Birdman exhilarates

Emma Stone and Edward Norton in a scene from Birdman.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu: Michael Keaton is an aging actor, formerly the star of a superhero franchise, who is now trying to stage a respectable play off Broadway and desperately doing battle with the fears of the modern artist (perhaps of everyone) in an age of burgeoning media culture and of immediate obsolescence — fears of personal irrelevance, invisibility and, conversely, of shameful exposure and public degradation. Apart from the superb performances by Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and Zach Galifianakas (!), what is marvelous about the film is that this “backstage” story, with its multilayered thematics and its almost absurdly narcissistic characters, becomes an exhilarating visceral experience as well in part because of the extensive, sinuous tracking shots of Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity).

MORE: With its ebullient script and score, its casting coup and spectacular acting, Birdman plays on the pressure of working in the fickle spotlight of superherodom/celebrity, and almost every critic found additional superlatives to laud this film by Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amoros Perros, Babel, Biutiful). Writing for the Boston Globe, Ty Burr called it “a backstage middle-aged male freakout comedy-drama and, as such, possibly a guy’s answer to the anxieties of All About Eve. Riggan is an LA superstar best known for the superhero blockbuster Birdman, but that was well over a decade ago and he’s starting to look like — well, Michael Keaton several decades on from Batman. The movie winks in that direction and then gets down to business. To prove his ongoing cultural worth and artistic depth, Riggan has written and is starring in a theatrical adaptation of Raymond Carver’s 1981 short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” — exactly the sort of cred-heavy overreach that might tempt a fatuous Hollywood has-been.” Burr praises everything from the “garrulous, endlessly quotable script,” to Keaton’s performance as “splenetic, poetic, dangerous, funny, and refreshingly vanity-free, at the same time insisting that vanity is the motor that gets a performer out of bed every morning.”

The wonder of Boyhood

Imagine yourself 12 years from now.

Boyhood dir. Richard Linklater: Linklater’s three-hour film is a unique cinematic project in that the narrative encompasses a fictionalized twelve-year span in the life of its characters, which is represented by a selection of scenes filmed over the course of twelve years with the same actors, one of whom is Linklater’s own daughter Lorelei, and a remarkable presence in the film. A real sense of privileged intimacy and poignancy is created by watching the main child actor, Ellar Coltrane, age from a six-year old boy to an eighteen-year old college student. The film not only restores our understanding of cinema’s innate capacity for recovering time, but also leaves us with a sense of wonder about time’s power in all of our lives.

MORE: Critics were rhapsodic about this movie by Richard Linklater — director of the beloved Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight triology, which over the course of years follows a couple, played by Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy, through the stages of their life together. Linklater seems to have created a new genre of filmmaking that combines documentary with narrative fiction. Alexandra Molotkow, writing for The Globe and Mail notes, “Life is just as spectacular as it is in the movies, but only very occasionally, and then mostly in hindsight. That’s enough to make the rest of it worth living, and it’s enough to inspire a body of work, but the long process of waiting for meaning to accumulate rarely makes for exciting drama. The work of American filmmaker Richard Linklater is an exception. The long trail of fleeting moments is a theme in his movies, which somehow collapse the difference between art as it makes life seem and life as it mostly is. Romantic moments come wrapped in the mundane, which his eye redeems.”

 Troubled, taut Calvary

Kelly Reilly and Brendon Glees0n in the moody and metaphysical Calvary.

Calvary dir. John Michael McDonagh: This film, which was shot in County Sligo in Ireland is directed by the brother of playwright and director Martin McDonagh and stars Brendon Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd and Kelly Reilly. Gleason is a priest who, because he is a good priest and therefore will be a grievous loss to the church as a whole, is nominated for death by one of his parishioners who is bent on revenge after suffering horrific childhood sexual abuse at the hands of another local priest. McDonagh turns an archetypal story of sacrifice into a hard-fought and intricate argument for faith in the cynical modern world created by proliferating Catholic Church scandals.

 

MORE: The English-born Irish director of Calvary — acclaimed for his previous film, 2011’s The Guard, which also starred the intensely charismatic Brendon Gleeson — says that he wanted to “rip off the Hitchcock ‘I confess’ structure.” In an interview with Calvary‘s director and main protagonist on RogerEbert.com, Gleeson said, “It’s interesting. I think people are different from what they imagine themselves to be…. I think when people are faced with death — and John [Michael McDonagh] based this on the five stages of grief — there are various forms of bargaining and depression and anger, but the acceptance is an extraordinary thing.”

