Anthropologist Laura Nader talks energy at lecture series

WINSTED — Ralph Nader’s elder sister, Laura Nader Milleron, was in Winsted last week to present the first lecture of the fall 2010 lecture series, the Rose B. Nader Circle, dedicated to Winsted’s late matriarch, who was affectionately known as “an agitator� in town.

“More and more I find myself saying to people in California that I come from New England, and they’ll say ‘but you’ve been here 50 years,’� the 80-year-old anthropology professor told a near-capacity crowd at Northwestern Connecticut Community College’s Founders Hall Auditorium. “I still come from New England. I come from a small New England town where you had the town meeting and you could get up and say what you think.�

Nader’s lecture, “Energy Solutions: 5,000 BC to 2010,� offered a number of observations about human progress, which at times she railed against and other times seemed to embrace. She discussed some of the work she has done as an anthropologist, denouncing the technological revolution and calling for the return of trains and rail cars, while saluting advancements in solar and wind power.

“We’re getting dumber as we get smarter,� Nader said. “We’re taking the future for granted.� The central point of the lecture seemed to be that progress is happening too fast in the world and that people need to put on the brakes and take time making decisions about America and the world’s energy future.

Dignitaries in the audience included Nader’s 76-year-old younger brother, Ralph, and elder sister, Claire, 82, with other members of the extended family.

Former Connecticut gubernatorial candidate and political commentator Bill Curry sat with Ralph for the lecture, while members of the NCCC student senate and Community Lawyer Charlene LaVoie helped organize the event and volunteers from Charter Community Television and Northwestern Regional High School recorded video of the event.

Nader’s lecture was warmly received by audience members, many of whom stayed after the lecture for falafel, hummus, baklava and other Lebanese delights by Noujaim’s Specialty Foods in Torrington.

The second lecture in this fall’s series featured someone familiar to the NCCC community, the college’s president, Barbara Douglass, who was scheduled to discuss “The Community College and the Town of Winchester� Thursday night. The lecture took place after The Winsted Journal went to press this week.

The final lecture in the series, “Five Simple Keys to Understanding Tax Breaks,� will be offered by John O. Fox, author of “If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax: Uncovering Our Most Expensive Ignorance� and “Ten Tax Questions the Candidates Don’t Want You to Ask.�

The lecture is scheduled at a good time for procrastinators, on Thursday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m., with more than four months to go before the annual filing deadline on April 15.

Latest News

Bunny Williams's 
‘Life in the Garden’
Rizzoli

In 1979, interior decorator Bunny Williams and her husband, antiques dealer John Rosselli, had a fateful meeting with a poorly cared for — in Williams’s words, “unspoiled” — 18th-century white clapboard home.

“I am not sure if I believe in destiny, but I do know that after years of looking for a house, my palms began to perspire when I turned onto a tree-lined driveway in a small New England village,” Williams wrote in her 2005 book, “An Affair with a House.” The Federal manor high on a hill, along with several later additions that included a converted carriage shed and an 1840-built barn, were constructed on what had been the homestead property of Falls Village’s Brewster family, descendants of Mayflower passenger William Brewster, an English Separatist and Protestant leader in Plymouth Colony.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Creators: Sitting down with Garet Wierdsma

Garet&Co dancers

Jennifer Almquist

On Saturday, March 9, the people of Norfolk, Connecticut, enjoyed a dance performance by northern Connecticut-based Garet&Co, in Battell Chapel, titled INTERIOR, consisting of four pieces: “Forgive Her, Hera,” “Something We Share,” “bodieshatewomen,” and “I kinda wish the apocalypse would just happen already.”

At the sold-out show in the round, the dancers, whose strength, grace and athleticism filled the hall with startling passion, wove their movements within the intimate space to the rhythms of contemporary music. Wierdsma choreographed each piece and curated the music. The track she created for “Something We Share” eerily contained vintage soundtracks from life guidance recordings for the perfect woman of the ‘50s. The effect, with three dancers in satin slips posing before imaginary mirrors, was feminist in its message and left the viewer full of vicarious angst.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kevin McEneaney, voice of The Millbrook Independent

Kevin McEneaney

Judith O’Hara Balfe

On meeting Kevin McEneaney, one is almost immediately aware of three things; he’s reserved, he’s highly intelligent and he has a good sense of humor.

McEneaney is the wit and wisdom behind The Millbrook Independent, a blog that evolved from the print version of that publication. It's a wealth of information about music venues in this part of Dutchess County interspersed with poetry, art reviews, articles on holidays and other items, and a smattering of science.

Keep ReadingShow less