Delegate Assembly

 

 Members of the Higher Education Academy at Delegate Assembly


This year, I attended the annual NEA Delegate Assembly, which gathers together union leaders from elementary school to state colleges to vote on everything from union dues to elected officials.


I always enjoy the chance to talk with old friends such as Chris Waddle, a Peru State Alumni, pictured on the right here. 


Students also attend this gathering, including the three Peru State Students pictured here.

Devin Garcia, Nick Miller, Megan Brown, and Bill Clemente

I bribed Megan Brown and her fellow PSC students to take a picture with me by gifting them with bright Higher Education Academy shirts.


The assembly elected a number of people to leadership positions in the organization, including the new President of the Nebraska Educational Association, Nancy Fulton, pictured here with the Higher Education Academy President, Dr. Roger Davis, a professor of History at University of Nebraska-Kearney.

Civil War Conference

 

  

Conference Co-Chairs, Clay Lamphear and Caroline Keenan

April 14-16, Peru State College hosted Phi Alpha Theta's Civil War conference for undergraduates, The Trial of a Nation.  Dr. Sara Crook and Dr. Spencer Davis serve as Faculty Sponsors for Phi Alpha Theta.

I could not attend the entire event because of having to attend NEA's Delegate Assembly.  But on Thursday night, I went to the conference's opening ceremony that featured Dan Holz's singing Civil War Songs--you can watch Dan perform two of the songs on You Tube.

Before leaving town, I also photographed the keynote speaker for the Friday lunch, Peg Keenan, who talked about "The Underground Railroad Quilt."

As the photographs indicate, I also visited the Peru Depot, where Civil War Reenactors displayed their wares and talked about their special areas of interest.

Unfortunately, I could not attend the banquet and consequently missed Paul Finkelman's excellent key note speech. 


The successful undergraduate conference also awarded a number of prizes:

The Trial of a Nation Conference

April 14 & 15, 2011

Presentation of the 1^st and 2^nd Place Awards: Dr. Hanson and Clay Lamphear

Poetry:

         2^nd Place: Brandi Edmond ($100) “Civil War Nursing”

         1^st Place: Amanda Pearson-VanderBroek  ($500) “Spring 1862”

Posters:

2^nd Place: Jessica Manning & Charlotte Wallace (check of $50 to each) “Recipes of the Civil War”

         1^st Place: Megan Bottcher ($500 “Examining Civil War Photography”

Papers:

         2^nd Place: Janet Vaher ($100) “J. Sterling Morton”

         1^st Place: Caroline Keenan ($500) “Kate Stone”

Power Point Presentations:

         2^nd Place: ($100) Katherine Nierman “Habeas Corpus”

            1^st Place: ($500) D. J. Pophams “Contrasting Economic Lifestyles”           

Career Fair

The April 12 Southeast Nebraska Career Fair was hosted in the AWAC, 11:00 a.m. to  3:00 p.m.  Alice Holtz, pictured on the immediate left next to Coach Matthews and Elaine Hanson, organized this excellent program

On this Tuesday, I spent a couple hours with the Omaha World Herald reporter who wrote the story linked in a previous posting about our fun-filled Peruvian visitors.  

To show off the wonderfully successful Career Fair Alice Holtz had organized, I arranged for the reporter to interview a number of students in Wheeler Center--including members of the PSC men's basketball team--where the event took place.

Approximately 175 students and 45 people from the SE community attended the fair.  As the photographs indicate, interested students and visitors from the community found plenty to keep them busy.

Of the thirty-nine employers,  represented, thirty-six came from eastern Nebraska and three traveled from Iowa, Kansas and Wyoming.

Four military recruiters and two service organizations rounded out the participating employers. 

Twenty Second Piano Extravaganza

 

This year marked the twenty-second Piano Extravaganza that Tom Ediger has orchestrated at Peru State College. 

And as always parents, friends, and relatives of the performers--from elementary school children to retired music teachers--packed the Peru State Theater on Saturday evening, April 9.

The collected images--ready, as always, for downloading--provide a quick look at the evening's entertainment.

I also posted a couple videos of the great variety of performers. 

The first video features some familiar faces, Heidi Welsh and two of her and Denis'  children, Charlotte and Lucas.  

