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OLLI
E-News #26-08 of July 3, 2008
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 PLEASE WELCOME BETH
DAVIS
Introducing the new Program Associate
By Thom Clement,
Executive Director
WE
ARE VERY PLEASED TO INTRODUCE our
newest OLLI staff member, Mrs. Beth Davis. Beth officially started as
our new Program Associate on Mon, Jun 30. In this position, she
coordinates the work of OLLI volunteers as they plan for courses and
special events. She will also organize the course descriptions and
registration information for publication in our OLLI catalogs.
Beth comes to us with a variety of work and
volunteer experiences.
Her educational background is in Industrial Engineering, and she is
also an Air Force wife. She and her husband have two wonderful
children. Beth's most recent work has been as an administrative
coordinator with Chase Home Loans (2006 to present) and CondoSource
Mortgage (2005-2006). She has worked with committees for Officers’
Spouses Clubs, PTAs, and church-related events.
Beth Davis brings a blend of strong computer
and interpersonal
skills to the job of OLLI Program Associate. She enjoys working with
people and is looking forward to adding her abilities to the OLLI team.
Photo
by Bill Walsh
IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR FRIENDS OF OLLI CONTRIBUTORS
Information needed from contributors
By John Woods, Development Committee Chair
MEMBERS
WHO MADE CONTRIBUTIONS TO FRIENDS OF OLLI during
the first half of this calendar year are receiving emails this week
about their names being listed in OLLI publications. In case you missed
the email message, here is what we need.
- Please let me (or the office)
know if you prefer NOT to have your name published as a Friends of OLLI
contributor in any OLLI publication (including our printed and online
catalogs and Web site) as well as on a plaque to be displayed in the
social room.
- If you and
your
spouse both made contributions to the Friends of OLLI during this
period we will combine the names (e.g., contributions from John Doe and
Mary Doe would be listed as from "Mary and John Doe") unless we hear
from you
that you want to be listed separately.
- If you
contributed
in your name only but want the contribution to be listed as being from
you and your spouse please let us know how you want the listing made,
including your spouse’s name.
Note that you do not have to respond if it's
OK to
publish your name
and you are satisfied with item 2 above. Otherwise, please advise your
preferences BEFORE FRI, JUL 11, as we need to finalize the list early
the following week. You can reach me by responding to the email message
or by contacting me directly via email
or phone. Also, if you did not receive the email please contact me.
Thanks for your help with this and for your contribution to Friends of
OLLI.
MASON MILITARY OUTREACH
An update
By Helen Goff, OLLI Liaison to the Mason Military Outreach Committee
THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT
of Mason Military Outreach. OLLI has
donated a total of
$210 towards mailing boxes of donated items to our troops and two boxes
and two shopping bags full of items to fill the boxes. The dollar
contributions that go into the can in the OLLI office help to ensure
that there is funding to mail the boxes and make a huge difference in
what can be done to support the soldiers.
Some news: Mason is establishing a veterans
transition
center. The goal is to have the first phase of the transition center
operational by the start of the new school year in September. Those
interested in reviewing information about the transition center can
obtain it in the OLLI office.
Editor's reminder. Donations
of
colored shorts and T-shirts are needed to make "adaptive" clothing for
injured servicemen/women. See this article.
WINNING BIDDERS ENJOY
A DELIGHTFUL EVENING
French Mediterranean dinner for six
THE ABOVE PHOTOS SHOW THE WONDERFUL
HOSPITALITY of Cecile
and George Heatley who prepared a sumptuous French Mediterranean dinner
for three other OLLI couples.
During the Silent Auction in May, the bidding
for the dinners was fierce. The winners of the dinner for six were Jean
and Dan Feighery, Julie and Mike McNamara, and Beverley and Bob
Persell. It was a grand three-hour-plus evening of exquisite
company, conversation, food, and wine.
Photos, collage and article by Dan
Feighery.
Back to top
THREE NOTICES
| IMPROMPTU CONCERT |
HELP WANTED |
RESTON KNITTERS
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| DANA HOFFORD, guitarist and singer
from Sweden, will perform an impromptu concert at OLLI on Fri, Jul 18,
at 9:30 in TA-3. Dana has lived in Sweden for over 25 years and is
active in the music scene there. He composes, conducts three choirs,
and gives private lessons. Come hear some old favorites (e.g., Simon
and Garfunkel) and new ones too! |
WANTED: Someone who enjoys working
on wooden structural projects. We need your help in developing a
display
unit for use in our booth at festivals and other such events.
