She’s participated in many music festivals, notably, the Colorado College Summer Conservatory, the National Orchestral Institute, where she was named principal cellist, and the Aspen Music Festival where she met her husband Jeff Hunsinger, now the operations and production manager for the Arkansas Symphony.

Dr. and Mrs. Dan West established The Dan C. and Sidney Childs West String Endowment in May 1981 for the purpose of offering live musical performances or stringed instrument instruction at Lyon College.

The West String Endowment has supported free concerts on campus by such fine ensembles as the Trio Cassatt, the Guild Trio, and the Quapaw Quartet. In 1998, the endowment brought a Baroque chamber ensemble to campus to perform in a Harlequin Theatre production of The Beggar’s Opera. Dr. West was president of Lyon College – then Arkansas College – from 1972 to 1988.

The work of Rodgers and Hammerstein takes center stage at Lyon College

By Wil Shane
Lyon College News Bureau

The Ozark foothills will soon be alive with the sound of music and wind whipping o’er the plains.

On Feb. 10, Lyon College students and members of the Batesville Community Theatre will present “An Evening with Rodgers and Hammerstein.” The event, to be held in the Bevens Music Room, will feature a musical retrospective in honor of one of America’s most beloved songwriting teams.

Amanda Pickett, Lyon’s adjunct vocal instructor as well as a Lyon student, will perform in the program, as will fellow faculty members Russell Stinson, Ceil Smith and choir director Joel Plaag. Along with them, 10 Lyon students will also perform in the show, including Emily Fleming, Aubray Scott, Skye Hart, Bridgette Hanna, Neva Joseph, Derinda Fair, John O’Connor, Chris Estes, Nathan Reinhardt and Cris Slaymaker.

Pickett says the event will be more than merely a recital; it’ll be a “concert-lecture.”

“We’ll hand out information and interesting facts about Rodgers and Hammerstein,” she said.

An acting and singing veteran of several plays by the duo, Pickett said Oklahoma!, The King And I and Cinderella rank among her favorites, though it’s a revolving list.

“My favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein play is usually whichever one I’m looking at right now,” Pickett said. “I love them all.”

The music written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein raked in a total of 34 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards.

The duo pumped out 11 musicals for the stage and screen, including Allegro, Me And Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song and perennial hits such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I and The Sound of Music.

The classic film, State Fair, was their only production to be written directly for the big screen. Cinderella was a television production in 1957, and again in 1997, in a reprised production starring Brandy.

After Hammerstein’s death in 1960, Rodgers continued to write for the stage and screen. Some of his other collaborators included Stephen Sondheim, Sheldon Harnick and Martin Charnin. Rodgers died in 1979 at the age of 77. In 1990, the operators of the 46th Street Theatre honored him posthumously by renaming the theater the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

Admission is $10, and all proceeds go to benefit the John Saltzman Memorial Fund. Lyon students with ID will be admitted free.

For more information, call 613-3827.

Counts play to be produced at festival in New York “Beautiful Deceivers,” a one-act play by Dr. Michael L. Counts will be produced at the The Riant Theatre’s Strawberry One-Act Play Festival in New York City. The play will be performed Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 11-12, at 3 p.m. It will be taped and shown online on Sunday, Feb. 12, at www.TheRiantTheatre.com. The Strawberry One-Act Festival, in its 11th season this winter, is a play competition in which the audience and the theatre's judges cast their votes to select the best play of the season. Twice a year, hundreds of plays from across the country are submitted for the competition, of which 50 are chosen to compete. Plays move from the first round to the semi-finals and then the finals. The playwright of the winning play receives a grant and the opportunity to have a full-length play developed by the Riant.

The theatre’s website says: “This February the Strawberry One-Act Festival will go worldwide as we broadcast the festival via the Internet on the second day of each series in the competition."

Dr. Counts is professor of theatre at Lyon and director of the Harlequin Theatre.

