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Gearing up Gere
Jassen Todorov, assistant professor of music, spoke to KGO-AM on Nov.
11 about giving Richard Gere violin lessons for the movie "Bee
Season." "It was great working with Richard Gere. He was
a good student," Todorov said. "He was very musical. He plays
piano, guitar and violin. He can't play with a string quartet but can
play a few tunes on the violin. In another four or five months he could
play with a string quartet." A story on Todorov also appeared
in the Nov. 22 edition of the Oakland Tribune.
Pacifica prose
The San Francisco Chronicle profiled Toni Mirosevich, associate professor
of creative writing, in its Nov. 11 edition. Mirosevich recently published "Queer
Street," a collection of prose, poems and stories inspired by
the experiences she and her same-sex partner had moving into and becoming
part of a Pacifica neighborhood. "Writing is an attempt to come
to grips with things I don't understand," she said. "It's
a way I try to meet the world. Otherwise I go into myself with assumptions."
Revisiting Altamont
The Rolling Stones recently returned to the Altamont Speedway for a concert,
where in 1969 a Hell's Angels member killed a teen. John Burks, chair
of journalism, covered the original event for Rolling Stone magazine.
In a Nov. 15 KRON-4 News story, Burks said, "There was a rosy
period that didn't last that long after Woodstock where people were
sort of floating on air. Everything was 888 for this generation. Rock
'n' roll set us free. This [the killing] made a statement 180 degrees
from there -- that we're capable of being just as ugly. That things
can turn out to be just as ugly as for anybody else."
Political debate and soldiers
Jerald Combs, professor of history, discussed the effects that the debate
over the Iraq war might have on U.S. troops, in a Nov. 19 Contra Costa
Times story. "There is no way to prevent the debate when the war
is a war of choice as this one was and when things are going so badly," Combs
said. "It absolutely makes things more difficult." He also
said: "I have confidence in the American people ... that (unlike)
after Vietnam, the vets aren't going to get blamed for what happened
there. I think most people know that the troops over there are doing
their very best under very painful circumstances."
Pacing the Web
BusinessWeek named SFSU one of its "Web Smart 50" in a Nov.
21 feature on companies, individuals and organizations that are "Pacesetters" in
using online technologies. SFSU was recognized for its plan to introduce
a suite of online collaboration tools that will "make it easy for
the commuter university's 30,000 students to work together on projects
virtually."
Mainstream love
The Nov. 28 CBS 5 News featured a story on the movie "Brokeback
Mountain," which focuses on two Midwestern men who fall in love
in the 1960s. Steve Ujlaki, chair of cinema, suggested that the characters
are full-fledged and mainstream. "It's actually treated as a normal
love affair and not as a gay love affair in the movie," he said. "That's
what I found interesting about it. There was no special pleading."
For
more SFSU people and programs in the news, see the SFSU
in the News page on SF State
News.
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