Historian Richard Striner will read from his new book, Lincoln’s Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power, and discuss presidential leadership Thursday, September 23 on the Washington College campus. The reading, sponsored by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the Miller Library and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield, Striner’s book explores the power of the U.S. presidency to create sweeping and positive changes throughout the nation and the world. Scheduled for release on September 16, it has earned praise for combining scholarship and depth of knowledge with an engaging and clear style of writing. Blending intellectual history and presidential biography, it creates a valuable lens for viewing the present.

Striner explains how Abraham Lincoln set the stage for America’s global superpower status by using his federal authority in shrewd ways, borrowing from both ends of the political spectrum. It was a powerful, centrist way of leading that was adopted by five subsequent presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.

These presidents denounced the idea that government was “always the answer” but did believe it was “sometimes the answer” when it came to necessities. “They believed in the value of coordinated national life—in teamwork,” Striner writes in his introduction.

Lincoln’s Way earned advance praise from two well-known fellow historians and authors, James MacGregor Burns and James M. McPherson. Burns called Lincoln’s Way “an unforgettable book” and “must reading for lovers of American History—a fresh and spirited presentation of some of our greatest leaders, with special emphasis on key ideas, presented in a broad intellectual framework.”

Noting Striner’s “remarkable range of knowledge,” McPherson wrote: “Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, the author writes with great clarity for a general audience beyond the academy, while at the same time offering original insights that deepen and broaden our understanding of how the government promoted greater justice and equity in the American socioeconomic order during the century from the 1860s to the 1960s.”

Striner’s earlier book, Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery, was published in 2006 by Oxford University Press. A professor of history at Washington College, he is also is a senior writer for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Committee.
For more information on the reading, visit starrcenter.washcoll.edu or call the Starr Center at 410-810-7161.

The Chincoteague Cultural Alliance will present three concerts this fall from September through November. Concert goers will have the rare chance to hear outstanding professional, touring musicians in an intimate setting.

The series launches on Saturday, September 25 with a performance by the duo Jennings & Keller. From the Broadway musicals of New York to the honkytonks of West Texas, the music of Jennings & Keller is called “Fusion Folk Americana’ – a blend of many different elements that comes from their vast and wide-ranging musical backgrounds. A former Shakespearean actress, Laurie Jennings has been a singer and songwriter for many years. Dana Keller is a veteran pedal steel, dobro, and guitar player has spent years performing on stage with such luminaries as Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye.

October brings bluesman Ernie Hawkins to the stage. For many years Hawkins has played concerts, clubs, blues and folk festivals, workshops, colleges, museums, and celebrations in the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe. At every stop in the road from A Prairie Home Companion to Antone’s to the Madrid Jazz Festival, Ernie Hawkins has thrilled his audiences. He has performed with blues greats including Son House, Mance Lipscomb, Fred McDowell, Jim Brewer, Rev. Gary Davis and many others. Hawkins will also offer a guitar workshop prior to his concert.

The fall series concludes on Saturday, November 20 with Maggie Sansone and Grammy-nominee Andrea Hoag. Maggie Sansone brings a unique beauty and vision to the ancient music of the Celts. Her albums ring with a Renaissance spirit, Celtic melodies, and a jazzy new crossover into what she calls “cool Celtic.” It’s a fusion of ancient sounds and modern sensibility, fueled by the innovative use of old and new instruments. Sansone is known throughout the U.S. as a performer, producer and teacher of the hammered dulcimer. She has recorded nine albums including AFIM Indie winner, MIST AND STONE, and is author of eight music books.

Grammy Nominee, Andrea Hoag has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and at festivals, colleges, and folk clubs across the U.S., Scandinavia, and the British Isles. Hoag is one of North America’s foremost performers of traditional Swedish music, and is a highly respected fiddler in several American, English, and Celtic styles. “Call it a fiddle, call it a violin— in [her] hands it is simply a marvelous string instrument that fits into myriad traditions and fuels many cross-cultural fusions,” wrote Richard Harrington of The Washington Post in a review of Andrea’s 1999 solo/collaborative CD, Fire & Water.

