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FeedOctober 2011: Spree Insider
October offers thirty-one days of great events. On three of those days, Spree is cosponsoring activities that showcase some of the best our community has to offer, from health care to education to global culture.
UNYTS 30th Anniversary Dinner
Upstate New York Transplant Services is celebrating thirty years of life—literally. Created in 1981 in downtown Buffalo, UNYTS handles organ, tissue, and eye procurement for patients in need (and all under one roof, which is rare in the U.S.). Within the past ten years the organization has also added blood-banking services that bring a significant amount of savings to area hospitals while keeping donations local. In fact, UNYTS boasts one of the highest rates of organ donation in the country, with WNY’s willingness to give far exceeding the national average. The nonprofit organization assists donor families in various ways, coordinates the donation process, and increases community awareness regarding transplantation.
On Thursday, October 6, UNYTS and the Donate Life Foundation mark the anniversary with a gala dinner from 6 to 9 p.m. at Kleinhans to recognize individuals who have supported the organization for the past three decades. Visit www.unyts.org for more info, tickets, or a table reservation.
Young Audiences Goes To Town
Young Audiences of Western New York has been working for almost fifty years now to make art an essential part of daily life for children by bringing professional artists from several fields into area schools for long- and short-term visits. This month the organization will be raising funds with a unique musical celebration calling attention to the kinds of connections between artists and audiences that the group makes every day.
“Young Audiences Goes to Town” is a two-part event coming to Town Ballroom (681 Main Street) on Wednesday, October 12. During Act I, from 6 to 8 p.m., guests will be treated to classical music, appetizers, a silent auction, raffles, and an awards ceremony honoring local achievements in arts education. Act II, the afterparty, runs from 8 to 10:30 and features musical performances with headliners N’Dias. Also known as “The Mix,” this seventeen-member West African dance and drum group offers a high-energy feast of movement and creativity.
You can learn more about the party, purchase tickets, and discover other ways to support the work of Young Audiences at www.yawny.org.
Babel: Amos Oz
“Babel,” Just Buffalo Literary Center’s wildly popular series of encounters with internationally recognized authors, kicks off a new season at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 27, with author Amos Oz discussing his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. The work has been called one of the ten most important books since the birth of modern-day Israel. Oz is widely considered one of his native country’s most highly praised and internationally translated intellectuals on the basis of his fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. There’s a strong personal dimension to many of his insights, which are often drawn from his family history growing up in Jerusalem, and as the helpful Reader’s Guide to his work available for download at the Just Buffalo website notes, “His destiny as a writer seemed to have been born along with him.”
Mike Kelleher, artistic director of Just Buffalo, says the Babel series “creates a global conversation about literature here in Buffalo.” Join in the conversation when Oz speaks at Kleinhans. For info on his appearance and the rest of the series, call 883-3560 or visit www.justbuffalo.org.
SUNY Fredonia junior Chelsea Drake, the coediter Spree’s Performing Arts Guide, recently completed a Spree summer internship.
