Bill McKibben and Green Week

Best-selling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben will deliver the fourth annual McBride Lecture for Faith & Literature at 7:00 p.m. on Oct. 3 in Oklahoma Christian University’s Gaylord University Center. The evening lecture will be followed by a book-signing reception. Both events are free and open to the public.

“We invite Oklahomans to hear this powerful thinker discuss issues of great importance – not only how both to design durable human communities and care for the planet, but also specifically how to sustain the great quality of life we enjoy in Oklahoma as well as pass on to our children the best of Oklahoma’s natural resources,” said Scott LaMascus, Professor of English and Director of the McBride Center for Faith & Literature.

“As always, faith plays a unique role in this year’s lecture programs,” LaMascus said. “McKibben’s book The Comforting Whirlwind should be read by every Christian because he asks us to consider the book of Job not so much for its insights into suffering or belief, but because the book calls readers to appreciate the marvel of creation as well as to humbly accept our place of responsibility in it.”

The McBride Center was named in 2004 and is endowed by donations from alumni, foundations, and humanities organizations to honor the lifelong work of McBride, a longtime professor of English and university leader, and his wife, Joyce Warren McBride. They have three children and eight grandchildren. McBride began teaching at the university in 1956 when the campus was located in Bartlesville, and served from 1971 to 1990 as the university’s chief academic officer. He continues to direct the university’s Honors program. He is a member of the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame. See www. http://www.ohehs.org.

Co-sponsors with the McBride Center have included The Oklahoma Humanities Council, The Oklahoma Scholarship-Leadership Enrichment Program, The Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers and “Writing Out Loud”, The Inasmuch Foundation, and the Williams Foundation. Book sales following the lectures benefit the McBride Center and are provided by Best of Books in Kickingbird Square.

For additional information or Media opportunities with McKibben, contact Ron Frost at 405-425-5330. For information about the McBride Center see www.oc.edu/mcbridecenter. For program details contact Frances Sawyer at 405-425-5330.

Back-to-School Bash Photos!

Abigail swings as everyone else watches


Here's a taste of what happened last Friday at the Back-to-School Bash! If you didn't come, you really missed out. It was a great time!

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Abby, Ashleigh, John and Annalisa

My brother Davis was pretty much our entertainment for the evening.


A lot of fun was had on the trampoline!
Kayla, Bailey, Taylor, Anna, Laura and Jessica.
Our freshmen came straight from Fanfare practice!

Everyone just hanging out before dinner!
Jaclyn and Mica
The highlight of the evening: Davis prank-calling non-English majors on Wil's iPhone.

All in all, it was a great evening!

Opportunity to Hear Poet Douglas Goetsch

"I am writing to let you know that the award-winning poet Douglas Goetsch, the University of Central Oklahoma English department's 2008-09 Artist in Residence, will be giving a free public reading at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September twenty-fourth, in the Dean's Reception Room in UCO's Liberal Arts Building (LAR 211). Refreshments will be served, and a reception will follow the reading.

Mr. Goetsch has taught writing to the gifted, the incarcerated, undergraduates, post-graduates, and continuing education students since the 1980s. He served for fourteen years as a member of the English faculty at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, and he then established and directed the creative writing program at Passages Academy, a network of schools that serves court-involved youth in New York City. He has been on staff at the Stonecoast Writing Conference, The Frost Place, The Dodge Poetry Festival and, for nine years,at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Mr. Goetsch's books of poetry include Nobody's Hell (Hanging Loose Press, 1999), The Job of Being Everybody (Cleveland State, 2004), which won the CSU Poetry Center Open Competition, and four prize-winning chapbooks. He is the recipient of awards from Prairie Schooner, MARGIE, Slipstream, and The Chautauqua Literary Journal, and he has also received two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, many Pushcart Prize nominations, and the Donald Murray Prize for writing on the teaching of writing. Mr. Goetsch's poetry, reviews and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Poetry, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The New England Review, online at PoetryDaily and Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac, on the air at NPR, and in numerous anthologies. "

Starting the [08-09] Year

Hey everyone,
Welcome to the official Sigma Tau Delta [Rho Mu] blog, where I'm going to post news, pictures, memories - if it has to do with us, it'll be on here.

I'm still trying to make sure everyone's added to the email list so that everyone can get the emails, but I'll go ahead and post most of my last email on here just as an update.

"We are getting ready to host our Back-to-School Bash! This year it will be a bbq/cook-out at my house (we’ll send out directions as it gets closer). It’s going to be this Friday the 19th at 6 PM and it’s going to be extended to the entire Department of Language and Literature, so be sure to invite your English, TEFL, Spanish, everything LangLit major friends.

Right now I really need to get a head count of people who will be coming. I don’t need it within the next few hours or anything, but if I could get everyone to email me by about Sunday evening or so, we officers will be able to figure out how much food we need to get and what we need to plan. If you could just send me an email saying if you’re coming, that would be great. Spread the word to your friends – we’ll get a department-wide email out soon!"

As of right now, it's Monday and I haven't heard back from anyone except my roommates, so I need to know if you're all coming as soon as possible (by tomorrow!). So PLEASE leave a comment or shoot me an email or something.

Also, submit to the Skinny Voice by midnight on Thursday the 18th! That's this Thursday, so send your poetry, prose, and rants to theskinnyvoice@gmail.com.