UNews - Congress

Border policies greatly affect communities

trevor.kenney — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:45:55 +0000

Close co-operation between municipalities and chambers of commerce on both sides of the border is important to ensure that decisions made in Washington, DC and Ottawa will serve the interests of most residents of the region, according to ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge political scientist Geoffrey Hale.

Groups like the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) do an excellent job of promoting broader regional interests on cross-border economic co-operation, says Hale, but there are enough different interests at play on border issues that area business groups can't take political responsiveness for granted.

"Governments in both countries naturally tend to be focused on big ticket items and the busiest border crossings, especially when they're stretched financially" says Hale, noting the ongoing work of the "Beyond the Border" Task Force announced by President Obama and Prime Minister Harper in early 2011. "This can lead to the emergence of 'nickel and dime' irritants that create unnecessary barriers to economic activity."

Recently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed that the U.S. Congress authorize a study to explore the feasibility of collecting a fee for both Americans and visitors returning to or entering the United States across its land borders with Canada and Mexico. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, about 193 million people crossed the U.S. land border in 2012 – including 1.5 million across Montana's 13 border crossings with Canada.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee quickly passed an amendment to the comprehensive immigration bill now before Congress to scrap the measure. Congress is also considering proposals to allow Canadian "snowbirds" not working in the United States to stay an additional two months (above the current six) if they own or rent property there without triggering tax penalties under complex IRS rules. Canadians have invested heavily in vacation and other properties in the Flathead Valley and elsewhere in Montana in recent years.

In 2012, almost one million vehicle crossings occurred at 13 ports of entry into Montana, including 737,724 personal vehicles, with 1,300,642 passengers, 175,770 trucks, 843 buses, 21,342 passengers; and 5,145 pedestrians – most of the latter between the border communities of Sweetgrass and Coutts. The top three crossings – Sweetgrass (I-15); Roosville (US-93), and Peigan (US-89) – account for 86 per cent of passenger vehicle and 84 per cent of truck traffic entering Montana from Canada.

"Cross-border travel, particularly for tourism and recreation, is a major engine for the economy of Flathead Valley," says Hale, who studies economic, security, and other cross-border issues between Canada and the United States. "In addition, Canadian travelers have generated much of the traffic growth at Kalispell / Glacier Park and Kalispell Airports in recent years."

Hale notes that Montana's members of Congress and area legislators have a record of engaging business interests from Montana's northern border regions with a view to promoting economic development and job creation. With members of Congress from both northern and southern border states weighing in on these types of issues, sometimes with very different priorities, it's important for Montanans who benefit from continued cross-border traffic to ensure their voices are heard on these issues, says Hale.

Morgentaler brings Rosenfarb's work to surface

trevor.kenney — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:01:43 +0000

After discovering unpublished poetry translations of her own poems by her late mother - internationally recognized Yiddish novelist and Holocaust survivor Chava Rosenfarb - ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge professor Dr. Goldie Morgentaler is sharing these poems, along with previously published poems, in a new book entitled Exile at Last.

In her lifetime, Chava Rosenfarb was recognized internationally for novels, poems and plays about the Holocaust, including The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto, one of the seminal works on the Holocaust. Her international awards include the Prize of the Congress for Jewish Culture, the Sholem Aleichem Prize, the Atran Prize, the John Glassco Prize for Literary Translation and the Manger Prize - Israel's highest award for Yiddish literature.

Included with the poems is an introduction Rosenfarb had written for a poetry collection she was planning to publish in the early 1970s. For unknown reasons this collection was never published.

"My mother began her writing career as a poet. She published three books of poetry in Yiddish during her lifetime. She had always wanted this poetry to be available to English readers as well, which is why she translated most of the poems into English," says Morgentaler. "It is not clear to me why she never published these translations, but now that she is gone, I feel it is important for me to complete the job for her."

Rosenfarb was 16 when she and her family were interned in the Lodz ghetto after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. When the ghetto was liquidated, she was deported to Auschwitz and later Bergen Belsen, before being liberated by British forces in 1945. After spending many homeless years in Europe, she moved to Canada in 1950, settling in Montreal.

