Macky

Hot Pepper

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 17:51:00 +0000

Hot Pepper Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/01/2016 - 10:51

Eric Gershon

At Macky, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor walks the talk

The justice confessed: She’s not one for sitting.

“I was called by my mother ‘aji’ — hot pepper,” Sonia Sotomayor told a Macky Auditorium audience Sept. 2. “I’ve gotten a lot older, but I still can’t sit still.”

So, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice said, she planned to get up, walk the aisles and answer questions while shaking hands. It would make her security detail anxious.

“Their job is to protect me — not from you, from me,” she tactfully told the chuckling audience.

Sotomayor made several appearances in Colorado leading up to Labor Day, culminating in a series of public and invitation-only events at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ. Her Macky talk was the fifth John Paul Stevens Lecture hosted by Colorado Law School’s Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law. White (Econ’38) was a Supreme Court justice from 1962 to 1993.

Initially from the stage, Sotomayor — now more than seven years into her term but still one of the newest justices and, at 62, youngest — responded to questions posed by CU Law professor Melissa Hart. Then Sotomayor made a long, slow stroll around the center section seats, talking as she went.

She touched on influential books in her life (the Bible, Don Quixote, Lord of the Flies), memorable cases and her own stubbornness. She meditated on judges’ compulsion for consistency, the psychological gravity of working on the nation’s court of last resort — and the imperative of decisiveness amid the law’s ambiguity.

“You’re not very valuable to people if you can’t make up your mind,” she said.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

At Macky, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor walks the talk.

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Mr. Apple Returns to CU-Boulder

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 20:48:00 +0000

Mr. Apple Returns to CU-Boulder Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/01/2016 - 14:48

Eric Gershon

Steve Wozniak’s mind is a busy place, and it moves very, very fast. The man himself can struggle to keep up.

But the Apple co-founder isn’t too proud to ask for help reorienting himself after an enthusiastic digression: More than once during an April 4 visit to campus, he asked his interviewers, “So, what was the question?”

In a nearly 90-minute appearance on the first day of the 68th Conference on World Affairs, Wozniak (ElEngr ex’72, HonDocSci’ 89) addressed a dizzying array of topics: Bob Dylan, self-driving cars, primary education, robots, jokes in Japanese, the A-plus he got in “Introduction to Computers” at CU, his weakness for Apple’s App Store and (of course) his early days with fellow Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

The Woz also volunteered his personal equation for happiness: “H = f-cubed: food, fun, friends.”

Wozniak reconfirmed a central rumor about his year as a CU-Boulder student, as a freshman in 1968-69: Yes, he did unwittingly run up an astonishing bill for the university through heavy use of CU’s early computing equipment.

But there was nothing clandestine about his activities, he said: “I ran them under my own matriculation number.”

Still, Wozniak suggested that his extracurricular computing adventures were a reason he didn’t return to campus for sophomore year: “I was afraid to go back.”

In 1969 Wozniak returned to California and within a decade had invented the Apple I and, with Jobs, co-founded Apple.

Enthusiastic, voluble and seemingl y unfiltered, Wozniak took questions on stage from two student interviewers, Briana Johnson (Engr’16) and Anneliese Wilson (Anth’16).

He recalled CU and Boulder fondly, noting that a trip to Boulder as a high school senior was his first outside California and that CU was the only university where he sought admission.

“This campus has meant so much to me in my life,” he said. “…I spoke of it so highly that two of my own children went here.”

Read a longer version of this article.

Steve Wozniak on stage at Macky, live, unplugged and unfiltered

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'Hanging Out' with Snowden

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 23:40:43 +0000

'Hanging Out' with Snowden Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/22/2016 - 16:40

Eric Gershon

Edward Snowden talked about secrets a lot during a live video appearance at CU-Boulder Feb. 16, but he didn’t give up many of his own.

The former National Security Agency contractor — who in 2013 leaked a vast collection of documents about mass surveillance of U.S. citizens by the federal government — demurred Tuesday when asked which Presidential candidate he favors.

But Snowden declared he’s at peace with the possibility his actions could lead him to prison and said he has achieved his primary goal.

“I set out to let the public have the information they should always have had…,” he said of millions of classified government documents he disclosed, revealing the nature and vast extent of federal surveillance of Americans. “Once that was done, my mission was accomplished, my work was done.”

He also said: “If I end up in Guantanamo…I can live with that.”

