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Depression-era shortstop catches good fortune, passes it on

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 19:05:56 +0000

Depression-era shortstop catches good fortune, passes it on Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 13:05

Clint Talbott

And for 72 years, Martin and Gloria Trotsky have been generously grateful to CU �鶹ӰԺ

Martin Trotsky in the early 1940s. Photo courtesy of CU archives.

Martin Trotsky came to the �鶹ӰԺ to play baseball and earn a college degree. He knew so little about where he was heading, he thought �鶹ӰԺ was home to �鶹ӰԺ Dam, now called Hoover Dam. He had yet to develop a fondness, let alone loyalty, to the university.

That was 1938. He was 20. During his first year, when he was subsisting on $15 a month, spaghetti and skim milk, he considered dropping out and returning home to the East Coast.

But here he found kindness from CU �鶹ӰԺ’s baseball coach and its chief dietician, who helped him survive his freshman year. Here he played shortstop on a CU baseball team that won 25 consecutive games between 1940 and 1942. And here he met Gloria, his wife of 72 years.

Martin and Gloria supported the university each and every year since 1942—the year he graduated. Today, Martin is 99, Gloria is 95, and their devotion to each other, and CU �鶹ӰԺ, seems only to have grown.

“After 75 years of contributions, we still feel honored to be graduates of the university, and we learned a lot there, both academically and socially,” Martin Trotsky said recently. “We feel very, very close to the university, and I hope the university feels close to both of us.”

Paul Levitt, a professor emeritus of English whose writing program Martin and Gloria Trotsky have long supported, said the feeling is mutual, calling the couple “wonderful people” who are “enormously generous.”

A child of the Great Depression, Trotsky grew up in New Haven, Conn., and hoped to attend his hometown institution, Yale University. But at $450 a year, the cost was an “economic impossibility.”

After graduating high school in 1935, he played semi-pro baseball for three years, making $2 or $3 a game, until his athletic skills caught the eye of CU �鶹ӰԺ Coach Harry Carlson, who invited Martin Trotsky and two of his chums to CU.

Coach Carlson told the young men to come with $200 each, and “he’d see that we got through school, as long as we made our grades,” Martin Trotsky noted.

Once here, however, the students found it tough going. Each had a job through the National Youth Administration, a New Deal program, that paid $15 a month.

“It was a far cry from what we expected, and at one point early in my freshman year, I thought seriously about transferring to another school, because it was very difficult to get along [financially],” Martin Trotsky recalled.

Nonetheless, the young men invited Carlson and former CU football standout Kayo Lam to dinner at their apartment. Carlson and Lam were served “our normal course of spaghetti and skim milk.”

Gloria and Martin Trotsky in a recent photograph. Photo courtesy of Gloria and Martin Trotsky.

Skim milk was 10 cents a gallon, and spaghetti was cheap. “So, we had a lot of skim milk, and we ate a lot of spaghetti”—with no sauce.

A few days after the dinner, Carlson told Trotsky to speak to Bly Curtis, CU’s chief dietician and director of the women’s dormitory of the time, now called Sewall Hall. Curtis told Trotsky to “get a large pot” to take to the women’s dorm, which gave the young men the dorm kitchen’s leftovers.

“It was like manna from heaven,” Martin Trotsky said.

Levitt emphasizes the deeply positive effect of Carlson and Curtis, which continues to this day: “He adores both of them. He has good reason to adore both of them.”

Carlson admired Martin Trotsky as well. In 1946, he told The Denver Post, “No one who ever played shortstop at CU compared to Marty Trotsky, who scintillated in that position in 1941 and 1942.”

Martin Trotsky posed with a baseball at his Denver home in 2011, when he was 93. Trotsky played baseball and basketball for CU. He was a shortstop that was on the team that won 25 games in a row. Photo credit: The Denver Post/Getty Images

During his sophomore year, the baseball team began its 25-game winning streak. Fortune smiled in other areas as well:

The young players from Connecticut got a pay increase to $20 a month. Martin Trotsky was pledged to a fraternity, which gave him room and board in exchange for a few odd jobs: “hashing” (chopping food) in the kitchen, stoking the furnace, cutting the lawn and shoveling snow from the sidewalks.

And Gloria met Martin in his junior year, 1941. After he completed his service in the U.S. Marine Corps, they married in December 1944. “It’s been a real romance for 72 years,” Martin Trotsky said.

Martin graduated with a degree from the business school, and Gloria Trotsky earned a bachelor’s in music education.

They settled in Denver, where he became a successful businessman and where the couple still lives. They have two children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

“As I improved my economic situation, well, then my contributions to the university grew, and we’re very happy to be able to pay back to a school that was so important to both Gloria and me,” he said.

Among the many initiatives they have supported are the Gloria and Martin Trotsky Music Scholarship Fund and the Martin and Gloria Trotsky Writing Scholarship Fund. The Trotskys’ support for the latter fund, administered by Levitt, came about after Martin Trotsky heard Levitt give a presentation in the 1980s about the undergraduate-writing program, which was then being launched.

“We’ve been very fortunate to live this long, and we’ve been very fortunate to be able to support the university in a fashion that we felt was very satisfactory for both ourselves and the university,” he said. “We weren’t million-dollar givers, but we were givers every year.”

Skim milk was 10 cents a gallon, and spaghetti was cheap. “So, we had a lot of skim milk, and we ate a lot of spaghetti”—with no sauce.

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La-la landings

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 18:44:01 +0000

La-la landings Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 12:44

Clay Bonnyman Evans

A cast of CU �鶹ӰԺ alumni are making their mark on Hollywood

Here’s a little story about a little Hollywood movie, and a bigger story about how several CU �鶹ӰԺ alums have forged Hollywood careers.

Back in 2014, a guy named Devon Avery was shadowing a director on the hit CBS television series NCIS. Avery asked actor Brian Dietzen, who has played Dr. Jimmy Palmer on the show since 2004 and is a �鶹ӰԺ alumnus (Theatre, ’00), if he’d be willing to help him make a short science-fiction comedy film he’d written, One-Minute Time Machine.

Brian Dietzen

“In Hollywood,” Dietzen says, “the answer is always, ‘Yes, let’s do it. We’ll suss out details later.’”

After reading the script, Dietzen asked Avery if he could “bring in a friend,” Sean Crouch, also a CU alumni (Theatre, ’96), who had been working as a writer, producer and “show runner,” or the head honcho, for such shows as NUMB3RS, Veronica Mars and Unforgettable.

“I told him (Sean) was good at science fiction,” Dietzen says. “He was cool about it.”

Dietzen soon made another request: Would Avery mind if they brought in his and Sean’s friend Erinn Hayes (CU �鶹ӰԺ, Theatre, ’98)? Again, he agreed. Three Buffs onboard.

Soon, the all-CU cast and screenwriter were joined by numerous professional crew members from NCIS. The team shot the film in a single day for a mere $800. It went into post-production and, eventually, made its debut online.

At once comic, romantic and thought provoking, the six-minute film about two strangers in a park trying to make use of the time-travel gadget became a viral sensation, and Crouch’s screenplay went on to win Best of the Fest at the 2015 Love Your Shorts Film Festival, an annual showcase of short films from around the world.

“It was so much fun,” Hayes says. “You never know with things like that how it’s going to turn out, but they did a great job. It’s really funny.”