Artist Najera showcases the ‘Double Meaning’ of her work

Lyon College’s Kresge Gallery is offering an intimate look at the many sides of San Diego, Calif.-based artist Marie Najera. On Friday, Feb. 10, from 6 – 8 p.m., the gallery will host an opening reception for Madera’s art exhibition, “Double Meanings.” The exhibition will run from Feb. 1 – 26 in the gallery located in the Alphin Building.

Najera’s paintings consist of images and icons with multiple meanings and feelings that are layered together to create a sense of chaos and order. Within the heavily textured paintings, the viewer is allowed glimpses of objects, words and numbers. Secrets often lie below the surface about love, lust and truths. Every object holds within it a double meaning.

Though Najera lives and works in San Diego, Calif., the David Lusk Gallery in Memphis, Tenn., represents her work. Lusk recently served as the juror for Lyon’s third annual Juried Student Art Exhibition in Kresge Gallery. Robert Hollingsworth, director of gallery logistics at David Lusk Gallery, will give a discussion about Najera’s paintings during the opening reception. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Chris Valle, Lyon College assistant professor of art, at 698-4336, or by e-mail at cvalle@lyon.edu.
 

Internship Awareness Day Lyon student Tracy Turner (left) speaks with Bethany Pitts, director of career development at Lyon, and Debra Dickey (right), administrative assistant to the Career Development Center, about available internships and job opportunities. Wednesday was Internship Awareness Day at the college.                                                                                     Photo by Eric Stewart

Lyon partners with ‘Team Spirit’ Lyon College expresses its gratitude to its ‘Team Spirit’ business and corporate partners. Team Spirit sponsors support unrestricted scholarships and unbudgeted athletics expenses such as post-season play. Team Spirit sponsors receive numerous benefits, including free admission to athletic events at Lyon, a corporate banner in Becknell Gymnasium and recognition at home games and in several college publications. Companies interested in becoming Team Spirit sponsors may contact Gina Garrett at (870) 698-4624. Team Spirit partners for 2005-2006 are: Wal-Mart Concord Specialty Corrugated ConAgra of Batesville Econo-Mart Pharmacy Ridout Home Center Arkansas Lime Bank of America Citizens Bank Kent’s Firestone New Vision Graphics Regions Bank White River Health Systems, Inc.

Memorable characters must be as ‘troubled’ as we are, renowned writer says

By Wil Shane
Lyon College News Bureau

When writing quality fiction, it’s imperative to let the characters tell the story, and for the writer to remain invisible to the reader, an acclaimed novelist and short story writer said Tuesday, Jan. 31.

Ron Tanner, Lyon College’s 2006 Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing, presented the Fiction Matters craft lecture, “Creating Characters Who Count,” in Nucor Auditorium on the college campus.
 

Lyon’s writer-in-residence, Andrea Hollander Budy, spoke of the endowment she helped establish to create the Visiting Fellow in Creative Writing program. The endowment brings those writers to Lyon every other even year. In 2004, the first fellow was British poet Peter Abbs, a professor of creative writing in the Graduate Research Centre in the Humanities at the University of Sussex, England. He’s lectured on poetics and given poetry readings and workshops in Britain, Australia, India and the United States, and is the author of eight volumes of poetry. Budy then introduced Tanner, the program’s second Visiting Fellow. Skilled writers, who “occupy a god-like seat in his fictional world,” should do more than just stay out of the way of their characters, they must create characters that a reader will care about, Tanner told the audience.

Ron Tanner and Andrea Hollander Budy                                                        Photo by Eric Stewart

“We need characters as complex and as flawed as ourselves,” he said. “The central characters of most successful American fiction are underdogs. He wants something that he can’t have, or can’t get easily. Our society loves an underdog.”

Compelling fictional characters almost always have four traits in common, including competency, caring, vulnerability and being self-directed, Tanner said. He used the character of Huck Finn from Mark Twain’s masterpiece novel, and Sethe, from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, as examples of how to incorporate these traits into living, breathing people who step off the page and into our minds, and into our hearts

Both Huck Finn and Sethe are competent in the things they do, Tanner said. With Huck, he’s an expert liar, among other things, when necessity mandates it. And Morrison shows Sethe early on in her story preparing a batch of biscuits with the skill of a craftsman.

