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 Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has announced its intent to issue a water discharge permit to Indian River Power LLC’s Millsboro plant which will require a 95 percent reduction in cooling water use when the plant goes from three generating units to operating a single unit in 2013 – as called for in a consent agreement the company signed earlier with DNREC.

Indian River Power LLC’s application is for reissuance of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit to discharge once-through cooling water, once-through service water, screen backwash and stormwater to Island Creek and Indian River from a generating station located at 29416 Power Plant Road in Dagsboro.

When the consent agreement was signed, DNREC Secretary Collin O’Mara hailed it as “virtually eliminating the use of water and impacts on our fisheries from the Indian River power plant.” Reduction of cooling water use as DNREC would require in issuing the permit will eliminate more than 60 billion gallons of cooling water drawn annually from Indian River – which in turn will dramatically reduce fisheries impacts on blue crabs, bay anchovy, Atlantic menhaden, Atlantic croaker, winter flounder and weakfish resulting from water withdrawal from the river and discharge of the heated water back into the Inland Bays.
Indian River Power LLC will make significant reductions in the amount of water needed at the plant by eliminating units that do not have a closed-cycle cooling water system. Unit 4 – the newest and scheduled to be the plant’s last operating generator – is already equipped with closed-cycle cooling.

Indian River LLC submitted an updated application in 2004 for renewal of its NPDES permit. Working with DNREC, the company later agreed to retire Units 1, 2 and 3 at the plant. The consent agreement with DNREC and the NPDES permit require the following schedule:
· Unit 2 was retired, effective May 1, 2010 (once-through cooling water (OTCW) intakes and discharges have already been eliminated),

· Unit 1 retirement is scheduled for May 1, 2011 (with OTCW to be eliminated 60 days later, by July 1, 2011) and

· Unit 3 retirement is scheduled for December 31, 2013 (with OTCW to be eliminated by March 1, 2014).

The draft NPDES permit can be found at www.wr.dnrec.delaware.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/IRGS%20Permit_20100908.pdf . A factsheet for the NPDES permit can be found at: www.wr.dnrec.delaware.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/IRGS%20FactSheet_20100908.pdf.

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Governor Jack Markell joined community members and other elected officials to declare September 15th – October 15th, 2010 to be Hispanic Heritage Month.

“Members of the Hispanic community have contributed so much to our state and our country,” said Markell. “They have served with honor and distinction in the U.S. Armed Forces and the Delaware National Guard. Hispanic Americans have helped move Delaware forward through their work in areas like law enforcement, healthcare, education, science, art, music, and athletics. I’m proud to be here today to celebrate Delaware’s diverse culture together.”

The proclamation took place at the annual Open House of the Latin American Community Center, also known as El Centro Latino, and was followed by surprise Mariachi music and food representing the traditions of countries across Latin America.

STATEMENT IN OBSERVANCE OF HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

Whereas, Delaware has a long history of welcoming immigrants and becoming home for people from all over the world; and

Whereas, the Hispanic presence in the First State dates back before 1529, with the first mapping of the area that today bears the name of Delaware; the map drawn by Diego Ribero; and

Whereas, Hispanics have served in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, serving with honor and distinction and making invaluable contributions through their service to our country; some have given their all and all have given some.

Whereas, Hispanics have made great contributions to the quality of life in the First State through their work in many fields such as law enforcement, healthcare, education, science, art, music and athletics; and

Whereas, members of Delaware’s Hispanic community have succeeded in finding the delicate balance between retaining their cultural and ethnic heritage while establishing themselves as an integral part of American life; and

Whereas, the Hispanic community shares the core American values of love of family, strong work ethic and religious faith; and

Whereas, Hispanic Heritage Month is the period set aside each year to celebrate the life, work, culture and traditions of Hispanic Delawareans.

Now, Therefore, We, Jack A. Markell, Governor,
and Matthew Denn, Lieutenant Governor,
do hereby declare September 15th – October 15th, 2010

HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH

In the State of Delaware and urge all Delawareans to join the Latin America Community Center in recognizing the importance of this observance, and the contributions of the Hispanic community to the First State.

Jack A. Markell
Governor

Matthew Denn
Lieutenant Governor

Senior crew Caroline Hill (Tiverton, RI/Bishop Stang)has been named the captain of the Washington College sailing team, head coach Josh Putnam recently announced.

Hill recorded the highest intersectional finish of her collegiate career at last year’s Eckerd Intersectional, sailing with skipper Mike Whitford (Chicago, IL/Francis W. Parker School) to place third in B Division. Washington College finished second overall at that event. She matched her third-place B Division finish two weeks later at the Boston Dinghy Cup, again sailing with Whitford.  Later in the season, she turned in her best-ever finish at a conference championship regatta, placing fourth in B Division with Whitford at the America Trophy, which serves as the Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Associations’s (MAISA) Spring Co-Ed Dinghy Championships. She went on to sail at the Intercollegiate Sailing Association’s (ICSA) Co-Ed Dinghy National Semifinals, placing 14th in B Division while splitting time with Mildred Conroy (Newton, MA/Tabor Academy) as Whitford’s crew.

As a sophomore, Hill finished sixth as an A Division crew at the America Trophy.  During her freshman year, she placed sixth as a B Division crew at the MAISA Fall Women’s Championships.

