At the reception, Jenny Stasio ’07 will talk about her work with incarcerated women through her position with Family Crisis Services and its Incarcerated Women’s Program.

Recognizing the statistical connection between female incarceration and domestic abuse, the program offers support groups for women at the Cumberland County Jail (Portland) and the Maine Correctional Center (Windham), one of only a handful of such programs offered by U.S. domestic violence agencies.

In 2007, the program added creative writing activities to its educational groups. The women began each creative writing session by reading author Natalie Goldberg’s tips for writers in Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within:

1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don’t cross out.
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.

The majority of the work in the exhibition was done within 15-minute free-writing sessions.

To create the photographic portraits for More Than a Rap Sheet, Family Crisis Services worked with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and Salt alum Christine Heinz, who photographed the women.

Donations of non-spiral-bound notebooks or composition books are greatly appreciated. They are always needed for the project’s ongoing work.

The grandstand is rising at Garcelon Field, the eagle landed at 10 Frye St., and they’re still slinging steel at Hedge and Roger Williams halls:

“That’s going to be a fun thing to watch to go together,” Garcelon Field project manager Mike Gustin said as the first components of the new Garcelon Field grandstand showed up on Sept. 15. Read more about the renovation of Garcelon Field.

Watching workers fasten wooden planks to the sides of steel beams near Roger Williams Hall the other day, we got vague ideas about some kind of bare-brick, hanging-fern, exposed-beam motif for the interior renovation. Not so, said project manager Paul Farnsworth. Read more about the renovation of Roger Williams and Hedge halls.

On Sept. 9, a crew from Physical Plant restored the 1873 eagle weathervane to its roost atop the carriage house at 10 Frye St., Bates’ newest student residence. Carpenters Tim Chouinard and Tom Winslow went up in a 65-foot cherry picker to remount the bird, with painter Dan Sands, who gave the bald eagle its colors, standing by. See images of the eagle being returned to its aerie.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions, reminiscences and comments about campus improvements. Please e-mail staff writer Doug Hubley at this E-mail, stating “Construction Update” in the subject line.

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An original composition by a Bates senior from West Virginia is featured in a concert by the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

“Gamelan” refers to a broad genre of traditional Indonesian music played primarily on percussion instruments. Barbara Byers, an interdisciplinary major in music and dance from Elkins, W.Va., composed and will dance a piece titled “Monkey” that’s included on the program. Byers studied various traditional performance disciplines, including gamelan, while in Indonesia last summer on a Phillips Fellowship from Bates.

The concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

The program comprises a variety of instrumental and vocal music, including a contemporary arrangement of a traditional lullaby. Also included is a solo masked dance that originates in Cirebon, a city on the north coast of West Java, and portrays a character from the Hindu epic “Ramayana.”

Assistant Professor of Music Gina Fatone directs the Bates College Gamelan Orchestra. The ensemble is composed of students and faculty members Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance, and Jennifer Woodruff, visiting assistant professor of music. The concert will also feature the vocals of a Bates alumna, Lisa McClellan ’09.

Bates College has gamelan instruments from Central Java and West Java, Indonesia. The instrument set named Gamelan Mawar Mekar (“Blossom of Inspiration”), acquired by the College in 2001, is composed of iron and brass pieces and was made in Central Java in 1997.

A smaller bronze chamber ensemble from West Java, of a type called gamelan degung, was donated to the college in 2007. The concert will feature both sets.

In addition to its public performances, the orchestra makes a distinctive contribution to ceremonial events at Bates and is increasingly integrated into the arts and cultural curriculum.

This winter, in collaboration with the Androscoggin Valley Regional Program for the Gifted and Talented, Bates College hosts three presentations related to the 2010 election for Maine governor.

Former Maine Gov. Angus King opens the series with a discussion of his first Blaine House race at noon Tuesday, Dec. 8, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. King will also discuss his legacy as governor, including the Maine public school laptop program that provides every public middle-school student with an Apple laptop.

King ran as an independent for governor in 1994 and was re-elected in 1998. Building his platform on bipartisanship, King won re-election by a substantial margin. He currently serves as the Segal Lecturer in American Politics at Bates.

Two candidates for the 2010 Blaine House race continue the series: American Skiing Company founder Les Otten on Feb 10 and former Maine legislator and state Attorney General G. Steven Rowe on March 3.

Sponsored by the college’s Harward Center for Community Partnerships, all of the series events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6400.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Otten speaks at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 10, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates, 70 Campus Ave. After leaving American Skiing Company, Otten worked as vice chairman and minority partner for the Boston Red Sox baseball franchise. In June 2009, he announced the formation of an exploratory committee to consider a bid for governor.

Democratic candidate Rowe speaks at 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 3, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. As attorney general, Rowe tackled such major issues as lowering prescription drug costs, domestic violence, sexual assault, substance abuse and elder financial exploitation. He helped reform mortgage lending practices by taking on predatory lenders and by advocating for tougher consumer protection laws.

His leadership positions in the Legislature included chairing committees on economic development, research and development, and natural resources, and he was elected by his colleagues to serve as speaker of the House in his final term. He supported higher education by leading the passage of a $26 million capital improvement bond to improve Maine’s community colleges, promoted public health by leading the creation of the Fund for a Healthy Maine and led the passage of a $50 million Land for Maine’s Future bond issue.

