September 29, 2008

Frequency North, September 25

Daniel Nester has been coordinating this series at the College of St. Rose for 4 years now & has brought some wonderful writers who do not appear on the NY Times bestseller lists. He gets a decent size crowd, but usually mostly students & faculty. This night the room on the second floor of the Events & Athletic Center at St. Rose was SRO -- the Times-Union had run a 2-page, centerfold spread in its Preview section this morning with an interview with David Rees, one of tonight's readers. In addition to the usual crowd, there were lots of community people -- artists, activists, & the cultured curious. What a fabulous start for this year's series.

The program was a study in humor, the personal & the political. Rachel Shukert's schtick is that she is a not-so-nice Jewish girl from Nebraska. What she read (&, by the way, read much too fast) was from her memoir Have You No Shame?, sections about looking for work in NYC & an attempted seduction, with cookies, by a Hasidim baker.

David Rees is a political cartoonist who modifies clip art as he trashes the Bush administration; he has published 3 volumes of his Get Your War On strip. He showed & read samples using an overhead projector. Check out the interview by Amy Halloran in the Preview section (Sept. 25 - Oct. 1) of the Times-Union.

For a schedule of upcoming Frequency North readings check out www.strose.edu/visitors/frequencynorth/frequencynorth.asp.

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