 

Documentary depths in Citizenfour

Citizenfour dir. Laura Poitras: Poitras’ documentary film is a straight-ahead account of her and Guardian US reporter Glenn Greenwald’s emails and secret filmed interviews with Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency Contractor, who made the decision to reveal the extensive nature of the NSA’s electronic surveillance and information gathering on private citizens in the US and around the world. Adding moral weight to Snowden’s whistleblower efforts is his demeanor on camera, which is sober, articulate and seemingly self-effacing. It is not only the details of the type and extent of the surveillance as he explains them, which surprise and chill. Images of an otherwise picturesque sea shore in Wales seem almost uncanny as we notice the incongruous satellite dishes and the filmmaker’s voice-over tells us of the undersea cables carrying data on millions upon millions of personal cell phone and email messages and images that will be monitored and analyzed in secret NSA sites. Not even Orwell, it seems, could have imagined the scope of this culture of surveillance.

 

MORE: Citizenfour made quite an impression on filmgoers and critics alike. Wired billed it as one of its top five documentaries of 2014, writing that “Director Laura Poitras was one of the handful of people NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden contacted to help him reveal the information he wanted the public to know, so she was there filming as the leaks happened.” The Globe and Mail writes: “the documentary of the year may also be its most hair-raising thriller“; Citizenfour follows the award-winning director’s “two previous post-9/11 documentaries, My Country, My Country (2006), about life in Iraq under U.S. occupation and The Oath (2010) about prisoners in Guantanamo.”

 

The visceral velocity of Whiplash

So much for the inspiring teacher cliché: Jazz drummer Miles Teller leaves blood on the drumkit under the lacerating scrutiny of J.K. Simmons in Whiplash.

Whiplash dir. Damien Chazelle: J. K. Simmons is the jazz band instructor who holds a terrifying power over drum student Andrew, played by the very watchable and talented Miles Teller. Watching loyally from the wings of Andrew’s life as he struggles to gain the approval of this hyper-agressive masculine authority is his chummy, passive and well-meaning father (shades of Rebel without a Cause). It is a testimony to our collective fears of anonymity that it is difficult for viewers to tell whether Andrew’s striving for the approbation of this sadistic tyrant, beyond all reason and often with devastating consequences, is pitiable or laudable.

 

MORE: With apparently only minimal irony, the Wall Street Journal called the dark Whiplash “a kind of Black Swan for the jazz-drumming set,” whereas Indiewire dubbed it “a pedagogical thriller” and Paste magazine (and others) described the movie as “Full Metal Jacket at Julliard.” A.V. Club summarizes Whiplash this way: “An aspiring jazz drummer taking classes at a prestigious, fictitious music conservatory in New York City, Andrew yearns to be legendary — the heir apparent to Buddy Rich, whose work he religiously studies and whose face he plasters across the walls of his dormitory. And so when a revered instructor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), handpicks him for the school’s big-band jazz ensemble, it seems like a dream come true. Little does Andrew know, however, that he’s just fallen under the tutelage of a notorious perfectionist, a man whose reputation scarcely does justice to his extreme motivational tactics.” According to the director, “conductors have a special thing about drummers.” Yikes.

 

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Looking forward to: Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice.

Faye McIntyre is an instructor of English, film, and theatre, Faculty of Arts at the University of Manitoba. She has a special interest in classical Hollywood films, Italian cinema and women filmmakers.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

My unranked, unordered list is certainly eclectic. It was hard to recommend just five! Everything on the list is available in print and as an e-book as I love both formats equally for different reasons. It is made up of my favourite authors, topics that reflect my diverse interests and of books that I read based on recommendations from my sons who are both at university and are voracious readers.

Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress

Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald, with Philippe Aghion, Kenneth J. Arrow, Robert M. Solow, and Michael Woodford (Columbia University Press, 2014)

ISBN: 9780231525541

I thought Stiglitz’s previous book, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future was a fascinating look at society. Even though one wouldn’t consider his newest work “light” reading, this thorough examination of economic policy and education, inspired by a lecture series, was hard to resist for me given my interest in education and government policy in support of education. It is a thought- provoking look at how economic policy must be inextricably linked to a learning society if it is to contribute to the development and sustenance of a country. Stiglitz, is a Nobel prize winner in Economics and a faculty member at Columbia University.

