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On the Record . . . |
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For Debbie McDuffie '71, the beat goes on ... and on! She has produced and arranged a single-track CD, Up in Smoke, funded by the Minority Tobacco Control Project and featuring the Ritz Voices, an all-city youth chorus -- of which she is choral director. Sponsored by Citibank and McDonald's, the 80 talented young people, representing 45 public and private schools in three Florida counties, perform contemporary, gospel and jazz music. This is just the latest project in Debbie's 25-plus years in the music business, where she has plied her talents in production, performance, composing, arranging, marketing and advertising -- as well as, lately, teaching and lecturing. |
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Hot off the press, Frontier Diplomats: The Life and Times of Alexander Culbertson and Nanyist-Siksina is the first book of Lesley Wischmann '73. Actually, the book was published in the fall of 2000, by Arthur H. Clark Co.-- but the paperback is scheduled to come out soon. Lesley spent 10 years researching Culbertson (1809-1879) and his Blood tribe wife, Nanyist-Siksina (1825-1893), important figures in the history of the American West and particularly the development of the fur trade. Lesley and her husband make their home in Laramie, Wyoming, where she travels the state for the Humanities Council, lecturing on various history topics and laying the groundwork for a new book on the 1851 Horse Creek Treaty Conference. |
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Leah Kennedy '66 (classmates knew her as Nancy Babcock) has written poetry all her life. Only recently did she decide to share it in this volume of 47 poems, Love With a Twist. By day, a writer/editor in the field of health and medicine living in New York City, she nevertheless had plenty going on in her creative life. In the past two years, she has participated in group shows and had three solo exhibits of her hand-colored photographs from Mexico, Costa Rica, northern Europe and elsewhere. But with encouragement from her longtime friend Marty Ley '65 -- herself a writer and photographer -- Leah felt the time was right "to indulge myself." Marty also lent her editorial expertise, and published the book through her Sky Ladder Press, in Santa Rosa, California. The cover image reproduced here is one of Leah's hand-colored photographs, "From the Roof, West Village, NYC." |
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Former faculty member Lennie Kesl's career as an artist has lasted more than 50 years. In October 2001, Obsession, a major retrospective exhibition at the University of Florida presented almost 400 of his works in painting, printmaking, mixed media, collage, sculpture and ceramics to honor -- in the words of the catalogue -- "one of the most prolific artists of our time." Lennie taught art at Western from 1958 to 1965 and, thereafter, briefly in Alaska and Montana. He moved his family to Gainesville in 1968 and taught at the University of Florida for four years, then at Santa Fe Community College until 1991. Retired from teaching but painting full time, Lennie is back in Gainesville. |
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