Roundup

OU students to dance for a cause

OU Dance Marathon benefiting Children's Medical Research Institute, the Oklahoma City affiliate of Children's Miracle Network, will be 5 p.m. Feb. 22 to 5 a.m. Feb. 23 at the Houston Huffman Center on the OU Campus. This year OU students hope to raise $50,000 for Children's Miracle Network.

This year's Dance Marathon will include free food and entertainment, prizes and a children's carnival. Individuals may attend to support the volunteers and meet some of the "Miracle Kids."

Dance Marathon is a Children's Miracle Network program started in 1994 and is the largest student-run philanthropic fund raising event in Oklahoma.

"Dance Marathon raises awareness among our student body as well as in the surrounding community about Children's Miracle Network and the opportunities that individuals have to support children who are in need of our medical care within the state of Oklahoma," said Amanda Holloway, CAC Dance Marathon Chair.

For more information about Dance Marathon, call Holloway at 214-803-3114.

One-woman show tells story of Victorian scientist

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History will feature a free public performance of "Blue Lias, or, the Fish Lizard's Whore," a one-woman show by playwright and performance artist Claudia Stevens 7 p.m. Tuesday.

The performance is co-sponsored by the SNOMNH with University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences departments of Zoology, Botany / Microbiology and Religious Studies program. The performance will take place in the museum's Kerr Auditorium.

"Blue Lias, or, the Fish Lizard's Whore" is Claudia Stevens' newest one-person play in which Stevens performs as actor, keyboardist and singer, with music composed by Allen Shearer (Rome Prize winner).

"Blue Lias" is set in the present within an imaginary convention of geologists. The audience is involved in the action, taking on the role of scientists at the convention who are being entertained by a play about accomplished Victorian-era fossil hunter Mary Anning, who discovered the first Plesiosaurus fossils in 1823.

Through musical and dramatic performance, and using letters and impressions by contemporaries, Stevens enriches her depiction of complex and significant characters and issues in the history of science. Allen Shearer's delightful incidental music and visual representations of fossil dinosaurs enhance the play further.

"Blue Lias, or, the Fish Lizard's Whore" is free and open to the public. The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is located at Chautauqua Avenue and Timberdell Road on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus.

Additional information about this and other programs at the SNOMNH is available on the Web at www.snomnh.ou.edu, or by calling 325-4712.

Geographer, land-use planner to discuss sustainability in the great plains at OU

The use of an ecosystem to satisfy current needs without compromising those of future generations is the topic of a free public lecture scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday on the University of Oklahoma campus.

Deborah Popper, a geographer at City University of New York, and Frank Popper, a land-use planner at Rutgers University, who invented the concept of the Buffalo Commons, meaning restoring Plains land to native habitat, assert that it is necessary to aim for radical changes in land-use practices in the Plains states, including Oklahoma.

They believe that Oklahomans should think in terms of sustainability and, in particular, respond to the environmental concerns created by oil and gas booms and busts and agricultural practices that have left depleted water supplies, overgrazed lands and depopulated small towns.

During their lecture, titled "The Buffalo Commons in the 21st Century," which will be held in the David L. Boren Auditorium in the National Weather Center, the Poppers will explore current conditions and future directions of agricultural, energy and environmental conditions in the United States' Great Plains.

A question-and-answer session will follow the lecture, and refreshments will be served at 5 p.m. in the National Weather Center atrium. The lecture is offered through the university's "Dream Course" program, which gives OU students the opportunity to learn from top national and international experts in a particular field.

In addition, a President's Roundtable Dinner featuring the Poppers and designed for OU students is scheduled for Tuesday at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.

For more information on the lecture, please contact Fred Shelley, professor and chairman of the Department of Geography at OU, at 325-5325. For more information on the President's Roundtable Dinner, call the Office of Special Events at 325-3784.

-- Transcript Staff