February

Using the book and film The Martian as a lens, Mike Seibert will discuss the current golden age of robotic Mars exploration as well as the challenges of mounting a human expedition to the red planet. Highlights of the presentation will be tales of challenges faced by the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity as their mission surpassed the expected 90 days into over 14 years of roving Mars.
Mike Seibert is a former Mars Rover Driver and Flight Director for the Opportunity Mars Rover. He spent 12 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of the operations team for the twin Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. Mike now works as a systems engineer in Boulder, Colorado helping to develop robotic arms for spacecraft to be used for activities ranging from satellite refueling to planetary exploration. In addition, he is a graduate student at the Colorado School of Mines pursuing a Ph.D. in Space Resources.

Frederick Law Olmsted was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-known urban parks with his senior partner Calvert Vaux, including Central Park in New York City and Cadwalader Park in Trenton. We will view a DVD about Olmsted, followed by a presentation from Priscilla Hibbard.

Frederick Law Olmsted was born in Hartford, Connecticut, a member of the eighth generation of his family to live in that city. His mother died when he was four, and from the age of seven he received his schooling mostly from ministers in outlying towns, with whom he lived. His father, a successful dry-goods merchant, was a lover of scenery, and much of Olmsted's vacation time was spent with his family on "tours in search of the picturesque" through northern New England and upstate New York. As he was about to enter Yale College in 1837, Olmsted suffered severe sumac poisoning, which weakened his eyes and kept him from the usual course of studies.
He spent the next twenty years gathering experiences and skills from a variety of endeavors that he eventually utilized in creating the profession of landscape architecture. He worked in a New York dry-goods store and took a year-long voyage in the China Trade. He studied surveying and engineering, chemistry, and scientific farming, and ran a farm on Staten Island from 1848 to 1855.

Ron Cooper will take us through photography, from Brady to now, as he describes and give examples of the rapidly changing photographic paradigm, the sudden and rapidly changing ways of photographing the world around us and what the future may have in store.

Ron is a self-taught photographer. He started at the Oregon Statesman in 1969. He has photographed presidents, bull riders, governors, bus drivers and many other people and events. He has continued to pursue his passion for photography since retirement, adopting the new digital format. In recent years he has purchased a photo drone and his "flying cameras" are seen frequently in the skies over Salem and the Mid-Willamette Valley landmarks.

As a direct consequence of the new social status of the artist as an intellectual in early sixteenth-century Italy and the increasingly diffused acknowledgment of the conceptual values of images, authorship became a predominant parameter for the evaluation of paintings, sculptures and engravings. By the time Giorgio Vasari published his Lives (Florence, 1550), the degree of individuality that characterized the style of masters such as Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo had already set a new paradigm of artistic accomplishment, focused on the “originality” and “authenticity” of their works. After having reached, according to Vasari, the highest forms of individual perfection, the styles elaborated by these artists were not only immediately recognizable but also virtually impossible to imitate.

While the imitation of previous models, based on the study of well-chosen examples, was still considered an important part in the training process of young artists, more experienced masters were expected, as a sign of their creative maturity, to refrain from mimicking someone else’s visual vocabularies and produce images that could fully embody their distinctive maniera, or “manner,” combined with a certain degree of personal licenza, or “poetic license.” Debates focusing on the concepts of imitation and emulation, along with the publication of treatises describing the practices of copying and borrowing, became recurrent topoi in the art literature between 1562 and 1604. In this same period, the production of market-oriented copies of well-known works and the making of forgeries intentionally designed to fool the eyes of well-trained “art lovers” and collectors reached unprecedented levels of technical mastery, visual sophistication and conceptual novelty.

This lecture will examine this intriguing cultural phenomenon, focusing, in particular, on the reception of a series of prints made by Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), in which the artist has programmatically pursued what could be called an “intervisual dialogue” with his models, reinterpreting styles and techniques associated with famous masters of the past. By imitating what was supposed to be inimitable, Goltzius plays with the expectations of his audiences, while asserting his manual dexterity and intellectual vitality within the highly competitive art market of late sixteenth-century Europe. Thanks to his “fake forgeries,” Goltzius set a model of creative procedure that presents revealing similarities with the Renaissance paradigm of “conversation”.

