From: Gapers Block (Chicago, IL)
Robert Hellenga, author of six novels including his debut national bestseller The Sixteen Pleasures, celebrates his birthday on Aug. 5. Consider this interview a small birthday celebration of this very accomplished Midwesterner. Hellenga teaches English at Knox College…
Q: It seems that your fiction is heavily influenced by your own life. Is this a deliberate or subconscious influence?
A: I don’t know what else to do, though I extend the range of experience through research…
Q: The Sixteen Pleasures is so rich with detail and historically correct facts about Florence. What was your research process like for this novel?
A: I was director of the ACM Florence programs, and our whole family (my wife and three daughters) went there for a year in 1982-83… I had to do extensive library research on the flood, book conservation, convent life… Read more…
From: Examiner.Com (Chicago, IL)
Everywhere we turn there is media gossiping about someone else’s life. Why is it that the human brain is so interested and aroused by gossip? Is it that when we have a good perception of a person, our jealousy within enjoys hearing negativity?…
Frank McAndrew, a Knox College Psychology Professor, said, “If someone is higher than you on the food chain, you want dirt about them. You want negative information, because that’s the stuff you can exploit to get ahead.”… Read more…
From: PBS: Charlie Rose (New York, NY)
Charlie Rose hosts a discussion about Afghanistan with John Podesta, Knox College alum, trustee and former White House Chief of Staff; and Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor. Podesta and Hadley chaired a bipartisan committee that recently issued its report as an essay, “The Right Way Out of Afghanistan,” published in Foreign Affairs magazine…
The committee reported that “the military/security transition [from American control to Afghan control] was thought through, but the political/diplomatic/financial transition needed more development,” Podesta said. “Right now, there’s a need to get these things synchronized. We still have influence [in Afghanistan], but if we don’t use it now, the capacity of the Afghan government to function… when NATO troops come out… I’m highly skeptical that it can work…” Read more…
From: The Wall Street Journal (New York, NY)
Faced with well-developed and largely saturated markets in Europe and North America, global satellite operators are looking east, where they seek fresh impetus for growth in Asia’s middle-class consumers and burgeoning enterprises… SES—the world’s second-biggest satellite operator by revenue—is leading the charge, carrying the most paid direct-to-home channels in Asia, with nearly 650 channels as of June… And the company is poised to spend more to shore up its lead here, according to Deepak Mathur, a senior vice president who heads the company’s commercial operations in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East…
[Mathur has a] Bachelor’s degree from Knox College in Illinois; Master’s in international management from the University of Denver…previously served as managing director at Americom-Asia Pacific, a joint venture between General Electric and Lockheed Martin… Read more…
From: Galesburg Planet (Galesburg, IL)
Eugene Field has a Galesburg connection because he attended Knox College for two years as a member of the Class of 1871. In his autobiography, Always the Young Strangers, Carl Sandburg wrote that his sixth grade teacher, Lottie Goldquist, insisted her students should know about Eugene Field because he had attended Knox College. She wanted her students to “feel close to him.”…
Field received an honorary degree from Knox College in 1893 and appeared “to a small and appreciative audience” in the Auditorium on May 22, 1894, to read a number of his poems and prose pieces… Read more…
