Bike to Work Day May 16

On Friday, May 16, IMRS at the University of Arkansas and the City of Fayetteville’s parks and recreation department will commemorate National Bike to Work Week.  Participants will bike to “Jammin Java” on the square arriving at 7 a.m., have a cup of coffee and then bike to their places of work.   You are invited to participate.  Helmets are required.

In addition, all faculty, staff, and students who participate will be allowed to shower and dress in the HPER; regardless of their membership status.  Participants must show their bike helmet at the doors to take part in the free showers. 

Archeologist to Speak on Colonial-Era Site

Dr. John House will be the guest speaker at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 27, at the meeting of the Kokoci Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society, presenting "Searching for the Roots of Arkansas History at Wallace Bottom." He will summarize the first 10 years of archeology at one of the most important archeological sites in Arkansas and look ahead to future studies that will bring the world of the French and Quapaws in colonial-era Arkansas into sharper focus. Work at Wallace Bottom since 1998 has included remote sensing, test excavations, preliminary geological investigations, and the 2003 "Cooperation Then and Now" project sponsored by the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma. These field studies have indicated the presence of well-preserved cultural features beneath the surface at the site.

House received his bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in 1973, after which he attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, receiving his Ph.D. in 1991. House serves as Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Station Archeologist at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

The will be held at the Arkansas Archeological Survey building, 2475 N. Hatch Ave., on the UA agricultural campus, in Fayetteville. The public is invited to attend. For more information, call 479-575-6549.

Speaker to Discuss Trade in the Western Hemisphere

John Anderson, senior director for western hemisphere affairs in the International Trade Administration, will speak on the “State of Trade in the Western Hemisphere and the Columbia FTA” from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, May 15, at the Arkansas World Trade Center in Rogers.

"Fayetteville 4" to Host Opening

"Fayetteville 4" will host an exhibit May 9 through June 21 at the Anne Kittrell Art Gallery located on the fourth floor of the Arkansas Union. Several graduate students and other community artists are presenting and selling prints, drawings, paintings and posters. Check out www.fayetteville-four.com for more info on this group.

Omni Center to Present Program on Iraq War

The Omni Center for Peace will present a forum about the true cost of the Iraq War titled “The Three Trillion Dollar War” (by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes), at 4 p.m. Friday, May 16, at the United Campus Ministry, located at 902 W. Maple in Fayetteville. The Omni Center has invited three panelists, Claire Detels, Van Brock and Gary Gray to comment on the book.

Detels is a University of Arkansas professor in music history and humanities active in arts education reform and feminist theory; keyboard performer and director of the Butcher-Detels Four-Hand Duo; author of Music in the Western Tradition and Soft Boundaries: Re-Visioning the Arts and Aesthetics in American Education.

Brock is a co-founder of the creative writing program at Florida State University, where he founded Anhinga Press.

Gray is a native of Searcy, had four years of active duty in the US Navy, is a licensed certified social worker, a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and a family therapist in private practice

The true cost of the Iraq War is $3 trillion and counting rather than the $50 billion projected by the White House.

Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. This sobering study by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes casts a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.

Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of Making Globalization Work and Globalization and Its Discontents. Bilmes, a professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a former assistant secretary for management and budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

TheatreSquared to Present "My Father's War"

TheatreSquared, Northwest Arkansas’ professional theatre company, concludes their 2007-2008 season with the world premiere of My Father’s War by artistic director Robert Ford. The play, running May 2-18, at the Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios inFayetteville, is based on actual experiences of the playwright’s father-in-law during World War II. 

The innovative play dramatizes the astonishing saga of PFC Arthur Herzberg, whose adventures took him from the D-Day invasion of Normandy through to the Battle of the Bulge, a ten-month span during which he survived one near miss after another, suicide missions, friendly fire, all to become the last man standing from his original platoon.

The theatre has advertised the play as "funny, harrowing, and ultimately profoundly moving." It is recommended for adult audiences, with strong language and difficult battlefield depictions. 

My Father's War is directed by New York-based director, Alice Jankell, and features local actor/director and University of Arkansas professor of drama Amy Herzberg in the central role.

In many ways, Art Herzberg's stories are typical of the hundreds of thousands of American G.I.'s who fought their way across France and Belgium in 1944, but in many ways they aren't. First, there's how he tells them. In his words, "I always said my war was like one of those Jerry Lewis movies from the 'fifties." So there's a comic, even slapstick, angle to many of the stories, right down to the punch line.   

Second, there was the anti-Semitism Art Herzberg often encountered in his own ranks. An urban Jewish kid, he put up with everything from harmless comments like, "Don't go all Hebrew on me, Herzberg," to the time he was volunteered for yet another suicide mission, "because you're the only Jew in the outfit."

Yet, ironic as the anti-Semitism might have been in a war against the Nazis, what may be most unusual about Art's experience was his near-miraculous stint as First Scout of his platoon, a job with an average life expectancy of two weeks. Art held it for 31⁄2 months. No wonder they nicknamed him "Combat."

Playwright Robert Ford culled 25 individual stories from the hundred or so Art has told over the years, many of which are recorded on a family video. In the play, those 25 stories unfold through the eyes of Art's daughter, Amy Herzberg, who plays both herself and her 19-year-old father in the play. She visits a spot in the Ardennes – in Belgium – one of the more brutal phases of the invasion. It's a place where her father had an encounter with a young German soldier, one that has never left him.

