News

WORCESTER, Mass. – Author and Blake Scholar Michael Phillips will present a lecture titled, “The Creation of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience” on Monday, Oct. 26 at 7 p.m. He will also present “Catherine Blake and her Household” on Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 4:30 p.m. Both events, which are free and open to the public, will take place in the Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross.

Phillips taught at Oxford, University College London, and Edinburgh University before joining the staff of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.  At York, Phillips teaches a post-graduate class in English and the history of art titled William Blake and the Age of Revolution. Currently he is writing a biography of Blake in Lambeth during the anti-Jacobin Terror in Britain, titled Blake and the Terror.  In the spring of 2010 Phillip’s edition of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell will be published by the Bodleian Library and the University of Chicago Press.  This past summer, he was a guest curator of the first major Blake exhibition in Paris, France and editor of the catalogue, William Blake (1757-1827) Le Génie Visionnaire de Romantisme Anglais.  From 2000-01 he served as guest curator of the Blake exhibition at Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Phillips’ training as a printmaker allows him to explore and replicate Blake’s graphic techniques that were used to produce Blake’s illuminated books and separate prints.  Phillips’ study of the printing techniques and his research in Blake’s manuscripts is seen in his William Blake The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (British Library and Princeton University Press, 2000).  Phillips has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Yale Centre for British Art, the British Library Centre for the Book, a British Academy Research Readership in the Humanities, Waynflete Lectureship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and the Medal of the College de France for his research on Blake.

Most recently, Phillips has been a visiting scholar at the Winter Park Institute of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. There he produced a limited facsimile edition of a selection of plates from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Flying Horse Editions, 2009). An exhibition of Phillip’s facsimile copper plates and impressions opened at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in Sept. and will run through Dec.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Acclaimed poet Spencer Reece will give a reading as part of the College of the Holy Cross’ Visiting Writers Series on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. in the Levis Reading Room at Dinand Library.   The event, sponsored by the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters and the Creative Writing Program, is free and open to the public.

Selected by the U.S. poet laureate Louise Glück, Reece’s book of poems The Clerk’s Tale (Mariner Books, 2004) was awarded the Bakeless Prize by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and was nominated for a L.A. Times Book Award. To coincide with the book’s publication—it had been 15 years in the making, its author laboring in relative obscurity while working days as a Brooks Brothers clerk—The New Yorker dedicated the entire back page to the publication of the book’s title poem.

Louise Glück describes the collection of 50 poems as having “an effect I have never quite seen before, half cocktail party, half passion play . . . We do not expect virtuosity as the outward form of soul-making, nor do we associate generosity and humanity with such sophistication of means, such polished intelligence . . . Much life has gone into the making of this art, much patient craft.”

Reece’s works have appeared in publications such as Boulevard, Poetry, and The New Yorker.  In 2009, his “Two Hospice Essays” won a Pushcart Prize. Among other awards he has received are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship. Spencer Reece is a postulant for holy orders to the Episcopal priesthood.

WORCESTER, Mass. – The music department at the College of the Holy Cross will present the following musical performances on campus during November/December 2009. All events are free and open to the public. For additional information, please contact the music department events line at 508-793-3528.

Thurs., Nov. 5; 8 p.m.
Lisa Leong Solo Piano Concert
Brooks Hall

Thurs., Nov. 12; 8 p.m.
Carol Lieberman
Chamber Music of Debussy and Ravel
Brooks Hall

Sun., Nov. 15; 3 p.m.
Joseph Ripka, Organist
St. Joseph Memorial Chapel

Sun., Nov. 15; 7 p.m.
An Evening of Vocal Chamber Music
Brooks Hall

Tues., Nov. 17; 8 p.m.
Jazz Ensemble Fall Concert
Hogan Campus Center Ballroom

Wed., Nov. 18; 8 p.m.
Holy Cross Chamber Orchestra
Brooks Hall

Thurs., Nov. 19; 8 p.m.
Sarah Grunstein, Piano Recital
Bach: Goldberg Variations
Brooks Hall

Fri., Dec. 4; 8 p.m.
Gamelan Concert
Brooks Hall

Tues., Dec. 8; 4 p.m.
Student-Faculty Recital
Brooks Hall

Thurs., Dec. 10; 8 p.m.
Festival of Lessons & Carols
College of the Holy Cross Choir
St. Joseph Memorial Chapel

WORCESTER, Mass. – Students at the College of the Holy Cross are hosting a Candidates’ Night Forum for the 2009 Worcester Municipal Election on Wednesday, Oct.21 at 5:30 p.m. in Rehm Library.  Prior to the Nov. 3 election, candidates running for city council and mayor will debate civic issues. The event is free and open to the public.