“We enjoy watching people who do things well,” Tanner said.

Huck displays a caring attitude in his dedication to helping the slave Jim escape to freedom, and Sethe’s love for her children is her overriding motivation throughout her life, and the story.

Both characters display vulnerability through their flaws, and both are self-directed in their efforts to attain that which they are after. With Huck, it’s helping Jim reach freedom With Sethe, it’s her urgent desire to protect her children from the tyranny of slavery.

“Good characters must feel pressure from within and from without,” Tanner said. “The struggle of these characters is encouraging to us because they mirror our own struggles.” They must be at least as good as we are, and no less troubled.”

Tanner’s many awards and honors for his fiction include a James Michener Fellowship from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the New Letters Fiction Prize, the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Award for Short Fiction, and the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for his collection of stories, A Bed of Nails, and the prestigious Pushcart Prize.

Tanner’s work has also been anthologized in Best of the West, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Twenty Under Thirty: Early Work of America's Influential Writers.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tanner holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Wisconsin and is chair of the writing department at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Tanner began his residency at Lyon College in mid-January. While in Batesville, he is completing work on a novel and teaching the advanced fiction writing intensive at the college.

On Tuesday, Feb. 7, he’ll read from his award-winning fiction, with a book signing to follow. That will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Bevens Music Room. This event will also be free and open to the public.

Finally, on Saturday, Feb. 18, he’ll conduct the Fiction Matters Writing Workshop in the Alphin Room of the Alphin Building. Limited to 15 participants, this event requires pre-registration and fees ranging from $15 -$40. Contact Adele Grilli (698-4246 or agrilli@lyon.edu) for registration information. More information and a downloadable registration form may be found at www.lyon.edu/fictionmatters.htm.

Professor, author is next featured speaker in Japan Lecture Series

Lyon College – one of only four colleges in the state that offers Japanese studies – will soon give students and interested residents a look inside the thoughts and traditions behind some of Japan’s ancient festivals.

On Thursday, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m. in the Derby Lecture Hall, University of Iowa associate professor of anthropology Scott Schnell will present his lecture, Ritual and Protest - A Different Look at Japanese Festivals, as part of the Japan Lecture Series.

The event is free of charge and open to the public.

The author of The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community, Schnell says his overriding interest lies in exploring the conceptual aspects of human interaction with the local landscape.

“Ecological studies in anthropology tend to emphasize the material bases of human existence, such as the range of usable resources, the subsistence technologies devised to exploit them, and the amount of energy expended in doing so,” he said on the University of Iowa website. “My own research focuses instead on the ways people conceptualize the natural environment and their place within it, and how such attitudes are expressed or enacted through a religious idiom.”

Schnell said he focuses on the selective redeployment of “traditional” concepts through grassroots environmentalist movements.

“For example, I’m currently researching the Buddhist priest Banryu, who lived from 1786 to 1840, his synthesis of Buddhism with localized animistic beliefs and his recent elevation as a kind of patron saint for contemporary mountaineering enthusiasts and environmental advocates,” he said.

One of Schnell’s current projects is an effort to reconstruct the lives and experiences of a remote mountain people and understand why they rebelled against the modernization reforms that were being implemented by the central government in 1869.

Lacking more conventional sources, the project relies heavily on the ethnographic data incorporated into a massive historical novel entitled Yama no Tami, or “The Mountain Folk.”

The Japan Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from the Freeman Foundation for the purpose of enhancing the study of Japanese language, literature and culture.

The Freeman Foundation funds projects that promote mutual understanding between the people of the United States and Asia. The Japan Studies Program at Lyon College has received similar grants from the foundation since 2002. Mieko U. Peek, instructor of Japanese language and literature at Lyon, uses the grant to enhance and develop new curricular offerings, for a Japanese speech contest, workshops for local K-12 teachers, a lecture series, and other campus-based programs serving the college and the surrounding community.