As a child, Rosenfarb's father encouraged her to write about her experiences. Considering the impact of the years she spent in occupied Poland and in concentration camps, these themes became central to her life's works.

Exile at Last contains poems from all three of Rosenfarb's poetry books, including Di balade fun nekhtikn vald (The Ballad of Yesterday's Forest), Rosenfarb's first published collection of poems, composed when Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the Lodz ghetto. The book also contains more personal poems from Rosenfarb's last collection of poetry, Aroys fun gan eydn (Out of Paradise]. The poems are arranged to follow the chronological order of the events of Rosenfarb's life.

"My mother and I were more than mother and daughter. We were a team, a translating team. She did the writing in Yiddish and then we worked closely together on the translations," says Morgentaler. "I feel that I owe her a debt and that debt can only be repaid by publishing her work in English – something she clearly wanted, despite her love of and fidelity to Yiddish, the language of her lost, annihilated home."

Morgentaler is a Professor of English at the U of L where she teaches 19th Century British and American literature, as well as Jewish literature. She is the translator of much of Rosenfarb's work including the play The Bird of the Ghetto, which was staged by the Threshold Theatre of Toronto in the fall of 2012. She was the translator in collaboration with the author of the three volumes of Rosenfarb's The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto. Her translation of Rosenfarb's book of short stories, Survivors: Seven Short Stories, won the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award in 2005 and the Modern Language Association's Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies in 2006.

The book, published by Guernica Editions, is now on sale at Chapters and at the U of L bookstore, and can be ordered from amazon and directly from the publisher at: michaelmirolla@guernicaeditions.com.

NOTE: Chava Rosenfarb was recognized by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in 2006 when she was presented with an honorary degree. Rosenfarb delivered an incredibly powerful address which can be viewed by following this link.

Matisz looking to make an impact

trevor.kenney — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:07:19 +0000

When Chelsea Matisz (BSc '05, MSc '09) began her academic journey at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge in 2001, she wasn't sure what she wanted to be – knowing only that she loved studying biology and was good at it. Ten years, plenty of hard work and several incredible opportunities later, Matisz is a PhD student with a passion for parasitology, ecology and evolution who has earned the distinction of being an award winning research scientist.

Matisz began her research career during the summer of 2003 when she landed a job collecting data for one of her professors, Dr. Andrew Hurly.

"I spent the summer in a cabin at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's field research station collecting data about the foraging behaviour of hummingbirds," recalls Matisz. "Once I realized that there were professors with different research projects going on and that they were looking for keen students to collect data, it was just a dream come true. I was amazed that I could get this kind of job and that I could get paid for it."

Alumna Chelsea Matisz recently won the prestigious Ashton Cuckler New Investigator Award.

During a course with Dr. Cameron Goater, Matisz became interested in parasitology so she jumped at the chance to work with parasites in Goater's lab. She spent a summer working as Goater's lab research assistant before completing her BSc in December 2005. The relationship she established with Goater led to Matisz pursuing a master's degree with Goater as her supervisor.

"We have a very unique situation in the Goater lab in that we can rear a parasite with a complex life cycle in the lab and we are able to control the age and density of the parasite; that offers some exceptional research avenues," explains Matisz.

Using the flathead minnow as an intermediary host, Matisz studied why two parasites migrated to specific areas (one to the minnow's brain, the other to its liver), how the parasites migrated and what the minnow's response was once the parasite made itself at home.

In 2007, Matisz was awarded the Meritorious Student Paper Award, after presenting her research at the First North American Parasitology Congress in Mexico. She continued to receive accolades for her work and in June this year she will be the first graduate student to be presented with the prestigious Ashton Cuckler New Investigator Award from the American Society of Parasitologists for work at the master's level. The award has previously gone to recently graduated PhD students only.

"This award means so much to me because it is validation for the work I have done. I feel immensely proud to get this," says Matisz.

Goater, who nominated Matisz for the award says, "There could be no better ambassador for our graduate program and for our ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. I am thrilled to see her waive the U of L flag at the annual meeting in Anchorage."

Now that she is studying for her PhD at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary, Matisz looks back on her graduate studies at the U of L with some degree of amazement.

