Miscellany

William R. ("Bill") Ferris, author of Mule Trader: Ray Lum's Tales of Horses, Mules, and Men (UP of Mississippi, 1998), senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South, film documentarian of "Hush, Hoggie, Hush," former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, and self-made southern culture enterpreneur, addressed the university community on April 17 in Mendenhall, reflecting on "The State of the South." Ferris observed, "To the people in the South, the most important question is not what you do, it's [and the entire audience finished his sentence] ... it's where are you from?" Ferris acknowldeged ECU's contribution to Southern culture and urged the audience to save the historical arcaheaology of the South in North Carolina -- old buildings and structures that were once vital to daily life, i.e. tobacco barns, shot gun shacks, smokehouses, etc. Ferris asserted, "When an old man or woman dies, a library burns down." He also entertained the audience with Ferris-like (vocal and guitar) renditions of "Honky-Tonk Blues" and "Be-bop-a-lula." A lively question and answer session followed his talk. He was introduced by his old friend from Mississippi, Chancellor Muse.

In the same musical vein, Jerry Leath Mills shares this easy method for creating your own blues heritage called "How To Sing the Blues" attributed to Memphis Earlene Gray et al.

Seven outstanding creative writing seniors -- Laura Bokus, Ivey Brown, Kim Miske, Amy Simpson, Casey Tart, and Eugene Tinklepaugh -- read from their work, Thursday May 8, in Bate 1031, at 7 p.m. Sponsored by the Student Services and Scholarships Committee and the Department of English, this event inaugurated the award for outstanding creative writing by ECU English majors.  The first award will be made in spring 2004.

Timm Hackett read from his original screenplay, "Once Upon The Time" at the Emerge Gallery in downtown Greenvile, April 8th at 7 p.m. The story is about a princess who must decide between marrying a prince and a clock maker and how her choice changes the entire Land of Green. Hackett's screenplay has been submitted for consideration to the Nichols Fellowship, which will be announced in October of this year. Hackett is presently at work on a novel titled A Thousand Other Simple Things.

Professor Armin Schwegler, associate editor of the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, and co-editor, of Revista Internacional de Linguistica Iberoamericana, presented "On the Discovery of a 'New' African Ritual (Language) in Cuba" on Tuesday, April 1 in Bate 1026. Schwegler is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Irvine, and he is currently writing a book on the Cuban ritual language of Palo Monte, whose true African roots can now be traced for the first time. Schwegler's visit was organized and sponsored by the Department of English, along with the Research, Public Relations, and Student Awards Committee, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and the Ethnic Studies Committee.

Sigma Tau Delta provided a "Pie in the sky in your eye!" for the 2003 edition of Barefoot on the Mall, April 24th. Among the Pie-Eyed particpants were: Tina Register, Amanda Chastain, Rob Bottoms, Ryan Anderson, Rick Taylor, Dawn Kellar, Sam Cox, Marina Golterman, Jennifer Sisk, Jason Myers, Kristi Southern, and Retta Lopez.

Pultizer Prize winning poet, Henry Taylor, visited East Carolina University on April 17, reading from his work in Mendenhall and the Greenville Museum of Art. He is Professor of Literature and Co-Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University in Washington, DC, where he has taught since 1971. His third collection of poems, The Flying Change (1985), received the 1986 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; his first two collections, The Horse Show at Midnight (1966) and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975), were reissued in one volume in 1992. His most recent collection of poems, Understanding Fiction: Poems 1986- 1996, appeared in 1996. Taylor is also a skilled translator; he has translated from Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Russian, as well as translating two collections by the Bulgarian poet Vladimir Levchev, the most recent being Black Book of the Endangered Species (1999). His translation of Sophocles' "Electra" appeared (Spring 1998) for the Penn Greek Drama series. He is now at work on a new collection called Crooked Run, titled after a creek in his native Loudoun County, Virginia.