All My Puny Sorrows

Miriam Toews (Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2014)

ISBN 978-0-345-80800-4

I can’t resist anything by Governor General’s Literary Award winner Miriam Toews. Through Yoli and her sister Elf, a suicidal, concert pianist, Toews blends humour with grief, to explore love, family and the intricacies of life. Another quintessentially Toews work, it is a delightful read.

Lila

Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)

ISBN 978-0-374-18761-3

I read Lila, by this Pulitzer prize winning author on the recommendation of my son. It is the story of migrant farm workers in the US Midwest and particularly of Lila, a stolen and abandoned child faced with starvation both because of poverty and from aloneness. I thoroughly enjoyed Lila, even though it is actually the third part of a trilogy. It isn’t necessary to have read the earlier parts to be consumed by Lila, but I now will go back and read the Pulitzer prize winning Gilead and Home.

OPERATION PAPERCLIP: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America

Annie Jacobsen (Little, Brown & Company, 2014)

ISBN: 978-0-316-22104-7

Another of my non-fiction reads was this expose of the Operation Paperclip by freelance journalist Annie Jacobsen. Little has been released about Operation Paperclip, the code name for the re-settlement of Nazi affiliated scientists in the US, but Jacobsen raises many ethical questions based on information gathered from court documents, family archives and some newly released information. I am sure there will be more to come on this series of events but Jacobsen’s presentation was certainly thought provoking.

Come Back

Rudy Wiebe (Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2014)

ISBN 978-0-345-80885-1

I love Canadian authors, and Rudy Wiebe delivers with this story of Hal, a retired professor who is grieving the loss of his wife. I know Edmonton well, and Wiebe’s work so the setting/author took on new meaning and probably influenced my selection. The main character,Hal, appeared as a child growing up in Wapiti, Saskatchewan in one of Wiebe’s earlier novels. We are reacquainted with him here, and meet his Dene friend Owl as he reflects on his life, his family and who he has become.

A sixth thought…

The Bone Clocks

David Mitchell (Alfred A Knopf Canada, 2014)

This was another recommendation from family. While sold as “drama” I would say that this work originating in the UK, might be a bit more fantasy than drama. It is not my typical favourite genre but it merits a mention having received both great and not-so-great reviews.   Maybe I enjoyed it because it was different. The tales of Holly Sykes did keep me immersed.

Mary-Jo Romaniuk was named head of U of M Libraries on October 1, 2014. From 2010 to 2012, Romaniuk served as acting chief librarian at the University of Alberta, where she held positions of increasing responsibility since 1997. Her main area of academic interest is leadership development in the library profession.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

Fidelio

Manitoba Opera presented Beethoven’s powerful liberation opera in November. It was a stirring performance, full of committed and amazing performances. The finale included the entire chorus, bolstered by about 50 former refugees. The presence of these refugees was incredibly moving and really brought home how relevant this opera, with its themes of oppression and freedom, still is.

Nick Cave, Jubilee Street

My husband is a huge Nick Cave fan, but I’ve always been a bit more on the fence about his music. We went to go see his movie, 20,000 nights on Earth, which I ended up loving and highly recommend. The movie ends with a stirring performance of Jubilee Street – this performance was definitely a highlight of the year for me. His use of texture, his sense of timing, the crescendo of sound and instruments – all of it was amazing.

Cluster Festival Pop-up dinner

The Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival‘s motto is “Boundless enthusiasm, endless possibility…”, and that sentiment was definitely on display at their festival last March. The highlight for me was the pop-up dinner. The food and wine were great, and the music thought-provoking and often surprising – XIE, U of M’s innovative electronic improv group, created an electronic soundtrack built solely from the sounds created by cutting vegetables and fruit – their knife skills scared me a bit, but the music was really interesting.

Corey Hamm – The People United Will Never be Defeated! (Redshift Records)

Corey Hamm, a professor at the School of Music at UBC, won the 2014 Western Canadian Music Award for best classical recording for this amazing CD. He plays with passion, virtuosity and intense commitment. Corey’s open heart and deep love of the music are clear in every minute of this recording. (You can stream the album below.)

Desautels Faculty of Music Homecoming Gala

Every September during Homecoming weekend, the performing faculty at the Desautels Faculty of Music perform in a Gala. Everyone wants to take part in this concert, so it’s always a long evening, full of inspiring, virtuosic, joyful performances that remind me of what amazing people I work with.