Ricardo De Mambro Santos
Professor and Chair, Department of Art History, Willamette University
Specialty: Italian and European Renaissance and Mannerism. Education
B. A., M.A., Università di Roma “La Sapienza” (Italy)
Ph.D., Università degli Studi di Bologna (Italy)
Post-Doctoral, Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane – Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze (Italy). Research and Teaching

Professor De Mambro Santos is an expert in Italian and European Renaissance and Mannerism. He has taught for twelve years in the Department of Art History at the University of Rome courses on Renaissance Art Literature and Visual Culture as well as classes on Methodologies of Art Criticism. In the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Rome, he has also taught courses on the activity of European painters in India, China and Japan from the sixteenth- to the eighteenth-century. More recently, as a Visiting Professor, he taught at the University of Washington and Whitman College classes on Northern Renaissance, Brazilian visual culture, and theories of art from Neoclassicism to Postmodernism.

 A look at how the economy has performed since the financial collapse and recession of 2007-8, with data presented on the overall economy, unemployment rate, inflation, international trade, and distribution of income and wealth. Problems include current budget deficits and increased levels of federal debt, international trade disputes with China, Canada and Mexico, a slowdown in the global economy, our aging infrastructure, and environmental challenges.

Monetary and fiscal policy, (including the 2017 Tax Act), will focus on past performance and future prospects.

Economists and ICL members.

Fall risk increases with aging, and an accelerated decline in physical and mental function can put some people at higher risk of falling at a younger age than others. Fall risk assessments done in clinical settings attempt to screen older adults for the broad variety of health and functional issues that increase the risk of falling. Some useful measurements of fall risk - like the ability to rapidly shift our weight side to side - have not yet been adequately translated to clinical settings, because of the need to use high-tech equipment that is often inaccessible in a clinical setting. Side-to-side movements are common in daily locomotion, even when walking forward, and disruption in the control of these movements has long been understood to signal an increased fall risk. For some years now, I have been working on the development of a low-tech, clinically-feasible test of rapid side-to-side weight shifting control by having participants perform rapid alternating step-tap movements. While I have successfully correlated high-tech measures of side-to-side movement control with performance on a low tech test of rapid stepping performance, I have struggled to improve some aspects of reliability of the test, and my work in this area is on-going. This presentation will illustrate the steps involved in this type of research.

Joining the faculty at Willamette University in Fall 2012 represented coming full-circle for me, since I graduated from Willamette in 1996. I teach classes in Biomechanics, Aging, Functional Anatomy, and Motor Control and Learning. I prioritize hands-on activities in my courses, ranging from data collections and analysis in Biomechanics class, functional assessments with senior citizen volunteers from the community in my aging class, and gaining hands-on anatomical kinesiology skills in our Clinical Healthcare class.

Members with last names starting with M to Z please bring a goodie to share.

The General is a 1926 American silent comedy film released by United Artists. It was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, a true story of an event that occurred during the American Civil War. The story was adapted from the memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger. The film stars Buster Keaton who co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman. At the time of its initial release, The General, an action-adventure-comedy made toward the end of the silent era, was not well received by critics and audiences. The General has since been reevaluated, and is now often ranked among the greatest American films ever made.

Jim Scheppke, State Librarian Emeritus, served as the eighth State Librarian of Oregon from 1991 to 2011. He came to the Oregon State Library in 1986 from Texas to head the Library Development Services division. Prior to becoming a librarian he worked as an independent bookseller. Jim Scheppke has served as president of the Oregon Library Association and of the Western Council of State Libraries, and has written numerous articles for professional library publications. He earned a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He currently holds leadership positions in a number of organizations including Progressive Salem, the Oregon Encyclopedia, the Willamette Valley Mushroom Society and the South Central Association of Neighbors.

