Minnesota State University Moorhead |
* McKnight "New Photography" exhibit showing in gallery
* Prof's new book: History of Black Baseball in Minnesota
* New Lutheran Campus Ministry pastor named
* Planetarium features "Space Bus"
* Chicago dance ensemble performs on campus Feb. 1
* Former migrant worker turned computer engineer speaks at MSUM
* Campus literary magazine seeks submissions
* Two legislative forums on campus
* Alum art exhibit in gallery
* Dragon temporary Wellness Center opens
* Alum tsunami survivor
* Dragonfire Afterhours
* King celebration Jan. 19
* Dale Carnegie training
* Reformed neo-Nazi to speak
* MSUM prof (aka Yadu, the famous narrator) introduces children to symphony music....
MCKNIGHT FELLOWS ON DISPLAY AT DILLE GALLERY JAN. 31-FEB. 23
The 2003 McKnight Fellows Exhibition, “New Photography,” featuring Terry Gydesen, Celeste Nelms, Xavier Tavera, and Katherine Turczan, will be on display Jan. 31-Feb. 23 at the Roland Dille Center for the Arts gallery.
A reception will be held Thursday, Feb. 3 from 4-6 p.m. in the gallery. Artist Celeste Nelms will be at the reception and will present a slide lecture at 6 p.m. in the Fox Recital Hall. Both are free and open to the public.
Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Friday.
The McKnight Foundation annually awards four Fellowships to artists residing in Minnesota who use photography as a primary means of creative, personal expression and whose work demonstrates excellence.
A look at the artists…
Terry Gydesen hoped to follow and record the work of two state senators, Mee Moua and Scott Dibble. Her work reflects a personal chronicle of life in the seat of government, with its surprises, disappointments, and unfortunate necessities.
Celeste Nelms sought to expand a performative aspect of her work in which she would fit her images into unusual, quirky frames and surreptitiously place them in thrift stores.
Xavier Tavera incorporated diverse materials in a variety of projects, all hovering around issues of Mexican identity and culture in conversation with realities of daily life in the United States.
Katherine Turczan included a dramatic new element into her work by including inanimate objects in their own frames, not just as props in her accomplished portrait endeavors.
More information on the McKnight Artist Fellowships for Photographers is available at www.mcknightphoto.org
Release scheduled in February by Minnesota Historical Society…
MSUM PROF EDITS HISTORY OF
BLACK BASEBALL IN MINNESOTA
In the summer of 1925, two men banned from major league baseball played what the local newspaper called a “humdinger” of a game in Breckenridge, Minn.
On one side was a 33-year-old black pitcher named John Donaldson, a veteran of semi-pro teams in Kansas City, Detroit and Brooklyn. He started on the mound for the Minnesota state champs, the Bertha Fishermen.
On the other side was Charles “Swede” Risberg, a former shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, a ringer for the Montana state champs, the Scobey Giants.
Risberg collected five hits in six at bats against Donaldson in a game that attracted more than 3,000 fans. But Donaldson ended up with the win in a slugfest, Bertha 12-Scobey 10.
What’s ironic about the confrontation, says Steve Hoffbeck, a history professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, is that baseball banned Donaldson because of his color. Risberg, who was white, was banned because of his entanglement with the Black Sox Scandal of 1919, reportedly earning $15,000 for his role in the fix.
One didn’t have access to the American Dream, the other broke it.
The two represented flip sides of baseball’s paradoxical dark side when the game, known as America’s pastime and forever linked with mom and apple pie, was played across the state from the bustling Twin Cities to sandlots in hundreds of sleepy farm towns across the prairie.
It’s just one of the tales told in “Swinging for the Fences: Black Baseball in Minnesota,” a 320-page hardback with 50 photographs that chronicles the struggles and triumphs of 16 black ballplayers over a span of 150 years.
Edited by Hoffbeck and written by a team of nine historians, sports journalists and baseball experts, it will be released in February by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Black baseball in Minnesota sounds like an oxymoron, particularly since only 759 blacks lived in the state in 1870 when an amended U.S. Constitution gave black men the right to vote in federal elections.