It attendance will be mayoral candidates/councilor-at-large candidates: Konstantina B. Lukes, Kate Toomey, Joseph C. O’Brien and Emmanuel Tsitsilianos and councilor-at-large candidates: Joseph M. Petty, Mary S. Keefe, Michael J. Germain, Rick C. Rushton, Stephen S. Buchalter, Kola A. Akindele and William J. McCarthy.

Student Programs for Urban Development (SPUD), Eco-Action, the College Democrats and the College Republicans are hosting this forum as a means of better engaging the student voice in Worcester.  The forum is intended to encourage students to vote for the city, with the welfare and shared interests of everyone in mind.

“We want the forum to be an opportunity for students to begin a dialogue with our city’s elected officials,” explains Sean McFadden ’10, one of the organizers of the event.  “As young people working to be informed, engaged members of the community, we have a responsibility to organize and question.”

Moderated by Julianna Stuart ’10, the forum will be a question and answer session. Students hope to cover issues ranging from housing policy and education to neighborhood pools.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Michael Pasquier, assistant professor of religious studies at Louisiana State University, will present “The Many Meanings of Martyrdom: Jesuit Missionaries and Their Encounter with Native America” on Thursday Oct. 22 at 4:30 p.m. in Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. His presentation is part of Jesuit Heritage 2009, which offers opportunities for the Holy Cross community to reflect on what martyrdom means—20 years after the murders in El Salvador of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter.  The event is free and open to the public.

Pasquier will explore the many ways that the Jesuit missionaries saw martyrdom in Native America.  Using textual and visual sources, Pasquier will prove that it is possible to recognize how difficult, yet essential, it was for many Jesuits to depict themselves as suffering servants of the church and saintly models for the next generation of missionaries.

“However, the heroic representations of martyrdom represent only a fragment of the story about the Jesuit encounter with native peoples of colonial America,” Pasquier says.

Pasquier will explain how the concept of martyrdom reshaped the Jesuits’ attitudes toward suffering, sacrifice, holiness, and sainthood. Pasquier says martyrdom meant many things to many Jesuits, and those many meanings have continued to influence ideas about missionary work into the 21st century.

Pasquier’s research focuses on the history of Roman Catholicism in the American South, Catholic devotional culture, and religion in colonial Louisiana. He is a contributing editor to the blog Religion in American History and has a forthcoming book titled French missionary priests and frontier Catholicism in the United States.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Cmdr. Bernadette M. Semple ’82, former deputy director of C4 Systems with the Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa and a College of the Holy Cross trustee, will take part in a panel titled “Women in the U.S. Military” on Thursday, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. in the Rehm Library at the College. Semple will be joined by Marlisa Grogan ’02 and Sergeant Kayla Williams. The group will discuss their experiences while serving in the U.S. Military.  The event, free and open to the public, is sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies.

Semple is a graduate of the Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I.  She earned her M.A. in national security affairs (strategic planning and international negotiations) at the Naval PostGraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and she received her M.S. in information resource management from Syracuse University. Previously she served as a commanding officer of the Naval Communications Security Material System and the chief Pacific Command representative in Guam.

Grogan served as a first lieutenant at Al–Asad Air Base in Iraq from Feb. 2005–06.  She is currently a captain in the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), which is composed of former active duty or reserve military personnel, and is pursuing a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University.

Williams, author of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army (W.W. Norton, 2005), wrote about serving as an Arabic translator in Iraq from February 2003-04.  She is currently in the IRR.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Author James Waller, Ph.D., will present his latest book, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing  (Oxford University Press, 2007) on Thursday, Oct. 15 at 4 p.m. in Seelos Theater at the College of the Holy Cross. This event, sponsored by the College’s Montserrat Program, is free and open to the public.

Waller, an affiliated scholar with the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, and a former psychology professor at Whitworth College, will discuss how the past century, dubbed the Age of Genocide, saw more than 60 million people murdered to meet the needs of the state.

Waller says that one indisputable fact behind human suffering is that political, social, or religious groups wanting to commit mass murder are never hindered by a lack of willing executioners.