My presentation is largely based on the book At the Hearth of the Mixed Races by Marie Melinda Jetté. The book covers the forty-seven years from 1812, the first documented contact between Kalapuyans and Euro-Americans, to 1859 when Oregon was accepted as a state of the United States of America. The Canadian Quebecois were hired by the early fur traders like John Jacob Astor (Pacific Fur Company) for their fortitude, skill, and adaptability to the adventures of exploiting Pacific Northwest resources. The French-Canadians, or Quebecois or voyageurs forged partnerships and created families with the local Native American and/or Métis women. The women became ideal partners in exploiting the fur trade, negotiating trade deals, and acting as intermediaries between the fur trappers and the Northwest tribes. Many of these fur trappers settled with their families to farm when furs were no longer easy to obtain due to over exploitation. My presentation focuses on the story of the French-Indian families of the Champoeg area, an history that is often passed over or ignored in the greater Euro-American Oregon Country foundation mythology.

Franca Hernandez has been a member of ICL since the fall of 2012.

Though arguably the most advanced economy in the world, the United States still uses centuries-old numbers to measure trade. The antique numbers mangle understanding of the U.S.-China trade relationship, shrinking America’s true economic size and competitiveness, while swelling China’s. Bad numbers give rise to bad policies that ultimately kill U.S. jobs and cede market share to China. What other tools can the U.S. employ to counter China’s unfair trade practices? There are several available, yet they remain mostly unused. Doug Lusk will discuss: Benefits of trade – Classic theory of trade; History of trade with China from 1976 opening of China; WTO membership 2001; Current status of trade – GDPs, trade deficit, current accounts, currency values; Enhancing Economic interdependence and the future.

Doug Lusk has been a member of ICL since 9/2018.

Can public deliberation be post-partisan? Yes, if it is prepared to be empirically-informed, scrupulously attentive to competing falsifiable explanations, and willing to apply explicit ethical principles in consistent ways. In this talk, I propose distributive patterns of mortality as the empirical bases for a public health approach to considerations about the public good. Whose lives seem to matter most in America? Notwithstanding our avowed commitments to freedom and equality there are stark patterns in the US data on death, patterns that implicate various sorts of systemic causal constraints and inequities on life chances. Drawing on the economic, epidemiological, and ethical work of Amartya Sen, Sandro Galea, and Georg Marckmann et al, I will offer some examples of the analyses of specific causes of unjust patterns of deaths and the justifications for public responsibility and interventions.

Sammy Basu, professor of history and humanities (formerly of politics), hails from northern England, grew up in Canada, received his PhD from Princeton, and has been at Willamette for more than 25 years. His research and teaching interests extend from intellectual history to contemporary ethics and public policy, with special interests in democratic theory, humor, Nazism, Canada, and death (in no particular order). His presentation will draw upon a course he has taught for many years, Death in America, and anticipate his efforts together with other colleagues to establish a new major in public health at Willamette.

Just because you've already had six books published doesn't mean the seventh will be a cinch, especially if the others were fiction and the new one is a memoir. Not even an ordinary memoir, this one is about making music. The story of Ginny's persistence has comic elements, surprises, long delays, an incompetent editor, moral perplexities and a fairy tale ending.

In the second hour, she will read selections from Keeping Time: a Life of Making Music and happily answer your questions.

Virginia Furtwangler returned to the USA in l996 after living in eastern Canada for 25 years. During that time five collections of her short fiction were published. The sixth, Season of Apples, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, came out after her return to the U.S. in 1996 when she was named first holder of the Hallie Ford Chair of English at Willamette University. Her collection, The Golden Thread, is based on her l3 years as a religious in the Ursuline Order. Subsequent collections mix topics sacred and secular, and her current project—spanning 10 years—is a music-moir charting years of making music, alone or with others, in schools, chapels, living rooms, in multiple forms and states of mind.