But according to Hoffbeck’s research, that’s also when a former slave named Prince Honeycutt, who served as a mess boy for the Union Army in the Civil War, followed his commander, Capt. James Compton, to Fergus Falls, Minn., and started a baseball team.
The book starts there, and ends in the modern era of baseball with a chapter on the rise and fall of the Minnesota Twins’ Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett written by Minneapolis Star Tribune sports writer Jay Weiner.
In between are stories about Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Earl Battey along with some obscure names like “Rat” Johnson, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Toni Stone (a black woman infielder with the Indianapolis Clowns) and Bobby Marshall, who in the first two decades of the last century was among the most celebrated athletes in the nation.
Why black baseball in Minnesota? (Even today, blacks make up only 3.5% of the state’s population, compared to 12.5% of the entire U.S.)
“It’s an epic story about manhood, brotherhood and fatherhood, a lost part of Minnesota history,” said Hoffbeck, whose last book, “Haymakers,” earned a Minnesota Book Award in 2001.
“Baseball was more than just a game to these black players,” he said. “It was a way to assert their manhood in a society that tended to emasculate them. If you could beat a white player, or a white team, it proved your equality and, for some, opened a pathway into the mainstream of America.”
It’s odd that a sport that thrives on minutia and statistics left so little in terms of a written record of black baseball.
“It was tough as nails trying to find sources for some of these players,” Hoffbeck said. “One problem is that white newspapers simply didn’t recognize the existence of black baseball during the early decades of the century.”
On the cover of the book is a photo of Minnesota Twin Dave Winfield swinging for the fence and above him, almost as if looking down from the stands, is an old black and white photo of the St. Paul Colored Gophers.
After five years of research in newspapers, diaries, letters, interviews, personal recollections and sports guidebooks, Hoffbeck could only identify seven of the players in that St. Paul Colored Gophers photograph.
That photograph, however, is what prompted Hoffbeck to write the book. He found it while researching a famous lynching in Duluth. “It was a piece of history begging to be told. Little did I know how difficult it would be. If I didn’t enlist a supporting cast of writers, or join the Society for American Baseball Research, it would have taken me the rest of my life to finish.”
Hoffbeck, who grew up in a farm in Morgan, Minn., was eight years old when he saw his first black man, Earl Battey, a catcher for the Twins, in Metropolitan Stadium. He became an avid baseball fan, listening to games on radio while raking hay or milking cows with his dad, and poring over the box scores in the St. Paul newspaper.
That background kept him on track while trying to retell the elusive stories of summer baseball in Minnesota’s bucolic past, the humiliation of racial discrimination, and the perseverance of strong-willed men playing a child’s game.
Black players, Hoffbeck said, were forming their own teams in the Twin Cities as early as the 1880s, and at the turn of the century barnstorming black teams streamed to the state, in part because the racial situation was more hospitable.
But in the era of Jim Crow segregation, racism was still part of Minnesota life. When John Donaldson pitched for Bertha, Hoffbeck said, legend has it that he struck out 21 batters in a row to silence racist heckling.
“By the late 1920s and 1930s, as the Negro Leagues disintegrated, some of the best black ball payers of all time ended up in Minnesota,” Hoffbeck said. “Finally, Roy Campanella came to St. Paul to integrate the minor leagues, just after Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1946.”
One question Hoffbeck never answered: Did Earl Battey attend Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech?
“It’s intriguing only because Earl had worked behind the scenes since joining the new Minnesota team in 1961 trying to integrate the housing situation at the Twins’ spring training camp in Orlando, Fla.” Hoffbeck said.
The white players then stayed at the upscale Cherry Plaza Hotel, while Battey and four other black teammates were housed in a black-owned motel that Twin Cities columnist Sid Hartman called “an absolute dump.”
“This was before Disney World and the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” Hoffbeck said. “Earl wrote a letter to the governor at the time. But Twins owner Calvin Griffith avoided the issue.”