He will question how ordinary people can become perpetrators of such extraordinary evil. Waller will address this question using a model of perpetrator behavior that synthesizes a wide range of factors that spur ordinary people to participate in mass atrocities. Ultimately, he believes that man’s best safeguard against future genocides is to be aware of his capacity for extraordinary evil and how to cultivate the moral sensibilities that will curb the scope of violence.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Blaise Nagy, professor of classics, and a member of the College of the Holy Cross faculty since 1976 received the 2009 Distinguished Teaching Award at the College’s annual Fall Faculty Convocation and Awards Ceremony.

The Holy Cross Distinguished Teaching Award recognizes and honors the teaching excellence of the College’s faculty. A committee of students, faculty, alumni and administrators selects the honoree after careful review of nominations from individuals and groups on campus. Recipients demonstrate the College’s commitment to teaching and personalized instruction by making ideas come alive for students both in and out of the classroom. The Distinguished Teacher is invited to give the principal address during the Faculty Convocation and is awarded a $1,000 honorarium.

Nagy received his B.A. from Boston College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in ancient history from Harvard University.  He chaired the classics department at Holy Cross from 1990 to 2003.  A nationally recognized expert in Greek religion and Greek history, he has given numerous talks across the U.S. and Canada.  In addition, Nagy is the author of A Thucydides Reader (Focus Press 2005), A Herodotus Reader (forthcoming), and dozens of scholarly articles, reviews, and translations. He resides in Sutton, Mass.

Also awarded at Fall Convocation was the Rev. Raymond J. Swords, S.J., Faculty Medal, which honors those members of the faculty who have served the College for 25 years or more. This year’s recipients were Robert I. Bertin, professor of biology; David B. Damiano, professor of mathematics and computer science; Richard S. Herrick, professor of chemistry; William R. Morse, professor of English; Kenneth N. Prestwich, professor of biology; Scott Sandstom, professor of economics; and Janine Shertzer, professor of physics.

WORCESTER, Mass. – Two members of the College of the Holy Cross faculty have been honored with the Arthur J. O’Leary Faculty Recognition Award. These $10,000 honoraria are given each year by the senior vice president to senior faculty members who make a special contribution to Holy Cross through their teaching, scholarship and/or service. The O’Leary Awards are intended to honor the recipients, to advance their work, and to encourage other members of the faculty to attain a high level of professional achievement and to be a positive influence in the lives of students.

The 2009 recipients are:

Ann Marie Leshkowich, professor of sociology and anthropology, received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University in 2000.  Her research concentrates on gender, economic transformation, globalization, fashion, and transnational adoption in Vietnam.  Leshkowich has published articles on socioeconomic transformation in Vietnam, focusing on gender and moral issues, female entrepreneurs, fashion, and the middle classes. Currently she is studying matters of culture, kinship, and ethnicity surrounding adoption within Vietnam and the experiences of Vietnamese American adoptive families.  The O’Leary award will support Leshkowich’s fieldwork on transnational adoption between the Vietnam and the U.S. In Vietnam, she will conduct interviews with social workers at orphanages, domestic adoptive families, and birth mothers whose children have been adopted abroad.  Her research in the U.S. will explore the cultural experience of Vietnamese American adoptive families.  She hopes this research will reveal shifts in attitudes toward family, conceptions of cultural identity, and the role of adoption in the economic and political relations between Vietnam and the U.S.  She resides in Cambridge, Mass.

Kenneth Prestwich, professor of biology, received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Florida.  In addition to teaching at Holy Cross, he continues to study forestry at the University of Florida’s Natural Area of Teaching Laboratory.  Prestwich serves on the executive board of the American Arachnological Society (AAS) and this past summer, he received a distinguished service award at the annual meeting of the AAS for creating the association’s Web site and uploading its publications into online databases.  Prestwich also is on the advisory board of the University of Florida’s Natural Area Teaching Lab and in 2006 he received a service award for his work in restoring a portion of the University of Florida’s campus into an upland pine community. Prestwich will use his award to enhance the teaching of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and mathematical modeling in conjunction with biology and geology courses at Holy Cross. The honoraria will be used to purchase tablet type computers, GPS units for field work, modeling software, and equipment in his research lab. Prestwich and his wife divide their time between North Brookfield, Mass. and Gainesville, Fla.

The Arthur J. O’Leary Faculty Recognition Awards have been made possible by an endowed gift to the College from Thomas H. O’Leary ’54, former President, CEO and Chairman of Burlington Resources, one of the largest independent oil and gas companies in the United States.

WORCESTER, Mass. – New York Times columnist David Brooks will deliver the annual Condé Nast Lecture on Media, Ethics and Values on Oct. 19 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom at the College of the Holy Cross. The talk is free and open to the public.

