June 28, 2008 at 11:00 am

Youth and Media: Benefit vs. Peril

Rona Zlokower, MCM.

Media —everywhere, all the time are revolutionizing our children’s lives from the noted PBS series,Sesame Street, to video games, the rapidly growing world of advergames, MTV, BabyTV, texting, twittering and YouTube. Rona Zlokower will address media’s powerful influences on our children’s health and how we can empower ourselves and our children to be smart about media. B thr@Lycm or lstn 2 NHPR.

Rona Zlokower, MCM, has participated in and led public/private partnerships in the healthcare, corporate and nonprofit sectors for over 35 years. In 2000, Rona created MediaSmart with Selma Deitch, MD, founder of Child Health Services, Manchester, to address the increasing influence of media on children’s health and behaviors. In 2007, under Rona’s leadership, the program became Media Power Youth, a New Hampshire nonprofit that guides parents and professionals to empower youth to succeed in school and make healthy choices through smart use of media.

July 5, 2009 at 11:00

The Samaritan's Dilemma:
Should Government Help Your Neighbor?

Deborah Stone

Who is responsible for our welfare—the individual or society? In 1981, Ronald Reagan famously declared, “Government is not the solution to our problems.” In February 2009, Newsweek proclaimed, “We Are All Socialists Now.” Surely the economic crisis triggered this tectonic change in our political culture, but Deborah Stone has a different take. The desire for collective responsibility also grew from the vast reservoir of everyday altruism that was so neglected during the “greed is good” era. She will show why bringing the Good Samaritan ethic into public policy is critical for a healthy democracy.

Deborah Stone is a Research Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and a founding editor of The American Prospect. She is the author of three previous books, including Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, which has been translated into five languages and won the Wildavsky Award from the American Political Science association for its enduring contribution to policy studies. She has taught at M.I.T., Brandeis University, and as a visitor at Yale, Tulane, University of Bremen, Germany and National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. Her essays have appeared in The Nation, New Republic, Boston Review, Civilization, and Natural History, and Natural New England. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Harvard Law School, and was a Phil Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar.

July 12, 2009 at 11:00

How Starbucks Changed My Life

Micheal Gill

A dramatic talk that tells the surprising story of someone who had everything that the American Dream is supposed to provide-- big house, six figure job and social status--and lost it all. The surprising news: by that very loss of material riches Michael found a new kind of spiritual happiness he could never have imagined.

The son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, Michael Gates Gill was a creative director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising, where he was employed for over twenty-five years. He lives in New York within walking distance of the Starbucks store where he works, and has no plans to retire from what he calls the best job he’s ever had.

July 19th 2009 at 11:00 am

The Earth Knows My Name

Patricia Klindienst

Patricia Klindienst will talk about the ethnic gardener as a culture bearer and citizen of the land community, one who, in healing the wounds of displacement--whether by injustice, poverty, or war--brings a wealth of traditional wisdom to the task of healing the land as well. Patricia addresses where we might begin the work of remembering who and what we are.

Patricia Klindienst earned a Ph. D. in Modern Thought & Literature form Stanford University in 1984 then began her career as an interdisciplinary scholar at Yale, publishing ground-breaking feminist re-interpretations of classical myths and biblical stories. An award-winning scholar and teacher, she left the academic world to write for a broader audience.

Her first book, THE EARTH KNOWS MY NAME (Beacon Press 2006), tells the stories of ethnic Americans who transmit their cultural heritage through their gardens. Praised by readers as diverse as Dr. Jane Goodall and Barry Lopez, Klindienst’s rendering of the voices of ethnic peoples has been called "An original and exemplary kind of cultural study" by Geoffrey Hartman, Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature and co-founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale, who characterizes her book as "… essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the growing reality that an ancient ecological relationship, imaginative and religious in its intensity, is slipping away." She received an American Book Award for 2007.

July 26 2009 at 11:00

 Our Courts:  Learning Civics through Games

Eric Keylor

Since the beginning of video games, there has always been interest in using video games for learning.  Now, a perfect storm of technology, social media, and learning science is making the development of video games for deep learning more feasible than ever.  During this talk, we will explore the learning principles behind good video games, and we will discuss the design, development, and future vision of Guardian of Law, a game to teach civics to middle school students that was initiated by Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as part of the Our Courts project (www.ourcourts.org).

Eric Keylor is a Ph.D. student in Educational Technology at Arizona State University and is currently on the Our Courts design and development team.   He studied music at Yale University and has a Master’s of Entertainment Technology from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. 

While at Carnegie Mellon, he was on the development team for PeaceMaker, a turn-based strategy game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  PeaceMaker won the University of Southern California’s Public Diplomacy Games contest and won the Games for Change Annual context.  In late 2007, the Peres Center for Peace distributed 100,000 copies of PeaceMaker in Israel and the Palestinian territories and committed to providing teacher support for the use of PeaceMaker in Israeli and Palestinian schools. 

Eric is interested in finding new ways of applying instructional design and learning science to game design.