Bonus

I know this is supposed to be a list of my top 5 music events, but here is a bonus choice. The Watermelon Song, on Youtube. Watch it right now – you’ll be glad you did.

Upcoming concerts in 2015

WSO’s New Music Festival (January 31 – Feb. 6, 2015)

The festival is chock-full of performances by musicians associated with the University of Manitoba. Highlights for me are the performances by former student Sarah Kirsch, a new commission by colleague Örjan Sandred, a concert featuring some of Winnipeg’s amazing choirs, and the joy of going to concerts on the coldest days of the year.

Britten War Requiem (March 27 and 28, 2015)

The WSO, soloists, and two choirs are joining forces to perform Britten’s requiem, based in part on words by Wilfred Owens. I attended a performance of this work many years ago, and the deep emotions I felt at that concert have stayed with me until this day.

Eve Egoyan, piano – (February 26 and 27, 2015)

Groundswell is bringing this wonderful Canadian pianist to Winnipeg to perform two distinct recital programmes on back-to-back concerts. This doesn’t happen every day, and is something not to be missed.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

Recently my life has taken a surprising turn and I find myself a student again. As a fiction writer now in the process of taking courses to become a family therapist, most of the books I have gravitated towards this year are those that blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction. I have included four books from 2014 and one classic.

Detachment: An Adoption Memoir

Maurice Meirau (Freehand, 2014)

Meirau’s clean writing style, his depiction of his own weaknesses as a parent and husband and his exploration of his father’s war trauma history are the elements of this book that resonate. He wants to make a story coalesce out of his father’s past and his adopted sons’ present. He doesn’t quite succeed, but I think the raggedness or the “whole story” is a powerful and honest truth. [Read an excerpt here.]

All My Puny Sorrows

Miriam Toews (Knopf, 2014)

Toews writes what she calls fiction but makes no attempt to hide that the book is based on her sister’s battle with depression and her eventual suicide. Reading the book, I struggled with Miriam’s portrayal of the past once all hope is lost. I couldn’t help feeling that the narrator’s understanding of her sister was shaded by the fact of the irrevocable outcome. If her beloved sister’s depression had subsided over time, if an attempted treatment had helped, if her suicide attempt had failed, the inevitability of her death and the meaning of her life would all be different or at least allow for a greater range of possibility. The book is a valuable contribution to the discussion on what people need to endure living and the legal need for the right to die with dignity, but it is also an after the fact argument for the inevitability of the narrator’s sister’s suicide. The book denies the usual fictional possibilities of other (better or worse) outcomes. [Read an excerpt here.]

Lila

Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2014)

I haven’t finished reading this yet, but the first few chapters reveal that Marilynne Robinson is still able to create a world so completely her own, so beautifully and precisely drawn that it is utterly compelling, like a hypnotic dream. I am a cheerful atheist with no interest in being born again, but Marilynne Robinson’s prose, something she creates within a her own tightly-sealed Christian context, has the power to almost make me reconsider. [Read an excerpt here.]

Collected Poems: Mark Strand

(Knopf, 2014)

The great poet from P.E.I, Mark Strand, committed the heinous act of dying this year at the age of 80. I say heinous because I foolishly believed that this man who relentlessly stared down, scrutinized, feared, and faced mortality was a trickster poet whose language feats could outfox death. Strand’s poetry is so personal and so philosophical, so minimalist and so large.

One Classic:

Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy

Irvin Yalom (Penguin Books, 1989). This collection by existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom reads like the best fiction: Yalom’s empathetic imagination takes the reader to where his clients/characters live, struggle and sometimes learn. This book showed me that therapy and fiction writing are in so many ways the same craft with the same goals, struggles, rewards and risks. [Watch an interview with Irvin Yalom.]

Melissa Steele is a Winnipeg short story writer who teaches creative writing at the University of Manitoba. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Prairie Fire, Zygote and City Magazine. She is the author of two story collections, Donut Shop Lovers and Beautiful Girl Thumb, both from Turnstone Press.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

1. Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit by Marie Battiste. A powerful and informative book on why it is important for all levels of schooling — elementary to university and colleges — to undergo transformative change that focuses on sharing Indigenous knowledge and world views in all forms of learning and teaching. One of my favorite books.

