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By Sharon Zukin

Of all the mosques, in all the towns, in all the world, why did this mosque cause a furor in this town? I’m speaking about Park51, an Islamic “community center promoting tolerance and understanding,” as its website says, which is being planned to replace an old five-story building in Lower Manhattan that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory store with a modern, thirteen-story multi-service facility modeled on Jewish community centers and the YMCA. The burning issue of course is that this location is two blocks from the World Trade Center site where nearly 3,000 men and women died in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. A terrorist attack planned and carried out by…Muslims.

But this is New York, for goodness’ sake, which prides itself as – and is often excoriated for being – the most cosmopolitan city in the United States. And it’s not even a mosque, or not exclusively a mosque; it’s a cultural center mainly for Muslims but with an interfaith board of directors, outreach programs for members of the surrounding residential community and a small memorial to the victims of the World Trade Center attack, as well as space for prayer. Park51 is projected to be a place for learning, recreation, and, oh yes, preserving the religious identity of the one million Muslims who live in New York City and the many Muslims who work in Lower Manhattan, some of whose co-religionists—bond traders, street vendors, computer technicians, restaurant workers—were 9/11 victims too.

The plan for Park51, as yet undeveloped and with uncertain funding, won approval this summer from a series of public authorities who have jurisdiction on the matter. From the local community board, an advisory commission that must give its opinion on every change of land use in its district, to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Committee, the city council, and the mayor, every public official declared the project has a right to build in its chosen location. After the controversy broke and the Anti-Defamation League declared its opposition—but before the construction workers’ union said they would not work on the project and President Obama supported American Muslims’ right to worship where they choose (within unspecified political limits), the governor offered to mediate talks about choosing a different location. Apparently a new location might be less insulting to those who feel an Islamic center would defile the “sacred ground” where victims died.

Most New Yorkers would prefer to move Park51 farther from the WTC site but keep it in Lower Manhattan. But they also believe that Muslims have a right to build a mosque wherever they choose; they want Muslims to compromise, not yield their constitutional freedom to worship.

This ambivalence is not surprising. You would think a Muslim center that promotes tolerance would find a home in this most ethnic, most tolerant, most global of cities. But we know from all the controversies that have erupted around rebuilding the World Trade Center site that nothing about this location is either local or normal. Especially not a mosque and not when thousands of Americans are rallying against immigrants of all kinds and “Arabs,” whatever their religion or looks may be, are portrayed as terrorists in both popular films and high-class novels.

Just two weeks ago in midtown a Muslim taxi driver from Bangladesh was slashed by a passenger, an und

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By Jennifer Coopersmith

Energy is the go of things, the driver of engines, devices and all physical processes. It can come in various forms (electrical, chemical, rest mass, curvature of spacetime, light, heat and so on) and change between these forms, but the total is always conserved. Newton missed energy and it was Leibniz who discovered kinetic energy (he called it vis viva). The idea was promoted on the continent, chiefly by one family, the Swiss family of feuding mathematicians, the Bernoullis, in the first half of the 18th century. The more subtle concept, potential energy, slipped in over a hundred years, uninvited, like the 13th fairy at the party.

In Feynman’s profound allegory (‘Dennis the Menace’ playing with blocks), energy is defined by its property of being conserved. But, this doesn’t answer to all our intuitions about energy. Why does it change smoothly between its various forms? For example, when a child swings on a swing, her kinetic energy decreases as the swing climbs (and gains gravitational potential energy) and then, as the swing descends, she goes faster and faster.

A different approach holds the answer. Consider the walk to the shops. You could take the shortest route or you could optimize other aspects, e.g. take a longer route but less hilly, or more shady or with the least number of road-crossings. Nature also works in this optimizing way: it tries to minimize the total ‘action’ between a starting place and a final destination. ‘Action’ is defined as ‘energy’ times ‘time’, and, in order to minimize action, the energy must be able to change in a prescribed way, smoothly and continuously, between its two forms, kinetic and potential energy, (The Principle of Least Action was discovered by an eccentric Frenchman, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, while head of the Berlin Academy of Science, in the mid 18th century.)

