PRESIDENT’S CORNER

President’s Corner for March 4, 2016

More News…

Director Search: the committee met to review the 21 applications received on Tuesday of this week. We were able to reduce the pool to four finalists. These will be interviewed by the committee on Tuesday, March 8 via group phone calls. We will then determine which finalists to interview in person in our facilities, likely the following week. We will also be checking references of each finalist. A list of questions has been formulated to ask each candidate. We feel very confident that a successful candidate will be forwarded to Dean Hand for appointment.
Membership: Many of you have likely heard that we have not reached 500 members in this fiscal year. It is essential that we do so, so we will be making an effort to contact people that have been members to ask if they would join again. I would also ask you to contact anyone you know that might enjoy being an OLLI member, take classes and participate in our activities. I cannot emphasize too strongly how important it is for us to maintain and even expand our membership base. The future of the Osher endowment is at stake!
Outreach--Charleston: For the past year, we have been holding classes in Charleston with the goal of establishing a branch OLLI there. This was an important initiative for our outgoing Director, Angela. The Search Committee has discussed assembling a Work Plan for the new Director that would certainly include a thorough review of the Charleston branch and how it can move forward. For our friends in Charleston, I would urge you to invest in this effort by forming a small committee to oversee the activities there, plan classes, recruit faculty and members, and generally work for a successful OLLI experience. I don’t believe any branch “campus” can survive in the long term without a local steering committee and people on the Board in Morgantown to administer activities from the “mother ship,” as it were. Let’s keep talking!

OK, enuff seriousness…let’s savour some advice:

"The afternoon is bright,
with spring in the air,
a mild March afternoon,
with the breath of April stirring,
I am alone in the quiet patio
looking for some old untried illusion -
some shadow on the whiteness of the wall
some memory asleep
on the stone rim of the fountain,
perhaps in the air
the light swish of some trailing gown."
[Antonio Machado, 1875-1939]

March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away. [Thalassa Cruso]

Facts about March. The word 'March' comes from the Roman 'Martius'. This was originally the first month of the Roman calendar and was named after Mars, the god of war. March was the beginning of our calendar year. We changed to the 'New Style' or 'Gregorian calendar in 1752, and it is only since then when we the year began on 1st January. The Anglo-Saxons called the month Hlyd monath which means Stormy month, or Hraed monath which means Rugged month. All through Lent the traditional games played are marbles and skipping. The games were stopped on the stroke of twelve noon on Good Friday, which in some places was called Marble Day or Long Rope Day. The game of marbles has been played for hundreds of years and some historians say that it might have been started by rolling eggs. In the past, round stones, hazelnuts, round balls of baked clay and even cherry stones have been used.

Stay tuned, my friends…

Jim Held, President