Model students Andrew Clark '00, left, and Schenectady High School sophomores Beena Iype,
center, and Rafael Iskhakov make final adjustments to the model of the lift
bridge they built for the Erie Canal exhibition in the Nott Memorial. Union
students, joined by local high schoolers through the Science and Technology
Entry Program, built four models the others were a change bridge, aqueduct
and lock under the direction of Prof. Andrew Wolfe. The students were
recognized last Thursday at a dinner and symposium on the construction of the
canal. “Monument of Progress: The 175th Anniversary of the Erie Canal”
runs through Oct. 29 in the Nott Memorial.
Ask first-year student Alexandra Kagan anything about opera. Anything.
Kagan was a regional finalist last April in the Texaco Opera Quiz's
first-ever contest for high school students. The popular event is an
intermission feature of the live radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera.
While panelists are usually critics, performers, conductors, or playwrights, 57
students from eighteen schools competed to be one of the three quiz finalists.
Kagan, a graduate of the Gunnery, a private school in Washington, Conn., was
a New York region finalist, but did not win the final round to participate in
the quiz on the radio a fact that doesn't bother her at all.
“I am not the most outgoing of people, so the opportunity to be heard by
millions of people internationally was a little nerve-wracking,” she says.
Kagan was introduced to opera by Tom Adolphson, a humanities teacher at the
Gunnery whose passion for music inspired her. “He just started throwing on
different CDs and recordings. Then we went down to the Metropolitan Opera House
in Manhattan. I just fell in love with it,” she says.
When Adolphson said that he needed three students to take on an extra course
load to compete in the opera quiz last spring, Kagan agreed and immersed
herself in opera for several months, spending three hours each evening studying
operas and composers.
“I had a lot of fun with it,” she says. “I was in shock that I
knew most of the answers. I didn't think that I had done enough to
prepare.” She lost to another student who had studied opera his whole life
and was fluent in Italian.
Kagan is studying psychology and European history something she fell in
love with while researching operas.
As for continuing with opera, she plans to be a lifelong opera-goer. “I
haven't found one yet that I didn't like,” she says.
Friday, Sept. 22, and Saturday, Sept. 23 Hale House.
“Preparing Engineers for the 21st Century,” a workshop on implementing
curricular change in engineering education. For more information, see http://engineering.union.edu/iccee.
Friday, Sept. 22, 8 p.m. Nott Memorial.
Concert: The Blues Duo (Henry Afro Bradley, guitar, and Jasper McGruder,
harmonica) will perform music that ranges from field hollers and popular songs
of the nineteenth century to contemporary rural and urban blues. (Workshop at
12:25 p.m. in Arts 215.)
Friday, Sept. 22, through Monday, Sept. 25, 8 and 10 p.m. Reamer Auditorium.
Film: U-571.
Friday, Sept. 22 and Saturday, Sept. 23, 8:02 p.m. Yulman Theater.
Proctor's Too presents Paul Zaloom.
Admission $15; $10 students. Info: 346-6204.
Tuesday, Sept. 26, 3:30 p.m. Ralph and Marjorie Kenney Center, Park Place and Nott Street.
Open House. Students, faculty, and staff are invited to join community leaders
and neighborhood residents to celebrate the grand opening of the Ralph and
Marjorie Kenney Center in College Park.
Tuesday, Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m. Schenectady Museum Auditorium.
“Waterways West: The Antecedents and Origins of the Erie Canal” with
Philip Lord, director of the division of museum services, New York State Museum.
Part of “Monument of Progress: The 175th Anniversary of the Erie
Canal,” an exhibition and series of events at Union and the Schenectady
Museum.
Thursday, Sept. 28, 3:30 p.m. Arts Atrium Gallery.
Artist Ben Frank Moss delivers a slide lecture on his paintings and drawings,
now on exhibition in the Arts Atrium.
Thursday, Sept. 28, 7 p.m. Nott Memorial.
“Forum for Change,” a discussion with community leaders on the future
of Schenectady.
Through Oct. 21. Arts Atrium.
“Ben Frank Moss: Paintings and Drawings,” an exhibition by the George
Frederick Jewett Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College.
Through Oct. 29. Nott Memorial.
Exhibit: “Monument of Progress: The 175th Anniversary of the Erie
Canal” with related events throughout.
(A full schedule of events appears in “Union's Calendar,”
distributed weekly on campus, and at www.union.edu/News/Events_Calendars.)
One afternoon last July,
as Juliet Ordon (at left in photo) and Rhobie Langwig were toiling over a
transplanting project in Jackson's Garden, a couple settled down on a blanket
with a fancy lunch, fine china and glasses of champagne.
“This is it,” they excitedly told the gardeners. “This is the
exact place where we got married 30 years ago.”
Just as the Hans Groots Kill bubbles its way through the secluded eight-acre
garden and woodland, so does a steady stream of humanity: the man reading a book
while his dog chews a stick, bike-riding teens taking a shortcut to Nott Street,
an elderly alumnus showing his grandchildren the rare ginko tree.
“It was really strange,” recalls Langwig, a sophomore. “We
would be weeding and planting and all of these people would be coming through to
admire the flowers and just get some peace and quiet.”
The two 1999 graduates of Schoharie High School, friends since the age of 10,
found their calling and their serenity in Jackson's Garden this
summer. “This was very peaceful and low stress,” the pair said of
their summer jobs. “The rabbits came out and chewed on the flowers, but we
left them alone.
Save for the occasional wail of a siren or the screech of tires, there
is little hint of the city nearby. This is a place of solace, an escape from the
bustle of the urban world, a retreat from the toils of academia, a place known
for its restorative powers.
In fact, we have indigestion to thank for Jackson's Garden. President
Eliphalet Nott in 1831 suggested to mathematics professor Isaac W. Jackson that
working the soil could remedy his problem with digestion. Jackson's therapy
lasted nearly 50 years, and successive gardeners have molded his vision into a
celebrated parcel of landscape architecture at the northwest corner of campus.
Except for a few species that prefer drier conditions,
plants in the garden thrived this year. Figwort, in the southwest corner of the
garden, towers some twelve feet with leaves the size of trashcan lids. “We
did a lot of weeding, especially this year with all the rain,” said Ordon,
a sophomore education major at the College of Saint Rose, whose mother, Bea,
worked in Campus Safety and now in the Annual Fund.
“It was nice when people stopped by and complimented the garden,”
said Langwig. “We're no gardeners. We just planted this stuff and somehow
it lived.”
“This job was totally different from what we've done in the
past,” said Ordon, referring to their previous summer jobs at Howe Caverns,
where the air is a humid 52 degrees. Langwig was lucky enough to work as a
parking lot attendant. Ordon rarely saw the sun.
“I'll never look at the garden the same way,” said Langwig.
“I'll always be looking for weeds.”
Hilary Putnam
Cogan Research Professor
Harvard University
September 21, 2000
Nott Memorial
Union College
7:30 p.m.
Professor Hilary Putnam continues to revolutionize contemporary philosophical thought with his work on the nature of consciousness; artificial intelligence; the mind/body problem; the relation of truth, language, and reality; the foundations of mathematics and logic; and the methods and history of philosophical pragmatism.
Professor Putnam will be in residency at Union September 18-23, 2000. The Spencer-Leavitt Professorship is sponsored by Union College.