What are kinetic and potential energy? Kinetic energy is the energy of motion of an individual body whereas potential energy is the energy of interaction of parts within a system. Potential energy must be specified for each new scenario, but kinetic energy comes in one essential form and is more fundamental in this sense. However, as potential energy relates to internal aspects (of a system), it doesn’t usually change for differently moving ‘observers’. For example, the game of billiards in the lounge of the ocean liner continues unaffected, whether that liner is coasting smoothly at 30 kph or whether it’s moored to a buoy. The kinetic energy of the liner is vastly different in the two cases.

But sometimes potential energy and even mass do change from one ‘reference frame’ to another. The more fundamental quantity is the ‘least action’, as this stays the same, whatever the (valid) ‘observer’.

Heat energy is the sum of the individual microscopic kinetic energies. But the heat energy and the kinetic energy of an everyday object are very different (e.g. the kinetic energy of a kicked football and the heat energy of a football left to warm in the sun). In fact, for the early 19th century natural philosophers, considering heat as a form of energy was like committing a category error. The slow bridging of this error by people like Daniel Bernoulli, Count Rumford, Robert Julius Mayer and James Joule makes a very interesting tale.

With regards to the looming energy crisis and global warming, here are the things we must remember:

1. Nature always counts the true cost, even if we don’t
2. There is no such thing as safe energy – it is energetic, after all
3. As the sink of all our activities becomes warmer, so all our ‘engines’, cars and humans etc, will run less efficiently
4. We must consider not only energy but also ‘least action’ – and take action.

Jenn

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Gary Bruce is Associate Professor of History at the University of Waterloo.  His newest book is The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi.  The book is based on previously classified documents and interviews with former secret police officers and ordinary citizens and is the first comprehensive history of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, at the grassroots level.  In the excerpt below Bruce looks at how the Stasi impacted one ordinary man’s life.

Dr. Werner Hoffman studied medicine at Humboldt University in Berlin from 1954 to 1960 before interning until 1963 at the hospital in Fürstenberg in District Gransee…His time in Fürstenberg counted toward his compulsory Landjahr, a year in the countryside required of all new physicians.  In 1962, one year after the construction of the Berlin Wall (which made previously available western medicines nearly impossible to obtain) and while still tending to the medical needs of villagers and miners from the southern GDR who had a union holiday retreat near Fürstenberg, Dr. Hoffman began his specialization in internal medicine at the regional hospital in Schwerin.

While vacationing on the Black Sea…he happened upon a high-ranking administrator in the Wittenberge hospital who arranged for his transfer there…Five years later he was promoted to senior physician in charge of the rheumatism division.  Within the decade, he had become one of the very few surgeons in the GDR who could treat people who suffered from rheumatism in their knuckles, a surgery that was in its infancy in the West as well.

His first misgivings about the regime came in 1972 when the position of chief of medicine opened up in nearby Bad Wilsnack.  Although the position called for expertise in rheumatoid arthritis, Dr. Hoffman was passed over in favor of a younger physician who had no experience in treated rheumatism but was a member of the Communist Party…

Hoffmann knew that in order to one day become chief of medicine he would have to join the Communist Party, and so in spite of what he had seen, he joined the SED in 1974.  He was promoted to chief of medicine of the Wittenberge Hospital in 1978.  Financially, this was a good decision.  In this position he earned 2,500 Ostmarks a month, nearly twice the average wage in the GDR of 1,280 Ostmarks but, remarkably, on a par with Stasi wages, where the average wage for Stasi officers in the regional administrations was 1,700 a month…

Dr. Hoffmann’s position required him to be responsible for every aspect of the hospital, from the care of patients (with 615 beds and anywhere from fifteen to twenty-eight physicians, the hospital was quite large) to ordering rubber gloves to ensuring broken windows were replaced, and that there was sufficient coal for heating…

Shortly after his appointment, the urologist on staff attempted to flee the GDR while vacationing in Romania…the escape attempt caught Wittenberge’s chief doctor completely by surprise.  Months later Dr. Hoffmann and his wife were awaiting a flight to Bucharest…when two Stasi officers arrested them and escorted them…into waiting vans.  He and his wife were transported separately to Alexanderplatz in Berlin, where they were accused of preparing to flee the GDR, just as the urologist had.  In the initial whirr of events, the surgeon had difficulty comprehending what was happening.  When his interrogator asked him if he knew where he was, Hoffmann answered that he believed he was in police headquarters.  The Stasi officer looked at him squarely and, scanning his face for any reaction, said: “No.  You are at the Ministry for St

“I do not have a favorite story,” said Dr. Olajide Williams about his book Stroke Diaries. “For me–a physician–the word favorite in the context of stroke does not seem appropriate.”

