Author Anne Kreamer to Lead Discussion of “Emotion in the New Workplace” at Cazenovia Forum

Anne Kreamer

CAZENOVIA, NY – How people cope with emotional issues at their jobs will be the topic of the next Cazenovia Forum lecture, as author Anne Kreamer discusses her latest book It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace on Friday, May 4, at 7pm at Cazenovia College’s Catherine Cummings Theatre on Lincklaen Street.

The event is free of charge and no reservations are required. A reception will follow the talk. More information can be found at www.cazenoviaforum.com.
To research her book, Kreamer spent two years travelling around the country speaking with experts and working Americans about the feelings and emotions that people experience at their jobs.

“I made a lot of discoveries, such as the fact that a lot more men cry on the job than you’d think, saleswomen make more money during the ovulation phase of their cycles, and the cultivation of positive emotions isn’t some Pollyanna myth but a scientifically proven tool to better health and problem solving,” she says. “Indeed, the more of your authentic emotional self you bring to work happier and more effective you will be.”

Kreamer is also the author of the book Going Gray: What I Learned About Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters, which she developed from a feature she did for More magazine about the process, when she was 49, of letting her hair grow out to show her natural gray. In it, she skillfully uses the experience to explore thoughts about aging and femininity.

Her upcoming book, Plan C, is about the unprecedented professional adaptability required of everyone in the 21st century.

Kreamer has worked as a columnist for Fast Company and Martha Stewart Living, and is a frequent blogger on HBR.org. Previously, she was Executive Vice President and Worldwide Creative Director for the television channels Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. She holds a B.A. from Harvard College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

The Cazenovia Forum is a 501 (c) 3, not-for-profit organization established in 2006 by community members focused on promoting the understanding and discussion of national and international issues. By organizing and underwriting lecture events featuring nationally-known experts, the group intends to further Cazenovia’s commitment to knowledge-seeking and community involvement.

It takes all kinds of people to make a world.

Caz Forum – David Kaczynski

6 April 2012

by Jessica Green

Jessica Green is a sophomore at Cazenovia College majoring in English and Communications.

 

That’s what David Kaczynski told the audience at the latest Cazenovia Forum lecture about his brother Ted, the infamous “Unabomber” of the 1980s and 90s. Kaczynski gave a compelling and moving account of his realization that his brother was the Unabomber and his painful decision to turn him in.

More than 220 people attended the talk at the Catherine Cummings Theater on March 30^th.

The name “Unabomber” was given to Ted by the FBI after he started mailing and hand-delivering homemade bombs to various companies and people he felt were “evil” for promoting the use of technology. In his 17 year bombing campaign, Ted Kaczynski killed 3 people and injured 23 others.

David Kaczynski told an intimate story of his journey through this terrible time, in a way no news source could get close to giving. Signs of Ted’s mental illness were evident even in childhood, Kacynski said, although not recognized by the family. For one, Ted had a fear of abandonment; their mother told David to never abandon his brother. David always complied, even when he got married, but he said he felt like he was leaving his brother behind.

Ted Kaczynski had a successful academic career, until at age 28, he suddenly moved to Montana and began to live as a recluse, sending David letters that were increasingly delusional, reflecting growing anger and disengagement. He also sent a long letter to his parents telling them they were bad parents and neglected him. Family members weren’t the only ones receiving strange letters. In 1995 he started sending letters to former victims and certain media outlets. He outlined his future plans and  demanded that his 35,000 word essay Industrial Society and It’s Future (the FBI called it the “Unabomber’s Manifesto”) be printed, verbatim, in a major newspaper or journal. He got his wish and, on September 19, 1995, the manifesto was published in the New York Times and The Washington Post.

David recalled the moment when he came home and saw his wife sitting with a newspaper and Ted’s letters, comparing the words. He soon realized that his older brother was the Unabomber.  As much as he didn’t want to abandon him, he had to think about all of the lives that could be lost if his brother was to continue. He went to the FBI and turned his brother in. He told the Forum audience he thought that telling his mother was going to be hard, but she simply hugged him and gave him a kiss.

Ted Kaczynski was arrested by the FBI in April 1996, a live bomb ready to be mailed under his bed, and charged with capital murder.  It was only after a two-year campaign by David and his family and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia that Ted was spared the death penalty.  He is now serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

David Kaczynski is now an activist against the death penalty, serving as executive director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. (NYADP).  He said he sees a moral contradiction in the death penalty and is convinced that there are more constructive ways to prevent violence than by using it.  At NYADP, he led a successful campaign to end New York’s capital punishment system.  He has since focused the organization’s work on promoting community initiatives that address root causes of violence and provide assistance to those directly affected by it. NYADP’s current program, Limits to Loyalty, introduces young people to the notion of responsibility for countering violent activities.

Kaczynski was introduced at the Forum by Janice Greishaber Geddes, whose daughter was murdered by an early release parolee. Her work to reform the parole system led to the 1998 Parole Reform Act know as “Jenna’s Law.”

The next lecture will take place on Friday May 4, at 7:00pm, with Anne Kreamer, author of It’s Always Personal. She will be talking about Workplace Politics.

Anti-Violence Activist David Kaczynski to Speak at Cazenovia Forum March 30

David Kaczynski

CAZENOVIA, NY – David Kaczynski, the executive director of New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NYADP) and the brother of so-called “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski, will deliver the next Cazenovia Forum lecture, to be held Friday, March 30, at 7pm at Cazenovia College’s Catherine Cummings Theatre on Lincklaen Street.

The event is free of charge and no reservations are required.  A reception will follow the talk.  More information can be found at www.cazenoviaforum.com

At NYADP, Kaczynski led a successful statewide campaign to end New York’s capital punishment system, and has since focused his organization’s work on promoting community initiatives that address the root causes of violence and that provide assistance to those directly affected by it.

Theodore Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 after David and his wife Linda Patrik approached the FBI with their suspicions that he might be involved in a series of bombings that caused three deaths and numerous injuries over 17 years.  It was Linda who first suspected David’s brother as the Unabomber, and she pressed him to search for the truth after the Unabomber’s “Manifesto” was published in The Washington Post.

Despite a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, Theodore was charged capitally and avoided the death penalty only after his family waged a two-year campaign to convince the US Justice Department that his delusions had precipitated his violent behavior.

Subsequently, David Kaczynski formed close friendships with Gary Wright, who was nearly killed by one of his brother’s bombs, and with Bill Babbitt, who saw his own brother executed 18 years after he turned him in to the Sacramento police. A documentary film,  An American Life: The Journey from Violence to Hope, featuring the three friends and Bud Welch, whose daughter Julie was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, is currently under production.

Prior to joining NYADP, Kaczynski was assistant director of the Equinox shelter for runaway and homeless youth in Albany, where he counseled and advocated for troubled, neglected and abused youth in the Capital District.

Introducing Kaczynski and participating in the audience question and answer session will be Janice Greishaber Geddes of Manlius, whose advocacy and activism following the 1996 murder of her daughter by a parolee led to the enactment in New York of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1998, also known as “Jenna’s Law.”

 

http://nyadpjournaldotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/nyadp-journal-winter-2012.pdf

Click on the link above to read the latest edition of the NYADP Journal, which includes articles, stories and poems that cover the broad range of NYADP’s post abolition mission and work.