Snowden has been living in exile in Russia since August 2013, when the Russian government gave him asylum. The U.S. Justice Department has charged him with espionage.

From Russia, Snowden addressed the CU-Boulder audience live via Google Hangouts, appearing on a giant video screen suspended over the Macky Auditorium stage. The event was sponsored by CU-Boulder’s student-run Distinguished Speakers Board and moderated by Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who teaches at Harvard Law School.

Variously hailed as a civil liberties hero and condemned as a traitor, Snowden’s disclosures have embarrassed the U.S. and allied governments, spurred intense discussions about privacy and other civil liberties, and prompted changes to federal conduct.

He found a friendly reception at Macky, where the capacity crowd cheered him repeatedly, sometimes at length.

The audience, dense with students, was so eager to hear directly from Snowden that some heckled Suskind for interrupting with his own long-winded questions.

“Let him speak,” one young woman shouted out to applause.

Snowden, 32, sat before a dark backdrop with nothing more visible behind him. He wore a dark shirt and sport coat, eyeglasses and ear buds.

Over the course of nearly 90 minutes, he touched on a wide range of topics, including his motives for exposing government secrets, his thoughts about the ramifications for society and for himself and technology as an “amplifier of power.”

He also addressed his close collaboration with journalists, the long history of rebellion in America and the proliferation of government secrets, which can sometimes be necessary, he allowed, but only in a “transient” way.

Besides allowing himself a few broad, shy smiles in response to heavy applause, Snowden maintained a serious attitude, even when the moderator tried to set him up for a joke.

Suskind at one point asked Snowden about HBO comedian John Oliver’s suggestion, in a previous interview with Snowden, that the main reason most people care about government monitoring of private communications is the fear their “naked selfies” might be exposed. But Snowden didn’t take the bait, and simply addressed the matter of why people should care.

When Suskind tried again, saying that 330 million Americans represented “a lot of naked selfies,” Snowden again opted for a sober response.

“People go… ‘I don’t have anything to hide…’” he said. “That’s like saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”

In the event’s closing moments, Suskind prompted a final burst of applause. Saying the event had “struck a blow for the First Amendment,” he encouraged the crowd to cheer so loud that “Ed could hear it in Moscow.”

The cheer went up. Then the screen went dark and Edward Snowden was gone.

Photo by Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado

Edward Snowden appears at Macky (by video).

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A Century of Macky

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:00:00 +0000

A Century of Macky Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/01/2010 - 00:00

Silvia Pettem

Andrew Macky

As Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i on Dec. 7, 1941, CU-Boulder President Robert L. Stearns called an emergency meeting with students in Macky Auditorium. Thousands of miles away from the sounds of sirens, screams and explosions, Stearns announced to an unsettled student body there would be no change of schedule during final exams.

“Just do the best possible,” he said as he stood before the students in the grandiose auditorium, “and mutter
a prayer.”

The next day, the United States declared war on Japan resulting in its entry into World War II.

For 100 years Macky Auditorium has played a central role on campus as host to emergency campus meetings, commencements, political protests, music concerts, academic departments and beyond. Poet Robert Frost and the Dalai Lama have spoken there while singers like Neil Young have performed lively concerts.

Yet, in some ways, it’s a miracle the building exists. Andrew Macky, the man who left his fortune to construct the auditorium, never received a college education, much less attended CU.

Banking on others

Students gather in front of Macky in 1916, five years before President James H. Baker held a building dedication ceremony. In his speech Baker emphasized how the university had grown from a smattering of chicken coops, pig pens and enclosed pastures to a series of “modern” structures that had attracted a much larger student body. Photos University of Colorado at Boulder, University Archives, University Museum Photograph Collection, Charles Snow Collection, University Images Collection

A New York native, Macky came west with a group of Wisconsin prospectors to follow the lure of gold, arriving in Boulder in 1859 when the newly founded supply town was still part of Nebraska Territory. Instead of hitting pay dirt, Macky banked on the wealth of others by organizing First National Bank and becoming its president.

After the university football team suffered a discouraging defeat by Nebraska in 1903, he commented to a Colorado senator that he would “do something for the boys.” What he did was designate $300,000 in his will for the construction of an auditorium. When he died in 1907 at the age of 73, Macky was Boulder’s richest resident and a loyal supporter of CU. To honor his bequest, grateful regents passed a resolution to annually place a wreath of flowers on his grave in Boulder’s Columbia Cemetery.