Dr. Williams is a general neurologist with special interest in stroke, and Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia University. He is also a fellow of Columbia University’s prestigious Glenda Garvey Academy for outstanding teaching, and has been recognized locally and nationally for humanism in medicine.

Stroke Diaries is a collection of Dr. Williams experiences, both somber and hopeful. He told me, “Some memories are more vivid than others, some experiences more profound. Pedro’s story is one of those. I remember the morning Pedro told me in the stroke clinic that his greatest pain since his stroke was his physical inability to care for Lucy, his dog. I remember the noose of hopelessness dangling around his neck; the way he sat in front of me, scratching frenziedly at his paralyzed right arm, the deep excoriation marks, the trails of oozing blood from under his skin, my concerns about a drug allergy, and the way he talked about Lucy. I remember watching tears fall from his heavy eyes and the relief in my heart that he was opening up for the first time in months since his stroke. I remember not knowing what to do; a momentary lapse that seemed infinitely long.”

I have excerpted the story of Pedro and his beloved dog below. I can only hope you will find it as powerful as I did.

The Man Who Did Not Take His Medicine

Pedro was lying on the bathroom floor next to the toilet bowl. Water was still running from rusty faucet, overflowing the sink, and pooling around his body as he lay limp on wet porcelain tiles. Lucy was standing over him and whining. The young black Labrador retriever had not left her owner’s side since the previous night. It was as if she had predicted it, as if she was responding to some perceptible change in his body, perhaps even a “stroke odor” that her heightened sense of smell allowed her to detect. Lucy had followed him everywhere; she lay awake next to him throughout the night, constantly licking the left side of his body. She rushed after him into the bathroom that morning, before Pedro’s world began to tilt–the visual metamorphosis, tilting up to 180° in second, and developing into a violent vertigo that caused him to slump to the ground, hitting his head against the toilet bowl on the way down.

It was 5:30 a.m. The sun had just begun its ascent above the coastline when Pedro woke up to brush his teeth. And now, hours later, he could not get up off the floor. He could not move his left arm or left leg, and he could not feel Lucy licking his left palm. When he realized what was happening, fear filled his soul like a poisonous gas causing a great panic inside him. Dazed and desperate, Pedro dragged himself into the bedroom, sliding onto the wooden floor with his wet clothes, snaking himself around a large floor cushion, knocking over the standing lamp, dragging himself towards the far window by his bed, towards the sunrays that filtered though half-open blinds. Lucy began barking; Pedro began banking against the window. He cried out for help, thumping the glass with his one working arm, trying to alarm his neighbors or anyone who could have saved him. As Lucy barked louder, the stroked tightened its grip, claiming Pedro against his will, pulling he prize right out of him–a piece of his brain–against the tugging of a frantic soul.

Per

Donald Stoker is Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His most recent book is The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, and in the original post below, he dismantles a common myth about the Battle of Bull Run–the first major land battle of the Civil War–which was fought 149 years ago, today.

On July 21, 1861, the Union troops under Irvin McDowell were defeated by the combined forces of Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston on the banks of Virginia’s Bull Run Creek. Too often it is reported that this clash was the result of press pressure on Abraham Lincoln to act against the Rebels. This was not the case.

Lincoln did push for action, but he pushed because he wanted a quick end to the war. Moreover, something often ignored is that the Union plans were bigger than just marching an army into Virginia and hoping something good happened. McDowell’s advance was only one prong of the Union operation. Major General Robert Patterson commanded another Union force in the Shenandoah Valley, one that was supposed to pin Johnston’s forces in the Shenandoah. Union troops under Benjamin Butler at Fortress Monroe, at the end of the Virginia Peninsula that George McClellan would soon make famous, were to hold Confederate forces in that area. McDowell, using multiple prongs of attack, aimed at Manassas Junction with the intent of defeating 20,000 Confederates with 30,000 Union troopers.