And, of course, the three friends got a kick out of working together.

Sean and Juliana Powels Crouch.

Not that they’re strangers out there in La-La-Land: They and their spouses—two of whom, Annie Haas Parnell and Juliana Powels Crouch, are also CU theatre grads, and a third, Kelly Scoby Dietzen, earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from CU—still socialize frequently, and meet up with another CU alum: Chris Parnell (Theatre, ’98). Parnell went on from CU to earn a master’s degree from Florida State University’s prestigious Asolo Conservatory and in July was named co-president of Sony Pictures Television.

“We all still hang out and support one another. None of this is done in vacuum, and none of us can individually claim success,” Dietzen says. “We were really lifted up by a system [at CU] that helped to nurture and foster a creative environment working with other people.”

That kind of teamwork, support and camaraderie reflects the culture and ethic these and other Hollywood success stories say they experienced while studying and treading the boards at CU �鶹ӰԺ.

To outsiders, Hollywood often evokes glitz and glamor, stars and celebrities, riches and romance. But finding success in the film business is a much grittier proposition than the public often realizes, requiring persistence, hard work and, often, the humility and toughness to labor in obscurity, even poverty, sometimes for years.

Only the persistent survive

Eme Ikwuakor (Theatre,’08) found acting success in Colorado after graduation, most notably in the science-fiction film Ink, which was named Best Colorado Film of 2009 by the Denver Film Critics Society.

With that project sparkling up his resume, he decided it was time to take the plunge and head to Los Angeles, where he took a job as a server and began to audition. But his best-laid plans did not exactly pan out right away.

“I don’t think I got paid for a single thing that first year,” says the actor, currently starring in ABC’s new science-fiction series, Inhumans, which debuts in September.

Eme Ikwuakor in a promotional photo. At the top of the page, he is at left in an image from Inhumans, which premiers in September 2017.

After writing, producing and acting in Chance, a short film about a guy who dreams and fantasizes away his only opportunity to talk to a woman he’d like to meet, Ikwuakor saw himself at a crossroads. He knew he hadn’t fully committed to achieving his dream of acting success, but was afraid to take a leap of faith.

But, having suffered a heart attack at age 21 while at CU and endured hundreds of racist taunts during his youth, the former Buffalo track-and-field recruit also recognized that he had already faced much bigger challenges in life.

“Three weeks later, I quit my day job. I had no money, no savings; I don’t think I could even pay the rent in that moment,” he says. “But I got three jobs in the first month, and now 95 percent of my income is from acting.”

While at CU �鶹ӰԺ, Ikwuakor joined the Interactive Theater Project, which presented art and theater as an avenue to social change. Life at CU began to teach him that the experiences with racism that he faced while growing up were not universal.

“Going to �鶹ӰԺ and starting in the CU theater program made me realize that not everybody thinks that way. I had this huge kind of awakening,” Ikwuakor says.

Social justice has remained a major focus of his career and life ever since. Last winter, Ikwuakor accompanied military veterans to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota.

Of course, all the hard work in the world doesn’t guarantee success. Talent does come into the picture, and in Hollywood, when the going gets tough—as it so often does—only the persistent survive.

‘Pick yourself up, keep going’

Erinn Hayes grew up performing in Marin County and confesses that she chose CU �鶹ӰԺ because she “wanted to get out of California and snowboard. I was lucky enough to stumble into a prestigious acting program.”

Erinn Hayes

Following graduation and a brief stint working in the Bay Area, she overcame her northern-California doubts about SoCal and moved to Los Angeles, in part to be with her boyfriend (now husband), Jack Hayes. She had booked a few commercials and was taking improv classes, just scraping by. Then she took a gig performing part-improvised soap-opera scenes at �鶹ӰԺ’s California Adventure Park.

“The experience of working there with those performers taught me more about improv than the classes I was taking,” Hayes says.

She then landed a role in a show with the short-lived PAX TV network, only to see the project collapse. But the casting director liked her work and hooked her up with a top talent manager, David Sweeney, with whom she still works. Eventually, she was getting roles in such shows as Desperate Housewives, New Girl and Parks and Recreation. Recently, she was surprised to be let go from her regular role on CBS’ Kevin Can Wait after 24 episodes.

“To have that come up after 24 episodes came as quite a shock,” Hayes says. “Hollywood can be so weird, but you have to learn all these lessons. You have to learn to pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and keep going.”

Hayes is now in New York filming an Amazon series, The Dangerous Book for Boys.

A second chance and a job

Studio-executive Parnell, who grew up in Las Vegas and on Florida’s Space Coast before moving to �鶹ӰԺ and graduating from Fairview High School. After graduate school, he went to L.A. and began taking low-level jobs in the industry.

He spent five grueling years working as an assistant to two Hollywood bigshots, television producer Sarah Timberman and agent Adam Berkowitz (“Loved and feared, Adam is one of the real heavy-hitter TV agents” at Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency, Parnell says) before landing his first major gig.

Chris Parnell

He bombed his first interview with the agent. But he’d worked so hard for Timberman that she called Berkowitz and insisted he give Parnell a second chance. The agent did, and Parnell got the job.

“I spent two of the hardest years of my life working for him,” Parnell says. “But it was like grad school all over again, in the business of show business. Answering the phone for five years and listening to Sarah and Adam, I learned how to read a contract, how television packaging works, and the real machinations of business dealings and how television really works.”

Eventually, Parnell says, “the whole floor at CAA” called on his behalf and he got an “early executive position” with Columbia Tristar, now Sony Pictures Television. He’s now spent 12 years with the studio, and has been a key contributor to the success of such major hits as Breaking Bad, Outlander and Preacher.

Parnell’s career offers a fascinating glimpse into the vital role that personal connections can play in Hollywood.

Both he and Crouch, who is now an executive producer and show-runner for Fox’s The Exorcist, proudly fly their “geek” flags, having been science-fiction and comic fans all the way back to childhood (they recently served together on a panel at San Diego’s immensely popular Comic Con, “Inside the Writer’s Room”).

“My early life was shaped by living on the edge of the space program” in Florida, says Parnell, who as a sixth grader watched with horrified classmates as the Challenger shuttle exploded in the sky above his school. “So, it’s no surprise that I turned into a total geek.”

Way back in 1995, while at CU, Crouch—whose first job was behind the counter at Denver’s Top Notch comics—handed him a copy of a dark, gritty Preacher comic.

“I thought it was one of the coolest … things I’d ever read,” Parnell says. “One of these days,” he told himself, “I’d love to do that” as a film or TV series.

Once in a top position at Sony, Parnell tracked the rights. Eventually he helped get the ball rolling on a new AMC series based on the comic, co-produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

But wait! There’s more!

All the way back in 1996, Parnell shared the stage with a New York actor, Sam Catlin, in Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF). In the ensuing decades, Catlin had gone on to become a writer and co-producer for the wildly successful AMC series, Breaking Bad.

“Sam is so subversive,” Parnell says. “He’s one of the best writers I’ve ever had a chance to work with.”

So, he connected his old CSF colleague—who had a deal with Sony thanks to his work on Breaking Bad—to the producers, and Catlin is now executive producer and show-runner for Preacher.