Brooks’ column on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times began in September 2003. He is a weekly political commentator on National Public Radio and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He is author of The New York Times bestseller BoBos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Simon & Schuster, 2000), On Paradise Drive (Simon & Schuster, 2004), and the Atlantic Monthly article, “The Organization Kids” about this generation’s Princeton students. Previously, Brooks had been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly.

Previous speakers in the series include David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker; Matthew Rose, reporter for the Wall Street Journal; Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation; and Peter Steinfels, columnist for The New York Times.

The lecture is made possible by a gift from Condé Nast Publications, coordinated by the company’s former president and CEO Steve Florio, parent of graduates from the classes of 2000 and 2003.

Condé Nast publishes numerous magazines including The New Yorker, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit and Gourmet. Condé Nast Publications mission stresses its commitment “to journalistic integrity, influential reporting and superior design.”

WORCESTER, Mass. – “From new construction, to energy conservation to even eliminating dining trays, Holy Cross has made a comprehensive campus-wide effort to reduce its global footprint over the past few years,” according to the Worcester Business Journal.

For these efforts and much more the College has been recognized with a Central Mass Green Award by the Worcester Business Journal.  Featured in their Sept. 28 issue, the College will be presented with the award during the Central Mass Energy Summit on Oct. 15.

The College was also recently featured in Inside Higher Ed about the College’s goal to reduce carbon gas emissions 20 percent by 2015 and reach carbon neutrality by 2040 as part of American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. Of the 392 colleges and universities whose presidents signed the pledge in 2007, Holy Cross is among the 88 to submit a plan by the deadline.

Worcester Business Journal (Sept. 28, 2009)
Cultivating A Sense Of Responsibility

Inside Higher Ed (Sept. 17, 2009)
Climate Action for Some

Related Information:

* Holy Cross Finalizes Carbon Neutral Plan
* Sustainability Web site

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at the College of the Holy Cross presents Cities of Peace: A Suite of Monumental Gold-Illuminated Paintings from the Ellen Frank Illumination Foundation. The exhibition, which honors the history and culture of cities that have suffered major trauma, will run from Oct. 21 – Dec. 16, 2009. There will be an opening reception on Oct. 21 from 5 – 7 p.m. in the gallery, with opening remarks by Ellen Frank, founder of the Illumination Arts Foundation.

Cities of Peace is a series of nine 6 x 8 foot gold-illuminated works on canvas consisting of a visual tribute to the people and locations around the world where violence and tragedy through war or conflict and ideological extremism in modern times have left horrific reminders of man’s destructive power.  The Cites of Peace project and exhibition was started as an ambitious idea to unite people and the visual arts through dialogue about issues of peace.

“If we understand the history and beauty of what has been damaged or destroyed, we can participate in the beauty of recovery and peace,” explains Frank.

Cities of Peace focuses on nine cities that have experienced major conflict and trauma in the 20th and 21st century:  Baghdad, Beijing, Hiroshima, Jerusalem, Kabul, Lhasa, Monrovia, New York and Sarajevo. A visit to Jerusalem in 1999 by Frank inspired her to produce the first painting in the series and to visualize the creation of other works representing additional cities that have survived strife. Frank’s goal for the series was to direct action through hopeful acts and to celebrate the best of the human spirit, and to transform anguish into beauty.

Jan Oberg, executive director of Transnational Foundation for Peace in Sweden, praises the exhibit:  “Cities of Peace superbly promotes ethics, dialogue and inner calm–so overlooked in our world as tools, as language, for peace and peaceful co-existence. Cities of Peace should not only be exhibited in New York or Geneva but in war zones, in schools and art halls where they could give hope and inspiration.”

The large scale paintings, created on linen, evoke artistic traditions as diverse as illuminated manuscripts, icons, tapestries, embroidery, architectural mosaics, woodcarvings, and metalwork. Mica, bronze powders, and many types of gold leaf create multilayered imagery that shimmers and resolves itself into successive scenes of time, place, and humankind. Crimson leaf, the color of our blood, is tucked into each painting to honor the dead. Text, in the tradition of micrography (words shaped into images), appears in some of the works. The arts of each country portrayed are incorporated into the paintings. While serving as memorials to particular eras and locations, the paintings also become border crossings that enable visions of greater compassion and heightened consciousness among peoples.

