Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 - (Page 11)

ARTS & CULTURE line interactive game. (Available at www.doonesbury.com.) He composed and recorded the music to Nickelodeon’s animated series Doug and Doug’s 1st Movie. Skeeter Valentine, Doug’s oddball friend, shares Newman’s voice and a propensity to make strange noises. Tom Cruise’s horse in Far and Away neighs and gallops thanks to Newman, who also created the dolphin cries in Cocoon. Many of the aliens in Men in Black would be speechless without Newman’s noises and voices. These days, Newman uses sound to playfully teach phonetics through his PBS children’s television program, Between the Lions. Newman’s show eschews the glitz of most television, and instead he recreates the calm, creative tone of Keillor’s show. bookshelf “POWERFUL” CAPTIVATES READERS As a high school student, Debbie Lee Wesselmann remembers learning that the stories she wrote should always explore new territory. As a Lehigh adjunct faculty member teaching ﬁrstyear composition classes, she urges her students to do the same. As a published author, that advice is guiding her professional path as well. Her ﬁrst books—Trutor & the Ballonist and The Earth and Sky—examined troubled interpersonal relationships, quirky characters, whimsy, love, loss, and isolation. Her latest, Captivity, due out in the spring from John F. Blair, publisher, tackles more unfamiliar turf: that of chimpanzees contained in private sanctuaries and the controversial topic of animal rights. “If someone told me this is what I would be writing about, I’d have been just as surprised as they were,” Wesselmann says. The inspiration for the book came through a random article found in an old Smithsonian magazine, which Wesselmann flipped through to jump-start the creative process. “The article was about a primatologist teaching captive baby chimps how to be, in essence, baby chimps, by reintroducing them to other chimpanzees,” she says. “It was a fascinating topic, which I started researching. And, as I did this, a character started to emerge.” The protagonist in Wesselmann’s ﬁctional tale is Dana Armstrong, who was part of her scientist father’s psychology experiment and who shared a unique kinship with the chimps she communicated with through sign language. “A tragic event ended the experiment, and that experience inﬂuences Dana’s professional career,” she says. “In her role, she’s challenged by a number of events, and her life is further complicated by her brother, Zack, sort of a drifter and what I call a ‘sweet troublemaker.’” The pivotal event in Captivity occurs when several chimpanzees from a local primate sanctuary are mysteriously released into the South Carolina woods. Poorly socialized, potentially violent and dangerous, the chimps present a physical threat to the local community, and are also vulnerable to a host of dangers. As Dana struggles to deal with the crisis, she is faced with pressure from several fronts, and the emotional baggage of her own troubled past. Wesselmann employs the narrative device of telling the story from several points of view, including Dana’s, Zack’s, and that of the reporter. “At crucial points in the story,” she says, “I thought it would be interesting to inject multiple points of view. I wanted to create something that was an issues novel, a literary work, and a suspenseful page-turner all at once.” Wesselmann, who is married to P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science associate professor Daniel Lopresti, is hoping to duplicate the critical success of her earlier books, one of which earned a glowing review in The New York Times that characterized her work as “elegant.” That process has already begun, with a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly that calls Captivity “powerful” and “unforgettable.” Regardless of the external success and recognition, she says she’s already found reward in the intensive, two-year research process. “Like most people, I never really had any access to chimps beyond being at a zoo,” she says. “I was very fortunate to connect with people via an online Princeton University writing group. And that connection led me to the director of the Jane Goodall Institute in Silver Spring, Md., which led me to other people, and that led to an understanding of the politics surrounding the whole issue of sanctuaries. The whole process was fascinating.”—Linda Harbrecht winter 2008 11 NEW NOVEL Garrison Keillor describes Bethlehem and Lehigh University to his radio audience. “I love the intimacy of radio, and I’m trying to pull that into TV,” he says. “I’m trying to keep kids playful.” If you missed the live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion from Lehigh, you can listen to it online by visiting: prairiehome. publicradio.org/programs/2007/12/22/. —Becky Straw http://www.doonesbury.com http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2007/12/22/ http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2007/12/22/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Ugly is in the Eye of the Beholder Fitch's Law of Motion A Blessing to the Community The Amidonian Acclamation China Trip Bridges Cultures, Generations From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

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