Connections

Connections to CU can also catalyze a successful career in Hollywood. Consider Gabrielle Miles Hill (Theatre,’09), who has worked as an animation producer for Dreamworks, Paramount and Mattel, Inc. (where she produced a lucrative series of DVDs based on the company’s famous Barbie doll) and now works as an adult animation producer for Seth Green’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

Hill grew up dancing and acting in Los Angeles and originally came to CU to study musical theater. Eventually, she decided to pursue a double major in journalism and theater. The summer after her freshman year, while working as a tour guide at Universal Studios, she inquired about possible future internships with the studio.

“They said, ‘We’re looking for an intern in the IT department immediately—when can you start?’” she recalls.

Gabrielle Miles Hill.

But there was a hitch: she could only take the internship if she received college credit, and she hadn’t set up anything like that. She called then-department chair Bud Coleman in a semi-panic, and he worked swiftly to establish some requirements, including a paper, so she could take the job for credit.

That turned out to be the first of a string of top-notch industry internships, including stints with NBC, Walden Media and even living in London and working on the set of the reality show Big Brother.

“Bud Coleman was absolutely instrumental in my film career,” says Hill, who is married to David Hill (CU �鶹ӰԺ, Theatre, ’08), a post-production coordinator with NBCUniversal Media who also has worked at Fox, ABC, CBS and TVLand.

Despite her success, Hill, too, has endured the slings and arrows of capricious Hollywood fortune. She was thrilled to be working on major new animation projects for Dreamworks and Paramount when, due to changes at the top, both were canceled.

“Projects can be so fickle,” she says. “From one day to the next, all your funding can go away, or the studio can turn around, and the project’s dead.”

But, Hill says, the experience she gained working on major projects for major studios only burnished her resume, and her skills. At Stoopid Buddy she’s worked on irreverent adult animated series such as Hot Streets, a new animated comedy about two FBI agents who keep stumbling upon supernatural situations, for Adult Swim, an adult-oriented programming block on Cartoon Network.

“It’s its own kind of fun,” she says. “But it’s light years away from Barbie!”

Coleman is not the only CU �鶹ӰԺ faculty member who has influenced some of CU’s Hollywood success stories. Others mentioned include Associate Professor Emerita Lee Potts, Senior Instructor Lynn Nichols and former faculty member Sean Kelly, who is now at Roosevelt University.

If you see 14-hour days as normal, you are a step ahead of your competitors.”

“Sean Kelly said he’d never seen a ballet dancer finish his or her training and go sit on the couch and wait for calls,” says Dietzen, who forced himself to spend at least 40 hours a week working on his career and craft when he first arrived in Hollywood, whether or not he was working.

While part of CU’s BFA acting program, Dietzen attended classes every day, did scene study in the late afternoon and early evening, rehearsed until perhaps 11 p.m., then went home to complete homework.

“We were pulling 15- and 16-hour days all the time. Coming out of that program, you viewed that as normal,” Dietzen says. “Out here (in Hollywood), there comes a time when there’s a dude who looks just like me, is the same age and has the same training, and a lot of times the X-factor isn’t necessarily who is a better-looking guy, but who’s going to bust their butt more. If you see 14-hour days as normal, you are a step ahead of your competitors.”

And while big-name stars might be able to get away with being prima donnas or treating people “beneath” them with contempt— think “Batman” actor Christian Bale’s infamous, expletive-laden excoriation of a crew member, caught on camera in 2009—Kelly constantly taught his students to be decent people.

“My general tip to people who want to work (in Hollywood) is, ‘Don’t be a dick,’” Dietzen says. “Be an easy person to work with. Because another huge consideration is always, ‘Can I spend 14 hours a day on set with this person?’ Sometimes ‘fit’ isn’t as important as being a good human.

“People in Colorado like Bud Coleman and Sean Kelly really shaped that viewpoint in my life,” Dietzen says, “and I’m eternally grateful to them.”

Here’s a little story about a little Hollywood movie, and a bigger story about how several CU �鶹ӰԺ alums have forged Hollywood careers.

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CU �鶹ӰԺ lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 16:52:29 +0000

CU �鶹ӰԺ lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 10:52

Jeff Thomas

Postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students to increase their knowledge of demography and genetics in one of the first programs of its kind

Jason Boardman has made headlines studying the interactions between people’s genes and their environment, finding, for instance, that social factors trump genetic forces in forging friendships.

Now, the �鶹ӰԺ sociologist is helping to launch an advanced training program, one of the first of its kind in the nation, to train young scholars in this cross-disciplinary field.

The National Institute on Aging has awarded Professor Boardman, from CU �鶹ӰԺ’s Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), and Professor Michael Stallings from CU �鶹ӰԺ’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG), $595,666 over three years, to create a formal training program in the area.

Boardman was a tenure-track assistant professor in sociology at the �鶹ӰԺ in 2005 when he decided to expand his research in social demography, or the statistical study of human populations, to include behavioral and statistical genetics.

Jason Boardman

“Essentially, I had to take graduate level studies in these areas,” Boardman said. “I didn’t have much of a background in many of those fields, so I was raising my hand a lot.”

Boardman decided to look at the intersection and interaction between social factors — such as where one lives or works or whom one socializes with — and genetic factors as both influence complex health behaviors, such as smoking. He has published on this topic extensively, and beginning next year, like-minded post- and pre-doctoral students will be able to as well in the new training program.

Boardman’s genetic research has previously been supported by a five-year award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the National Institutes of Health. This grant allowed Boardman to maintain his position as a faculty member but spend nearly half of his time studying genetics with researchers at IBG.

Leaders of both IBS and IBG hailed the award:

“This is a tangible vote of support at the national level for the successful collaboration between IBS and IBG,” John K. Hewitt, director of IBG, said. “It reaffirms the value of our efforts to develop innovative interdisciplinary graduate and postdoctoral training programs.”

This training program will enable the next generation of scholars to tackle complex public-health issues such as increasing rates of obesity, individual differences in stress sensitivity, and complex and comorbid substance-use disorders with innovative and cutting-edge approaches.”

"This new grant demonstrates the leadership that Jason has achieved in connecting social and behavioral science with a deep understanding of genetics, something that draws on the outstanding expertise of the two institutes and amplifies our ability to train the next generation of researchers," Myron P. Gutmann, director of IBS, added.

Demography and genetics postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students will be annually funded by the grant over three years to increase their respective knowledge of demography and genetics —demographers will study behavioral genetics, and behavioral geneticists will study demography.

Three postdoctoral researchers, two of whom received support from NIH, have recently taken similar paths at the two research institutes, and have all been involved with innovative research projects, leading to tenure-track positions at leading universities.

Benjamin Domingue is now an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. During his time as a postdoctoral researcher with Boardman, he was supported by several funding mechanisms in an ad-hoc manner. The goal of this new program at CU �鶹ӰԺ is to replicate the training that Domingue received but in a more formal manner.

Brooke Huibregtse, the first postdoctoral researcher appointed to the training program, said she is excited about the opportunity to integrate new approaches with her formal training in psychology.

“Investigating genetic risk factors is only one side of the coin; it is important to also consider the social context in which complex health behaviors develop,” she said.

While there are now numerous research articles expanding on the study of the interaction between genes and environment, there is not a permanent training program today, according to Boardman. Reviewers noted that the strength of research from both the IBS and IBG, as well as researchers from CU Denver, was a significant factor in the decision to locate such a program at CU.