Please contact Debbie Halverson if you think this
is up your alley. |
SHEILA GOLD ADVISES that due to the
crash of her computer, she lost the names of people interested in
joining an OLLI knitting group.
So if you were one of those who were
interested – or you hadn’t told Sheila but you are still interested –
please come to a meeting on Wed, Jul 9, at 11:00 at the Lake Anne
Coffee House. See you there!
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THE YA YA'S
A touching story by a new member
 By Nancy Diesel, OLLI member
Ya Ya's: A group of three or more
women whose hearts and souls are joined together
by laughter and tears shared through the glorious journey of life.
AFTER
YEARS OF WANTING TO JOIN OLLI, I
finally registered this past spring. It was difficult to decide which
courses to select as I am still working. However, I was drawn to
"Life Writing Your Monologue," and the timing was perfect. I had not
been in a classroom for some time, so thought I would just sit and
observe.
Expecting a large class, I instead found
myself in TA-2, the smallest classroom, set up with one long table and
11 chairs around it. Our leader greeted each of us as we came in. There
was something about her presence and smile that relieved my
apprehension.
Soon there were eight women and two men around
the table, and we introduced ourselves. After the second class, both
men and one woman left because of overlapping classes. Most of us
remaining women were strangers and a bit skeptical about how this thing
was going to work. The plan was explained, and the only class in OLLI
to receive homework was given its assignments. I soon found myself
involved and forgot that I was only there to observe.
Our leader took us back to our beginnings and
asked us to write about various stages of our journey. Each week we
handed in two pages, and then we were deftly encouraged to read those
memories in front of each other. It
was amazing; one of us would be reading a snippet
of our life, and someone in the room would connect to it and comment.
Eight ladies, from 50 to 90, initially strangers, bonded as though we
had known each other all our lives.
You all know our leader as Kathie West, but to
us she is "Mother Ya Ya," the woman who joined our hearts and souls
together by laughter and tears, and enabled us to share with each other
this 'glorious journey of life.'
We are a very diverse group but have decided
to meet for lunch every month.
BOOK CLUB
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to
Promote Peace...One School at a Time
 THE
OLLI BOOK CLUB will be meeting on Mon, Jul 14, at 10:00
at Tallwood. The book for discussion is Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to
Promote Peace...One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson, an
American mountain climber, who in 1993 became lost and ill after a
failed attempt to climb K 2, the world's second tallest mountain. After
his rescue he was sheltered in a small Pakistani village to which he
later returned to build the community's first school.
All OLLI members are welcome.
Contributed by OLLI Book Club
Co-Coordinator Ceda McGrew.
HOW TO EXPRESS YOUR VIEWS ABOUT OLLI
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PUBLICLY:
Email
your "Letter
to the Editor" (see recent sample)
or "Letter to
Ms. Ollie Ettakit" (see recent sample)
to the editor. Anonymous
submissions are
acceptable if you provide contact information so we can verify that you
are an OLLI member. Whenever an official response to a letter to
the editor is
clearly appropriate, the editor will obtain and publish the OLLI
response in the same issue so members will have more complete
information and a balanced picture of the matter. |
PRIVATELY:
• Contact any Board member,
committee or
resource group chair, or the executive
director;
• Send an email
to the entire
Board
(email the editor or the office to have your
message forwarded to all members of the Board);
• Submit a
suggestion online
or in the box in the Tallwood social room; or
• Contact the
office by email
or phone (703-503-3384). |
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COMING
ATTRACTIONS
Non-class events at OLLI for the next two
weeks
The following
list covering the
next two weeks is extracted for your
convenience from the master calendar maintained by the office (see the Forecast
of Non-Class Events to view the
actual OLLI online calendar used by the office). Note: Board,
committee, resource-group and 'membership-type' meetings/events below
are highlighted
in bold. OLLI members are
welcome at all Board, committee and resource-group meetings (except
during executive sessions).
Monday
Jul 7 10am Bridge Club - TA-3
Friday Jul 11
10am Recorder Group - TA-2
10:30am Homer, Etc. Book Club - TA-Annex
Monday Jul 14
10am Bridge Club - TA-3
10am Book Club at Tallwood - TA-2
Wednesday
Jul 16 12 noon Finance Committee
Meeting - TA- Annex
Thursday Jul 17
11am Fiction Writers Club - OL-TBA
Friday Jul 18
9:30am Impromptu Concert by guitarist/singer Dana
Hofford - TA-3
10am Recorder Group - TA-2
10am Board of Directors
Meeting - TA-1
10:30am Homer, Etc. Book Club - TA-Annex
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Back to top
OLLI member for the past eight years
We
regret to report the death of Mary Kenney, an OLLI member since June
2000. Following is the obituary from The
Washington Post.