All performances of the Chincoteague Cultural Alliance Spring Concert Series will be held in the Chincoteague Senior Center on Church Street. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $18 at the door, $15 for advance purchase, or $40 for a season ticket that provides admission to all three concerts. Student tickets are $5 for each concert. Tickets may be purchased online through www.ChincoteagueCulturalAlliance.org. Two weeks prior to each concert, tickets will be available at these outlets: Egret Moon, H&H Pharmacy, and Sundial Books. Season tickets are available online, through the mail, at the March concert or at Sundial Books. Seating is limited. Advance ticket purchases are recommended. To order tickets by mail, send a check to Chincoteague Cultural Alliance at P.O. Box 257, Chincoteague Island, VA 23336.

The Chincoteague Cultural Alliance is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization formed to enhance community life by fostering and promoting the growth and vitality of arts and culture on Chincoteague Island and Delmarva’s Eastern Shore. The Alliance is the sponsor of the popular Second Saturdays Art Stroll on Chincoteague.

Ned Sublette, the 2010-11 Patrick Henry Writing Fellow at Washington College, will explore the cultural heritage of New Orleans in a performance titled “Kiss You Down South: An Evening of Music and History” September 21 at 6:30 on the College campus. Combining musical performance and history in a coffee-house setting, the event will take place in Center Stage, an intimate space in Hodson Hall Commons. It will include a book signing and reception; admission is free and open to the public.

Sublette will share stories of America’s most unique city, home to a vibrant cultural heritage that has endured in the face of crippling poverty, endemic racism, and rising floodwaters. New Orleans’ history is, in many ways, best told through its music, a product of centuries of interaction between diverse groups: Africans, West Indians, Creoles, Native Americans, Cubans, Haitians, and European-Americans. Through that diversity, the city has birthed or nurtured many of America’s great musical traditions, including jazz, blues, gospel, zydeco, hip hop, funk, Cajun, and rhythm & blues.

Sublette is an internationally renowned musician and cultural historian who brings a special perspective to the study of early America. A native of Texas, he has spent most of his working life in New York City. He is the author of several well-received books, including The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans (2009) and The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (2008), both published by Lawrence Hill Books, and Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press, 2004).

The Guardian (U.K.) has called his writing “astonishing work that explains much about our modern world,” and the Boston Globe has lauded The World That Made New Orleans as “an energetic and fascinating read … the best argument yet for why we need to save New Orleans.”

The Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, provided by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and supported by the Rose O’Neill Literary House (the College’s center for literature and creative writing), offers a yearlong residency to authors doing innovative work on America’s founding era and its legacy. It is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative.

Sublette will use his residence at Washington College to continue work on a history of the American “slave coast” and the vast but little-known black migrations that shaped American history and culture from the 18th century to the present. Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of the C.V. Starr Center, describes Sublette’s approach as “groundbreaking,” and explains that, “while several excellent monographs have chronicled the role of specific mid-Atlantic port cities in the oceangoing domestic slave trade, none have explored the region as a whole as a ‘slave coast,’ similar in character and function, if not in scale, to the West African coast.”

As part of the fellowship, Sublette and his wife, the writer Constance Ash, are living in a restored 1735 house in the heart of Chestertown’s colonial historic district. Sublette will co-teach a course at Washington College in the spring.

He is a previous recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. He is also a classically trained guitarist and a songwriter. His albums as composer and vocalist include Cowboy Rumba, Monsters from the Deep and the forthcoming Kiss You Down South. He has been a producer for Public Radio International’s Afropop Worldwide, co-founding that program’s scholarly Hip Deep series, and was co-founder of the record label Qbadisc, which distributed Cuban music in the United States.

Downtown Cambridge will bid a musical farewell to the season on Saturday evening, September 18 with five different performers lined up for the annual Summer Sendoff Block Party, which will run from 5 to 10 pm.

“We’ve never before presented this much music at one of the block parties,” said Keith Graffius, the chair of the volunteer committee organizing the event for the nonprofit Cambridge Main Street. “This year’s Sendoff is going to be bigger and better than ever.”

