Miscellany

Julie Fay attended, along with 300,000 others, the Anti-Globalization Conference August 8-10 in Larzac, France. Of special interest were forums on Occitan language (the language of the Troubadors), speeches by Jose Bové, and debates over the current situation of young North African (beurs) in France.

A baby boy was born to Maya Socolovsky on August 6th at 12 noon weighing 6 pounds and 14 ounces.  Maya says, "He is very sweet and tiny! His name is Ilan (last name: Socolovsky-Hull!). We're all doing well but obviously on no sleep. ... And I'm having to concentrate very hard not to have any typos in this message!"

"Expressions of Creativity," a video by Chuck Baldwin, an Instructional Technologist in the College of Health and Human Performance, has been selected to be screened at the Emerald Eye Short Film Festival, Sept. 27-28. The video presented the qualitative research findings from an interdisciplinary collaborative project involving Boni Boswell, Mike Hamer, and Sharon Knight. Baldwin included segments from previously produced videos chronicling Mike Hamer and Boni Boswell's long-term involvement in wheelchair dance as well as music and poetry.  The video was originally developed as a means of presenting research findings during the International Advances in Qualitative Methods Conference in Banff, Canada in May 2003.

Margaret Maron read from her work on Sept. 9 at Mendenhall and Sheppard Memorial Library as part of the Writers Reading Series of Eastern North Carolina.  Maron, a North Carolina native, is the author of the Judge Deborah Knott Series, which includes Southern Discomfort, Bootlegger's Daughter, Shooting at Loons, Up Jumps the Devil, Killer Market, Home Fires, and Storm Track. She is also the author of Uncommon Clay, Bloody Kin, Slow Dollar, and Shoveling Smoke.  Her works have been translated into seven languages and are on the reading lists of various courses in contemporary Southern literature. Maron also been nominated for many major literary awards in the American mystery field.  She is a founding member of Sisters in Crime and served as its third president.  She is also a past president of the American Crime Writers League and past member of the national board of Mystery Writers of America.  Maron's latest book, The Last Lessons of Summer (2003), is available from Warner Books.