"I had a great experience at the U of L. I was given such incredible resources in terms of support and expertise. Generating three publications for my masters was simply amazing. I don't feel like I could have done better anywhere else," she says.

Matisz admits there were times throughout her thesis project when she needed to clear her head, so she attended a variety of different lectures on campus.

"The lecturers reminded me why I was doing what I was doing. Seeing their passion was really motivating and helped me keep trucking on, although, there have been times in desperation that I've seriously considered abandoning research to be a musician or write fiction," laughs Matisz.

She completed her masters of science in biology with a 4.0 GPA in 2009. For nine months she worked as a research associate at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ through the Canadian Water Network, before spending another three months at the Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health in Edmonton in advance of her PhD studies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary. Currently she is studying with Dr. Derek Mackay and Dr. Keith Sharkey, researching host-parasite interactions of the rat tapeworm in a mouse and how this can affect or modulate joint inflammation.

"I hope that my studies will one day have an impact on human health. It's amazing that parasites can potentially have a therapeutic role for inflammatory diseases – and I hope I can be a part of elucidating those mechanisms. That would be amazing," she says.

GET THE FACTS

· Matisz also won the 2010 Medal of Merit and was a finalist for the Gold Governor General Award

· Matisz had her own radio show on CKXU, Music Soup, while she was at the U of L

· Matisz designed the cover for the edition of the International Journal of Parasitology which housed her very first publication

· Matisz has been awarded scholarships/grants in excess of $114,000

This story first appeared in the Legend. To view the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Campus Kudos - December

trevor.kenney — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:56:32 +0000

Dr. David Renter (music) Trio performed at Southern Alberta Art Gallery on Dec. 3 as part of the second event organized by the brand new Lethbridge Jazz Society.

Dr. Goldie Morgentaler (English) was featured in the Fall 2010 issue of Pakn Treger magazine, the magazine of the Yiddish Book Center. Published in Amherst, Mass., the Pakn Treger story details Morgentaler's teaching of Yiddish literature in what is referred to as the "Canadian Bible Belt".

Lisa Doolittle (Theatre & Dramatic Arts) was a plenary speaker with ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Calgary professor Anne Flynn and U of L alumnus Troy Emery Twigg (BFA '03) at the American Society for Theatre Research and Congress on Research in Dance international joint conference in Seattle in November. They presented the paper, Performing Negotiations: Blackfoot Dance in Colonial and Multicultural Canada. Doolittle also presented, Dance Research on the Move: Connecting across the academy and engaging with community, to graduate and PhD students at York ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ.

��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Senate member, Paul Gale Pharo, was appointed to the Alberta Provincial Court Bench. Pharo is also the incoming president of the Rotary Club of Lethbridge and has three children attending the U of L.

Taras Polataiko (Art) recently exhibited his new work at the 5th International Biennale of Video Art in Israel.

Leanne Elias (New Media) recently had a chapter published in the book, Mobile Learning: Pilot Projects and Initiatives. The chapter is, Using Smartphone Technology to Extend the Educational Experience.

Nick Wade (Art) spoke at the Alberta Public Planners Institute in Lethbridge on the subject of art in the public realm.

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge home page, www.uleth.ca, was selected as one of the Top-30 Outstanding Websites of Higher Education by Vandelay Design (http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/higher-education/). It was mentioned along websites from Johns Hopkins ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, Virginia Tech ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ and ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Southern California.

Emily Luce's (New Media) exhibition, Parallel Park (Lab Space), is showing in the Helen Christou Gallery until Jan. 14, 2011.

Catherine Ross's (Art staff) exhibition, Field Sightings, is currently showing in Lethbridge's Mueller Art Gallery.

Dr. Josie Mills (U of L Art Gallery director/curator) presented, Deaccessioning: The Root of All Scandal, as part of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery's, Articulations: Art Appreciation Lecture Series, in November.

Matthew Blackburn (BMus '09), winner of the 2009 Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition, performed with Musaeus String Quartet as part of the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra's Chamber Series.

For a look at the full issue of the December Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

UNews - Congress

Border policies greatly affect communities

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Morgentaler brings Rosenfarb's work to surface

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