More about the book

Drawing on treaties, international law, the work of other Indigenous scholars, and especially personal experiences, Marie Battiste documents the nature of Eurocentric models of education, and their devastating impacts on Indigenous knowledge. Chronicling the negative consequences of forced assimilation and the failure of current educational policies to bolster the social and economic conditions of Aboriginal populations, Battiste proposes a new model of education. The new model she advocates is based on her experiences growing up in a Mi’kmaw community, and the decades she has spent as a teacher, activist, and university scholar.

2. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King. An easy read yet a powerful one. I laughed and cried while reading this book. A must read for everyone.

More about the book

It won the 2012 RBC Taylor Prize National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. Here’s hte citation: Histories of North America’s Native Peoples abound, but few are as subversive, entertaining, well-researched, hilarious, enraging, and finally as hopeful as this very personal take on our long relationship with the “inconvenient” Indian. King dissects idealized myths (noble Hiawatha, servile Tonto, the Sixties nature guru) against the tragic backdrop of real Indians abused in mission schools, penned together on reserves, and bludgeoned by vicious or ham-fisted government policies. A sharp, informed eye is cast on Riel, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull, on the dark and tangled stories of Native land claims, on Alcatraz, Will Rogers (a Cherokee), and the maid on Land o’ Lakes butter; on Batoche, on Wounded Knee. In this thoughtful, irascible account, and in characteristically tricksterish mode, King presents a provocative alternative version of Canada’s heritage narrative.

3. Kiss of the Fur Queen by Thomson Highway. I read this book about 15 years ago and the beauty of the story remains fresh in my mind. I was emotionally moved by the fictitious story about the lives of two Cree brothers from Northern Manitoba. Touching, raw, real. I loved the journey.

More about the book

Writing in Quill & Quire, reviewer Suzanne Methot described Kiss of the Fur Queen this way:

Cree playwright/pianist Tomson Highway’s debut novel, is the story of champion dog-sled racer Abraham Okimasis and his sons Jeremiah, a pianist, and Gabriel, a dancer. As the brothers journey from northern Manitoba to residential school and then to Winnipeg, a mysterious trickster figure – the Fur Queen – plays witness to their lives. The resulting story is about sibling rivalry and sibling love, and the effects of re-education and religious conversion on one family’s existence.

In Cree cosmology, children choose their parents. Highway’s depiction of the brothers’ trapline births are among the most haunting and evocative pieces of writing to ever appear in Canadian literature. The playful yet hallowed tone of these early passages is pure magic.

It is impossible to dislike a book that brings a reader to tears (twice) by page 33.

4.  High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky by Joshua David and Robert Hammond. The High Line walkway is one of my favorite places to visit and when I read about the history of the High Line I was blown away. The book explains the long history of the High Line and how two local community organizers and residents of the area saved the space. It is a true testimony on effective community engagement, creating space, and land use planning.

More about the book

The High Line is among the most innovative urban reclamation projects in recent memory. The story of how it came to be is a remarkable one: two young citizens with no prior experience in planning and development collaborated with their neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders of burgeoning movements in horticulture and landscape architecture to create a park celebrated worldwide as a model for creatively designed and socially vibrant public space.

“High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky” tells the story of the project with more than 200 photographs documenting the High Line’s transformation and a narrative by Friends of the High Line co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond about how it all came to be.

5. A Room With a View by E.M. Forster. A classic love story.  Timeless.

More about the book

This 1908 novel is praised by readers and writers alike, and was adapted in 1985 into an award-winning film by Merchant-Ivory starring a radiant Helena Bonham Carter and the always-wondrous Maggie Smith. The novel opens in Florence (what’s not to like?), and follows Lucy Honeychurch’s awakening . Acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith loved the book so much that she gave an entire lecture on the novel, the 2003 Orange Word Lecture titled, “EM Forster’s Ethical Style: Love, Failure and the Good in Fiction. Here’s an excerpt from her Guardian published essay based on that lecture:

EM Forster’s A Room With A View was my first intimation of the possibilities of fiction: how wholly one might feel for it and through it, how much it could do to you. I felt it was very good and that the reading of it had done me some good. I loved it. I was too young, at 11, to realise serious people don’t speak of novels this way. Soon enough, though, I grew up and grew serious; I became intellectually responsive to the text. And as serious young adults, we are thrilled to be able to talk of theme, of the mechanics of plot and the vicissitudes of character. Maybe we continue this interest and take it further, deciding to study novels in earnest, or even teach them, review them, or write them.

