Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Lunch & Learn for May


“Photographing Trains at Night”
 
Speaker:  William Gill  B.S. ‘03, M.S. ‘11
 

Friday, May 9, 2014
12:00 noon to 1:00 pm
Folsom Library's Fischbach Room
 
 

Senior Web Producer William Gill has always preferred to photograph at night and three years ago, after becoming "completely bored with drunk people in bars," began setting up studio style lighting outdoors to capture images of trains passing through the American landscape at night.  He will cover the process of working along the tracks at night and what he hopes to achieve with this project.
 

 
 
Everyone is invited.  Bring your lunch or purchase one at the Library CafĂ©.  Dessert will be provided.
 
 
Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library


Friday, April 4, 2014

The 73rd McKinney Writing Contest and Reading
A Vollmer Fries Lecture
by
Lydia Davis
Winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize
 
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
8:00 p.m.
Biotech Auditorium,
Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building
RPI
Reception to follow
 
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
 
 
As we've done for several years now, Friends has again contributed $250 toward the McKinney Writing Contest, Rensselaer's annual writing competition administered by the Department of Communication and Media.  The contest offers both undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity for assessment and recognition of their creative writing talent. Work can be submitted in one or more of the following areas:  fiction/drama, poetry, essay, and electronic media. This year's awards will be presented by short story writer and translator Lydia Davis, who will first give a reading from one of her works and then answer questions from the audience.  

Lydia Davis
(Photo by David Ignaszewski)
Davis is the author of story collections Almost No Memory (1997), Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001), Varieties of Disturbance (2007), The Collected Stories (2009), and most recently Can't and Won't (2014).  She is also a novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, and has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Marcel Proust's Swann's Way and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary.  Davis is known for her concise short stories.  Characteristically, they usually run between three and four pages.  The New Yorker praised her "lucidity, aphoristic brevity, formal originality, sly comedy, metaphysical bleakness, philosophical pressure, and human wisdom." Davis currently is a professor of creative writing at the University at Albany.
 
  

Barbara Lewis, Chair of Friends of the Folsom Library's Board of Directors and Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media, is coordinating the event.


Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library
 

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Your Laugh for the Day


I just have to share this with you all.  Friend Steven Smith '50 responded to my recent blog entry regarding Don Bell's upcoming Lunch & Learn program concerning teaching young people about money management.  Here it is.

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Adrienne, I thought this story, forwarded by my niece, was so pertinent to the theme of the April 11 Lunch and Learn that I should pass it on. Hope it gives you a chuckle.

Bravo to Don Bell and all who teach young people financial savvy. Such an important subject! 

Steven 


His name was Ole. He was from South Dakota. And he needed a loan. So, he walked into a bank in New York City and asked for a loan officer. He told the loan officer that he was going to Oslo for the All-Scandinavian Summer Festival for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000 and that he was not a depositor of the bank. The bank officer told him that the bank would need some form of security for the loan, so Ole handed over the keys to his new Ferrari. The car was parked on the street in front of the bank. Ole produced the title and everything checked out.

The loan officer agreed to hold the car as collateral for the loan and apologized for having to charge 12% interest. The loan papers were signed and an employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank's private underground garage and parked it. Later, the bank's president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at Ole from South Dakota for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral for a $5,000 loan.

Two weeks later, Ole returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest of $23.07. The loan officer said, "Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out on Dunn & Bradstreet and found that you are a Distinguished Alumni from South Dakota State University, a highly sophisticated investor and multimillionaire with real estate and financial interests all over the world. Your investments include a large number of oil wells around Williston, ND. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000?"

Ole replied, "Vare else in New York City can I park my car for two veeks for only $23.07 and expect it to be dare vhen I return?"

His name was Ole. Keep an eye on these South Dakota boys! Just because we talk funny does not mean we just got off the lutefisk boat.








Brilliant, ja
 
Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Lunch & Learn for April

"Money Life$avers:  What We All Need to Know About Money"
 
Friday, April 11, 2014
12:00 noon to 1:00 pm
Folsom Library Fischbach Room
 
 
Don Bell
Former RPI web learning consultant Don Bell's newly published book, Money Life$avers:  What Teens Need to Know About Money, aims to provide parents, grandparents, home school educators, teachers, tutors, and mentors with fun ways to teach teens  (or anyone!) financial literacy.  He'll talk about some of the ways to make a potentially dull subject--personal finances--engaging and fun.
 
 
According to Don, the present generation of teens and young adults are struggling to stay afloat financially and could greatly benefit from money lifesavers like his book to help them make smart money decisions and avoid common financial pitfalls.  The content is based on National Standards in K-12 Personal Finance Education (developed by the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy) and Money As You Grow--20 Things Kids Need to Know to Live Financially Smart Lives (published by the President's Council on Financial Capability).  Don's book makes learning about money fun by using quiz questions (over 400!) and incorporating over 100 cartoons. (The ideas for the cartoons were envisioned by Don and the images were created by Randy Rumpf, who was a designer and illustrator for RPI for 15 years.) There are also plenty of noteworthy quotations, money trivia, and definitions of financial terms.  But most importantly, the book is loaded with essential money management advice that anyone can benefit from. 
 

Illustration by Randy Rumpf
 

Illustration by Randy Rumpf
Don has over 30 years of experience working   in education, media, and technology. He was employed as a special education teacher, computer trainer, and educational software marketer before joining the staff of Academic and Research Computing at the Institute.  In the early 1990s, Don started working on developing games to teach youngsters about personal finance.  In 2011 he developed a money quiz card game based on the Jump$tart Coalition's National Standards in K-12 Personal Finance Education.  A year later he converted the game into a book format. 


Adrienne Birchler
Coordinator
Friends of the Folsom Library