Headlining the musical lineup will be The Jimmy Cole Band. A longtime favorite of the Washington, D.C. club scene, Cole has been performing his unique brand of high energy electric blues and Chuck Berry style rock ‘n’ roll for more than three decades now.
Blackwater will also be performing on the main stage near the corner of Race and Gay streets. This Cambridge-based band headed by Josh Woodard and Jeremy Testa performs a mix of classic funk and rhythm & blues.

Musicians will also be featured in Cannery Way, a pocket park on Race Street. The young guitarist and singer Evan Button will be featured there starting at 5 pm. Just 12 years old, Button has become a popular attraction at downtown block parties in recent years. Singer/songwriter Justin Ryan will perform at Cannery Way later in the evening.

Up on Poplar Street, troubadour Alan Girard and His Traveling Band will be performing a mix of classic folk and blues tunes.

The music lineup at Summer Sendoff is generously supported by the Dorchester Arts Council.

More than just a music festival, Summer Sendoff will also feature great barbecue prepared by local firehouses and an array of microbrews served up throughout the event by Cambridge restaurants. The wacky Main Street Mile race returns to the event, with teams competing in a relay race on tricycles, wearing flippers, and carrying eggs in spoons.

Additional details about the event will be released next week. Updates on plans are available at www.cambridgemainstreet.com.

Explore the outdoor treasures and heritage of Wicomico County this weekend through the West Wicomico Heritage Bike Tour and Hidden Treasures Half Marathon & 5K. Registration for both events is still open, and those unable to participate are encouraged to cheer on cyclists and runners along both routes.

Take a tour through 300 years of Maryland History during the 15th Annual West Wicomico Heritage Bike Tour on Saturday September 11th from 9:30am – 3:30pm. Beginning at Pemberton Hall (5561 Plantation Lane Salisbury, MD), the tour offers a 15, 32, 50 or 62 mile ride through scenic farmlands, historic villages, and tidewater marshes. Registration is $55 and includes a t-shirt, map, cue sheet, marked route, sag service, rest stops and picnic lunch after your ride. All proceeds go directly towards historic preservation and education at Pemberton Historical Park and in the town of Whitehaven. To register, please visit www.PembertonPark.org to download a form. For additional information please contact Kerri Liming at 410-860-2447 or email pembertonpark@wicomicocounty.org .

The inaugural Hidden Treasures Half Marathon & 5K presented by Gateway Subaru will follow on the heels of the bike tour on Sunday, September 12th with an early morning start at the Wicomico Youth & Civic Center. While on the course, runners can enjoy a flat, scenic loop that meanders through the Salisbury City Park, to Eastern Shore Drive, then directly through the beautiful SU campus, which is a national arboretum. From there runners will make their way back to the finish via city & county neighborhoods and backroads. The top male and female finishers of the Half Marathon will split a $2000 prize pool.

Registration fees are $55 for the Half Marathon and $35 for the 5K. Runners will receive an Under Armour Tech Shirt as well as food at the conclusion of the race. For more information please visit www.WicomicoTourism.org . Additional inquiries can be directed to Michelle Wainwright at 410-548-4914 or 1-800-332-TOUR. The event is presented by Gateway Subaru and sponsored in part by Fresh n Fruity, Peninsula Orthopaedic Associates and Healthy U.

For more information regarding any events offered by Wicomico Recreation, Parks & Tourism please visit www.WicomicoRecandParks.org or www.WicomicoTourism.org.

Mirror Mirror, 443 Race Street, will be marking it fourth anniversary with a community-appreciation party featuring music by local talent Ty Bolden; a hair show showcasing the talents of the salon’s stylists; and free refreshments. The event runs from noon to 3 pm. For information, call 410-228-9105.

The Harriet Tubman Museum will be hosting a Tricky Tray Fundraiser starting at 2 pm, with proceeds going to support the operations of the Museum. For information, call 410-228-0401.

Novelist Colum McCann leads off the 2010/11 Sophie Kerr lecture series at Washington College on Thursday, September 16 at 5 p.m. in Tawes Theater, the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts.

A native of Ireland who now teaches at Hunter College in New York, McCann is the author of five novels and has been published in 30 languages. His most recent book, Let the Great World Spin (Random House, 2009), was praised by the New York Times as “an emotional tour de force” and became one of the most talked about books of the decade. Set in New York City in the 1970s, it has been described as an allegory of the city’s resilient post-9/11 self.