A peculiar thing happens at this point. We find that our initial affective responses are no longer of interest to the literary community in which we find ourselves. We are as Heraclitus described us: “Estranged from that which is most familiar.” Suddenly this incommensurable “Love”, and this other, more vague surmise – that the novel we loved was not simply “good” but even represented a Good in our lives – these ideas grow shameful and, after some time, are forgotten entirely, along with the novel that first inspired them. For no sensation empirical as love can have any importance as a “response” to novels qua novels. Can it?

Deborah Young.

Deborah Young is executive lead, Indigenous achievement, at the U of M, and an alumna of the Faculty of Social Work.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

Occultation of star by asteroid

Occultation of star by asteroid observed at U of M observatory

A team of amateur astronomers at the Glenlea Astronomical Observatory south of Winnipeg managed to capture a video image of an asteroid passing in front of a star. The astronomical event, called an occultation, is rare and difficult to observe, and the astronomers’ ability to observe it required a great deal of skill — so much skill that an international astronomy magazine profiled their work online.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson visits U of M for first Canadian University appearance

Neil deGrasse Tyson, acclaimed astrophysicist and television personality, gave his first lecture at a Canadian university — the University of Manitoba — on March 13 to more than 3,000, rather raucous, people. The cheering when he came out on stage was similar to what you’d hear at a rock concert. Science is indeed cool.

A model rocket lifts off

Space Camp 2014

Tuesday, July 15 was an exciting afternoon at the 2014 Space Adventure Camp at the University of Manitoba as participants took to the skies with rockets and drones. Earlier in the week the Space Campers constructed model rockets which were sent soaring hundreds of meters into the air (with the assistance of a little rocket fuel).

David Barnard speaks at Magellan Aerospace

U of M enters partnership with Magellan Aerospace to build satellites

The Honourable Michelle Rempel, Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification has announced $2.4 million in support to the University of Manitoba towards establishing a world class satellite integration facility. The Magellan Aerospace / University of Manitoba Advanced Satellite Integration Facility (ASIF) will be used for research, development and the construction and testing of satellite components.

Emmanuel Rotimi (Timi) Ojo. // Photo Mike Latschislaw

Rotimi Ojo working with NASA on remote sensing of soil moisture, now on PhD research

“The timing is excellent, because NASA has begun work on a satellite that will take global soil moisture readings, and they’ve asked for my collaboration. Their satellite can only sense a few inches below the surface but I’ll take deeper readings for them to create a more complete picture.”

Our resident astronomy expert, Chris Rutkowski, has also collected some of the most incredible stories of space exploration of 2014. The final frontier was a fascinating place this past year.

SpaceX crash
A lot of hope and expectation has been placed on the commercialization of space. When SpaceX was to send its first payload to the International Space Station, this would have heralded the new era of space exploration and development. What will this mean to private spaceflight?

New Horizons spacecraft now nearing Pluto
This spacecraft was sent to Pluto when it was still considered a planet! It’s been ten years en route and will in a matter of about eight months give our first good look at what was once our most distant (but still not an exoplanet) Solar System companion.

Orion spacecraft successful test flight
NASA’s replacement heavy-lifting body finally completed its first test flight. After the Space Shuttle program wound down, NASA needed something for our next step into the universe. This is the spacecraft that will be used when humans head for Mars in about 15 to 20 years.

Rosetta’s Philae Lander touches down on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
When Rosetta landed on a comet, it marked a significant milestone in that it was the first landing on an astronomical body that wasn’t a planet or moon. Sure, it bounced and ended up tucked underneath an overhanging rock so that its batteries died two days after it got there, but it was still a remarkable feat of engineering.

Two astronomy-related films nominated for Golden Globes (Interstellar and Theory of Everything)
For Hollywood to have two astronomy-films in theatres in time for the major awards (including the Oscars) is pretty rare. Interstellar is about humans’ eventual destiny in space, whereas The Theory of Everything is the biopic of Stephen Hawking, the guy who imagined the universe.

Chris Rutkowski is a Canadian science writer and educator with a background in astronomy who’s been studying reports of UFOs and writing about his investigations and research since the mid-1970s.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

President and Vice-Chancellor David Barnard’s 2014 reading list

I see that in this past year I read a lot of poetry — starting early in the year with (1) Aimless Love by Billy Collins, moving on to the Collected Poems of my friend Micheal O’Siadhail (which was a rereading), then everything I could find by Frank X. Walker (having first been introduced to his Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride by a colleague a couple of years ago) and ending late in the year with The Best American Poetry 2013, edited by Denise Duhamel, the most recent volume in the long-running series edited by David Lehman, with other things interspersed along the way.