CU President James H. Baker contributed to the auditorium’s design by challenging the architectural firm of Gove and Walsh to come up with “something different,” harmonizing elements of European buildings Baker admired. Despite the university’s outward optimism and enthusiasm, getting the building off the ground proved to be an uphill battle. Macky’s adopted daughter contested his will, and intermittent litigation interrupted construction for years.

Construction formally began in fall 1909. A year later CU faculty, students, alumni and invited guests gathered north of Old Main on a windy day to hear Colorado Gov. John F. Shafroth and Baker speak at the cornerstone-laying ceremony. A newspaper reporter predicted the auditorium would be a “splendid building” and dutifully noted the assortment of items placed in the box inserted into the cavity of the cornerstone. All eyes focused on Masonic Grand Lodge members who followed their traditional ritualistic ceremony, hoisting the stone into place and consecrating it with corn, wine and oil — symbols of prosperity, health and peace.

Dean Antoinette Bigelow later noted, however, that “mostly what we did was fight the wind that blew that morning so menacingly across the lake and over the little bare hillside that one wondered whether even a building could stand there long.”

By 1912 the shell of the auditorium was complete and Baker, followed by CU President Livingston Farrand, worked from a makeshift office within the building. Wooden benches were installed in 1914 in time for that year’s commencement. Then the lawsuits resumed, and the interior remained unfinished. Even so, in 1919 John Philip Sousa and his band gave a rousing performance to an enthusiastic crowd. Finally, in 1921, the building was dedicated — complete with 2,600 seats and a $68,000 pipe organ donated by community members, largely women’s clubs.

National entertainers

Many people who frequented the auditorium came from the Boulder community. In 1923 they packed the house to hear Helen Keller, blind and deaf since infancy, give one of her inspirational lectures. Other well-known speakers and entertainers followed, including Boulder opera singer Josephine Antoine and poet Robert Frost whose vibrant performances set the stage for years to come.

As the student body grew and the campus evolved, Macky Auditorium was used for every purpose from freshman exams to commencement. In 1935 President George Norlin stood on the stage to deliver his baccalaureate address, now repeated every year as the “Norlin Charge to Graduates.”

When the Conference on World Affairs began in 1948, the words of one stimulating speaker after another reverberated throughout the ivy-covered building. An overflow crowd of students and citizens gathered in 1955 to hear former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt speak on world peace. Even so, the Cold War lurked in the shadows. Civil defense supplies were lowered into the basement, turning the auditorium into a huge fall-
out shelter.

Then came turbulent years for the campus and the nation. In 1969 protestors gathered when San Francisco State President S.I. Hayakawa delivered a lecture in Macky. In 1970 demonstrators bombed the building’s roof and, in 1971, gate-crashers started a near-riot at a sold-out Neil Young concert.

Calmer years followed. In 1980 the auditorium was included in the Norlin Quadrangle National Historic District. Five years later, it was renovated into a concert hall to improve the auditorium’s acoustics and ambiance.

Throughout the years, performers and speakers have included artists from the Trapp Family Singers to Yo Yo Ma. The auditorium also has featured talks by Jane Goodall and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Male students who were part of the campus ROTC gather in front of Macky in this 1918 photo.

A time capsule recovered

In July 2010, three months before the 100th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone, a university facilities management crew began the process of recovering the building’s time capsule. After drilling from above and around the 5-foot-long polished block of granite, the crew — working from inside the building — discovered an opening in the bottom of the stone and located a soldered rectangular copper box tightly wedged inside.

It contained crisp Boulder and Denver newspapers; a copy of Andrew J. Macky’s will; several photographs of Macky, the regents, the auditorium under construction and a drawing of how it would look when completed, as well as a catalog for the previous year’s commencement address. On Oct. 8 the contents of the box were publicly displayed in the foyer of the auditorium before being moved to a permanent home at the CU Heritage Center.

“As the legacy of Andrew J. Macky has endured for 100 years, the auditorium is the most visited tourist destination on campus, an icon of the Boulder cultural landscape and a centerpiece of the performing arts in Colorado,” says Rudy Betancourt, Macky director. “As we move forward in the 21st century, it will continue to be a monument to the human spirit.”

Silvia Pettem (A&S’69) writes history columns for the Boulder Camera and was featured in the September 2010 Coloradan in “Sleuthing for Jane Doe.”

As Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i on Dec. 7, 1941, CU-Boulder President Robert L. Stearns called an emergency meeting with students in Macky Auditorium.

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