My Father's War by Robert Ford, directed by Alice Jankell, features Amy Herzberg, Abbey Molyneux, Jason Engstrom, Justin Scheuer and Kris Stoker.

Tickets are available online at theatresquared.org or by calling the T2 box office at 479-445-6333.

Arkansas World Trade Center Hosts World Trade Month

The Arkansas World Trade Center, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Commerce, will bring five international trade experts to northwest Arkansas in May for a series of lectures to celebrate World Trade Month.

The lectures will be held each Thursday in May at the trade center’s offices in Rogers. The events are free, and the public is welcome. These are “brown bag” events, with the center providing beverages.

Thursday, May 1, from 10 to 11:30 a.m., Israel Hernandez, assistant secretary for trade promotion, will speak on “Free Trade Agreements and the State of Trade.”

Thursday, May 8, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Abdul Shaikh, regional coordinator for the Africa, Middle East and South Asia trade information center, will discuss “Opportunities and Challenges in Doing Business with India.”

Thursday, May 15, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., John Anderson, senior director for western hemisphere affairs in the International Trade Administration, will speak on the “State of Trade in the Western Hemisphere and the Columbia FTA.”

Thursday, May 22, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Matthew Quigley, international trade specialist with the China business information center, will describe “Opportunities and Resources in China.”

In the final lecture, Thursday, May 29, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Karoli Ssemogerere, an expert on U.S./Africa affairs, will speak on “The African Growth and Opportunities Act and Africa Trade Initiatives.”

U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator to Speak Thursday

Ambassador Mark R. Dybul, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, will deliver a lecture on “Saving Lives, Creating Hope: America’s Response to the Global HIV/AIDS Crisis” at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10, on the University of Arkansas campus. Dybul directs the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has supported life-saving antiretroviral treatment for 1.45 million men, women and children.

The lecture will be in Giffels Auditorium in Old Main. It is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served at a reception afterward outside the auditorium.

Landscape Architect to Discuss "Legacy" Approach to Landscape Planning

An entry monument to High Desert in Albuquerque, N.M., is one of several stylized images of blue grama grass, a drought-resistant plant native to the area. Courtesy Design Workshop, Inc.

Kurt Culbertson is principal, shareholder and chairman of the board for Design Workshop, Inc., an award-winning international firm that practices landscape architecture, land planning, urban design and tourism planning. Culbertson will discuss his multifaceted design approach in a lecture titled "Toward Legacy: Evidence" at 5:30 p.m. today in Ken Shollmier Lecture Hall (room 103 in Vol Walker Hall).

Design Workshop is renowned for using sustainable development and design strategies to reconcile economic needs with the preservation of scenic, cultural and community values. Culbertson took a lead role on two key projects for the firm: the master planning process for Flathead County, Montana, a 3.8-million-acre community experiencing rapid growth, and the design of High Desert, a residential development in Albuquerque, N.M. that uses open space planning to preserve natural drainage systems and views. These and other projects are discussed in depth in the 2007 monograph on Design Workshop, "Toward Legacy."

A native of Shreveport, La., Kurt Culbertson received his undergraduate degree in landscape architecture from Louisiana State University and a master's degree in business administration in real estate from Southern Methodist University. He has won more than 20 regional and national awards for design work that ranges from secluded sanctuaries to national parks. In addition to design work, he has conducted extensive research on the contributions of German-American landscape designers to the profession of landscape architecture and authored an award-winning biography, "The Life and Times of George Edward Kessler."

Mechanical Engineering Lecture Jan. 23

Dr. Itzhak Green, a 21st Century Chair faculty candidate will present a seminar entitled "Lab-scale Modeling of an Electromagnetic Launcher: Structure & Tribological Interface" from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 23, in the mechanical engineering building, room 212.

For more information, please contact Debbie Haynes at dlhaynes@uark.edu.

Foo Fighters to Perform at Barnhill; Student Tickets Available Beginning Thursday, Nov. 29

For its first major concert of the school year the University of Arkansas Headliner Concerts Committee is bringing Foo Fighters to Barnhill Arena on Monday, Jan. 28, 2008. UA students may pick up their free tickets on a first-come first-serve basis, beginning at 6:30 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, on the fourth floor of the Arkansas Union. Watch for signs.

The show will be a combination of general admission and assigned seating. The floor in front of the stage will be general admission (with no chairs) and the rest of Barnhill will be assigned seating. Students will have a choice on which type of ticket they prefer until those tickets run out. There are about 5,000 student tickets available. No waiting or camping is allowed inside the Arkansas Union for tickets. The line for tickets will form at the southwest door into the Union Connections Lounge. Tickets for the general public will go on sale Friday, Nov. 30, through Ticketmaster.

Students must present their valid student ID when picking up a ticket. Students may bring one friend's ID to get a ticket for them. Students will also need to present their ID and ticket to get into the concert.

The Headliner Concerts Committee is a student-led organization created by the Associated Student Government and approved by the UA student body to bring major name acts to the University of Arkansas campus. During the 2007-2008 school year the group brought John Mayer and The Roots for two concerts at Barnhill Arena.