The works were all produced at the Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation in East Hampton, New York. The purpose of the foundation is to enhance understanding of the art and history of the historic forms and conventions of illumination among artists and the public and to enable the creation of new work in this historic technique, in part through education and training.  Since its inception the Illumination Atelier (internship program) has sponsored 17 students to work at its facility on Long Island from China, Korea, Colombia, Estonia, Japan, Poland, and the United States, under the artistic direction of Frank.

Frank studied art history and connoisseurship at Yale University and holds an inter-disciplinary doctorate in English literature and the visual arts from Stanford University. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Ford Foundation fellowship, and grants from the National Endowments for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Frank founded the nonprofit Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation in 2005.

Gallery Events

A series of lectures and events will be held at Holy Cross in conjunction with the gallery exhibition.  All events are free and open to the public.

* Wednesday, Oct. 21, 5 -7 p.m., Cantor Art Gallery
Opening Reception: Introductory remarks by Ellen Frank, Ph.D.
* Thursday, Nov. 12, 4 – 5:30 pm, Seelos Theater
The Cities of Peace Project: A discussion
Participants: Abigail E. Disney, Ph.D., philanthropist and filmmaker, president of the Daphne Foundation, NY
Ellen Frank, Ph.D., artist, author and founder and artistic director of the Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation, Inc. East Hampton, NY
Co-sponsored by the Montserrat Program

Also on view at the Cantor Gallery

Ukiyo-e Japanese Woodblock Prints, Selections from the Collection of John Rossetti, curated by artist James Tellin and John Rossetti, will remain on view in the gallery’s entrance through December 16. Rossetti, who began collecting Japanese prints in college, has been collections care manager and chief exhibition designer at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College for the past 16 years and is a former chief exhibition designer at the Worcester Art Museum. The exhibition features prints depicting a range of subjects created by Toyohara Chikanobu, 1838-1912; Konishi Hirosada, 1819-1865; and Kobayashi Kiyochika 1847 – 1915, as well as other artists of the mid – late 19th-century.

In the first floor hallway space of O’Kane Hall, a selection of 35 black-and-white photographs and 35 poems titled Kathryn Cahill: Poems and Photographs, will also be shown through December 16. The work of the late artist represents observations of the simple details of life that are often overlooked or missed. Cahill graduated from Rosemont College and the New York Institute of Interior Design. She authored two books: a novel, Inside Out: A Portrait of a Family and a book of photography, A Walk About Town. Her creative spirit found expression mainly through poetry, but she also pursued ceramics, gardening, painting and photography in her efforts to share a love of beauty and wonder with the world as she encountered it.

Gallery Information

Founded in 1983 through the generosity of Iris & B. Gerald Cantor, the Cantor Art Gallery serves both as a venue for a changing series of historical and contemporary public exhibitions, as well as a vital resource for Holy Cross faculty and students, linking exhibitions to the broader liberal arts curriculum.

The hours for the Cantor Art Gallery are Monday – Friday 10 a.m. – 5p.m., Saturdays 2 – 5 p.m. Located in O’Kane Hall, 1st Floor, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College Street, Worcester, MA, 01610.  Admission to the gallery is free.

For additional information please call 508-793-3356 or visit the Gallery’s Web site.

Related Information:

* Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation, Inc.
* Video: The Making of Cities of Peace Part 1

WORCESTER, Mass. – Russ Immarigeon, editor of Women, Girls & Criminal Justice, will give a lecture titled “Women in Prison in New England: What can be done to reduce reliance on incarceration?” on Tuesday, Oct. 6 at 6:30 p.m. in Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The lecture, sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture and the College Honors Program, is free and open to the public.

While New England states incarcerate fewer women than other regions of the country, Immarigeon will argue that too many women are being unnecessarily confined. He suggests that community-based infrastructures that encompass economic development, employment, health care, housing and substance abuse treatment should adapt or develop services and interventions to provide an effective system of alternatives to imprisonment.

Immarigeon is a nationally-known expert on issues related to women and girls in the criminal justice system, offender programming, and restorative justice.  He is the editor of Women, Girls & Criminal Justice, a national, bi-monthly report for practitioners and policymakers in the criminal justice system, as well as the Community Corrections Report and the Offender Programs Report, all publications of Civic Research Institute.

He is the editor or co-editor of three books, including After Crime and Punishment: Pathways to Offender Reintegration (Willan Publications, 2004), and two volumes of policy issues and program strategies for women in the criminal justice system. Immarigeon has served as a policy analyst for such groups as the Massachusetts Council for Public Justice, the Maine Council of Churches, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and has been a consultant to such groups as the U.S. National Institute of Corrections, the Women’s Prison Association, the Center for Effective Public Policy, and the Center for Court Innovation.