Her fiction has won numerous prizes and awards including two NEA Fellowships, several Canada Council Awards, and a finalist for The Governor General’s Award for Fiction in Canada. Years of teaching, as a Professor of English Literature and also as Distinguished Visiting Fiction Writer have brought her to U.S. and Canadian universities in locales including New York, Kansas, Idaho, Minnesota, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, a Canadian maximum security penitentiary, and finally to a happy landing in Salem, Oregon.

Her Ph.D. from Cornell is in Modern Literature.

Under the heading of "Symphonies, Sonatas, and Songs", the quartet will present an amazing, virtuosic performance of music representing widely varied styles, genres, and sources. Composers include Italians Antonio Salieri and Domenico Scalatti; Spaniard Sergio Ortega; and our own Richard Rogers. Most of their music is transcribed and arranged by the quartet's own Bryan Johnson, and will also include traditional music from Scotland, Greece, and America. Titles will range from "Sinfonia Veneziana" to "My Funny Valentine". They will of course give helpful background information on each selection. In other words, prepare to be both educated and entertained!

The critically acclaimed Oregon Guitar Quartet is an ensemble of four of the finest classical guitarists residing in Portland, Oregon. The group’s members Mario Diaz, John Mery, Jesse McCann and Bryan Johanson have been performing and recording together for nearly a decade. Their 2010 debut album Something Wondrous Fair was met with outstanding approval. Soundboard’s Jim McCutcheon wrote, “…it is the joyousness, energy, and precision of the performance that convinces me that this group is one to hear.” Since then, the group has released five more exciting and unique recordings each receiving rave reviews.

 Kristen Grainger spent more than a decade early in her career working in Oregon state politics before crossing State Street to take a leadership position at Willamette University. Nearly 14 years later, she was summoned back to public service during a leadership crisis. Kristen soon discovered that, in the intervening years since she left politics, everything had changed, and absolutely nothing had changed. In 1969, Tom Imeson began working for Senator Mark O. Hatfield on Capitol Hill, launching a public service career that took him from the office of Sen. Hatfield to the administrations of three Oregon governors and many gubernatorial appointments to boards and commissions. Tom reflects on his fifty years serving Oregon and his efforts to work effectively on behalf of the public good regardless of issue or politics.

Kristen Grainger has been the Special Assistant to the President of WU and Acting Chief Communications Officer since returning to WU in 2018. She assists President Thorsett with state and federal affairs. She formerly served as vice president and executive assistant to the president of WU from 2002 to 2015. She was communications director for Gov. Kate Brown from 2015 to 2018.

Thomas Imeson has had extensive involvement in Oregon politics and public life, including working in high level jobs for Governors Hatfield, Kitzhaber and Kulongoski. He has worked for the Port of Portland as director of public affairs. His private sector experience includes, in addition to his consulting practice, 11 years with PacifiCorp. He is currently VP for Public Affairs at NW Natural Gas. His civic involvement includes The Nature Conservancy, the Cascade Aids Project, Oregon Land Conservation, and the Oregon Board of Education. He is currently chair of the Oregon Board of Forestry. Imeson received a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University.

During this two hour presentation, you will become an anthropologist, using your skills in biology, economics, psychology, sociology and philosophy in an analysis of this political divide. The task will be hard. You will be asked to be an unbiased observer of your own culture. This will not be a political discussion; leave your biases at the door. You are a member of the species Homo sapiens. You have achieved your success as a species through cooperation, empathy, and sentience. These are the traits you will use to study this political divide.

Yuval Noah Harari holds a Ph.D. in history from University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in World History. His two books, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, have become global best sellers with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide, with translations in more than 45 languages.

 DVD and presentation on artist's self-portraits. How do artists view themselves and how do they want others to see them?

Sharon has been a member of ICL since September of 1999. Don only arrived on the scene in 2004.

These two presentations will discuss the Sophists, Plato & Socrates and the post-Platonic schools, e.g. Skeptics, Epicureans, Stoics, Cynics, etc.

Bob Muir has been an ICL member since January of 2014.

Charts used in the Presentation: Great Ideas of Philosophy charts.pdf