I also made a second attempt to read Jill Paton Walsh’s continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy Sayers. I came to Sayers by way of The Nine Tailors, recommended by a member of my advisory committee when I was a Ph.D. student, and then consumed the Wimsey series and her other books. When it appeared some years ago, I tried (2) Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, with Paton Walsh building on some material left by Sayers, and moved on to one or two of the subsequent books that Paton Walsh produced by herself, but had not developed my usual compulsive urge to read them all. In the summer I decided that I might have misjudged, tried again this year and found them pleasurable in a different way than I had enjoyed Sayers herself, and so read the rest of them.

Reading the delightful (3) Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language by Jila Ghomeshi, our faculty colleague here at UM, provided an occasion for me to ask for Jila’s views on some of the patterns of English usage that irk me the most — for various reasons that she did not find compelling!

I met Northrop Frye when I was a student, though as a computer science major I was never in any of his classes. Over the years I have read a number of his books (sometimes twice) but this year decided to read (4) The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye and, as usual, found him to be stimulating and a bit intimidating.

I read history usually because specific books are recommended to me by several friends who read much more of it. (5) Warlords: Borden, Mackenzie King and Canada’s World Wars by Tim Cook is an example of such a book. It broadened my perspective on this country and on the political complexity of leading in such stressful times.

The President’s Bookshelf is an occasionally appearing column by U of M President and Vice-Chancellor David Barnard.

>> See more Best of 2014 lists here.

Liaison librarian for history Kyle Feenstra’s Top 5 History Books for 2014

Deciding on the Top 5 History Books for 2014 turned out to be a nearly impossible task so instead I give you my top 5 suggestions for holiday reading compiled from a list of books that I purchased for Elizabeth Dafoe Library in the past year.

The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War

Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2013)

D 511 M257 2013

Margaret MacMillan’s book stands out as one of the important titles published at the centenary of World War I. The renowned scholar examines a complex array of contributing factors that set the stage for the Great War, with particular attention to decisions made by Europe’s leading statesmen. Margaret MacMillan will deliver the CBC Massey Lectures in 2015.

Noble Illusions: Young Canada Goes to War

Stephen Dale (Fernwood Publishing 2014)

P96.W352 C3 2014

Our memory of First World War is one of contrasting narratives, the patriotic valour of a generation of young men and women set against the senseless atrocities of trench warfare. In Noble Illusions, Stephen Dale critiques pop-culture propaganda used to persuade young Canadians to enlist in one of history’s most brutal wars.

Congo: The Epic History of a People

David van Reybrouk (Harper Collins, 2014)

DT 652 R4913 2014

A new English translation of van Reybrouk’s book sheds light on the Congo’s colonial history and its ongoing struggle to establish political stability and lasting peace. The book is exceptionally researched with the fluidity of a well written novel.

The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush

David Igler (Oxford University Press, 2013)

DU 20 145 2013

David Igler brings together the competing interests of nations and indigenous peoples to tell a modern history of the world’s largest ocean. The author illustrates how the interplay of scientific exploration, imperialism, trade expeditions, and the harvesting of marine life resulted in dramatic transformations of the commerce, cultures, and ecology of the Pacific.

Paris Blues: African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920-1960

Andy Fry (University of Chicago Press, 2014)

ML 3059 F7 F79 2014

Andy Fry offers an alternative view of the history of African American jazz music in Paris. Fry’s book argues that the widely accepted view of Paris as an egalitarian refuge for jazz icons, such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, is an oversimplified portrayal of race relations in France in the early 20^th Century.

Kyle Feenstra is the history librarian at Elizabeth Dafoe Library. He is currently researching information literacy instruction and the role of ICTs in development. When he is not working he reads books on African History, collects analogue cameras, and enjoys cycling, kayaking and fine scotch.

Alien head (Magog), c. 2000 from the Allan Eastman fonds

Alien head (Magog)

Allan Eastman, an alumnus of the U of M [BA/1971], was executive producer and director for many popular television series, including Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. He also directed episodes of many popular television series including: The Littlest Hobo, Road to Avonlea, Beachcombers, Sliders, Star Trek, and many others. This alien head was likely a model or prop designed for Andromeda. The fonds was donated to U of M Archives & Special Collections by Allan Eastman in 2005.

