Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

“The only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute.”--Rumi

The eighth annual MTSU Flute Festival featuring guest artist Jonathan Keeble will be held Saturday, Jan. 26, with registration beginning at 8 a.m. in the Wright Music Building lobby on the MTSU campus. Guest artist Keeble will give a 2 p.m. recital performance and a 4 p.m. master class in the Hinton Music Hall located in the Wright Music Building. In addition, Keeble will make a presentation titled Making Old Music New: Transforming the ‘Warhorses’ Into Modern Language. “Other flute festival events include a High School Solo and a Junior Solo Competition, which takes place in the morning. Also, area college teachers will be the hosts of a Flute Chat session,” says Deanna Little, festival coordinator and assistant professor of flute.

Contact Little at 615-898-2473.
drhahn@mtsu.edu

Let freedom ring

To celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the MTSU chapter of the NAACP will sponsor a voter registration drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow, Jan. 23, on the second floor of the Keathley University Center. Also on the second floor will be a display chronicling King’s life. Donations will be accepted for the National MLK Memorial being constructed in Washington, D.C. Tomorrow night, at 7 p.m., you can lace up your skates for “Skating for Justice,” an outing at Skatecenter of Murfreesboro, 849 West College Street.

For more information on MLK tributes, contact the Office of Intercultural and Diversity Affairs at 615-898-2987 or go to http://www.mtsu.edu/aahm/events_aahm.shtml.

The Seventies’ Screen

In the 1970s, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and other filmmakers responded in passionate but diverse ways to the defining events of a highly charged political era, including Watergate, Vietnam, the emergence of global corporatism and the continued threat of nuclear holocaust. It was a period when the American film industry eagerly absorbed the values of the counterculture, which, in turn, had deeply questioned the seemingly sacred foundations of American society. This semester, Dr. Will Brantley, English, is teaching “American Film in the 70s,” a University Honors College class which explores some of the ways in which the creative community made sense of the so-called “Me Decade.” Screenings include Cabaret, Carrie, The Conversation, The Deer Hunter, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, Nashville, and Taxi Driver.

Contact the University Honors College at 615-898-2152.

TR EXTRA

WHERE HISTORY COMES ALIVE--You can contribute to the living legacy of MTSU by allowing officials at the James E. Walker Library to make digital images of your university memorabilia. The MTSU Memory Project is looking for photographs and documents from both the campus community and the community at large. Eventually, these images will be posted on a user-friendly, searchable Web site suitable for both research and reminiscing. If it’s in your attic, in a piano bench, or on a living room bookshelf, the Memory Project wants to make a digital image of it and preserve it for all time to come as part of the institution’s history. For more information, contact Ken Middleton at 615-898-8524 or kmiddlet@mtsu.edu or Mayo Taylor at 615-898-5605 or taylorm@mtsu.edu.

READ ALL ABOUT IT--Four recent MTSU graduates now grace the halls of MTSU’s James E. Walker library and the walls of Tennessee high schools on posters encouraging students to read. The latest READ posters are available for viewing in the periodicals section of the library on the main floor. They feature young people from dramatically different walks of life who found reading to be essential to their academic, spiritual and professional lives. Bill Black, library professor in charge of administrative services, says library officials are working gradually to distribute the posters to schools throughout Tennessee. Featured on the posters are John Awan, a native of Sudan who has worked to collect books for shipment to his war-torn homeland; Matthew Bullington, a Murfreesboro native and recipient of a Presidential Scholarship, which paid for all four years of his MTSU education; Kimmie Jones, a Brentwood woman who has refused to let muscular dystrophy block her career in public relations; and Petar Skobic, a native of Croatia who learned English by reading Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien novels. Contact Black at 615-898-2772 or wblack@mtsu.edu.

THE BITE AND THE BLOOD--When MTSU student Craig Hutto lost a leg, he gained a new appreciation of the medical profession—one so intense that it prompted him to change his major. A week before his 17th birthday in June 2005, the Lebanon youngster was on vacation with his family about 50 miles southeast of Panama City. As Craig was fishing with his brother Brian, a bull shark estimated to be six to eight feet long attacked Craig’s right leg, piercing his right femoral artery. Medical personnel who happened to be on vacation on the beach went into action and saved Craig’s life, but they couldn’t save his leg. Craig has since changed his major from computers to nursing and speaks to groups about the importance of blood donations. For more about Craig Hutto, contact Gina Logue in the Office of News and Public Affairs at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu.

GOING GRAY BEHIND BARS--“Grandma Lifers in Prison: Approaches to Understanding the Lives of a Forgotten Population” will be the first presentation of the new year in the Women’s Studies Research Series at 3 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 24, in Room 100 of MTSU’s James Union Building. This lecture is free and open to the public. Dr. Ron Aday, professor of sociology and anthropology, will deliver the address and answer questions. “The number of women inmates in state and federal prisons has increased rapidly in recent decades and, more recently, older women have been the fastest growing segment of this population,” Aday says. “As a forgotten minority, virtually nothing is known about the distinct experiences of older women in prison.” For more information, contact Dr. Jane Marcellus at 615-898-5282 or jmarcell@mtsu.edu, or contact the Women’s Studies office at 615-898-5910 or womenstu@mtsu.edu.