A Victorian Christmas with John Doan

"A Victorian Christmas With John Doan," a holiday tradition in its 16th season, comes to Salem Sunday, Dec. 15, at 7 p.m. in Hudson Hall at Willamette University.

This seasonal program is a live version of Doan's Emmy nominated Public Broadcasting television special which re-enacts the celebration of Christmas a century ago. The show explores how the Victorians invented many Christmas traditions both remembered and forgotten. The 20-string harp guitar, classical banjo, and ukelin are a few of the original turn-of-the-century instruments Doan will introduce.

Tickets at the Willamette music department box office are $10 for adults and $8 for children under 12. Free tickets are available to Willamette University students, faculty, and staff with a Willamette ID. For more information and phone reservations call (503) 370-6255.

Doan is a touring and recording artist who has appeared on radio and public television. His recording, "Eire - Isle of the Saints," was voted Best Celtic Album of the Year by the NAV Music Awards and was followed by "Wayfarer - Ancient Paths to Sacred Places" released on Hearts O'Space Records.

Doan is an associate professor of music at Willamette University.

For more information, contact John Doan at www.johndoan.com.

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Peace Lecture Oct. 23 at Willamette

Medea Benjamin, founding director of Global Exchange, an organization dedicated to building people-to-people partnerships around the world, will discuss "Terrorism and the Erosion of Human Rights at Home and Abroad" at the 13th Annual Peace Lecture, Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. in Cone Chapel in Waller Hall at Willamette University. Admission is free and open to the public.
In addition to the lecture, each year the event honors an individual or couple who have been active in peace and justice issues in the Salem area. This year Verne and Rosemary Cooperrider will be honored for their many years of dedication and activism.

Benjamin will also discuss “Corporate Irresponsibility” at Willamette University’s Convocation Thursday, Oct. 24, at 12:45 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

For more than 20 years, Benjamin has supported human rights and the causes of social justice around the world. She has been an outspoken advocate for Afghani civilians who have lost relatives during the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.

Benjamin was the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate from California in 2000. Her run for U.S. Senate succeeded in mobilizing Californians around issues such as living wage, schools-not-prisons, and universal healthcare. She has been a key figure in the anti-sweatshop movement, having spearheaded campaigns against the giant sports shoe company Nike and clothing companies such as the GAP.

She is author of eight books, including "Bridging the Global Gap, The Peace Corps and More," and the award-winning book "Don't Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart."

Medea received a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and a master’s degree in economics from the New School for Social Research. For 10 years, she worked as an economist and nutritionist in Latin America and Africa for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the Swedish International Development Agency, and the Institute for Food and Development Policy.

Tax-deductible contributions to support the work of the Annual Peace Lecture are welcome and should be made payable to Peace Plaza.

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Art Auction to Benefit Willamette Student

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Willamette Dean Wins Prestigious Prize

Symeon C. Symeonides, dean of the School of Law At Willamette University, has been awarded the first Friedrich K. Juenger Prize in Private International Law for his article "Choice of Law in the American Courts in 2000: As the Century Turns" published in the American Journal of Comparative Law.

The prize was established in 2001 by the American Society of Comparative Law in honor of its late former president Juenger, a long-time professor of the University of California and one of the top private international law scholars in the world. Symeonides is the first recipient of this prize.

Symeonides donated the $1,500 prize to the Fund for Faculty Excellence at the College of Law.

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“Big Love” Plays at Willamette

“Big Love,” written by Charles Mee and directed by Lisa Rothe, opens at the Willamette University Theatre Nov. 14 and plays Nov. 15-16, and Nov. 21-23 at 8 p.m. Matinees are scheduled for Nov. 17 and 24 at 2 p.m.

Tickets are $3 to $10. For ticket details call 503-370-6221.

The hit of the 2000 Humana Festival of New American Plays, “Big Love” is an outrageously hip, disarmingly funny look at men, women and the inescapable power of love.

On the eve of their wedding, and the brides-to-be are not amused. Promised as infants to their cousins, the girls are having second thoughts about marriage. Stealing away on the family yacht, they seek asylum at a sumptuous Italian villa. The boys soon arrive in hot pursuit and the resulting nuptials quickly turn into a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred war between the sexes.

Rothe most recently directed “Top Girls” at Stella Adler in New York City and played Madge in “Time and the Conways” off Broadway with the Epic Theatre Company. She has directed and taught at various theatres and universities across the country including Manhattan Theatre Source, Riverside Theatre in Iowa City, NYU, Chautauqua Theatre Conservatory and Long Island University.

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Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center At Willamette University Next Month

The Willamette University Grace Goudy Distinguished Artists Series presents The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Wednesday, Nov. 20, at 8 p.m. in Hudson Hall in the Mary Stuart Rogers Music Center on campus.

Featured artists include David Shifrin, clarinet; Ani Kavafian, violin; Ida Kavafian, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; Fred Sherry, cello; and Anne-Marie McDermott, piano.

The program will include works by Mozart, Copland and Brahms.