Silverware bent by Joe A. Nuzum from the Alexander Imich fonds

Spoon bent by Joe A. Nuzum

Alexander Imich had been interested in the paranormal since childhood. By 13, Imich was dabbling with table tilting and with Ouija boards.The eleventh series of the Imich fonds contains various pieces of silverware which were [psychically] bent by Joe A. Nuzum. The collection was donated to the U of M Archives & Special Collections by Alex Imich in 2012. Imich passed away on June 8, 2014, shortly after being named the oldest man in the world at the age of 111 in April 2014.

Hockey stick inscribed with winners from 1931 World Championships from the Arther T. Puttee fonds

Hockey stick from 1931 World Championships

Arthur Tyrell “Art” Puttee was an ice hockey goaltender and an engineering student at the U of M. Puttee and the team known as the “University of Manitoba Grads” went on a 25-game tour of Europe that included games in London, Berlin, Prague, St. Moritz, Hamburg, and Paris. The tour involved representing Canada at the 1931 World Championships in Krynica, Poland. The team won the world title in a 2-0 final game against the Unites States (represented by the Boston Hockey Club) in the 21st game of the tour, and was undefeated in all of those 21 games. Rob Puttee, Art Puttee’s son, donated the stick in 2006.

Gay & Lesbian archives t-shirt collection

Gay and lesbian t-shirts

This t-shirt collection from the Manitoba Gay and Lesbian Archives contains 33 shirts, dating from 1984 to 1997 adorned with LGBTIQ motifs and slogans as “Out on the Streets/ August 2nd 1987,” “THE PAINTED LADIES” and “KILLER DYKE.” The fonds was donated by Ryan Schultz to the U of M Archives & Special Collection in 2008.

Student Scrapbook from the Margaret Oliver fonds

Margaret Oliver scrapbook

The Margaret Oliver fonds contains a scrapbook which covers events during Margaret Oliver’s (nee Hammett) academic years from the end of grade 11 (1944) through her second year in a post-graduate laboratory technician program, as well as a few items in the years following (until 1956), most of which took place at the U of M. What’s unusual about this scrapbook is that it contains, beyond the usual dance tickets, ski club passes and floral corsage remnants, some Faculty of Science pins, earrings, rings and a piece of brightly-coloured plastic used in one of the science labs!

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Faculty of Arts graduate Alexa Yakubovich was announced as the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship for 2015. Yakubovich has done undergraduate and postgraduate research in a variety of fields, including gender studies, belief systems, cancer, heart disease and HIV/AIDS. She is currently working with Katherine Starzyk of the Social Justice Laboratory at the U of M and with the Centre for Human Rights Research on strategies to improve water and sanitation services for First Nations in Canada. She is the 98^th U of M student to receive the prestigious award.

When she returns to Oxford this winter, her focus will be on improving child well-being in socially disadvantaged communities, researching how social disadvantage compounds child health problems and studying HIV-positive adolescents in low-income South African communities.

Two first-year students were awarded the Schulich Leader Scholarship in 2014. Kailee Rutherford and Alexander Czehryn are known for their unshakable positive spirit, their high academic standings and for inspiring others to give back.

Rutherford was diagnosed with cancer in her Grade 11 year. In the face of this challenge, she maintained excellent grades, became an ambassador for the Terry Fox foundation and was elected student council president. Her friends and family were amazed at her positive spirit and how she turned heartbreaking experiences into her inspiration to become a doctor and help save young lives.

Czehryn also dreams of saving lives. He says much of his inspiration comes from watching his father cope with hemophilia. After witnessing how research dramatically improved his dad’s treatment options., Czehryn’s long-term goal is to be a tissue engineer so that he can help others with conditions similar to his dad’s. His 99 per cent average upon graduation from high school suggests that he has the potential to achieve his dreams.

Graduate student Kathryn Marcynuk was announced as the recipient of a 2014 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her research in electrical and computer engineering aims to improve fetal electrocardiograms (ECG) recordings by separating out the numerous background noises in mother-and-fetus ECGs, in order to help reduce incorrect diagnoses and unnecessary medical intervention.

Erika Bockstael, a PhD candidate in natural resources and environmental management, was announced as one of the recipients of the coveted Trudeau Scholarship. This is the most prestigious doctoral award for the social sciences and humanities in Canada. Bockstael’s research focuses on the inclusive and participatory governance of coastal resources among the group of Ciaçara, a mixed-heritage traditional people, and among people with disabilities, in Partay, Brazil.