“This is an important indication that reviewers and NIH see this as the place to go to receive this very unique training,” Boardman said. “This training program will enable the next generation of scholars to tackle complex public-health issues such as increasing rates of obesity, individual differences in stress sensitivity, and complex and comorbid substance-use disorders with innovative and cutting-edge approaches.”

According to the proposal, IBS faculty members have expertise in areas that could not easily be duplicated by other research institutes, including the intersection of people’s genetics and their environment and its role in health outcomes, patterns of HIV/AIDS in Africa and healthy adolescent development.

“IBG has an incredibly strong and international reputation in research on genetic factors linked to different behaviors across the life course,” Boardman said. IBG “hosts annual workshops on twin modeling and advanced statistical genetics that are among the most popular courses on this topic in the country. Indeed, following a comprehensive external evaluation of IBG, one reviewer commented that IBG is, ‘a world leader that is unique in its extensive combination of human and animal model research studies of human behavioral variation.’”

Boardman said faculty members are still determining whether to offer an academic certificate for the program. Meanwhile, the interaction between IBS and IBG researchers continues to lead to interesting studies, including “wet lab” scientists such as IBG’s Tom Johnson, who studies molecular behavioral genetics using worms and mice.

“It’s amazing what comes up when we’re all together talking about this,” Boardman said.

Postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students to increase their knowledge of demography and genetics in one of the first programs of its kind.

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Trace arsenic linked with deteriorating health among American Indian elders

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 15:39:46 +0000

Trace arsenic linked with deteriorating health among American Indian elders Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/25/2017 - 09:39

Cay Leytham-Powell

Low levels of inorganic arsenic, thought to be safe, might be harming American Indian communities in the western United States, according to new CU �鶹ӰԺ research.

Long-term exposure to low levels of inorganic arsenic, or the "poison of kings," through drinking water is linked with deteriorating motor skills and neurological processing speed of American Indian elders, according to new research by Clint Carroll, an assistant professor in ethnic studies at the �鶹ӰԺ, and a nationwide team of scientists.

This research builds on an existing body of findings, and is the first of its kind looking at both the impact of arsenic on this specific underserved and under-represented segment of the population and the effects on neuropsychological health, which, Carroll asserts, have large-scale cultural implications.

Clint Carroll, an assistant professor in the ethnic studies department, studies indigenous governance and environmental perspectives. Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado.

"When you think about who are the sources of traditional knowledge or of ancestral knowledge, elders are the subset of the population who contain a lot of this generational knowledge and language," Carroll, who is also a citizen of the Cherokee nation, said. "And so, that knowledge is often conveyed through the language, and so when you’ve got impacts on neuropsychological health from this long-term, low-level exposure to arsenic, it raises concerns, at least in my mind, about the transmission of that knowledge to future generations."

"What is implicated is the cultural element of things — cultural transmission, knowledge transmission."

Arsenic is a naturally occurring mineral that can exist in food, water, soil and air in either an organic or inorganic form. Inorganic arsenic, when compared to its organic counterpart, is much more toxic and was once a common poison, as it gives off no smell or taste and can exist in the body with little to no side effect for years.

Inorganic arsenic is created in a variety of ways, such as through volcanic eruptions, the erosion of arsenic-containing rocks, runoff from mining (including gold mining), and the use of arsenic-containing pesticides — all of which disproportionally taint the drinking water of the western United States.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water from the tap, the mineral can still leach into ground water from naturally occurring and man-made sources, significantly affecting those (such as rural American Indian communities in the western United States) who rely on well water for their drinking water.

To study the effect of this exposure, the authors analyzed data collected via the Strong Heart Study and the Strong Heart Stroke Study. For more than 20 years, these two studies gathered data on thousands of American Indians in three regions: the American Southwest (or, an area near Phoenix), the Central Plains (or, the southwestern area of Oklahoma), and the Northern Plains (or, western and central North and South Dakota).

The Strong Heart Study data, which served as the baseline information, was collected in three different chunks (1989-91, 1993-94 and 1998-99) and included objective measurements regarding participants' health. Of these metrics, which included everything from familial history to BMI measurements, inorganic arsenic levels in the body were measured from the urine samples.

What is implicated is the cultural element of things — cultural transmission, knowledge transmission."

This information was then statistically combined with additional data collected between 2009 and 2013 (the Strong Heart Stroke Study), examining the surviving Strong Heart Study participants' vascular and structural brain disease risk factors. These data included, among other tests, a neuropsychological test that measured cognitive functioning, mental processing speed, verbal fluency and memory and fine motor skills (such as the tapping of a finger).

Altogether, the new study found one statistically significant conclusion: low level inorganic arsenic exposure in American Indian populations, over long periods of time, correlates with decreasing fine motor functioning and processing speed in elders.

These results, while dramatic, may not be quite the cause of alarm that they appear. Rather than immediate action, Carroll hopes they instead spark a conversation.

"The message is not to not drink the water or to go and buy bottled water," Carroll said. Instead, he hopes to raise awareness of risks "that are disproportionately shouldered by communities in rural areas — especially in the West — and, so, looking into ways that water can be made safer for these communities."

Montezuma Well, seen in the title image (which is from Ken Lund/Flickr), is one such naturally occurring pool located near Rimrock, Ariz., that contains high levels of arsenic that can leach into ground water.

Low levels of inorganic arsenic, thought safe, might be harming American Indian communities in the western United States.

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Forest regrowth tends to be thinner after wildfire

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 19:08:32 +0000

Forest regrowth tends to be thinner after wildfire Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/07/2017 - 13:08

Jeff Thomas

A changing climate is making it harder for forests to re-establish themselves at their former densities, CU �鶹ӰԺ doctoral student finds

Wildfires may soon change forests in the Colorado Front Range, thanks to shifting precipitation and temperatures driven in part by climate change, according to new research from the �鶹ӰԺ’s Biogeography Lab.

“Many areas that burned are not recovering following fire, and we expect these areas to stay more open, either as grasslands or more open savannas with sparse trees,” said Monica Rother, about forest regeneration in the lower montane zone, which is the “lower timberline,” generally between 6,500 to 7,300 feet, that separates the drier grassland plains from the mountain forests.

Monica Rother holds a harvested ponderosa seedline at Hail Valley Ranch Open Space, in an area hit by the 2003 Overland Fire. Photo by Lisa Trope. At top of page, Rother looks over a live seedling at Walker Ranch Open Space in the area hit by the Walker Ranch Fire of 2000. Photo by William Foster

The study, “Climate Drives Episodic Conifer Establishment after Fire in Dry Ponderosa Pine Forests of the Colorado Front Range, USA,” examined five recent Front Range fire areas: the High Meadows, Hayman and Buffalo Creek fires, and the 2003 Overland and 1988 Canyon fires in �鶹ӰԺ County. The study areas were selected largely based on the elapsed time from the fire, generally between 10 and 24 years, giving the forest time to regenerate.

“We do see fire as acting as a catalyst for forest change, whereas those areas would change more gradually under a climate-warming scenario (without fire),” said Rother, who earned her doctorate in geography in 2015 and whose study was published in the May edition of the journal Forests. “On a twisted silver lining, fewer trees could mean less fire danger for people who live in these areas.”

