PRESIDENT'S CORNER - January 29, 2016

Well, folks, we are about to enter the Dead of Winter (February) or, as we like to say around OLLI, the LIVE of Winter, since we do love to take our classes, lunch with friends, read a terrific book, see a movie or Met in HD opera (tomorrow = “Turandot,” Puccini’s final work, and one of my very favorites!) or go snow-shoeing on the River Trail. Here are some bullets of the non-lethal variety that do NOT require a background check:

• Today the spring course proposals are due. If you have a good idea for one but don’t want to teach it yourself, who could you call right now to do it for you?
• Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me… For half a century I have been writing thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song. I have tried them all, but I feel I have not said a thousandth part of that which is within me. When I go down to the grave, I can say, “I have finished my day’s work,” but I cannot say, “I have finished my life’s work.” [Writer Victor Hugo]
• Did you really think the quips and quotes were gone for good?
• Thanks to all who sent prayers and wishes to my Bonnie. She is home and doing better day-by-day.
• In the last 2-3 years, in retirement, I suppose, I have taken up Charlie Rose’s wonderful interviews.  We set the DVR to automatically record them all, then go in and preview each one to save just those we must see. There’s a good reason many call him the greatest interviewer/conversationalist we have. So, we just watched an interview with actor Mark Strong, currently concluding his run in Arthur Miller’s classic drama, “A View from the Bridge” in New York, to superb reviews. When Charlie asked him why so many people still agree to sit in a dark room and watch live actors play dramatic characters—who cares about theater anymore?—he said (and I paraphrase): Watching live actors on stage allows us to judge ourselves against those characters—what would we do in similar circumstances?  That’s an excellent answer. Being able to leave a theater, go out with friends and think through what we have just experienced and, perhaps, learn something and to think, “there, but for the grace of God, go I (or I might have done).”
• Bang!

Bon hiver, my friends!

Jim Held, President