For the North, none of this went according to plan. The Union forces in the Shenandoah needed a vigorous and aggressive commander. This, Patterson, was not. A veteran of the War of 1812 branded “Granny” by his troops, failed to do his job. As happened so many times in the Civil War the South stole a march on the Union. This allowed them to deliver Johnston’s troops to Bull Run in time to stop McDowell.

The events after the battle greatly impacted the course of the war. Union defeat meant McDowell’s replacement with McClellan, and the subsequent paralysis that then gripped the Eastern Theater until the spring of 1862. Confederate President Jefferson Davis failed to give his generals proper credit for their victory. Both Beauregard and Johnston were very prickly in regard to personal honor and reputation. This perceived slight helped poison the relations between the Confederate president and these two generals for the rest of the war, adding to the South’s difficulties prosecuting the struggle.

David Kilcullen is a former Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Patraeus in Iraq as well as a former advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Kilcullen is also Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and the author of The Accidental Guerrilla (2009). His new book, Counterinsurgency, is a no-nonsense picture of modern warfare informed by his experiences on the ground in some of today’s worst trouble spots–including Iraq and Afghanistan. In this excerpt, Kilcullen shares a few insights as to how progress in the Afghan campaign can be properly tracked and assessed.

WHY METRICS MATTER
In 2009 in Afghanistan, ISAF seems to be in an adaptation battle against a rapidly evolving insurgency that has repeatedly absorbed and adapted to past efforts to defeat it, including at least two previous troop surges and three changes of strategy. To end this insurgency and achieve peace, we may need more than just extra troops, new resources, and a new campaign plan: as General Stanley McChrystal has emphasized, we need a new operational culture. Organizations manage what they measure, and they measure what their leaders tell them to report on. Thus, one key way for a leadership team to shift an organization’s focus is to change reporting requirements and the associated measures of performance and effectiveness.

As important, and more urgent, we need to track our progress against the ISAF campaign plan, the Afghan people’s expectations, and the newly announced strategy for the war. The U.S. Congress , in particular, needs measures to track progress in the “surge” against the President Obama’s self-imposed eighteen-month timetable. To be effective, these measures must track three distinct but closely related elements:

1.   Trends in the war (i.e., how the environment, the enemy, the population, and the Afghan government are changing)

2.   ISAF’s progress against the campaign plan and the overall strategy including validation (whether we are doing the right things) and evaluation (how well we are doing them)

3.   Performance of individuals and organizations against best-practice norms for counterinsurgency, reconstruction, and stability operations

Metrics must also be meaningful to multiple audiences, including NATO commanders, intelligence and operations staffs, political leaders, members of the legislature in troop-contributing nations, academic analysts, journalists, and–most important–ordinary Afghans and people around the world.

We should also note that if metrics are widely published, then they become known to the enemy, who can “game” them in order to undermine public confidence and perpetuate the conflict. Thus, we must strike a balance between clarity and openness on the one hand and adaptability and security on the other.

SHARED DIAGNOSIS
Because

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.  His new book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, covers everything form Confucius and Mao to Internet censorship.  In the post below Wasserstrom poses some questions about China that you can find the answers to in his book.  See if you can answer them in the comments.  We will post the answers tomorrow.  For more China questions check out another quiz by Wasserstrom that appeared on The China Beat.

Q: Which country is most like China in internet usage?

Q: Which country’s population is most like China’s?

Q: Which country follows China in overall Greenhouse Gas emissions (China is number one, this country is number two)?

Q: When China hosted the Summer Games in 2008 was it the first, second, third or fourth Asian country to do so?

Q: Has Confucius always been revered in China?

Q: When did Mao’s face begin to appear on Chinese banknotes?

In 1949 (when the PRC was founded)
In 1966 (when the Cultural Revolution began and the Mao cult peaked)
In 1976 (when Mao died)
In 1999 (the 50th anniversary of the founding of the PRC)

Q: What replaced his face on some 2008 banknotes?.