Researchers examined seedlings from the high-, moderate- and low-intensity burn areas of the fires to establish exactly when those seedlings took root. After ascertaining what year the seedlings took root, the research then correlated those results with three main factors affecting tree seedling establishment: precipitation, temperature and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), which is a measure of drought that combines temperature and recent precipitation.

“Essentially, we first just looked to see pulses of activity (in years with higher precipitation and possibly lower temperatures),” Rother said. “Establishment does tend to happen in these years with higher precipitation and positive PDSI values.”

While rising temperatures are likely under climate change, decreased precipitation is not, according to studies cited in her research. Increased evapotranspiration, or the evaporation of water, under warming scenarios, however, would decrease the amount of water available to seedlings, Rother noted, even if precipitation remains constant.

In addition, her previous research of seedling mortality under controlled conditions indicates that increased temperatures—given similar water conditions—should have a detrimental effect on forest regeneration.

Rother’s past research on Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir forests, trees both common along the Colorado Front Range, indicated that the severity of the fire appeared to have less of an effect on regeneration than the availability of water. However, larger fires in the lower montane often mean there are large open areas where mature, seed-dispersing trees are simply too far away to naturally regenerate the interior of the area affected by fire.

“A lot of land managers tend to focus on the severity of the fire, but we found the distance to the seed source was more important,” Rother said.

The Biogeography Lab—and its director, Thomas T. Veblen, a Professor of Distinction in the geography department—is continuing the study of post-fire forest regeneration with new studies in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Veblen was also a co-author in the recent article that appeared in Forests, and he noted that higher-elevation forests are showing similar regeneration problems.

“Studies conducted at high elevations near treeline in the Colorado Front Range also show that warmer temperatures are limiting tree seedling establishment to infrequent years of above-average precipitation,” Veblen said.

“When those results are combined with the observations of reduced rates of tree regeneration following fire, the implication is that under continued warming trends we expect to see less dense forests and in some places shifts from forests to non-forest vegetation types.”

Rother is now a fire ecologist at the Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy in Florida.

Wildfires may be changing Colorado forests, thanks to shifting precipitation and temperatures driven in part by climate change, researchers find.

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Scholarship helps students persevere through disability

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 23:03:51 +0000

Scholarship helps students persevere through disability Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/18/2017 - 17:03

Jeff Thomas

“If you wish to be something, do not strive to be the smartest, nor race to be the most popular, for these are only weak plants that rot and die. Be pleasant, be patient, be poor but content, for these are blessings in disguise and will live with you forever.”
—“A Bluebird’s Desiderata” from Bluebird Son of the Sun, a collection of poems by Rob Wyant

Many scholarships go to the most gifted students: the smartest, the most talented and, of course, the fastest and strongest.

Rob and Rick Wyant circa 1976. Photo courtesy of Rick Wyant.

The �鶹ӰԺ’s Robert Wyant Scholarship is granted to students who might be none of the above, but somehow achieve academic success while overcoming the challenges of disability. Funded by 1976 CU �鶹ӰԺ Business School graduate Rick Wyant, the College of Arts and Sciences scholarship memorializes his late brother’s determination to overcome his own tragic obstacles.

“We both had to overcome hearing disabilities, but my brother got a scholarship and came to CU,” Wyant said of his brother, Robert, who majored in psychology. In 1978, Robert Wyant was in his senior year at CU when a severe windstorm changed his life forever.

“He was walking to his car, near 12^th and College, when the storm blew a camper shell off a pickup,” Rick Wyant said.

Rob Wyant while attending University of Illinois graduate school in 1981. Photo courtesy of Rick Wyant

“The shell hit him square in the back. Had he not been hearing impaired, I believe he would have heard it. Had it struck him two inches to the left, it probably would have killed him. Two inches to the right, maybe it would have been different.”

As it was, the incident left Robert Wyant a quadriplegic for life and a fighter for the rest of his days, his brother recalls. After a year of rehabilitation, his brother returned to graduate in 1979 and turned to writing poetry as his window to the world.

“It made us both much more determined and much more spiritual, as well,” Rick Wyant said. While never a great source of income, Rick Wyant said his brother worked painstakingly at his poetry — pecking out the letters one key at a time and keeping that window open.

“He never made much money, but he would always have several pages in books (of poetry from multiple contributors) every year,” Rick Wyant said. “He finally was able to publish his own,” Bluebird Son of the Sun, in 1983.

In the meantime, Rick Wyant had also returned to Colorado after trying his hand at graduate school, but this time to work on computers. He went on to a successful career managing data systems at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, before starting his own business, WDS Inc., along with a compatriot from Rocky Flats.

Robert Wyant would succumb to cancer in 2003. Rick Wyant and his wife, Marci, decided to start the scholarship in his brother’s honor in 2014.

So far, one student has been given multiple awards of the scholarship; her obstacles are almost as severe as Robert’s, his brother said.

“The point of the scholarship is to reward students who persevere through these challenges. Meeting her and seeing her successes was wonderful. We want to award people whose determination is strong to make their lives be everything they can.”

Many scholarships go to the most gifted students: the smartest, the most talented and, of course, the fastest and strongest. CU �鶹ӰԺ’s Robert Wyant Scholarship is granted to students who might be none of the above, but somehow achieve academic success while overcoming the challenges of disability.

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Local entrepreneur tackles athletic turf field safety, proving there’s more beneath the surface

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 16:32:20 +0000

Local entrepreneur tackles athletic turf field safety, proving there’s more beneath the surface Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/14/2017 - 10:32

Craig Levinsky

CU alum and Brock USA founder Dan Sawyer runs his business by taking athletes’ health and global sustainability into account

The experience of watching a professional, college or high school football game is hardly different today than 20 years ago. The doctors and trainers who look after the athletes, however, would certainly see a distinction, and they have Dan Sawyer, the �鶹ӰԺ alumnus who is founder and CEO of Brock USA, partly to thank for it.

An athlete’s potential for suffering a ground-impact concussion or injury can now be decreased by nearly 50 percent, and the reason is the development and availability of a polypropylene Shock Pad product designed in �鶹ӰԺ by Brock USA, as part of their artificial turf padding PowerBase Pro line, and sold throughout the world.

Dan Sawyer (history '88), Founder and CEO of Brock USA, demonstrates one aspect of his brainstorming process. Photo by Craig Levinsky.

PowerBase Pro Shock Pads cushion the play at college football stadiums and practice fields at Harvard, Dartmouth, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Stanford, and at facilities for NFL teams such as the Houston Texans, Dallas Cowboys, Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, not to mention countless other professional, recreational and high school athletic fields across the country. Brock USA’s PowerBase Pro product accounts for roughly 80 percent of the market share in artificial turf safety padding.

Sawyer (history, ’88) established the company in 1998 with his step-father, their sights set not on athletics at the time but, rather, the medical-supply industry.

Sawyer’s step-father had already built and sold a pair of successful companies in �鶹ӰԺ, one in wheelchair-seating technology, the other in hospital beds for the critically ill. After he sold those companies, he gathered a small circle of confidantes that included Sawyer and asked, “What’s next?”

Brock USA had been experimenting with liquid-to-solid polypropylene technology, “and ended up creating this really interesting impact-absorbing, breathable body padding,” said Sawyer. “We were going to be the Gore-Tex of athletic padding,” he said.

