Old friends, familiar haunts and updated memories await more than 5,500 Cornell University alumni and guests returning to campus for the university's Reunion 1999 weekend, June 10-13.

As in past years, a full slate of entertaining educational and recreational activities is planned for Cornell's former students and loyal friends. Two highlights of Reunion weekend are: the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Lecture by noted economist Lester Thurow, Friday, June 11, at 3 p.m. in Bailey Hall; and the annual State of the University address by Cornell President Hunter Rawlings, Saturday, June 12, at 10:30 a.m., also in Bailey Hall. Admission to both the Thurow and Rawlings lectures is limited primarily to registered alumni and guests with tickets. Members of the public will be admitted to Bailey Hall 10 minutes before each lecture to claim any remaining seats.

Thurow, professor of management and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Techonology and former dean of the school's Sloan School of Management, is the author of the best-selling books The Zero -Sum Society, The Zero Sum Solution. and The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America. He has written hundreds of journal articles as well as columns for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal, and he often can be seen on the Nightly Business Report. Thurow was staff economist for President Lyndon Johnson's Council of Economic Advisers, a presidential appointee of President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. National Commission on Manpower Policy in 1978-79 and an adviser on issues of public policy to several presidential candidates.

Among other Reunion '99 events are:

• Cornell chimes tours and concerts: Tours of the newly refurbished McGraw Tower will be offered throughout the weekend. Visitors also can view daily chimes concerts by the university's chimesmasters played from a temporary stand next to Sage Chapel: Friday 8:45 a.m., 1:10 and 6 p.m.; Saturday 10:40 a.m., noon and 6 p.m.; and Sunday 10:40 a.m. and noon. The recently retuned and restored bells will be returned to the tower in August.
• Savage Club show: The Savage Club, founded in 1895, will continue its tradition of providing an annual variety show for returning alumni and members of the community. This year's show, in Alice Statler Auditorium, Thursday, 8:30 p.m., will feature Dixieland, barbershop singing, Cornell songs, comedy, music of all kinds, recitations and more. Tickets are available at the door for $10.
• A free and open, current-events roundtable discussion titled "War and Peace Today: Kosovo," featuring Matthew Evangelista, Cornell professor of government and acting director of the Peace Studies Program; Valre P. Gagnon, assistant professor of politics at Ithaca College and visiting fellow in the Peace Studies Program; Peter J. Katzenstein, the W.S. Carpenter Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell; Henry Shue, the W. Hutchinson Professor in Ethics and Public Life at Cornell; and John H. Weiss, associate professor of history at Cornell, Friday, 1-2:30 p.m., G08 Uris Hall.
• An exhibition in the university's Kroch Library Exhibition Atrium, "Beautiful Birds: Masterpieces from the Hill Ornithology Collection," featuring selected volumes from hundreds of rare and important ornithology books in Cornell Library's Hill Ornithology Collection -- including plates by early American bird artists Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon -- Thursday and Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Saturday 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
• "An Evening of Violin and Cello -- Beethoven, Haydn and Kreisler," Friday 8:30 p.m. Two of Cornell's outstanding faculty members in the Department of Music, Linda Case and Heidi Hoffman, will bring the beauty of the violin and cello to Barnes Hall auditorium; tickets not required.