This video also includes performances by Deb and Rich Clopton's son Ellis.  I have enjoyed watching these players over the past couple years, for they play increasingly sophisticated pieces.

The second video records most of the final piece, always performed by the most accomplished and eldest of the pianists.

The movie pays particular attention to John Hnida and Mara Giles' daughter, Sofia. 

Last year, Charlotte, Ellis, and Sofia also took part in  in the Piano Extravaganza.

Lima Comes to Peru

Flavio Pantigoso Looks Up

De Peru For Peru Video Wins Major Awards!

When I returned from the Alpha Chi National Convention in San Diego, I thought that I had missed the film crew from Lima about whom someone had contacted me weeks before.

The April 2 article in the Lincoln Journal Star about the sharing of food and music over the weekend reinforced my feeling that I had missed out on a lot of fun, including such antics as a Llama coming out of the Peru Post Office pictured in an article that appeared in the Omaha World Herald on 17 April.

Well, the Tuesday before that latter article, I had spent a couple hours with Cindy Gonzalez, the reporter who penned the 17 April article because I had gotten to know the film crew.

As matters turned out, my colleague Dan Holtz informed me that the Peruvians remained in town.

I had the pleasure of watching and talking to them for most of Monday and a good part of Tuesday. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, for they all made me feel a part of the crew.

And what fun, from world championship tarp surfing in the commuter parking lot to a wrap-up party with Peruvian singers and the national drink at Shooters.

I posted a series of photographs from the visit. Part One takes place on Monday and includes images from sequences filmed on campus and involving students, many of whom earned 50.00 for their involvement in the fun.

And Part Two concludes the visit, concentrating on some tarp surfing and the celebration at Shooters leading to the final "cut."

As these images of shared music and fast friendship underscore, the visit lessened the distance between Lima, Peru, and Peru, Nebraska.

Among other things, the visit included a mock pep rally in the Wheeler Center and the gift of Peruvian literature to the Peru State Library.

I got to take part in the fun, from a bit of zany tarp surfing to a crazy interview with a popular Peruvian actor and comic, all about the location of Machu Picchu in Peru--Nebraska, of course.

I am in touch with directors Flavio Pantigoso and Richardo Maldonado. They will send me soon a video of Peru State and the area, shot from a helicopter (Peruvian red, of course), which will get linked here. And that video is now ready for your enjoyment.

The fifteen-minute video, "De Peru For Peru," made from hours of recordings from their visit will make everyone chuckle and then realize we have some wonderful friends in South America.

A version with English subtitles also got published. The video creates great buzz in Peru, where the crew got a five-minute ovation when they showed the video to government officials.

And, of course now I want to visit Peru, where at least a few people enjoy this blog about our own Peru now known to our friends in South America.

On Sunday, May 8, Cindy Gonzalez, journalist with the Omaha World Herald, wrote a follow-up article after the documentary went viral.

As of this afternoon, 13 May, the video continues to attract considerable attention and has over 600,000 hits. And on 18 may, Flavio sent me word that the most important advertising video-magazine of the world now features De Peru For Peru.

On Tuesday afternoon, May 11, the day before I left the summer with my wife here in Ripon, Wisconsin, I spoke briefly with a television crew from Lima, Peru, in Peru, NE, to check out the source, as it were.

They did not know about my blog and so talked for a bit about Tarp Surfing--but the real attention fell on Logan Merz, who sang on the video and who has become quite a star in Peru.


In fact, his song--with subtitles in English and Spanish--gets featured in this segment of the documentary. And the rising popularity of the tune in Peru finds reflection in this exciting recording of "SOLD," in which Behind the Fire, the band in which Logan plays, performs with a group of Peruvian musicians.

And add this article featured in Now Nebraska about Logan Merz's song and his band Behind the Fire.


A message on Facebook on May 16 took me to a "Behind the Cameras" look of the documentary's creation, including a brief look at my learning to pronounce Machu Picchu with the help of one of Peru's leading comedians, Gonzalo Torres.

And on Sunday, May 15, the following story appeared--Punto Final--on television in Lima after a two-person crew from the station traveled to Peru, NE, for a follow-up story about the popular video:

On June 6, Keven Abourezk of the Lincoln Journal Star wrote another article about the Peruvians' visit, "Peruvian Commercial Filmed in Nebraska Goes Viral." The article includes a couple photographs from my collection.

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