Bob Zordani

This summer was a good one for me. Water Press and Media accepted Epileptic's Song, my first full-length collection of poetry, for publication. It will be out this spring along with collections by our recently retired comrade Bruce Guernsey and our fine colleague Graham Lewis. Click for more information. Marty Scott and I started up The Rural Kings, a rock 'n' roll band, this summer, too. Our first gig will be at Friends and Co. on September 5th. That's the Friday after Labor Day, folks. Come on out and see the show. After school got out in the spring, I went up to Michigan with John David Moore and Michael Kuo. We ended up finding over 4,700 morels. My back still hurts from all that stooping. Michael Kuo and I went out to Durango, Colorado, to visit Carol and Ray Schmudde. Carol and Ray (for you old-timers in the department) own a beautiful house in the mountains on the edge of Durango. Carol is happily retired, and Ray is teaching business writing and public relations at the local university. Michael and I did a lot of trout fishing and mushroom hunting out there, and I got my first experience of being in a place so high no trees will grow.

Donelle Ruwe

David Radavich

My summer was filled with many travels, along with a refreshing opportunity to do some reading and research. In May, Anne and I flew to Rhodes to plan the conference next year of the International Lawrence Durrell Society (of which Anne is President). We toured hotel and convention facilities, met with university and local dignitaries, and explored local restaurants and tourist sites so we could pass on recommendations to next year's attendees. This involved more work and meetings than I anticipated, but all went well, and we seem on track to enjoy another one-of-a-kind Durrell Conference next summer in Rhodes.

Immediately after our return, we attended the Thomas Wolfe Society Conference in beautiful Burlington, Vermont and spent a couple free days in nearby Montreal. In early August, I presented a paper entitled "Finding New Ways to Revive Civic Theatre" at the Association of Theatre in Higher Education Conference in New York City. I also read poems at the Pink Pony Series in Greenwich Village (last December I was the featured reader, but this time round, I was simply one of the group). We managed to see three shows - my favorite being the beautifully staged Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci - and to avoid being thrown out on the street as later happened during the black-out.

As a result of my EIU Summer Research Grant, I was able to devote some uninterrupted time to a wide-ranging essay entitled "Signature Motifs in Midwestern Drama." This project grows out of several pieces I have written over the past couple years focusing on midwestern plays and playwrights, a project that appears to be growing into a book-length collection of essays about drama from the region. We'll see how that materializes!

I have officially handed over duties as UPI President to Charles Delman, Professor of Mathematics, as of August 1, though I remain on call as "resident sage" in matters pertaining to contracts and other union matters. The biggest change I notice is that the part of my brain which was constantly preoccupied with planning meetings, events, agendas, and newsletters is now free to obsess about new things. We'll hope my new obsessions will be as worthwhile and community-minded as the old.

Ruth Hoberman

In June, I gave a paper, "Aesthetic Taste, Kitsch, and The Years," at the International Virginia Woolf Conference at Smith College. In July, Kate Benzel (U of Nebraska, Kearney) and I signed a contract with Palgrave Press, which will be publishing our collection of essays on Woolf's short fiction. My essay on creepy stories set in museums, "In Quest of a Museal Aura: Turn of the Century Narratives about Museum-Displayed Objects," is due out this fall in Victorian Literature and Culture. And Reading Women, a book in which I have an essay on women patrons of the British Museum Reading Room, has just been accepted for publication by U of Toronto Press.

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John Guzlowski

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Jenny Chi

This fall's cover artist is Ke-Hsin Chi, an Assistant Professor in EIU's Art Department, where she has been teaching courses in such topics as Old Masters and Figurative and Anatomy Drawing since 1997. Born in Taiwan in 1973 (the year some of us graduated from college!), Jenny studied at the Tainan Junior College of Art, Lewis University, and the New York Academy of Art. Her work has been widely exhibited in the U.S., Taiwan, and Norway, and she has received many honors, including the Carl Steinsieck Memorial Award, a Duval County Artist Residency in Florida, and a White House Christmas Project Blue Ribbon. We are pleased indeed to have her beautiful painting, "Italian Landscape," for this issue's cover and page background. ——J.K.

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Susan Bazargan

The highlight of the summer for me was to celebrate, with my three children, the 25th anniversary of our arrival in this country. We flew from Tehran to Seattle on Pan Am (remember Pan Am?) on August 14, 1978 and arrived on the 15th, so on August 15, 2003, I flew from Chicago to Seattle with two of my children and met up with the third one who lives in Oakland, Ca. and had driven up with boyfriend and dog ("Salty") in tow. We stayed at a friend's house (it's nice to have friendships that old) in the Montlake area and did the usual things one does--visit the first house we lived in, my daughter's daycare (not much had changed--it was naptime), the UW campus, and as many other places we could fit in a long weekend. I tried not to do the scary stuff of taking stock (what did I do with my life??) but indulged in nostalgia and enjoyed the great weather and wonderful food. After all, we have survived.

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