Oxford Bibliographies Online is a series of intuitive and easy-to-use “ultimate reading lists” designed to help users navigate the vast seas of information that exist today. To introduce you to the doors this new online tool opens Andrew Herrmann, Associate Editor of OBO, has excerpted some suggested reading related to Greek mythology.  Use his study guide below to impress the date you bring to see the Immortals.

Andrew Herrmann, Associate Editor, Oxford Bibliographies Online

300, Troy, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, the reboot of Clash of the Titans, the forthcoming Immortals…Hollywood has been brushing up on its epic hexameter (or more likely picked up a Spark Notes guide to Homer) and has re-imagined the swords-and-sandals genre for the 21st century. While it is fun to see these classic works morph from the original Greek texts into flashy, raging battles between Brad Pitt and Eric Bana, classicists and mythology buffs alike often shudder at the blatant inaccuracies presented in these films (if Hector had killed Agamemnon in Troy, we wouldn’t have the Oresteia!). For those interested in knowing what happens in the true classic tradition, OBO recommends the following works on some of the central figures of these films.

Zeus, leader of the Olympians, has a rich mythology which extends beyond Liam Neeson’s now famous “Release the Kraken!” line in Clash of the Titans. Pura Nieto Hernandez’s Mythology entry offers a good starting point for those interested in this lightning-wielding god:

Dowden, Ken. 2006. Zeus. Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World. London and New York: Routledge.
In spite of its brevity, this introduction accomplishes a lot. Not only does Dowden concentrate on the cult of Zeus, he also provides the reader with ample mythological information about his rich subject. His careful presentation and analysis of the previous large bibliography makes this book a good introduction even to the study of ancient religion. Good illustrations add to its appeal.

Poseidon, father of Percy Jackson in the recent Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and soon to be played by Kellan Lutz in the upcoming film Immortals, is the stormy god of the sea. The Greek Religion entry by Angelos Chaniotis points users to a detailed study on the worship of Poseidon in ancient Greece. However, this one is not in English, so brush off your dictionary or head over to Oxford Language Dictionaries Online:

Mylonopoulos, Joannis. 2003. Pelopónnesos oiketérion Poseidonos = Heiligtümer und Kulte des Poseidon auf der Peloponnes. Liège, Belgium: Université de Liège.
Thorough discussion of the cult, sanctuaries, festivals, and political significance of Poseidon in the Peloponnese; an exemplary study in terms of method, approach, and combination of diverse source material for the interpretation of the cult and sign

Robert Paarlberg is the B. F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.  His new book, Food Politics: What Everyone Needs To Know, carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today’s global food landscape.  Politics in this area have become polarized and Paarlberg helps us map this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today’s fashionable beliefs about farming and food.  In the excerpt below we learn about the organic food.

Many who buy organic goods believe such foods are healthier than conventional foods because they contain more nutrients.  Others believe organic foods are safer to eat because they carry no pesticide residues.  Nutritionists and health professionals from outside the organic community tend to question both of these beliefs.

The strongest claim of superior nutrient content has been made by the Organic Center, an institution founded in 2002 to demonstrate the benefits of organic products.  In 2008, the Organic Center published a review “confirming” the nutrient superiority of plant-based organic foods, showing they contained more vitamin C and vitamin E and a higher concentration of polyphenols, such a flavonoids.  This review was rebutted, however, by conventional nutritionists who showed that the Organic Center had used statistical results that were either not peer reviewed or not significant in terms of human health.  Organic milk from cows raised on grass may indeed contain 50 percent more beta-carotene, but there is so little beta-carotene in milk to being with that the resulting gain is only an extra 112 micrograms of beta-carotene per quart of milk, or less that 1 percent the quantity of beta-carotene found in a single medium-size baked sweet potato.

Most certified health professionals find no evidence that organic foods are healthier to eat.  According to the Mayo Clinic, “No conclusive evidence shows that organic food is more nutritious than is conventionally grown food.”  European experts agree.  Claire Williamson from the British Nutrition Foundation says, “From a nutritional perspective, there is currently not enough evidence to recommend organic foods over conventionally produced foods.”  In 2009, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study, commissioned by the British Food Standards Agency, of 162 scientific papers published in the past 50 years on the health and diet benefits of organically grown foods and found no evidence of benefit.  The director of the study concluded, “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally-produced on the basis of nutritional superiority.”  The acidity of organic produce was found to be higher, which enhanced taste and sensory perception, but there was no difference for health.