Mary
C. Kenney, 72, an agricultural economist,
died of pneumonia Jun 21 at Virginia Hospital Center. She lived in
Fairfax.
Ms. Kenney worked as a research and staff
economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture starting in 1978. She
joined the General Accounting Office in 1985 as chief agricultural
economist and retired in 2000.
She was born in Milwaukee and graduated from
Marquette University there. She also received a bachelor's degree from
St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia almost 20 years later and went on
to receive a doctoral degree in agricultural economics at the
University of Kentucky in 1978. She moved to Northern Virginia that
year.
Ms. Kenney was a member of Holy Trinity
Catholic Church in Washington and enjoyed classical music, the arts and
current events. She was a member of several book clubs and engaged in
rigorous piano studies.
Her husband, Cornelius Francis Xavier Kenney
IV, died in 1994.
Survivors include four children, Cornelius
Francis Xavier Kenney V of Alexandria, Genevieve M. Kenney and Laura M.
Kenney of Arlington County, and Sarah M. Kenney of Washington; and six
grandchildren.
Interment was Jun 24 at Columbia Gardens
Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.
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Back
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Rod
Zumbro
Editor
Karen
Hamilton
Deputy
Editor
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About OLLI
E-News. OLLI
E-News, OLLI's weekly newsletter, is emailed to OLLI
members with email addresses on Fridays. When classes are in
session, printed copies of this newsletter are distributed in
classrooms, primarily for members without email. Comments,
suggestions or complaints? Please contact Editor Rod
Zumbro or Communications Committee Chair Gordon
Canyock.
| Submissions. We encourage members
to submit news items, articles and photos for this newsletter; deadline
to
the editor is 7:00 PM Wed (Mon for letters to the editor for which an
OLLI response is appropriate) for that
week's issue. Please limit
articles to about 250 words. Submit material to Editor Rod Zumbro
(email rzumbro@gmu.edu, phone
703-569-2750); email strongly preferred. |
Note
about HTML graphics. If
you do NOT see
photos and
clickable links in this message, you might want to ask a teenaged
grandchild or a neighborhood teenager or college student to fix things
for you. Or you could change your
email settings yourself. Here's how to view html-formatted messages
like this newsletter in five popular email systems:
•
Microsoft Outlook
Express and Windows Mail.
Click Tools; select Options; in the Read tab, uncheck "Read all
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... Original HTML" (not Plain Text). Also in View, select "Display
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Click Mail Options/General Preferences; under Security, uncheck "Block
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•
AOL. Upgrade,
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| Read the Latest
Issue Before Email Distribution. Eager to read the latest news
from
OLLI? The
new weekly issue of OLLI E-News
is
usually posted to the OLLI Website some time Thursday evening. So
Thursday night or first
thing Friday morning, just go to http://www.olli.gmu.edu/pubs.htm#enews,
where you will find a list of the last 12
issues, and click the issue with Friday's date. |
GMU Webmail.
If OLLI E-News is being sent
to your gmu.edu email address, we recommend against
using GMU Webmail
(i.e., iPlanet "Messenger Express") to read this newsletter unless
you are using Firefox as your browser; in Firefox, just click
the text/html
link to view the newsletter. This does not normally work with Internet
Explorer (although you may be able to make it work by clicking Open
after clicking the text/html link and then selecting Internet Explorer
as the program to use to view the link).
• You
could forward the
newsletter to your alternate Web-based email account such as Yahoo Mail
or
Hotmail and read it there ... or read it online at
the OLLI
Website each Friday.
• Perhaps
the easiest solution for those of you with gmu.edu email accounts
is to configure your desktop email system such
as Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft Windows Mail or Mozilla
Thunderbird to retrieve mail
sent to your gmu.edu address. To do this, see these
instructions.
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OLLI
E-News Editorial Staff
Reviewer and Backup Editor
John West
Database
Manager
Barbara Kyriakakis
Reviewer and Photo Editor
Michael Coyne |
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Updated: July 3, 2008
Copyright © 2008 Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at
George Mason University. Materials in this publication subject to
OLLI-Mason copyright may be reproduced for noncommercial educational
purposes as long as credit is given to OLLI-Mason.
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at George
Mason University, 4210 Roberts Rd., Fairfax, VA 22032-1028
Phone: (703) 503-3384; Email: olli@gmu.edu;
Fax: (703) 503-2832
Original site design and construction by OLLI-Mason member Rod Zumbro. |
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