Week of January 25th

David Orr: DOWN TO THE WIRE
Tuesday January 26, 2010, 7:30 PM
Agnes Scott College
Won a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging “persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy.”

Professor Orr’s latest book, Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse, has been deemed by Ray Anderson, Founder and Chair of Interface, Inc. to be “a sweeping synthesis of science, politics, history, and public policy…this very important book envisions a road map to a livable future.” The book is significant for any individual institution that has made the commitment to help address climate change locally, regionally or nationally.
Before the words “sustainability” and “climate change” were in the daily vocabulary on most college campuses, Professor Orr was challenging students and teachers to consider the consequences of our actions on the environments. In previous books he has set a high standard for including the environment in education that has become well known in the field.
His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. He is the author of six books and co-editor of three others. Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992), described as a “true classic” by Garrett Hardin, is widely read and used in hundreds of colleges and universities. A second book, Earth in Mind (1994/2004) is praised by people as diverse as biologist E. O. Wilson and writer, poet, and farmer, Wendell Berry.
In 1987 he organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses that helped to launch the green campus movement. In 1989 Orr organized the first ever conference on the effects of impending climate change on the banking industry. Co-sponsored by then Governor Bill Clinton, the conference featured prominent bankers throughout the mid-South and leading climate scientists including Stephen Schneider and George Woodwell.
In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as “One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century,” and by The New York Times as the most interesting of a new generation of college and university buildings. The Lewis Center purifies all of its wastewater and is the first college building in the U.S. powered entirely by sunlight. But most important it became a laboratory in sustainability that is training some of the nation’s brightest and most dedicated students for careers in solving environmental problems. The story of that building is told in two books, The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2002) that Fritjof Capra called “brilliant,” and a second, Design on the Edge (MIT, 2006), that architect Sim van der Ryn describes as “powerful and inspiring.”
Professor Orr taught at Agnes Scott College in the 1970s and we are honored to have him return at this important time for the college, for his work and for the global environment.

Michael Shelden: MARK TWAIN: MAN IN WHITE: THE GRAND ADVENTURE OF HIS FINAL YEARS
Wednesday, January 27, 7:15pm
Decatur Library
Michael Shelden, author of acclaimed biographies of Graham Greene and George Orwell, turns his attention to Mark Twain with an eagerly anticipated new book, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years. It's a deeply researched book utilizing some unpublished sources that brings to vivid life Twain's last years, a period that found the humorist full of charm, vigor and charisma. Critics call it "a breakthrough in Twain biography" and praise the scholarship and writing ("eloquent and moving").

Robert Pinsky :GULF MUSIC: POEMS
Sunday, January 31, 4pm
Glenn Memorial Chapel
Emory University
Served as US Poet Laureate from 1997-2000. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1974, and in 1997 he was named the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.
As Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state share their favorite poems. Pinsky believed that, contrary to stereotype, poetry has a strong presence in the American culture. The project sought to document that presence, giving voice to the American audience for poetry.[citation needed]
Pinsky is also the author of the interactive fiction game Mindwheel (1984) developed by Synapse Software and released by Broderbund. [3]
Pinsky guest-starred in a 2002 episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, "Little Girl in the Big Ten", and appeared on The Colbert Report in April, 2007, as the judge of a "Meta-Free-Phor-All" between Stephen Colbert and Sean Penn.