The claim that organic food is safer due to lower pesticide residues is also suspect in the eyes of most health professionals. The Mayo Clinic says, “Some people buy organic food to limit their exposure to [pesticide] residues.  Most experts agree, however, that the amount of pesticides found on fruits and vegetables poses a very small health risk.”  Residues on food can be a significant problem in many developing countries, where the sprayi

Tariq Ramadan is a very public figure, named one of Time magazine’s most important innovators of the twenty-first century, he is among the leading Islamic thinkers in the West.  But he has also been a lightening rod for controversy.  In his new book, What I Believe, he attempts to set the record straight, laying out the basic ideas he stands for in clear and accessible prose.  In the excerpt below we learn a bit about Ramadan’s stance as a thinker straddling two worlds.

My discourse faces many-sided opposition, and this obviously prevents it from being fully heard in its substance, its subtleties, and its vision for the future.  Some of the criticisms expressed are of course sincere and raise legitimate questions – which I will try to answer in the present work – but others are clearly biased and attempt to pass off their selective, prejudiced hearing as “doublespeak” one should be wary of.  I have long been criticizing their deliberate deafness and their ideological “double hearing”: I am determined to go ahead, without wasting my time over such strategic diversions, and remain faithful to my vision, my principles, and my project.

I mean to build bridges between two universes of reference, between two (highly debatable) constructions termed Western and Islamic “civilizations” (as if those were closed, monolithic entities), and between citizens within Western societies themselves.  My aim is to show, in theory and in practice, that one can be both fully Muslim and Western and that beyond our different affiliations we share many common principles and values through which it is possible to “live together” within contemporary pluralistic, multicultural societies where various religions coexist.

The essence of that approach and of the accompanying theses originated much earlier than 9/11.  Neither did it come as a response to Samuel Huntington’s mid-1990s positions about the “clash of civilizations” (which anyway have been largely misinterpreted).  As early as the late 1980s, then in my 1992 book Muslims in the Secular State, I sated the first fundamentals of my beliefs about the compatibility of values and the possibility for individuals and citizens of different cultures and religions to coexist positively (and not just pacifically).  Unlike what I have observed among some intellectuals and leaders, including some Muslim thinkers and religious representatives, those views were by no means a response to current events nor a change of mind produced by the post 9/11 trauma.  They represent a very old stance which was confirmed, developed, and clarified in the course of time.  Its substance can be found in my first books and articles in 1987-1989; those views were then built on and expanded in every book I wrote up to the present synthesis.  A Muslim’s religious discourse, and the mediator’s role itself, bring about negative reactions in both universes of reference.  What makes things more difficult is that I do not merely shed light on overlapping areas and common points between the two universes of reference but that I also call intellectuals, politicians

Suzanne Ryan, Senior Editor, Music Books

Oxford University Press joins a large community of friends, colleagues, performers, and students in mourning the passing of Shirlee Emmons Baldwin, one of the most beloved and strongest voices in the education, nurturing, and career development of singers. Having been trained as a classical singer myself, it was with great pride that I “inherited” Shirlee’s three titles when I began work at the Press—Power Performance for Singers (1998), Prescriptions for Choral Excellence (with Constance Chase; 2006), and Researching the Song (with Wilbur Watkins Lewis; also 2006). Through these books and others, and in the hearts of all those she touched, Shirlee’s voice will continue to resound and enlighten.

I am pleased to be able to share these beautiful words from Maribeth Payne, former OUP music editor who worked most closely with Shirlee and who had a long-lasting friendship with her:

As an author, Shirlee was great to work with–attentive, timely, responsive, hard-working, fun. Her work was the foundation of the professional voice list at OUP. But she was also a lovely, warm, generous person and a friend. Her voice was so resonant, I always had to shut my door when she came to the office–but the sound still got through. Her laugh was infectious and a joy to hear. She was also enormously helpful to young singers, several of whom I sent her way for lessons long after she had stopped teaching at Barnard and Princeton. One young man is now pursuing a budding opera career in Germany. Her studio was always completely full, but she took these students anyway, simply because I asked her to do so. I will really miss her.