To learn more about this program and other Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture events, visit www.holycross.edu/crec.

About The Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture:

Established in 2001 and housed in Smith Hall, the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture provides resources for faculty and course development, sponsors conferences and college-wide teaching events, hosts visiting fellows, and coordinates a number of campus lecture series. Rooted in the College’s commitment to invite conversation about basic human questions, the Center welcomes persons of all faiths and seeks to foster dialogue that acknowledges and respects differences, providing a forum for intellectual exchange that is interreligious, interdisciplinary, intercultural, and international in scope.  The Center also brings members of the Holy Cross community into conversation with the Greater Worcester community, the academic community, and the wider world to examine the role of faith and inquiry in higher education and in the larger culture.

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Regional Environmental Council, Inc. (REC), in partnership with the College of the Holy Cross, will hold their third annual Slow Food Gala fundraiser on Friday, Oct. 2, from 6 – 10 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center on the Holy Cross campus.  The event will benefit the REC’s Urban Food System programs which include UGROW, YouthGROW, and the Main South Farmers’ Market. The Gala, which includes a five course meal and a silent auction, is open to the public. Three courses will be paired with sustainably grown and/or organic wines.  Tickets are $65 for REC members and $75 for non-members.  To purchase a membership to REC with a ticket to the event, the cost is $90.

About Slow Food:

Slow food, an international movement dedicated to preserving and supporting traditional ways of growing, producing, and preparing food, was developed by renowned food and wine writer Carlo Petrini in 1986 in response to the opening of fast-food franchises in Rome. Opposed to fast food, Petrini advocated the value of sitting down and enjoying your meal with company.

Martin Dudek, assistant director of dining services at Holy Cross, and Holy Cross Chefs Edward Rome and Timothy Trachimowicz will prepare the dinner for the Gala using only seasonal ingredients that are locally grown. Some of the vegetables on the menu were grown in REC’s YouthGROW farm in Worcester and all the dinner ingredients come from sources within 100 miles of Worcester.

“This is the third year of collaboration between Holy Cross and the Regional Environmental Council in the form of Holy Cross being the site of R.E.C.’s Slow Food Gala fund raiser,” explains Alice Laffey, professor of religious studies and a member of the REC board. “Chef Marty Dudek will again prepare a delicious meal with locally grown products.”

The dinner menu follows:

* Butternut Bisque
* Pumpkin Ravioli with Sage & Brown Butter
* Salad of Fall Greens with Persimmons & Hazelnut Vinaigrette
* Local Marinated Beef Hanger Steak w/ Great Hill Bleu Cheese, Grilled Free Range Chicken Breast finished with a Gin & Juniper Berry Reduction, or Spaghetti Squash with Hen in the Woods Mushroom Marinara
* Roasted New England New Potatoes
* Greens from the Holy Cross garden at YouthGrow
* Flourless Chocolate Torte

All menu items will be served family style except for the three dinner entrees of the beef, poultry, or vegetarian options and all guests will receive a complimentary Slow Food Recipe Book.

According to Steve Fischer, REC’s incoming executive director, “We’re excited to celebrate food and community at the Slow Food Gala, especially during this time period when growing food locally and sustainably is becoming more and more important.  It has been a wonderful event the past two years, and we expect this year to be even better.”

About REC’s Urban Food System programs:

UGROW (Urban Garden Resources of Worcester) supports a network of 40 urban community gardens (maintained by more than 400 gardeners).  This network forms a constellation of farm plots throughout the city that produce roughly 10,000 pounds of organic food annually.

The YouthGROW summer and after-school program trains 32 youth leaders (ages 14-17) from Worcester’s low income neighborhoods in job- and life-skills by using urban agriculture and consensus-based decision-making as the centerpieces of the curriculum.  YouthGROWers learn how to grow food using environmentally sustainable techniques on two urban farms.

The Main South Farmers’ Market (MSFM), operating for its first full season in 2009 (Saturdays, June-October), brings local, organic produce at affordable prices to Worcester’s inner-city.  MSFM’s expansion to a full season was made possible by REC’s partnership with the Worcester Advisory Food Policy Council and their Hunger Free & Healthy initiative, which is funded by the Health Foundation of Central MA.

Founded in 1971, REC is a grassroots, environmental justice organization that is dedicated to building strong, healthy communities and improving the quality of life in Worcester.
For more information, visit the Regional Environmental Council Web site.