Please join us for two readings co-sponsored by Watzek Library and the English Department. Thomas Hardy's Heart Pauls Toutonghi, Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College Thursday, November 1, 7:00pm Armstrong Lounge, Manor House In 2004, Darin Strauss (Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy) selected Thomas Hardy's Heart as the winner of One Story magazine's annual short fiction prize. The story was subsequently shortlisted for The 2005 Best American Nonrequired Reading. As Strauss said: "The story is challenging, heartfelt, interesting -- and funny, too." "Sentimental Journey", A Concert of Poetry with Jazz Lawson Fusao Inada, Oregon Poet Laureate, and Portland-based musicians Wednesday, November 14, 7:30pm Council Chamber, Templeton Student Center Inada will read his work in a program exploring the theme of finding new ways home from the internment camps of World War II. In its combination of poetry and jazz, this event captures the way Inada’s memories of hearing jazz in the camps influenced his life and writing. Inada’s many publications include Before the War and Legends from Camp, which received the American Book Award in 1992. Inada will be joined by Portland-based musicians Larry Nobori (alto sax and clarinet), Rick Homer (trumpet and melophone), Andre St. James (acoustic bass), Nola Bogle (vocals), and Gordon Lee (piano). Inada will be available to sign books during the program intermission.

Watzek Library has a public scanner in the main floor copier room, which you can use to scan documents. It is conveniently located near the periodicals area of the library. Once a document is scanned, you can email it to yourself, upload it to webdisk, save it to a key drive, or print to a library printer. Next time you want to copy a document, try the scanner instead of a photocopy machine.

Join us in commemorating the 40th anniversary of Watzek Library on Sunday, October 28 at 2pm in the Council Chamber, Templeton Student Center. Dr. Leland Roth, University of Oregon Marion D. Ross Distinguished Professor of Architectural History will present "Aubrey Watzek and the Birth of Northwest Modern Architecture". Professor Roth writes,

It seems, in retrospect, ironically significant that an Oregon lumberman and the son of another prominent Oregon lumberman should together create a house that would introduce the principles of modernism to Portland in the late 1930s. Appropriately it was not an adapted European modernism of steel, concrete and flat roofs, but a distinctly American modernism built of northwest woods, with broad banks of windows protected from northwest rains by pitched roofs. Aubrey Watzek was the commissioning patron of this house, and a 26-year old John Yeon was its designer. The Watzek house in Portland’s west hills almost instantly was recognized, published, and celebrated by New York’s Museum of Modern Art as representing the best of early northwest modernism. Today the simple, almost ascetic elegance of the house and its careful attention to detail remain a touchstone in Portland’s artistic history and mark a time when Portland’s architects and patrons ceased copying Eastern formulaic historicism and created instead a new independent expression, uniquely adapted to the landscape and climate of the Pacific Northwest.

Professor Roth began teaching at University of Oregon in 1978. He has written extensively on the history of American architecture, and he is currently preparing a history of architecture in Oregon from the earliest Euro-American settlement to the present, as well as a guidebook to Oregon architecture. Reception to follow in Stamm East.