Cornell’s Free Summer Lecture Series Opens

For Rachel Dickinson, everything’s fodder for a story–from life in the little village of Freeville to being trapped beneath a volcanic ash cloud. Join Dickinson on Wednesday, July 7, at 7:30 p.m. in Cornell University’s Alice Statler Auditorium for an illustrated talk about her life as a travel writer–from climbing the hill to the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, and photographing walrus in the Bering Sea, to playing name-the-capitals-of-the-states with an overconfident Irishman in a pub in Ireland. She’ll also talk about juggling her family responsibilities with a serious case of wanderlust. Dickinson has been freelancing for about a decade and has traveled in China, Tibet, Siberia, South Africa, and South America in search of stories. Her most recent book is Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), in which she follows a hardcore falconer through a hunting season in central Wyoming. Her travel pieces have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic, National Geographic Traveler, Audubon, and in Smithsonian’s online magazine, Smithsonian.com.This is the first lecture in Cornell’s free summer events series, which includes Tuesday night performances at the Schwartz Center, Wednesday night lectures at the Statler, and Friday night concerts on the Arts Quad. Other speakers in the lecture series include James B. Maas on July 14, Patricia A. Moore on July 21, and Kenneth A. Blanchard on July 28.Parking for the lectures is available in the garage on Hoy Road and along Garden Avenue. For more information about summer events, which are sponsored by Cornell’s School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, call 607.255.4987, e-mail cusce@cornell.edu, or visit www.summer.cornell.edu/events.