Lizbeth, of Lars Eighner‘s Travels With Lizbeth, died on September 25, at the age of 13 years and seven months. In a local Usenet posting on austin.general, Eighner responded to a fan’s commisseration with Eighner and his loss by reporting that although Lizbeth “had been feeble for several months, she was alert and comfortable until very near the end and did not appear to suffer greatly.” For anyone who hasn’t read Travels With Lizbeth, Lizbeth was Eighner’s loyal black Lab who followed him on the cross-country treks he writes about in Travels; judging from the book, she was a good dog.
Mixed Notes
Congratulations to Louis Sachar, author of Holes, one of five finalists for the National Book Award in the Young People’s Literature category. Winners will be announced Wednesday, November 18. over 900 titles were submitted by 197 publishers and imprints for consideration for the awards (other categories are fiction, nonfiction, and poetry)…
Isn’t a public intellectual someone who is able to transmit “the big ideas” to a wide readership without talking down to those readers or bastardizing the subject matter? And aren’t successful public intellectuals few and far between? Perhaps so, but David Montejano, director of UT’s Center for Mexican American Studies, has plans to foster an environment at CMAS that will develop the faculty’s ability to interact with the public on a more regular basis. Montejano and vice-provost Ricardo Romo recently attended a Latino Issues meeting at UCLA with about 30 faculty members (most of them from the University of California system) “to discuss the current situation in light of the various ‘anti-Latino’ propositions that have passed in California in recent years.” Montejano says that defense of programs like immigrant services, affirmative action, and bilingual education “has almost entirely been based on a model of ‘victimization.'” “Rather than dwell on a history of victimization, we need to focus on a future of empowerment,” Montejano writes in the October edition of the CMAS newsletter, Noticias de CMAS. That’s where the idea of faculty playing a more interactive role with the public comes in. Asked how he intends to implement this interaction, Montejano says that “Right now I’m thinking in fairly basic terms —
op-ed pieces, magazine articles, radio & TV interviews, and so on. As director of a center, I have some resources I can use to encourage the faculty, especially the tenured faculty, to get involved. On the other, I imagine there already are motivated faculty who lack only structured opportunities.” As he writes in the newsletter, “To put it in a more pithy way: Forget the Alamo; we have work to do.”
Events
Book Woman and Folktales host a reading and signing celebrating the release of Sharon Bridgforth‘s new book bull-jean stories (RedBone Press, $12 paper) at Hyde Park Theatre, Sunday, October 25, 5pm. Bridgforth will also be reading at Resistencia Bookstore, Wednesday, October 28, 7:30pm…
Desert Books (1904 Guadalupe, in the basement of Bank One), is hosting a reception for Leticia Garza-Falcon, director of the Center for Multicultural and Gender Studies at Southwest Texas State University, in honor of her new book, Gente Decente: A Borderlands Response to the Rhetoric of Dominance, on Friday, October 23, 4pm…
Barnes & Noble Arboretum features Kinky Friedman in a live musical performance and book signing of Blast From the Past on Thursday, October 29, 7:30pm.
This article appears in October 23 • 1998 and October 23 • 1998 (Cover).