The novel begins in August 1974 as tightrope walker Philippe Petit makes his way through the dawn light across the World Trade Center towers, committing the “artistic crime of the century” and stunning thousands of watchers below. Using the true story of Petit as a pull-through metaphor, McCann crafts a portrait of the city and a people, weaving together seemingly disparate lives.

Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award and was chosen as Amazon’s top Book of the Year. It placed McCann—whose remarkable previous books include Zoli and Dancer—at the very top rank of contemporary novelists.

Born in Dublin in 1965, McCann was named Esquire’s Writer of the Year in 2003 and was awarded a prestigious French Chevalier des arts et lettres in 2009. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The Irish Times.

Sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Committee, McCann’s reading is free and open to the public. For more information on the author, visit www.colummccann.com. To learn about other literary events at Washington College, please visit www.washcoll.edu.

Second Saturday This Weekend in Cambridge
End of Summer Sales, Gallery Receptions, Free Giveaways, and more!

September’s Second Saturday festivities promise an evening of gallery hopping, great shopping, fine dining, and fun music in downtown Cambridge starting at 5 p.m.

Downtown shops will be staying open late, showcasing new fall merchandise and offering closeout deals on summer inventories. Art lovers will be able to enjoy four gallery receptions while making their way along the third annual Mosaic Path exhibit on display in multiple sites downtown.

Second Saturday attendees will also be able to enter a drawing to win free tickets to the upcoming Chesapeake Film Festival, which will be holding screenings in downtown Cambridge for the first time this year on Sept. 25 and Sept. 26. You can enter once apiece in as many shops and galleries as you stop during the event.

“These Second Saturday events give everyone in the community a chance to show their support for our locally owned businesses and our great local artists,” said Jim Duffy of Cambridge Main Street, the nonprofit group that organizes the monthly events. “Those artists and those entrepreneurs are both making great strides toward making our downtown a more fun, vibrant, and successful place.”

New exhibits will be on display this weekend at the Dorchester Center for the Arts and Joie de Vivre Gallery. The Center for the Arts, 321 High Street, is showcasing “Plein Air Painters of the Eastern Shore,” while Joie de Vivre, 410 Race Street has a new exhibit up featuring the works of the Virginia-based Everna Lee Taylor, a self-taught painter. Joie is also featuring the work of Karen Gallard O’Dowd in September, and be sure to visit the Danny Doughty Gallery in the back as well.

All of downtown’s galleries continue to feature mosaic works by top regional artists as part of the multi-site “Pieces of a Path” exhibit. The Main Street Gallery, 413 Muir Street, is devoted exclusively to mosaics, and works are also on display at Crabcatcher’s Scavenger Shop, 533 Poplar Street, and LunaChick, 430 Race Street.

Gallery 447, 447 Race Street, is featuring “Studioworks,” highlighting the work of artists whose studios ring the exhibit space at the Gallery.

Downtown restaurants are always busy on Second Saturday, so be sure to make reservations early. Mike Elzey’s Mayhem Band will take the stage at Jimmie & Sook’s starting at 10 pm.

For more information about this and other events in downtown Cambridge, go to www.cambridgemainstreet.com and www.facebook.com/CambridgeMainStreet or call 443-477-0843.

Forms can be picked up at:
In Chestertown:
Kent Athletic Club
Aqua Fit
Washington College Pool

In Rock Hall:
Durding’s Ice Cream Store
Java Rock Coffee
The Mainstay
 
More information: Peg Vorohees at 410 639-7079 or peg.voorhees@gmail.com

The FunRun is part of the:
13th Annual Rock Hall FallFest
A Celebration of Family and Community
Saturday, September 25th, 2010
10am – 5pm, Rain or Shine!
FREE

* 50 Craft booths
* 2 stages with music all day
* with The Catonsville HS Steel Band
* Food, food, food
* Kids Kourt in Oyster Court for youngsters
* 1K Fun Run

Plenty of FREE PARKING
Free Shuttle from Main St. to the Waterfront

Rock Hall FallFest is sponsored by:
The Mainstay, The Town of Rock Hall, The Kent County Arts Council, & The Greater Rock Hall Business Association