Grain & Chaff

National Public Radio's Corey Flintoff (right) chats with Paul K. Williamson, '74, prior to discussing his experiences in post-Soviet Mongolia in a March 6 talk. Williamson and his wife Kathryn endowed the Commonwealth College lecture fund that brought Flintoff to campus. (Stan Sherer photo)

Dinner with Friends

The Friends of the Library will host its first fund-raising event, a festive, four-course dinner with four local authors at the University Club on Saturday, April 5. The guest authors are mystery writer Jane Isenberg, journalist Bruce Watson, poet and English professor Dara Wier and children's author Nancy Hope Wilson.

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. with a reception, which includes a raffle of an autographed book by each of the four authors. Brief presentations by the authors will precede each course of the meal. An old-fashioned Yankee book swap will follow the dinner.

The Friends hope to raise $4,000 to build the Library's collections while enjoying a "fun evening with other Library-loving folks and area authors," said Ruth Owen Jones, vice-president of the organization and member of the event planning committee. "Another goal is to attract new Friends. We invite faculty, staff, and community members to join us in celebrating not only our local authors, but also the rich resource we have in our midst, the UMass Amherst Library."

Tickets for the event are $100 per person or $175 per couple. The tax-deductible donation is $65 per person or $105 per couple ($35 per person covers the expenses of the evening and is not deductible).

For more information or to make reservations, contact Susan McBride at 5-3974. The reservation deadline is March 24.

Committee assignment

Lisa Sullivan-Werner, interim head of Extension's Nutrition Education Program and Family Nutrition Program team leader, was recently appointed to the National Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program Planning and Coordination Team. The panel will help shape priorities for food stamp nutrition education programs across the country and advise states on policy-making, said Sullivan-Werner.

Raising the Bard high

English professor Arthur F. Kinney presented an invited lecture at the Université de Sorbonne in Paris last week on the "Interiority of Shakespeare."

Did you know?

Corey Flintoff's page on the National Public Radio features a photo of the journalist taken by our own Stan Sherer.

In the news

Political Science professor Sheldon Goldman, an expert on federal judicial appointments, was quoted in the Boston Globe (March 27) on Democratic attempts to block the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The Washington Post (March 2) cited Goldman's data in a feature on the average age of appeals court nominees broken down by president. ... Psychology professor Daniel R. Anderson commented in a St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times story (Feb. 28) about the death of Fred Rogers and the impact of the long-running children's show on PBS.