The Twins were playing double headers in Washington, D.C., just before and just after the King speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
The next spring, the Twins became the last major league team to integrate spring training.
“Battey died in 2003 and I was invited to attend the ceremony at the Metrodome last year inducting him posthumously into the Twins Hall of Fame,” he said. “I met the family, thanks to Kwame McDonald, who wrote the chapter on Battey in the book. But I never got around to asking them that question: Did Earl watch Dr. King deliver his famous address. I can still kick myself.”
When asked about his age, Satchel Paige, a future Hall of Famer and the first black pitcher to win a game in the major leagues, often answered something like this: “Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
He could just as well have been talking about race.
HONOR BAND PERFORMS FEB. 5
MSUM hosts the Honor Band here Saturday, Feb. 5, which will includes a free, public concert at 4 p.m. in Weld Hall Glasrud Auditorium.
More than 100 area high school students schools auditioned for the band last fall. Sixty-six ninth through 12th graders from 16 schools were selected for the honor. MSUM music professor John Tesch directs the band.
NEW LUTHERAN CAMPUS MINISTRY
PASTOR NAMED AT MSU MOORHEAD
Randy Skow-Anderson is the new pastor for Lutheran Campus Ministry at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
For the past three years, he’s served as co-pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Pelican Rapids with his wife, Laurie.
A 1978 music education graduate of Concordia College, he earned his master of divinity degree at Lutheran Seminary in St. Paul. Before settling in Pelican Rapids, he lived in St. Cloud developing a new congregation, now called People of Hope.
Laurie, a 1980 MSUM elementary and special education graduate, is now senior pastor at Trinity Lutheran.
The two first met at the MSUM Lutheran Campus Ministry Center when she was still a student here and he’d just graduated. Called the House, the center is a two-story blue residence at the corner of 7th Ave. and 10th St., one block west of the campus main gates.
Pastor Skow-Anderson’s instillation is scheduled at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20 in the student union ballroom. It’s open to the campus community.
‘SPACE BUS’ SHOWING AT PLANETARIUM
Space Bus,” a humorous story about a group of kids who take a field trip through the solar system, will show at MSUM’s Planetarium Sundays at 2 p.m. and Mondays at 7 p.m. Jan. 16 through March 7.
During the trip they learn many interesting facts about the planets, and a mishap sends their space bus on a non-stop flight to the stars. Find out how these students and their adult companions find their way home.
"Space Bus" is written for children 5-10 years old, and makes extensive use of the planetarium's video projector and main star projector.
The Planetarium is located on 11th Street South, in Bridges Hall room 167, on the MSUM campus. General admission is $3; children 12 years of age and under, senior citizens and Tri-College students are $1.50. For information, or to schedule a group show, call 477.2920.
PERFORMING ARTS SERIES FEATURES
CHICAGO DANCE ENSEMBLE FEB. 1
The MSUM Performing Arts Series presents the Chicago dance ensemble “Hubbard Street 2” at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 1 in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts Auditorium.
Founded in 1997 under the leadership of Artistic Director Julie Nakagawa Böttcher, these six dancers between the ages of 17 and 25 reach more than 35,000 people annually through performances in schools, community centers and theatres.
The troupe combines theatrical, jazz, modern and classical ballet techniques performing works of the nation’s most promising choreographers. For tickets, contact the MSUM Box Office at 477-2271.
FORMER MIGRANT WORKER TURNED
COMPUTER ENGINEER, AUTHOR OF
‘BAREFOOT HEART’ SPEAKS AT MSUM
Elva Trevino Hart, author of “Barefoot Heart,” a memoir of her childhood in south Texas and Minnesota as the daughter of Mexican immigrant migrant workers, presents a free talk about her life experiences at 7 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 16 in Minnesota State University Moorhead’s student union ballroom.
Hart eventually left the "migrant circuit" to earn a master's degree in computer science and engineering from Stanford, followed by a 20- year career as a computer programmer for IBM.