Specifically, they aimed to sell their padding product to athletic-equipment companies such as Nike and Ridell. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so easy, and Sawyer needed to regroup and modify Brock’s entire mission.

Around 2004, Sawyer’s step-father retired, and restructuring the company and its objectives proved a challenge for Brock during the next seven years. “I love the business now,” said Sawyer. “But when you’re struggling and raising money, it’s not that fun. But we’re also research-focused, and I’m competitive by nature. And I knew the science was on our side. I knew that if we stuck it out long enough, the market would come on board.”

The humanities give people a sense of other cultures, languages and viewpoints in the world, which we need now more than ever. So, maybe that’s what the humanities can teach people to do well, to listen."

Meanwhile, rising concussion and injury rates in football, alone, became too obvious to ignore; and growing instances of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease commonly found in athletes, brought greater awareness to modern-day health and safety issues, including the relatively ignored CTE epidemic.

With few advancements made since its Houston Astrodome introduction in 1966, artificial turf fields needed a better padding alternative to the original carpet-over-cement approach still being used into the 2000s.

Rather than play catch-up with sports science and medicine, soon, sports science caught up with Brock USA, and business came calling. Sawyer now estimates the artificial-turf industry grows at a rate of 6 percent annually, while Brock USA, in contrast, is growing at 40 percent, with product lines delivering well beyond just their PowerBase and Shock Pad lines.

"The key is to love what you do." - Dan Sawyer. Photo by Craig Levinsky.

The bulk of Brock’s business is the PowerBase Pro line. “Second is our PaverBase product,” said Sawyer. “Third, we’re working on new technologies that can be used way outside these spaces for consumer products, medical products,” and so on, all of which Brock manufactures in order to meet high environmental standards.

“We’re proud to be the only company in the artificial turf world to have attained a Cradle-to-cradle certification on our PowerBase product lines,” reads the Brock USA website.

“Cradle-to-cradle is the pinnacle right now of the sustainability initiative,” explained Sawyer. “It’s a complete, closed loop sustainability story. Cradle-to-cradle means you can start with a polymer and engineer it into a product. After it’s in use, you can retrieve it and either completely reuse it as is, or take it all the way down to the original polymer and turn it back into a product of equal quality as when it was first created. We can make thousands of useful products out of it.”

Sawyer emphasizes that there’s no material degradation in Brock’s production and recycling methods, and nothing is ever thrown out.

Mind you, Sawyer majored in history, not engineering or environmental science, although it’s his experience as an entrepreneur that has informed his opinion that the future of the world, its sustainability and economic markets are in the hands of those with liberal arts and humanities backgrounds.

“Today, everyone thinks you need to be an engineer or a mathematician. When I hire, I look for people who can communicate and write. Being able to write is the single most important skill I find in people, because at the end of the day, business is about the interaction of people. All my sales people are in communication,” said Sawyer.

�鶹ӰԺ Brock USA’s future, Sawyer said, “We follow the idea streams. The marketplace is always coming up with ideas. You just need to be able to listen. The humanities give people a sense of other cultures, languages and viewpoints in the world, which we need now more than ever. So, maybe that’s what the humanities can teach people to do well, to listen,” he said.

“We listen to the needs of the market, and throw our engineering and creativity toward solutions. When it comes to ideas, there is no end in sight.”

It’s rather impressive for a company, as Sawyer put it, “accused of being tree-hugging hippies from Colorado.”

Dan Sawyer (history '88) is taking an ecological and humanities-minded approach to guarding the well-being of professional, student and recreational athletes, alike.

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Inside the Greenhouse, climate discourse cools down

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 16:40:38 +0000

Inside the Greenhouse, climate discourse cools down Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/07/2017 - 10:40

Clint Talbott

Professors in theatre, biology and environmental studies team up to focus on creatively communicating climate science through the arts and social sciences

Where one stands on the validity of climate change science depends largely on where one sits on the political spectrum, surveys show. This fact vexes people who respond to climate science doubt by producing more data.

But relying solely on facts doesn’t necessarily advance the discussion, and, thanks to confirmation bias, can actually harden opinions. This is one reason a trio of scholars at the �鶹ӰԺ is practicing and teaching ways to advance climate discourse through the arts and social sciences.

Barbara MacFerrin in Churchill, Canada. At top of page, Rebecca Safran, Max Boykoff and Beth Osnes. Top photo by Casey Cass.

CU �鶹ӰԺ’s Inside the Greenhouse project describes itself as a “collective of professors, students, scholars, practitioners” who creatively frame climate change issues in ways that emphasize people’s common ground. The trio of faculty members who launched the project teach courses in creative climate communication and in climate change and film.

The project’s mission is to “to deepen our understanding of how issues associated with climate change are/can be communicated, by creating artifacts through interactive theatre, film, fine art, performance art, television programming, and appraising as well as extracting effective methods for multimodal climate communication.”

Associate Professors Max Boykoff of environmental studies, Beth Osnes of theatre and dance, and Rebecca Safran of ecology and evolutionary biology, say their initiative springs partly from the fact that climate change discourse often breaks down.

“People keep throwing scientific information at people, thinking that’s going to change their behavior, and we see time and time again that it doesn’t,” Osnes recently told Colorado Public Radio.

Osnes and her colleagues believe better discourse is possible. Students who’ve taken Inside the Greenhouse courses concur.

Barbara MacFerrin, who graduated with a master’s in technology, media and society from the ATLAS Institute this year, has taken Osnes’ Creative Climate Communications class and Safran’s Climate Change and Film course. A professional photographer herself, MacFerrin wanted to fuse her passion for photography and film with a desire to communicate climate change information effectively.

While in the class, she created a video for the “More Than Scientists” project, a nonprofit initiative that disseminates short video interviews with climate scientists that strives to show the humans working in climatology.

MacFerrin’s film (below) featured her husband, Mike, a research glaciologist at CU �鶹ӰԺ, and highlights his feelings about the dramatic melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

[video:https://youtu.be/6ISzoVMGn4o]

MacFerrin later worked with the city of �鶹ӰԺ Youth Opportunity Advisory Board, where she helped develop and produce a short film about climate change mitigation in �鶹ӰԺ. She also traveled to Churchill, Manitoba, last year to film polar bears in the wild.

She praises the program: “I think Inside the Greenhouse is a great initiative, is effective in getting students creatively involved with climate change communication efforts, and offers many opportunities to get engaged.”

Curtis Beutler

Curtis Beutler, who earned his bachelor’s in environmental studies in 2016 and is now a field and data assistant at the Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research program, focused his studies on the natural sciences behind environmental issues.

“But even with the majority of my coursework focused on science and research, the topics of outreach and communication kept coming up,” he said. In particular, having the chance to interact with climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—and hearing them stress the importance of public outreach—“spurred my interest in taking on the role of communicator.”

Boykoff’s class focused on “translating our already proficient working knowledge of atmospheric and climate science into meaningful and effective outlets,” Beutler said. This work focused on mass media and studying how to break down personal barriers to polarized topics, he said.

“Inside the Greenhouse, in my experience, thoroughly exceeded its mission to push interdisciplinary students out of their comfort zones and regular roles as to become storytellers and active participants in the dialogue on climate change,” Beutler said. “No matter their background, students learned how to utilize the pathos (emotional reasoning) of a community to convey a message of scientific rationality and humanitarian importance.”