August 2 2009 at 11:00

Transforming Turmoil into a New Economy

John Perkins

For the first time in human history every human being faces the same crisis, including climate change, diminishing resources, and economic turmoil. Because of the internet and cell phones, we all know that the old approaches have failed. It is time, Perkins says, to develop a model that takes us out of war-based, exploitative economies into ones committed to creating a world that future generations will want to inherit. Every major crisis can be traced to corporate goals of maximizing profits regardless of the social and environmental costs. By recognizing that the market place is a democratic voting booth, we, the people, have the power to demand new goals, ones focused on generating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.

Economist and New York Times Bestselling Author

As Chief Economist at a major international consulting firm, John Perkins advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies.

John Perkins's classic exposé of his former life, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, spent over 70 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and is published in more than 30 languages. His follow-up New York Times bestseller, The Secret History of the American Empire, provides a plan for creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world. He is the author of Shapeshifting, The World Is As You Dream It, and other books on indigenous cultures and personal transformation; a founder and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, nonprofit organizations devoted to establishing a world our children will want to inherit; and has lectured and taught at universities in many countries.　

August 9th, 2009 at 10:00 (due to MacDowell Day)

Performing Arts: Pathways Across Cultural Divides

Eric Stumacher

From California to the Middle East, performing arts can create a worldwide opening inspiring transformational personal connections that transcend political, economic, racial, cultural, ethnic, gender, skill level, education, and generational divides. The Sonad Project expands the music/conflict resolution continuum to include not only classical musicians, but all those interested in participating regardless of inclination or profession. Eric will detail his experiences and the bridge building effects that resulted from his efforts.

Eric Stumacher, founder of the Sonad Peace Project, has performed concerti, solo recitals, and chamber music concerts worldwide to critical acclaim for over forty years. For thirty-five years, Mr. Stumacher served as Founder, Pianist, and Executive and Artistic Director of the Apple Hill Chamber Players, Apple Hill, and the Apple Hill Playing for Peace Project, before resigning in October, 2007 to establish the Sonad Peace Project. Mr. Stumacher studied with Eleanor Sokoloff, Rosina Lhevinne, and Beveridge Webster, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and The Juilliard School. Mr Stumacher also serves as Music Director and Conductor of the Keene (NH/USA) Chamber Orchestra. He resides in Nelson, NH with his wife, Kathy, a violist, administrator, and day care professional, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

"Extraordinarily Effective"
New York Times

"Never doubt the power of a small group of dedicated, committed citizens to change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead

August 16, 2009 at 11.00

Being Spiritual While Living in "The Eye of the Storm"

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson

How does one person, or one congregation, or one religious organization continue the spiritual journey within chaotic times? Right Reverend Eugene Robinson will address the times in our lives where our spirituality can waiver and how faith can inform our lives even as controversy or challenges in relationships, careers, and other life stresses can rock our beliefs and values.

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson graduated from the University of the South, Sewanee in Tennessee in 1969 with a B.A. in American Studies and History. His M.Div degree followed in 1973 at the General Theological Seminary in NY and was ordained deacon, then priest serving in Christ Church, Ridgewood, NJ. He served as Youth Ministries Coordinator for the seven diocese of New England and served for two years on the National Youth Ministries Development Team, where he helped originate the national Episcopal Youth Event. In 1983 he served as Executive Secretary of Province I, coordinating all cooperative programs between New England’s seven diocese. On June 7, 2003, he was consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, having served as Canon to the Ordinary for nearly 18 years and was invested as the Ninth Bishop of New Hampshire on March 7, 2004.

Gene has co-authored AIDS educational curricula for youth and adults and has worked in the United States, Uganda and South Africa in this field. In addition he has advocated against racism in the diocese and wider Church.

Gene enjoys entertaining, cooking, gardening, music and theatre and has two grown daughters. He is the proud grandfather of two granddaughters. He lives with his partner, Mark Andrew who is employed by the State of New Hampshire’s Department of Safety.

August 23 at 11:00 am

Happy Birthday Darwin and Hello Alfred Wallace

Celebrating the Other Darwin: Alfred Russel Wallace, the neglected co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection

2009 marks Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species.  Overlooked courtesy of all the perfectly legitimate hoopla is a significant detail in the Darwin tale. Alfred Russel Wallace, an obscure English naturalist, had glimpsed the theory in the midst of a malarial fit while collecting specimens in the Spice Islands in 1858, and serendipitously sent his manuscript off to Darwin.  Had he not done so, but sent the manuscript instead directly to a journal, the history of science would be very different. This talk will tell Wallace's remarkable story and answer why we celebrate Darwin while Wallace seldom, if ever, rises above the obscurity.

With an undergraduate degree in zoology from Oxford and a PhD in evolutionary genetics from Princeton, Andrew Berry is a lecturer at Harvard where he teaches evolutionary biology and history of biology. His expertise is in Drosophila genetics but his fieldwork career has compensated for all that time spent in the lab: giant rats in New Guinea, butterflies and ants in Australia, aphids in Taiwan, bats in Nepal, wrens on the Faeroe Islands, mice on the Orkney Islands, butterflies in Borneo. He has published books on Alfred Russel Wallace (Infinite Tropics, Verso 2002) and, to mark the 50th the anniversary of the discovery of the double helix, on DNA (DNA, with James D Watson. Knopf 2003), and lectures widely to academic and popular audiences. He and his wife, Harvard lepidopterist Naomi Pierce, live in Cambridge MA with their twin 12 year old daughters.