She currently lives in Virginia and is working on a novel and a collection of short stories.
“Barefoot Heart” brings to life the daily existence of people facing the obstacles of working in the fields and raising a family in an environment that is frequently hostile to those who have little education and speak another language.
Hart will be available to sign copies of her book following the presentation.
The event, organized by the local Building Unity in the Community group, is free and open to the public.
CAMPUS LITERARY MAGAZINE RED WEATHER SEEKING SUBMISSIONS
Red Weather, MSUM’s campus literary magazine, is considering submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, personal essays, poetry and graphics for its Spring 2005 issue.
Current MSUM undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff and alumni, are invited to submit their best work
First places prizes of $25 will be awarded to best short story and the best poem by an undergraduate, and the best short story and poem by a graduate student.
Deadline for submissions is Feb. 4. Visit the web site web.mnstate.edu/english/redweather.htm for details.
TWO CAMPUS LEGISLATIVE FORUMS PLANNED ON CAMPUS
The MSUM Office of the President invites the campus to two legislative events in January. Faculty who may want to bring classes to the events should contact Susanne Williams in the president’s office to make accommodations.
Friday, Jan. 21, 3:30-5 p.m., Comstock Room, CMU
*Legislative Open Forum featuring Senator Keith Langseth, and Representatives Paul Marquart and Morrie Lanning
*Monday, Jan. 24, 8:30-10:30 a.m., Ballroom, CMU
*Mini-Summit with Senator Norm Coleman to discuss his forthcoming bill, Collaborative Opportunities for Manufacturing and Promoting Education, Technology, and Enterprise (The COMPETE Act)
MSUM ALUMNA ART EXHIBIT OPENS JAN. 11
Visual artist Jill Odegaard will exhibit her works in a show titled “Evolving Patterns” Jan. 11-26 at MSUM’s Roland Dille Center for the Arts gallery. An artists’ reception will be held Wednesday, Jan. 26 from 4 to 6 p.m. It’s free and open to the public.
Jill Odegaard, who received a BFA from MSUM and an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, is an assistant professor of art at Cedar Crest College, Allentown, Pa. She’s had solo and group exhibitions throughout the country, including the recent “Material Metaphors.”
Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Friday.
DRAGON WELLNESS CENTER OPENS
AT OLD THOMAS EDISON SCHOOL
The Dragon Wellness Center will be opening Tuesday, January 11, the first day of semester classes.
Located in the former Thomas Edison Grade School, it’s a block and a half south of campus on the corner of 14th Street and 12th Ave.
The Dragon Wellness Center includes an exercise area and a fitness room with free weights, treadmills, elliptical trainers, recumbent bikes, stair climbers, stretch trainer, a Smith machine, and a 19-station circuit training system. The $100,000 in new equipment was purchased using the $50 per-semester wellness fee, which was approved by the student senate and implemented fall semester.
Shower/locker rooms are currently under construction and will be available sometime during Spring Semester. When the locker room facilities are completed an open gym will also be available for students to shoot basketballs, play badminton or schedule for a group activity.
Hours of operation include:
Monday through Friday: 6 a.m.-12 a.m.
Saturday: Closed
Sundays: 4 p.m.-10.p.m.
Because they’re paying the fee, MSUM students are admitted to the Dragon Wellness Center FREE of charge.
Faculty and staff may join for $30/month or $100/semester.
The fitness center is a temporary arrangement until the university can build a new two-story wellness center onto the south side of Comstock Memorial Union, which will eventually connect the CMU and the library. An architect was chosen last month for the project, estimated to cost as much as $18 million.
The Thomas Edison building is being leased by MSUM and MSCTC and is called the Minnesota State Higher Education Center. It’s expected that the university’s Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences department will relocate to the center from Grier Hall, making it more accessible to the public. Some nursing courses may also be taught there.
For questions call 477-2211 and ask for Lynn or Jamie or e-mail wellness@mnstate.edu.
