

Clarinetist Todd Palmer made his New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall as winner of the 1987 Artists International Competition and has gone on to perform as a soloist with the Houston Symphony, the Maryland Symphony, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. He has also collaborated with the Orion, Borromeo, Brentano and St. Lawrence String Quartets.

Cellist Andrés Días has had numerous orchestral appearances that have included performances with the Atlanta Symphony, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the orchestras of Milwaukee, Seattle, and Victoria (B.C.) as well the Boston Pops. He has also performed recitals at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, and the Gardner Museum.

Prize-winning pianist Stephen Prutsman has received awards for his performance of Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev and has performed in recitals with major orchestras throughout the world, including solo recitals in Boston, Portland, and San Francisco and chamber music at Lincoln Center.

The Schenectady Museum-Union College concert series is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

Memorial Chapel is located near the center of the Union campus. Parking is available on campus and on nearby sidestreets.

Tickets, at $15 ($7 for students), are available in advance at the Schenectady Museum (518)382-7890 and at the door at 7 p.m. For more information, call 372-3651.