A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Vladimir Kulenovic, music director of the north suburban Lake Forest Symphony, is at once selfish and selfless, useful qualities for a bright, ambitious, young musician out to make a name for himself in the fast track of symphonic conducting.

Selfish, because the Belgrade, Serbia-born American conductor's career ambitions are, by his own admission, limitless. Now in his second year with the Lake Forest professional orchestra, Kulenovic, who is 35 and lives in Evanston, has energized the ensemble and its audience. The Solti Foundation U.S. has taken notice. Having already awarded him career-assistance grants in 2012 and 2013, the foundation, which supports young conductors of exceptional promise, honored him a third time by naming him its $25,000 Solti Conducting Fellow for 2015, a prestigious honor indeed.

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Vlade Divac

A first round pick of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1989 NBA draft, Vlade Divac went on to become one of the first European players to have an impact on the NBA.

In 1985, Vlade Divac was one of 15 young boys from Slovenia, Bosna, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Macedonia that won the gold medal in the University Games. This would prove to be a basketball team that is considered among the best ever assembled. They went on to win a gold medal at the European Junior Championships in 1986, a gold medal at the FIB A World Junior Championships in Bormio, Italy in 1987 (defeating Team USA twice in that tournament), and a silver medal representing Yugoslavia at the 1988 Olympics.

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Publishing

Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0