For more information, contact Mieko U. Peek at 870-793-1790, or e-mail her at mpeek@lyon.edu.

Quink in concert Quink, the Dutch a cappella vocal group, perform Friday evening at Bevens Music Room as part of the Ashley-Lewis Concert Series.                                                                                                Photo by Eric Stewart

Lyon’s Tau Kappa Epsilon chapter dives in for the Special Olympics

By Wil Shane
Lyon College News Bureau

A fraternity at Lyon College wants to help the Special Olympics, but their efforts will soon land them in deep – and cold – water.

On Feb. 11, at 1 p.m., the Xi Tau chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon will make a “Polar Plunge” into the frigid winter waters of the White River to help raise money for the Special Olympics, the fraternity’s national philanthropy. Locally, the fraternity has also recently committed to helping serve the children at the Arkansas Sheriffs’ Youth Ranch, located in Bethesda just outside of Batesville. The group will be doing various community service activities and fund-raising for the Ranch.

Neil McCarthy, a sophomore at Lyon, is the community service chairman for the college’s chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon. He said the fraternity has never made the “plunge” before, but has served the community in various other ways.

The Polar Plunge is a Special Olympics event, and the TKEs are participating in it to support and give something back to the organization, McCarthy said. The fraternity will set up a table in front of the dining hall in Edwards Commons next week to accept donations, he added.

“We haven’t determined the exact location on the river for the Polar Plunge yet, but that information will be available at the donation tables,” McCarthy said.

Youth Ranch CEO Mike Cumnock, speaking of the fraternity's commitment to the ranch, said the TKEs represent a standard of achievement that the children at the Ranch can learn from.

“Most of our children would be the first members of their families to go to college,” he said. “Having college students who are willing to volunteer one of their most valuable assets – time – to help others are the types of role models we want.”

Having the TKEs interact with the children face-to-face and one-on-one will do more to inspire young minds than rhetoric ever could, he added.

“Young people who care about the success of other young people, and are willing to sacrifice for them, says more to the kids than millions of words,” Cumnock said. “TKE members, in volunteering, are giving something money can't buy – acceptance.”

The TKEs relish the opportunity to help with the Polar Plunge, and the fraternity intends to continue its support of the event, McCarthy added.

“Sometimes it’s hard, with the hectic schedules and homework we have at school, to get out and try to give back to the community that we’re a part of,” he said. “We’re glad this will become a regular event for the Teekes. We’re excited about it.”

McCarthy used a quote by the renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead to illustrate how individuals can help make a difference in someone else’s life.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world,” he said. “Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

For more information on how to donate to the Polar Plunge and the Special Olympics, contact the coordinator of the event, Jessica Fagan, the north central Arkansas field representative for the Special Olympics. The phone number for her Batesville office is (870) 698-2035.
 

Lyon SAFARI to expand this year Lexi Sitton (at right) works on a project at last summer's Lyon College S.A.F.A.R.I. program. This year, the summer enrichment program for youngsters, now in its sixth year, is expanding. S.A.F.A.R.I., previously for students like Lexi who have completed grades K-6, will run a Teen Camp this year for those in grades 7-8. The first session of the Children’s Camp will be June 5-16; the second will be June 19-30. Each session will be from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Students who have completed grades K-2 may elect to attend half-day sessions, either morning or afternoon. Students who have completed grades 3-6 attend for a full day. The first Teen Camp will run from June 12-16, and the second session will run from June 19-23. Lyon S.A.F.A.R.I (Summer Academics – Fun and Recreation Included) is designed to provide students with enriching, challenging and enjoyable learning experiences in a variety of content areas. For more information or an application, e-mail mcooper@lyon.edu or call (870) 612-6490. The application deadline is May 14. More information also can be found on the Lyon SAFARI Web page at www.lyon.edu/webdata/groups/safari/.