The Androscoggin Valley Regional Program for the Gifted and Talented was developed in the 1980s in response to the needs of gifted and talented high school students who may benefit from differentiated programming. The program is a cooperative endeavor among school systems in the Androscoggin Valley Education Collaborative, comprising Lewiston, Auburn, SAD 52, school unions 29, 30 and 44, and Bates College.

Emanuel Xavier, an award-winning Latino poet, spoken word artist, author and activist, speaks at Bates College in observance of National Coming Out Day at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 8, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Xavier’s talk also marks the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, demonstrations considered the first instance of gay protest against government persecution of sexual minorities. Presented by the Bates Multicultural Center, he will discuss the importance of the riots as they relate to the modern civil rights movement for the LGBT community.

The lecture is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8376.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, of Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian descent, Xavier is prominent in the world of spoken-word poetry. He performs regularly throughout the United States and internationally, sharing his sexually, politically, culturally and often religiously themed poetics.

He is author of the poetry collections Pier Queen (Pier Queen Productions, 1997) and Americano (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2002); and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated novel Christ Like (Queer Mojo, 10th anniversary edition, 2009). His work has been commissioned for the Walt Whitman Archives, UNESCO and the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review.

Xavier has received a number of awards, including the Marsha A. Gomez Cultural Heritage Award, a New York City Council Citation and a World Pride Award. He was recently named one of the “25 Most Influential GLBT Latinos” and is currently working on a new poetry collection and a spoken-word/music collaboration with producer El David.

National Coming Out Day is observed every Oct. 11.

Titled Wabanaki Hopes for Their Lands: A Conversation, the panel discussion will explore the relationship between the lands of the Wabanaki (a term that refers to Maine’s four Native American tribes) and their cultures.

Open to the public at no cost, the panel is made possible by the Philip J. Otis Endowment at Bates. For more information, please 207-786-6237.

The college’s annual Otis Lecture follows the discussion at 7:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. The Otis lecturer is N. Scott Momaday, whose novel “House Made of Dawn” earned him the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a Native American.

The event is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required and can be reserved by e-mailing olinarts@bates.edu. A reception and book signing follow the lecture. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

The speakers in the 4:15 panel are Brenda Commander, chief of the Houlton Band of Maliseets; David Soctomah, Passamaquoddy tribal representative and historian; and James Francis, Penobscot Nation tribal historian. The panel, says organizer and Bates history professor Joseph Hall, “is a way for us all to learn how we might collaborate more closely as inhabitants of the same state.”

The annual Otis Lecture at Bates is funded by the Philip J. Otis Endowment, established in 1996 by a gift from Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, Philip, a member of the class of 1995 who died attempting to rescue injured climbers on Mount Rainier.

In recognition of Otis’ appreciation for nature, the endowment helps support Bates programs with an environmental focus, in particular those exploring the spiritual and moral dimensions of humanity’s relationship with the environment.

Dr. Dave Lounsbury ’72, retired Army colonel and co-editor of War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq, visited the campus in March as the College Key’s Distinguished Alumnus in Residence. He spoke with students and delivered an informal talk in Chase Hall. He also took time for this portrait by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen

At 4:48 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2008, after leaving a raucous Alumni Gym and a men’s basketball team win vs. Colby, photographer Phyllis Graber Jensen captured this image of a Chase Hall spire against the midwinter sunset.

Norman Finkelstein, controversial author of such books as Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press, 2005) and The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso, 2000 and 2003), speaks at 8 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8,  in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave. The public is invited to attend the talk, sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine and the Department of Politics, free of charge.

Finkelstein is no stranger to controversy. A New York City native and the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors, his positions on anti-Semitism, what he describes as the “Holocaust Industry” and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have earned him both passionate critics, including Harvard Holocaust historian Daniel Goldhagen and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, and staunch supporters, including MIT Professor of Linguistics Emeritus and political critic Noam Chomsky and the late Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg.

Finkelstein taught at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University and at DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

Denied tenure in a controversial decision by DePaul in June 2007, Finkelstein was scheduled to teach a final year at the university in 2007-08, when the institution decided to place him on administrative leave in fall 2007 and canceled his fall classes. Responding to his employer’s decision with the threat of civil disobedience, Finkelstein announced his resignation from DePaul in September, when he reached an undisclosed settlement with the university.

Finkelstein attended Binghamton University as an undergraduate, followed by studies at École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. He received a master’s and Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University.

The 2007–08 Bates College Lecture Series opens with a discussion of Africa in the modern world by sociologist Tukufu Zuberi at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3, in Bates’ Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call at 207-786-8293.

Zuberi is Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, chair of the sociology department and director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a visiting professor at Makerere University in Uganda and at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania.

An expert in African American history and U.S. society, Zuberi is also a co-host and investigator on the PBS television program “History Detectives,” a nationally broadcast series that uncovers mysteries of America’s past.

He has spearheaded a variety of major research projects including the African Census Analysis Project, which aims to increase the usefulness and availability of census data to promote a better understanding of African demography. He edited Demography of South Africa, the first volume of the series A General Demography of Africa.