Insider's View of George Magazine, Connecticut Welfare Reform, Impact of Mental Illness on Families Among Topics at Yale

The following talks at Yale University from Jan. 25-31 are free and open to the public, unless noted otherwise.

Talk marks opening of exhibit of works by woodcut artist

Robert Conway of the Fritz Eichenberg Trust will speak on “Fritz Eichenberg and the Dance of Death” to mark the opening of an exhibit of Eichenberg’s prints, illustrated books and original wood blocks at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, corner of Wall and High streets. His talk will take place on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 4 p.m. on the mezzanine of the library. It will be followed by a reception.

The exhibit and lecture celebrate the acquisition of the artistic archive of Eichenberg, a woodcut artist and German emigre best known for his illustrations of Russian literature and gothic tales, and for his work for Dorothy Day’s “Catholic Worker.” In 1997, the Eichenberg Trust donated 400 original printing blocks and over 6,000 works on paper by the artist. The exhibition, on view through April 16 in the Beinecke’s Arts of the Book Collection, includes boxwood and maple printing blocks; drawings and sketchbooks; proofs and correspondence with authors; and holiday greeting cards exchanged by the Eichenbergs and a wide circle of illustrators, designers and woodcut artists. It also includes material relating to Eichenberg’s work as a commercial artist and cartoonist-reporter in Berlin in the 1920s and work documenting his experience as an artist with the Federal Arts Project during the 1930s.

Editor of George magazine to talk at master’s tea

Rich Blow, executive editor of George magazine, will be the featured guest at a tea on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 4:30 p.m. in the Calhoun College master’s house, 434 College St.

Blow, a 1986 graduate of Yale College, had served as the Washington editor of George since the magazine’s founding in 1995, and was recently named its executive editor. He previously was the editor of Regardie’s magazine, a Washington monthly that covered politics and business. He started his career as a reporter-researcher at The New Republic, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones (where he is a contributing writer), Rolling Stone, Mirabella and the Washington Monthly. At Yale, he was an editor of The New Journal and wrote for the Yale Daily News. After graduation, he studied for three years at Harvard University.

Impact of mental illness on the family is topic of Peschel Lecture

Jay Neugeboren, professor of English and writer in residence at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will present the Enid Peschel Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 5 p.m. in the Beaumont Room of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. Neugeboren, who is an award-winning novelist, will discuss his recent memoir “Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival.”

Neugeboren’s memoir describes the long-term mental illness of his brother, Robert, who for 36 years has been a patient in the New York State system. Jay Neugeboren has served as his brother’s primary caretaker during those years, and will discuss the ways in which long-term mental illness makes itself felt within family life. The lecture is sponsored by the Program for Humanities in Medicine.

Welfare reform in Connecticut is subject of Bush Center talk

Donna Campbell, executive director of the Employment Success Program at the Connecticut Council of Family Service Agencies Inc., will give a talk titled “Welfare Reform in Connecticut: A Report on Families Who Have Lost Cash Benefits Due to Sanctions” on Friday, Jan. 29. Her talk, sponsored by the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy, will begin at noon in Rm. 119 of the Hall of Graduate Studies, 320 York St.

Employment Success is a state-funded welfare-to-work program that gives special help to Connecticut families with multiple barriers to joining the workforce, and to the children in families who have reached the welfare time limit and consequently lost cash benefits. The program provides comprehensive family assessments, intensive case management and clinical support services.

Campbell, who has directed Employment Success since 1997, is a social worker with prior clinical and administrative experience in chemical dependency, early childhood development and mental health, family violence, women’s issues and eating disorders. She has served as the chief executive officer and president of a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield. For further information, call 432-9935.