MSUM ALUM ESCAPES TSUNAMI
WHILE VACATIONING IN MALAYSIA
Clay Johnson, a 2000 MSUM elementary education graduate, was on a Christmas vacation break from his English teaching job in Tokyo, having breakfast with nine of his friends on Penang Island, a posh tourist haven in Malaysia, when he saw the wave approaching.
He looked at it for a moment with disbelief, then ran in terror for higher ground.
"I was freaking out," he told his parents in an e-mail to the family's home in Marshall, Minn. "I saw the whole thing."
Ironically, part of the reason he opted for the South Asian holiday was the fear that an earthquake might hit Japan.
Johnson, 28, is among the fortunate survivors of the tsunami that has killed as many as 155,000 people and inflicted catastrophic harm to 12 nations that border the Indian Ocean.
His friends survived, too. But many others on the beach at the time were not so lucky. Johnson told his father that he had seen about two dozen people get washed away in the wave.
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Johnson's parents, Steve and Mary Beth Johnson of Marshall, Minn., spent seven long hours that Sunday waiting to hear from him. They spread maps out at home to see how close he was to the epicenter of the giant underwater earthquake that unleashed the deadly tsunami.
"It was kind of a scary moment for us, because we knew that was where he was at," said his father, a teacher and coach in Marshall.
Clay had experienced a large earthquake in Japan earlier last month, and had heard rumors or warnings that bigger quake was expected in Japan.
It came, but farther from Japan, his father said.
"It's kind of a terrifying thing to experience," Steve Johnson said. "But fortunately, he's safe."
In his latest e-mail, Clay provided more details about the quake-driven tsunami that struck the beach where he was at, and how he survived the assault.
Eating breakfast near the beach, he saw this big white line in the distance. Everybody started to run to higher ground. The first swell was about three feet, then another at 15 feet. During the last, he said, the water reached six feet above his head.
“I was freaking out, and I ran to the main road,” Clay said in his e-mail. “I didn’t see any water coming, so I went back to the beach.”
The Malaysian island where Clay was vacation was more mountainous than other islands, giving him higher ground to escape to.
“I saw many people suffering and many people’s homes destroyed,” Clay said. “Scary stuff.”
Clay was scheduled to leave Malaysia on Jan. 4, but his father said he isn’t sure what the aftermath of the destruction has done to travel in the area.
Clay left Minnesota soon after graduating from MSUM. He spent three years teaching at a public school in an impoverished part of Los Angeles. Then he left for Tokyo, where he has a job teaching conversational English to children and adults.
His father said his son was eager to get out of Tokyo in December because he kept hearing rumors that a major earthquake might strike there soon.
But the trip was not his first choice. He had considered coming home to Minnesota -- until he followed his father's advice.
"I had told him that as long as he was living in that part of the world for a while he should try to see as much of it as he could, to have a few more adventures," Steve Johnson said.
"I think maybe he's had enough adventure now."
MSUM DRAGON FIRE AFTER HOURS JAN. 11
MSUM’s Dragon Fire Social will be held Tuesday, Jan. 11 from 5-7 p.m. at the Mulligan Lounge, Days Inn in Moorhead.
This is open to all Dragon Fire members and athletic supporters. The event provides an opportunity to meet MSUM coaches and includes free hors d’oeuvres, cash bar and prize drawings.
For more information, call Greg Peterson, 236-8484.
MINNEAPOLIS PASTOR SPEAKS AT
MSUM KING CELEBRATION JAN. 19
Rev. Jerry McAafee, senior pastor at the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Minneapolis, will talk on “Where Do We Go From Here?” at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 19 in the Roland Dille Center for the Arts Gaede Theatre a part of Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Martin Luther King Day Celebration.
A Minneapolis community leader and director of the Inner City Youth League’s At Risk Youth Services, McAafee is the founder of the Twin Cities African American Bible Institute and the president of the Minnesota Chapter of One Church, One Child. He’s also the newly appointed chair of the Commission on Violence for the National Baptists Convention
His appearance is sponsored by MSUM’s Cultural Diversity Events, Campus Activities Board and Psychology department.