Meagan Webber

Meagan Webber, who earned her bachelor’s in environmental studies in 2016, is now a graphic designer living in Malaysia.

She took the Creative Climate Communication class because, “I had come to realize the importance of properly framing and delivering messages about human-caused climate change and wanted to hone my skills in that area.”

She wanted to learn more about video editing in particular.

Before taking the class, Webber recalled, “I thought that if people would only listen to the facts, then we could solve the issue of human caused climate change more easily. Taking this class taught me how to really step into my audiences’ shoes and see the messages from their eyes.”

Webber noted that the “More Than Scientists” project aims to help viewers who don't have strong opinions about climate change “connect to the issue on a human level” through the eyes of the scientist.

Webber and a team of fellow students interviewed Mark Serreze, director of the CU �鶹ӰԺ National Snow and Ice Data Center, an expert on Arctic sea ice, professor of geography and one of the university’s most highly cited researchers.

�鶹ӰԺ the founders

Max Boykoff’s research and creative work focuses on cultural politics and environmental governance, creative climate communications, science-policy interactions, disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation.

Beth Osnes’ research focuses on using theatre as a tool for women to empower their voices for self-advocacy and civic participation and employing community engagement through performance for city planning for resilience.

Rebecca Safran is an integrative evolutionary behavioral and evolutionary ecologist whose research focuses on the evolution of biological diversity, from molecular, individual, and population perspectives.

Instead of focusing mostly on the data that he studies, “we framed the interview around his personal connections to the issue, starting with his childhood memories of playing in the snow and ice of Maine winters.”

Serreze discussed an ice cap that he had studied as a graduate student and noted that it has shrunk significantly since then. He is emotionally attached to the ice cap and is upset that it’s vanishing.

“The goal is for viewers to relate to those memories spent playing in the snow as kids or the attachment to a special place in the natural world that may be disappearing,” Webber said. “If they can relate on that emotional level, the urgency of acting on climate change may become clearer.”

She added: “Art has the power to touch people's hearts and minds, inspiring them to live to their highest potential and improve their communities. This makes artistic expression, from videos to dance to comedy, an important vehicle for communication about such a grave topic.”

Clarissa Coburn, an English major who took Creative Climate Communication in spring 2016, concurred.

Before taking the class, she thought conveying the scientific data was all that was necessary. “This class showed me that the science is just the beginning,” Corburn said. “All the climate science in the world won't help us if people do not know, do not understand, or do not care about the information.”

For more information on Inside the Greenhouse, click here.

Professors in theatre, biology and environmental studies team up to focus on creatively communicating climate science through the arts and social sciences.

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Author imagines a dire future to prevent it

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 23:16:33 +0000

Author imagines a dire future to prevent it Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/06/2017 - 17:16

Clay Bonnyman Evans

CU �鶹ӰԺ grad Carrie Vaughn’s latest science-fiction novel takes aim at 'generational short-sightedness,' while her collection of short stories wins Colorado Book Award

Since publishing her first short story in 1999, science-fiction and fantasy writer Carrie Vaughn has published an astonishing 20 novels and more than 50 short stories, becoming one of the most successful American science-fiction and fantasy writers of the 21^st century.

She has climbed the heights of the New York Times best-seller lists with her long-running series of novels about Kitty Norville, a Denver DJ who just happens to be a werewolf. She's been nominated several times for the genre's most prestigious award, the Hugo. And in May, her 2016 collection, Amaryllis and Other Stories (Fairwood Press) won the 2017 Colorado Book Award in the genre fiction category.

Along the way, Vaughn, who earned a master's degree in English at the �鶹ӰԺ in 2000, has made a habit of cheerily shattering conventions.

Take her infamous (her word) 2003 story, A Hunter's Ode to His Bait, which upends sappy, sweet conventions of the classic unicorn tale with a story that is simultaneously bloody, sexy and empowering. And her two "Golden Age" novels feature the daughter of two superheroes who goes to work for her parents' archenemy.

Carrie Vaughn, author of 20 novels and 50 short stories, has won the 2017 Colorado Book Award for her 2016 collection, Amaryllis and Other Stories. Photograph from Carrie Vaughn.

No surprise, then, that when she decided to try her hand at the too-often-hackneyed post-apocalyptic subgenre, she turned away from standard tropes.

"I told a friend I was writing a post-apocalypse novel," she says. "He said, 'Please don’t tell me it’s a zombie apocalypse!'"

It's not. This is Carrie Vaughn we're talking about, after all. Bannerless, due from Mariner Books on July 11, is a mélange of murder mystery, post-apocalyptic world-building and a serious argument in favor of sustainability and responsible social policy.

"I wanted to write a post-apocalypse novel, and whether or not I wrote about the actual apocalypse, I wanted to think where it came from," says Vaughn, 43, who lives in Longmont, Colo, with her American Eskimo dog, Lily, fancies horses and likes to fence in her spare time.

"What happens if it all happens at once — epidemics, antibiotic-resistant disease, climate disasters, flooding, storms — and society doesn't have strong enough economic and social footing to survive? What happens to the satellites, to GPS? What happens to broadcast, to water treatment, to the sewage system? Once you start losing things it ripples outwards."

Vaughn grew up all over the country as an "Air Force brat," picking up the science-fiction and fantasy bug from her parents. Her mother started it off when she was 8 with Red Planet, one of Robert A. Heinlein's famous "juveniles" — what would today be called YA fiction — and her father, who served on bomber crews in Vietnam, followed up by plunking her down in front of Stanley Kubrick's and Arthur C. Clarke's seminal science-fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. She soon began to write her own stories (including G.I. Joe fan fiction, some of which she reluctantly posted only in 2014, at the insistence of fans).

After earning a bachelor's degree from Occidental College, she attended the intensive, six-week Odyssey Writing Workshop in New Hampshire before coming to CU �鶹ӰԺ for her master's degree.

A lifelong interest in myth and literature has continually informed her work. Her story Draw Thy Breath in Pain, for example, imagines that Shakespeare was inspired by a literal encounter with a certain deceased Danish prince, while In Time injects a bit of the fantastic into the story of the death of Emily Dickinson's beloved dog Carlo, and "Fishwife" plumbs the wet and creepy depths of Lovecraftian horror.

"She has an extraordinarily wide range," says Jeanne Cavalos, founder of Odyssey.

The late Edward Bryant, who for decades helped midwife the careers of countless Colorado science-fiction and fantasy superstars through his Northern Colorado Writer's Workshop — including perennial award winners and bestsellers Dan Simmons and Connie Willis — called Vaughn "a major, major talent" early in her career.

Of late, Vaughn has been expanding her oevre, publishing three young-adult novels, including Steel, included in the 2012 Amelia Bloomer list for its treatment of feminist themes. With Amaryllis and Bannerless she is seriously speculating about a dire future in hopes — as the late Ray Bradbury argued good science-fiction should — of preventing it.

In Bannerless, the apocalypse arrives as a sort of slow-burn environmental and economic implosion. Years later, Enid of Haven, trained to mediate disputes in the Coast Road region in central California, must now investigate and resolve something much more serious: the suspicious death of an outcast.

"My hope is that the familiar pattern of the murder mystery — there is a body and we must find who did it — will draw readers in as they explore this setting," Vaughn says.

