PRESIDENT’S CORNER: December 2, 2016

We’re back and we have a few announcements…

Town Hall: Our second Town Hall meeting will be held on January 11 at 1 PM. This is a time for members to meet with Director Haislet and me to find out what’s going on, ask questions, and find out some important information for our future. I urge you to come to this meeting, because…

Fee Structure Proposal: …your finance Committee, chaired by Tom Rogers and Connie McCluskey, has met to discuss and finalize a proposal to change the way we pay for our OLLI. The committee studied five possible proposals after Jae and staff had done an exhaustive search of ALL OLLIs to see what they pay for memberships and classes, and the like. The bottom line is that we must do something to raise funding soon. Cost cutting strategies are being explored now to help save money, but to maintain and expand our mission, we must have more income. It appears that our OLLI is perhaps the cheapest in the country, but, having said that, we still want our membership fees to be as reasonable as possible and we want to insure that all our members have a say in this very important decision, so DO come to this Town Hall to see the graphics and the explanation. Your Board will be discussing the proposal at Monday’s meeting, that may conclude with a motion to bring the proposal to the membership. Jae points out that voting for this change at the annual meeting in June would be too late to affect new year memberships that begin in June, so we will be scheduling a special membership meeting in March to decide this issue. The proposal approved by the Finance Committee: Annual membership fee of $30 plus $30 per term for unlimited classes. For those of you that leave in the winter or summer, that means you would not have to pay for terms when you would not be here to take classes. If you did pay for a membership and 4 terms, your total would be $150. The committee feels strongly that this plan would result in maintaining more overall members and would make paying for individual terms easier on many members. As your President, I want to assure you that we want as many opinions on this as possible, so please do not be shy. Let your feelings be known, come to the Town Hall meeting, talk to Jae, or however you want your voice to be heard.

Holiday Presents: The Osher Foundation expects OLLI members to literally “buy” into their local group, so would you please plan to give a gift, small or large? Our staff will put your name on a snowflake to be posted on the inside of the glass doors into the Member Lounge. You can honor a friend, relative, or like Bonnie and I and Jae, our recently deceased cats. How much? You be the judge, but the equivalent for dinner for two at Olive Garden, Red Lobster or the like---or two. We’re entering the season of giving, folks, so let’s do this, OK? Contributions to the OLLI general fund will be most welcome.

Jim Benner’ Opera Salon: Jim asked me to tell you that his next opera showing/discussion will be Monday, December 5 at 6 PM at Evergreen. He’ll be showing Benedetti’s “Don Pasquale.” All are welcome. And, at the Regal Cinema a on Dec 3 (Sat) at 12:55 PM they will be showing an encore of Julie Taymor’s wonderful, magical production of “The Magic Flute,” in English, a shortened version but it is special!

Film Forum: We’re down to our final two films for the fall series. Next Wednesday, December 7 will close out our Robin Williams festival with the film that won him his Oscar, and won Oscars for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for their screenplay. Yes, this would be “Good Will Hunting,” the story of a young unrecognized genius in therapy with Robin Williams’ character. This is an exceptionally moving story set in and around Boston, and featuring a more subdued Robin Williams than anything else we have seen. The film is 126 minutes long and will start at 3 PM. A reminder: because of my upcoming thoracic surgery, I will not be teaching in winter term and we will not have a new film series until March. BUT…I am thinking a good theme for spring will be “The Pursuit of Happiness,” so with that in mind, I am well along in putting together a list that I will share with the current Film Forum group via email and will pass out fliers on Dec 14 at the last fall film. I will tell you that I’ve decided not to do the trilogy of “Nosferatu” films until summer, when our theme just might be “Darkness and Light.” How about that? There’s all that German and Russian expressionism, the casting of great shadows, even used to terrific effect in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice section of “Fantasia.”

And Finally… There will be no Executive Comm. or Board meeting in January due to my surgery. Bonnie is almost back to normal and that’s enough about us.

I’ll try to make next week’s column just a bit lighter but this is stuff y’all need to know, right?

Jim Held, President