The Washington College sailing team, which has advanced at least as far as the ICSA Co-Ed National Semifinals each of the past three seasons, opens its fall 2010 schedule this weekend at the prestigious Anderson Trophy, hosted by Yale University. 

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.

Suzette Stitely has celebrated her first year as Executive Director of the Dorchester Humane Society with the implementation of many successful programs. The community now has access to weekly low-cost spay/neuter clinics, a pet food bank and assistance with behavior problems.

“One of my goals is to help people keep their pets rather than surrendering them to a shelter,” explains Stitely. “Sometimes it’s as easy as spaying the cat so she stops having kittens and we’re here to help.”

Stitely has also had success with community involvement. There has been a 60% increase in members of the society and a 262% increase in donations.

“All the wonderful ideas in the world won’t make any difference if we don’t have the resources to implement them,” adds Stitely. “I have been overwhelmed with the outpouring of support from our community and thank them from the bottom of my heart.”

For more information on any of the society’s programs, please contact them at 410-228-3090 or www.dorchesterhumane.org for details.

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.

Intent on making information about vital services and resources more accessible to the public, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) and Delaware Health and Social Services’ Division of Public Health (DPH) today jointly launched a new drinking water quality website. Delawareans now can find comprehensive drinking water information by visiting www.waterquality.delaware.gov.

The new site provides easy access to drinking water quality data, including water system reports, violation notices, well test information, and the location and status of contaminated sites. An interactive map enables visitors to locate annual water quality reports for public water systems, from which 82 percent of Delawareans get their drinking water. The website, created with help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, also links to EPA websites and databases.

DPH’s Office of Drinking Water enforces the federal Safe Drinking Water Act by testing public drinking water supplies, reviews water system plans, certifies water system operators, and manages the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, a loan program for infrastructure improvements. DPH regularly monitors 490 public water systems for more than 80 chemical and bacterial contaminants. Private well owners, advised to test their water annually, can learn how to purchase test kits from the Delaware Public Health Laboratory.

DNREC’s Division of Water regulates surface water quality, administers a source protection program, evaluates the location of private and public wells for potential contaminants during well construction, and conducts and oversees groundwater cleanups.

“Protecting and improving water quality is among the most important responsibilities of the State,” said DNREC Secretary Collin O’Mara. “Whether served by a public system, a public well or private well, Delawareans have a right to know that their drinking water is safe and healthy. This new website will serve as an easily accessible one-stop shop where Delawareans can review statewide water quality monitoring data collected by DNREC and Public Health, and learn about the state’s efforts to clean up contaminated ground water sites as we redouble our efforts to improve water quality across the state.”

“Delawareans depend on clean, safe drinking water, using about 101 million gallons daily for drinking, cooking and bathing,” said DPH Director Dr. Karyl Rattay. “People deserve to know the quality of the water they drink, and this website compiles helpful information for them.”

“These user-friendly improvements provide timely and localized information on environmental conditions that could impact drinking water sources,” said EPA Region III Administrator Shawn M. Garvin. “Delaware’s new electronic efforts coincide with EPA’s ongoing efforts to use the best human resources and cutting-edge technology to keep residents and local communities informed of publicly-available environmental information.”

For more information about drinking water testing, contact the Office of Drinking Water at 302-741-8630. For more information about surface water or groundwater, contact DNREC’s Division of Water at 302-739-9949.
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Visiting Franklin & Marshall got a match-high 23 assists and team-best nine digs from Caitlin Krutsick as the Diplomats swept host Washington College, 3-0, (31-29, 25-19, 25-19) on Tuesday night at the Cain Athletic Center in Centennial Conference volleyball action.  It was also the home opener for the Shorewomen.

In the opening set, Washington had five set point chances to win the first set, but could not close out the set.  With the Shorewomen leading 29-28, Sydney Seydel recorded a kill to level to set at 29-29.  F&M would grab the lead at 30-29 on a hitting error by the Shorewomen and captured the set Nicole Morano kill. 

In set two, WC jumped out to a 5-1 lead on an ace by sophomore defensive specialist Rita Rivera (Plymouth Meeting, PA/Plymouth-Whitemarsh).  But the Diplomats won 17 of the next 21 points to take an 18-9 lead on a service ace by Krutsick. 

In the third and final set, WC took a 7-5 lead on a kill by senior middle hitter Maria Whitman (Galesville, MD/Southern) on a pass from freshman setter Lauren White (Huntingtown, MD/Huntingtown).  The Diplomats would go on a 19-8 spurt to take a 24-15 lead on a ball handling error by the hosts.  The Shorewomen cut it to 24-19 on a kill by senior defensive specialist/libero Traci Daelemans (Tracys Landing, MD/Southern), but a service error by Washington ended the set and match.

For the visitors, Seydel pounded out a match-topping nine kills and tied for tops in the contest with three blocks.  The Diplomats served up 10 aces in the win.

For Washington, White handed out a team-best 21 assists, while Rivera led all players with 11 digs.  Whitman tied for Seydel in blocks with three.

Washington is back on the road on Thursday night with a 7:00 p.m. non-conference tilt at Stevenson.