The course is for anyone who wants to enhance his or her personal and professional life. This results-oriented course focuses on improving self-confidence, business and personal relationships, stress and worry, leadership skills, and communication skills.
‘Practice Makes Permanent’ describes the Dale Carnegie teaching methodology. After identifying breakthrough goals and vision, participants will make weekly progress toward achieving them.
Dale Carnegie training is taught by certified trainers from Eide Bailly who demonstrate energy, enthusiasm and excellence in their facilitation of the course.
For more information on this Dale Carnegie course, contact: MSUM Customized Training Coordinator Kathleen Paulson at 218.477.5051 or paulsonk@mnstate.edu.
REFORMED NEO-NAZI SKINHEAD RECRUITER TO SPEAK
AT MSUM JAN. 24 ABOUT THE CULTURE OF HATE
Tom “TJ” Leyden, a former neo-Nazi white supremacist activist and recruiter, will speak about his profound change of heart at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 24 in MSUM’s student union ballroom.
Leyden’s life took a wrong turn at 15 when his parents divorced and he turned to punk rock and a violent skinhead culture to vent his anger.
Fifteen years later, he was one of the most successful organizers inthe white supremacist movement. He even hung a Nazi flag over the crib of his newborn son.
But then something happened that caused a profound, life-changing realization.
“One day, I heard my son use the ('N' word) and saw him give the Nazi salute,” Leyden said, “He was only three, and I knew he wasn’t going to grow up to find the cure for cancer or serve on the Supreme Court. He was going to be a mindless bum beating people for kicks.”
That realization led him to leave his wife, a committed racist, and search for a better life for himself and his sons. The search led him to the California home of his mother and eventually to a job at the Simon Wiesenthal Center as an anti-hate activist and educator.
At first skeptical, Wiesenthal Center staff spent many hours with Leyden and realized his sincerity.
“I got the impression that this was a person who had a profound change of heart and who is willing to tell the world, ‘I was wrong,’“ said Rabbi Marvin Heir. “He is saying, ‘Everything I’ve stood for in the last decade was for nothing.’ That’s admitting to a life’s mistake.”
The then 30-year old ex-Marine, became an educator, speaking at more than 100 high schools, to various military groups, including the Pentagon, presenting at Hate Crimes Summits and to the FBI. To date, Leyden is the only former skinhead actively working to fight against the groups that once nurtured him.
White supremacist groups frequently target him with death threats. Many of their websites have issued a “kill on sight” directive against Leyden.
But he says that fear is easier to deal with than the fear of his children growing up as haters.
Leyden’s presentation isn’t always pretty. He talks about the brutality with which heused to beat people just because of their race - how he and his friends robbed and harassed homosexuals and Latinos for sport. He shows the 29 tattoos of swastikas and Nazi SS officers that cover much of his body. He shares the recruiting methods of the neo Nazi’s.
“We all need to be aware of the culture of hate that exists, otherwise we are powerless to fight against the violence and insanity that they breed,” Leyden said. “As a recruiter, I figure I recruited at least 80 haters into the movement. So now my goal is to turn at least a million students the other way.”
His talk at MSU Moorhead is free and open to the public.
From the Kennedy Center to a Carnegie Hall recording studio….
MSUM PROF (A.K.A. YADU, THE FAMOUS
NARRATOR) INTRODUCES SYMPHONY
MUSIC TO CHILDREN IN NEW CD SERIES
Konrad Czynski was first introduced as “Yadu, the famous narrator” at the 2,400-seat Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., during a live children’s concert produced by his friend Stephen Simon, then the music director of the Washington Chamber Symphony.
Simon made the florid introduction himself.
“I was really overwhelmed,” Czynski (pronounced chin-ski) recalled. “I wasn’t famous at all. But Stephen said it was just publicity—you create what you say.”
The name stuck, and the p.r. scheme apparently helped.
Thanks to his approachable voice and his friend Simon, Czynski, a Humanities professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, beat out suggested celebrity Billy Crystal to land the narrator job on a new series of recordings aimed at introducing children to symphony music.
