Hunter Redux

Twenty-seven years ago McGraw-Hill threw me a book party to celebrate the publication of "How To Raise Your I.Q. By Eating Gifted Children, " at the Hunter Elementary School For Gifted Children. This year I have come full circle and returned to Hunter as the Director of The Writing Center at Hunter College CE. That CE by the way stands for Continuing Education something you all need if you are over five and a college graduate. With that in mind I have created a spectacular array of cultural offerings for anyone who has a scintilla of intellectual curiosity left and have even made the lectures and talks free so that if you have been affected by the dive-bombing economy you can still afford to attend them. Courses I'm afraid do cost a bit, though they are reasonable considering that we attract the creme de la creme of professional instructors. You can take a memoir course for example with Erica Jong this Spring or a course in column-writing with Daphne Merkin, or some exciting literature courses, self-defense, Abraham Lincoln, what have you. In addition to our Best-Selling Author Series beginning with Susan Cheever on January 25th, and continuing with Joseph O'Neill, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Francine Prose, and Jane Smiley, we are beginning a new series entitled "Great Thinkers of Our Time." Freeman Dyson, a futurist and one of the legendary mathematicians and physicists of the twentieth century who worked with Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman and has for years been a senior member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton will be visiting us in April. Frank Wilczeck a nobel-laureate in physics and another of the world's great minds will be speaking in March, as will Harvard's Howard Gardner, popularizer of MI (multiple intelligence) theory, and Carol Gilligan a great novelist and pioneer in woman's studies. We at the Writing Center are very proud of what we have begun at Hunter College and look forward to welcoming all of you to our programs. In most cases there will also be free refreshments and a book-signing. You can go on the web to the Hunter College Continuing Education listings and click on Writing Center. There I will be waiting for you, anxious to meet you. . . or go to my website lewisfrumkes.com and learn more than you ever wanted to know about me until you are nauseated. And for my money while things may look daunting and even grim around the world I have lived long enough to know that somehow we always manage to endure the scary and hard times and go on to enjoy the good times. I suspect that will happen again. . . so keep a smile on your face. Come to Hunter, enjoy our programs and say hello. You will feel better. . .