The fictional Coast Road community is successfully rebuilding, thanks to the concerted efforts of its founders to preserve important technology, such as vaccines and solar power.

But the novel never lapses into what legendary science-fiction author and critic Brian Aldiss has called the "cozy catastrophe," in which — with apologies to R.E.M. — it's the end of the world as we know it, but our protagonists feel fine. Vaughn is interested in what the reality might really be like.

Take, for example, the common post-apocalyptic trope of the abandoned city: "You see it still standing," she observes. "But if the fire department is gone, there is no water, fire is going to be a huge problem and cities won't stand. … Asphalt decays very quickly, and without upkeep, the roads will be gone."

What happens if it all happens at once — epidemics, antibiotic-resistant disease, climate disasters, flooding, storms — and society doesn't have strong enough economic and social footing to survive?"

The novel, vigorously pro-science, explores the rational use of resources, population control and social engineering, and is dedicated to her friend Paolo Bacigalupi, the Paonia, Colo., science-fiction superstar whose own best-selling, Hugo-winning novels and stories have put him at the forefront of environmental speculation.

"My conversations with Paolo really helped me when I first started to write stories set in this world," Vaughn says. "It's about the need to convince people that these are real problems we need to do something about, to overcome cultural conditioning on such things as birth control and vaccines. It's not the technology that is the obstacle here, but social and cultural mores that are centuries old."

Coast Road citizens, for example, no longer assume that everyone can, should or will, have children. Birth control is mandatory and people must justify and earn the right to reproduce.

"What happens when you have to explain why you want to have a baby," Vaughn says, acknowledging that the question is personal, "instead of having to explain why you don’t want to have a baby?"

To her dismay, Vaughn sees political developments since she began writing the novel as driving society in the wrong direction to avoid catastrophe.

"I see more steps, more clearly, in how we get from there to here than when I started. Step one is defunding the very tools we have for surviving," she says, citing plans to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control, Environmental Protection Agency, National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration and other agencies.

"They develop the technology and techniques for tracking storms and climate change; if we don’t have CDC to manage a major epidemic, we’ll be in trouble," Vaughn says. "I know there are some people who think there is too much government and want all those agencies to go away. But without them, how do we respond to a major epidemic? How do we handle major storms; what if Katrina and Sandy happened in the same year?"

If funding is drastically cut, society will lose ground, and years of expertise, but the problems aren't going away, she says. "We’ll end up covering a lot of the same ground again."

Vaughn sees our current dilemma as a case of "generational short-sightedness."

(Title Image from Doctor Chas/Flickr)

Bannerless, due from Mariner Books on July 11, is a mélange of murder mystery, post-apocalyptic world-building and a serious argument in favor of sustainability and responsible social policy.

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Professor of Japanese wins imperial decoration from Japan

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 23:42:22 +0000

Professor of Japanese wins imperial decoration from Japan Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/03/2017 - 17:42

Clint Talbott

Government recognizes Laurel Rasplica Rodd’s work to improve understanding of Japan and enhance Japanese education in the United States

When Laurel Rasplica Rodd began studying Japanese language and culture, she was one of only about 7,000 students nationwide. Today, the United States has an estimated 200,000.

During the five decades since then, Rodd, professor emeritus of Japanese at the �鶹ӰԺ, shepherded what is now called the Asian Languages and Civilizations Department, which has grown to meet students’ steadily rising interest in Japanese language and culture.

In this and in other roles, Rodd has “contributed greatly toward promoting understanding about Japan and Japanese education in the U.S.,” the Consulate General of Japan in Denver stated.

For her efforts, the Japanese government on Friday formally awarded her an imperial decoration: The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. Japan makes this award to recognize distinguished achievements in international relations, promotion of Japanese culture or preservation of the environment.

Japanese Consul General Hiroto Hirakoba and Laurel Rasplica Rodd share a moment during the ceremony in which she was formally bestowed with The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, a imperial decoration recognizing her efforts to promote education and understanding of Japanese language and culture. Photo by Danielle Rocheleau Salaz.

Other Coloradans who have won the award include the late Bill Hosokawa, a longtime editor at The Denver Post, and former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Rodd called the award a “nice career-topping event.”

However, this career wasn’t exactly the career she had originally planned. In 1966, Rodd was in college studying French, with a minor in Russian. She was considering a career in the foreign service or perhaps academe.

In her junior year of college, she won a scholarship to spend 15 months studying Japanese language and culture at the East West Center at the University of Hawaii.

“It really just turned me in a new direction,” Rodd recalls. “I was fascinated by the language and increasingly by the culture and literature of Japan.” She went to graduate school and focused on Japanese.

The textbook used in the Japanese language classes featured a haiku inside the front cover of each volume, “and I was just particularly taken with those.” She hit the library, continued to study Japanese poetry and hasn’t stopped.

When Rodd came to CU �鶹ӰԺ in 1994, the university did not offer a bachelor’s degree in Japanese. Now, it has that plus a master’s and doctoral program.

“Since I’ve been here, the program in Japanese has grown dramatically,” Rodd said. She attributes the growth partly to rising worldwide interest in the culture and language of Japan.

Since the early ‘90s, “worldwide, there’s been a youth culture that focuses on Japan,” Rodd observed. Fueling that interest was anime, a style of Japanese film animation, and manga, or Japanese comics, along with Japanese pop music, or J-pop.

“Almost every year since I’ve been here, we’ve had more students than we could fit into beginning classes,” Rodd said. Since 1994, the number of Japanese majors at CU �鶹ӰԺ has doubled.

Students with widely varying career interests have studied Japanese language and culture at CU �鶹ӰԺ. Rodd said they deploy their knowledge in careers ranging from teaching to tourism to government service to business.

“I feel as though we’ve moved from being a kind of small, exotic and maybe tenuously rooted program in the United States to one that really has deep roots.”

Rodd received a BA in French from DePauw University, an MAT in teaching from East Tennessee State University as part of the Teacher Corps program, and the MA and PhD in Japanese Literature from the University of Michigan.

Since coming to CU �鶹ӰԺ in 1994, she has served as chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations and director of the Center for Asian Studies. Prior to coming to CU �鶹ӰԺ, she taught at Arizona State University and the University of Virginia.

Rodd has won the Rackham Prize, the Japan-America Friendship Commission Literary Translation Award, Alpha of Colorado Phi Beta Kappa Chapter Campus Scholar, University of Colorado Excellence in Service Award, Ronald Walton Award in Recognition of Distinguished Career Service on Behalf of the Less Commonly Taught Languages and the University of Colorado Campus Global Citizen of the Year Award.

The American Association of Teachers of Japanese is based in �鶹ӰԺ partly because Rodd presided over it for six years.

The year before she retired, she completed a book featuring her translation of about 2,000 poems from all periods of Japanese history up through the 12^th century. The resulting two-volume set, published by Brill Press, is called Shinkokinshu: New Collection of Poems, Ancient and Modern.

Pre-modern poetry captivated Rodd’s scholarly interest through most of her career, “and I’m pleased to have been able to have shared that more widely now with an English-speaking audience.”

When Laurel Rasplica Rodd began studying Japanese language and culture, she was one of only about 7,000 students nationwide. Today, the United States has an estimated 200,000. At CU �鶹ӰԺ, Rodd helped fuel and meet the student demand.

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