Simon said that several associates wanted a name that could sell, a celebrity maybe. “We were just happy with Yadu,” he said. “There is kind of a basic simplicity to the way he tells the story.”
The first CD in the series, called Stories in Music, is an original adaptation of Virginia Lee Burton’s modern classic children’s book “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel” performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The story is a triumphant tale about an Irish-American worker whose steam shovel is soon out of work due to the arrival of electric, diesel, and gasoline-powered shovels.
Released in the fall of 2004, the 51-minute recording, featuring original music composed and conducted by Simon using Irish bagpipes, has already won a host of awards, including a Parents’ Choice Gold Award and a National Parenting Publications Gold Award.
Three other titles are in the works, including “Casey at the Bat,” which will be released by this year’s baseball season, “Juanita the Spanish Lobster” and a new narration for Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, “ first popularized by Walt Disney.
The recordings are aimed at children five and older.
Czynski first met Simon and his wife Bonnie 30 years ago. “I was taking a few classes at Princeton Theological Seminary before going to graduate school when a Mennonite friend invited me to a Quaker meeting house in Princeton,” he said. “It’s kind of a convoluted story. But that’s where I met Bonnie’s parents, who invited me to their house, and the rest is history.”
In fact, it was the Simons’ son, Basil, who accidentally created the name Yadu.
“When Basil was about 14 months old I tried to teach him to call me Radek, a Polish nickname my parents gave me. But he couldn’t pronounce the consonants. It came out Yadu. The name stuck around the Simon household.”
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his father was stationed as a member of the Polish Army during World War II, Czynski moved to New York with his family when he was in fourth grade. His father, a musician, spent his career as a church organist.
Czynski went to elementary and high school in Brooklyn, college in the Bronx and graduate school at Columbia University, where he specialized in comparative French and comparative literature. He eventually spent three years in France, two periods in Japan, then joined the faculty at MSU Moorhead 14 years ago.
Simon, for 25 years the music director of the Washington Chamber Symphony, initiated the Concerts for Young People at the Kennedy Center with his wife Bonnie, a music educator who was also executive director of the symphony then.
“In 1990 the Simons approached me to do the live narration for their young people’s concert of ‘Juanita the Spanish Lobster,’” Czynski said. “I was a little reluctant, but gave it a try. After that, about once a year for the next decade, they invited me to the Kennedy Center to narrate a children’s concert.”
When the Simons retired, they were encouraged to make some of those concerts into recordings, which developed into the CD series Stories in Music.
“They’re much more than recordings, though” Czynski said. “They’re educational instruments meant to introduce youngsters to the magical sound and awe-inspiring power of symphony music. The CDs give children ideas on what to listen for and how to listen.”
In “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,” the CD includes a track by Bonnie Simon talking about the book’s author, Virginia Lee Burton, another by Stephen Simon on the themes to listen for in the music, a jazzy sing-along song to reinforce the musical themes, and an accompaniment-only karaoke track.
The CD also comes with a colorful 24-page program booklet that provides background information on the music, composer, author and story.
“All four of the CDs in the series are already recorded,” said Czynski, who taped his narrations at a studio in New York’s Carnegie Hall. “What’s left are the program booklets, which require a bit of research and time.”
Czynski has already performed live versions of the Mike Mulligan story with the Harrisburg and Buffalo Symphonies, and he’s made contact with the FM Symphony for a possible live concert in Fargo this or next year.
Narration, Czynski said, comes easy for him. “I’ve always been kind of a ham, and I use my voices in the classroom to liven up some of the serious topics we cover in humanities and philosophy.”
To demonstrate, he breaks out in voice impressions of Count Dracula, Mickey Mouse and a Yiddish New Yorker.
His natural voice, however, is a pleasant symphony of his Polish ancestry, his Scottish birthplace and his Brooklyn upbringing.
As Simon puts it: “He doesn’t overwhelm the material. He lets the story tell itself.”