By ten minutes to seven, Fuqua’s Geneen Auditorium buzzes with preparation. Organizers shoo away early comers while the tech crew repeatedly tests the video feed and microphones, consulting over headsets. Each of the 450 seats has a program on it; many also sport a Thunderstick, a hollow tube for claquers to pound on or hoot through. The crowd will be big—and noisy. Welcome to the 13th Annual Duke Start-Up Challenge Grand Finale.
One hears, on campus and beyond, a longing for more systemic innovation in secondary education—change that could perhaps build on the success of Duke’s Talent Identification Program (TIP).
Herbie Hancock uses his hands and feet when he talks. When he says the word guitar, his hands strum an imaginary Fender. When he says record, his finger makes a needle and spins. Meanwhile he paces, gravitating back toward the piano keyboard again and again, though he doesn't touch it. He walks partway around the big Steinway grand. Lightly strokes its raised lid. Sits on the bench. Home base.
Hunting Midnight
By Richard Zimler '77.
Delacorte Press, 2003.
512 pages. $24.95.
Last of the Amazons
By Steven Pressfield '65.
Bantam Dell Publishing Group, 2003.
416 pages. $13.95, paper.
You might imagine that running a university press would be like playing the stock market, angling for the big win: You patiently invest in scholars, waiting for the one book that will take the intellectual marketplace by storm, dictate a new wave of public policy, or anticipate the next Big Idea.
Four hundred rapt listeners in Reynolds Auditorium hold their breath. The luminous personalities of the players flicker gradually through the great nexus of sound: the violist hearty and good-natured, the cellist insistent, one violinist passionately partisan, the other calmly engaged.