Ticket are $20 for adults and $12 for students and seniors at all Safeway FASTIXX outlets or by calling 1-800-992-8499.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) is the resident company at Lincoln Center devoted to the performance and creation of chamber music. Directed by David Shifrin, its pioneering structure, a core of distinguished artist members augmented by invited guests, allows for a repertoire of the widest instrumental and stylistic range.

The Chamber’s wide-ranging activities include concerts at Lincoln Center, national and international tours, nationally televised broadcasts on "Live from Lincoln Center," and regular features on both National Public Radio's "Performance Today" and Public Radio International's "Chamber Music New York."

As the nation's premier repertory company for chamber music, CMS strives to bring audiences the finest performances of repertoire dating as far back as the Renaissance and continuing through the centuries to include the finest music of our time. In addition, CMS has commissioned more than 110 new works from an impressive array of composers. In Alice Tully Hall, its home at Lincoln Center, CMS presents a subscription series from October to May, as well as other series dedicated solely to contemporary music and student and family audiences.

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Public Safety Lecture At Willamette University

M. Ray Mathis, who recently stepped down as executive director for the Citizens Crime Commission, an affiliate of the Portland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, will discuss “Public-Private Partnerships: Social Services, Security, and Public Safety/Terrorism” Thursday, Oct. 24, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in the Kilkenny Lecture Hall, Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University. A reception will follow.

Mathis is a member of numerous public safety committees including the Local Public Safety Coordinating Council, Homeless Youth Oversight Committee, Over-representation Committee, Sheriff’s Advisory Committee, and the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee.

He is past president and board member of the National Association of Crime Commissions and a former officer of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.

An FBI Special Agent until 1989, Mathis worked in the criminal, intelligence and counter-terrorism areas as both an investigator and manager. His last assignment in the FBI was as branch chief of personnel security, counter-intelligence/terrorism for NATO in Brussels, Belgium. Subsequently, he was recruited by PANAM Airways to reorganize their overseas security in the aftermath of the bombing of PANAM 103.

Mathis is also past president of Alert Management Systems, an airport security company whose 2,200 employees screened passengers at airports in the U.S. and Europe.

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Pelton Names Grainger Senior Executive Assistant

Kristen Grainger has been named Senior Executive Assistant to Willamette University President Lee Pelton, effective November 11.

For the past six years, Grainger worked as executive assistant to Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers. In this post she served as Chief of Staff, primary spokesperson and political advisor for the Oregon Department of Justice and served as the Department’s policy leader on issues of particular interest to the Attorney General.

She is currently on a leave of absence from the Department of Justice to serve as communications director for the Ted Kulongoski gubernatorial campaign.

Prior to her work in the Attorney General's Office, Grainger was president and co-owner of a Salem-based government relations firm, Grainger & Tresidder, Inc.

A graduate of the University of Washington, she has worked as a public information officer for the Oregon School Boards Association and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in Seattle. In 1989 she was one of the recipients of The Oregonian's Young Writers Fiction Prize.

Grainger replaces Gary Cordova who left in May to take a position as vice president for institutional advancement at Chaminade University of Honolulu.

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Molly Ivins Gives Atkinson Lecture

Irreverent, outspoken, hilarious, biting and brilliant are all words used to describe nationally syndicated columnist Molly Ivins. A thorn in the side of imposters and bureaucrats, Ivins has earned a reputation for poking fun at sacred cows and politicians who underestimate the intelligence of their constituents.

Ivins kicks off the 2002-03 Atkinson Lecture series in Smith Auditorium at Willamette University on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. Tickets will be available to the campus community at the Information Desk at the University Center beginning Oct. 15. For students, faculty and staff, the first ticket is free and additional tickets are $10 each with a limit of three tickets per person. Tickets will become available to the general public for $10 beginning Oct. 24.

Ivins, a best-selling author and widely syndicated political columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, says politics, particularly in Texas, is great entertainment -- "better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball."

The speaker has written four popular books-- Molly Ivins Can't Say That Can She?; Nothin But Good Times Ahead; You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You: Politics in the Clinton Years; and Shrub, which details George W. Bush’s road to the White House.

Ivins is the former co-editor of the liberal monthly Texas Observer and former Rocky Mountain bureau chief for the New York Times. She has also worked for the Houston Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Dallas Times Herald. Her column now appears in 113 newspapers besides the Star-Telegram.

Her freelance work has appeared in Esquire, Atlantic, The Nation, Harper's, the Progressive, Mother Jones, TV Guide and numerous other publications. She is a frequent guest on network radio and television shows.

Ivins has a B.A. from Smith College, a master's in journalism from Columbia University and studied for a year at the Institute of Political Science in Paris.

She served for three years on the board of the National News Council, is active in the Amnesty International's Journalism Network and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She writes about press issues for the American Civil Liberties Union and several journalism reviews.

She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist three times, and has won numerous journalism awards, including a 1992 Headliner's Award for best Texas column. She was named Outstanding Alumna by Columbia University's School of Journalism in 1976, and was a member of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize jury.

Ivins says her two greatest honors as a journalist came when the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and when she was banned from the campus of Texas A&M.

Ivins opens the two-part Atkinson Lecture series, which concludes in April with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

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