PRESIDENT'S CORNER: April 28, 2017

Citizenship: Yesterday’ Dominion-Post editorial was taking the local voters to task for turning out a mere 15% of registered voters for the City Council election. That IS pretty shameful. Still, the good news is that quite a few new faces will be on the “new” Council, including our own Barry Wendell—congrats to him. I hope he’ll still have time to offer his series on pop music.

I hope this election is not a sign that folks either don’t care or feel their vote doesn’t matter—it does! It reminds me about our OLLI and trying to encourage enough members to “vote” to be volunteers to ensure that everything gets done. Our committees need members and chairs, help is needed in the office, rotation of instructors is needed to bring in fresh ideas and broaden our class offerings, and we can always use the donations of time and $$$ to make it all run well.  Many thanks to those of you that contribute above and beyond, but again I plead with those of you that may have never volunteered or don’t know what you could do. Everyone has a special talent that could be useful at OLLI. I know that Jae and I both treasure each and every one of you and whatever you feel you can give to us.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. [Mark Twain, 1908]

Love: Ah, spring is sprung and there’s a robin in the yard listening for worms…that’s what they do, you see.  They cock their little heads to one side, bend down, listen, and then, when they hear it, they snatch it right out of the grass…amazing. I also love getting little email notes from many of you that have things to say or just want to send a bit of encouragement or advice. This has been a strange year for Bonnie and I but we seem to be getting past it and our house, with a new roof and paint is looking nearly new. I had no idea what changing the color would do. We were gray, but now we are a golden ochre color with white trim. And there will be burgundy doors!

Did you see the Pulitzer winners? The failing New York Times won THREE, and the New Yorker got one and the fiction prize went to THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, now on my Kindle, and the Charleston paper got one for its coverage of the opioid epidemic in WV…and in drama, Lynn Nottage got her second Pulitzer. We have seen one of her plays some years ago and I would love to see more…a major talent of the African-American experience now that August Wilson has left us.

Film Forum: See info elsewhere in the Bulletin for next week’s film, “Stranger Than Fiction.”

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it. [Mark Twain]

Jim Held, President