PRESIDENT'S CORNER

Latest Breaking News!  Did that get your attention? At her final meeting with our Board, Angela said that finding a new Director would be a great opportunity to think about our OLLI, consider new directions, figure out priorities, and decide how we want to grow and prosper in our state. The Director Search Committee has had phone interviews with three finalists, has met personally with one candidate, Skyped with one, and will have the final two in-person interviews today and next Tuesday. Once that is done, the committee will rank the candidates and make our recommendations to the School of Public Health for action. Our conversations with the candidates have been exciting and educational, in that we have been able to candidly discuss issues and how each one might be resolved by the new Director.  We plan to ask the new Director to be our keynote speaker at the Annual Meeting in June, so stay tuned!

Membership. As many of you know, we are lacking between 50-60 members of reaching our required goal of 500 members that Osher expects us to maintain in order to keep the million dollar endowment. Please talk to any friends or acquaintances you have that you feel would benefit from being an OLLI member. Remember, a trial membership for $25 or a lone-term membership at $50 is certainly affordable, and we have a great line-up of spring courses to tempt everyone. In addition, can I urge you, as you take courses, to take seriously that little question at the end of the class evaluation, asking you to recommend courses YOU would like to see? The Curriculum Committee takes each of those ideas seriously and tries to find instructors for them.

Met in HD 2016-17 Season: Here’s the line-up for next season for those many of us that attend these great live, simulcasts at the Regal Hollywood cinema. Mark these on your calendars. The live program is on Saturdays with the encore the following Wednesday evening. Tristan and Isolde, Oct. 8; Don Giovanni, Oct. 22; L’Amour de Loin, Dec. 10; Nabucco, Jan. 7; Romeo et Juliette, Jan. 21; Rusalka, Feb. 25; La Traviata, Mar. 11; Idomeneo, Mar. 25; Eugene Onegin, Apr. 22; and Der Rosenkavalier, May 13.

Spring is About to Pounce! The vernal equinox is happening to us on March 19—tomorrow—so put on your ballet slippers and get out there and do a dance around your blooming daffodils!

A Prayer In Spring - Poem by Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Happy Spring!

Jim Held, President