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Dream Yoga Meditation Series, Part 2
with Linda Go
Moderated by Sally Ekaireb
Monday, April 20m 4:30-5:30 p.m.
with Open Chat Room starting at 4:15 p.m.
This period of social distancing is a great opportunity to get quiet and meditate. However, group meditations are even more powerful than individual ones. So let's stay connected via ZOOM. Zoom is an easy-to-use meeting platform you can access via your phone or laptop and allows you to participate in video or audio.
Linda Go will be sharing a sampling from her "Night School" Dream Yoga Meditation Practice with a few fun and possibly challenging lucid dreaming practices that may help you to:
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improve memory and brain function
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stimulate creativity
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achieve power of intent and problem solving
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dispel hidden fears and traumas
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attain forgiveness
Remember, to access this conference call one has to pre-register with Zoom.
All OLLI members are welcome at our meditation programs.
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OLLI Online
Open Mic Night
Thursday, April 23,
Doors to the Zoom Room open at 6:45 p.m.
Performances begin at 7 p.m.
Music and community are good for the spirit at this time of uncertainty. We are pleased to bring you a special virtual "open mic" style concert with some wonderful performers from our OLLI Community. There will be limited space within the Zoom room, so
please use this link to reserve your spot.
Even if you don't get a spot, please know that the concert will be recorded and shared on OLLI at UNC Asheville's YouTube channel the following day, so others, unable to attend, can still enjoy the gift of our wonderful community.
Reserve your space for the OLLI Open Mic Concert. There is limited space, so please only reserve if you plan to attend. The concert will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 23. "Doors" open at 6:45 pm. You will receive instructions for how to join into the fun on Tuesday, April 21. We will also include more information about the performers.
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The Odyssey Project:
The Journey Home
"Beyond the Seduction of
Violence as Virtue"
Gareth Higgins, Thomas Griggs, and Avery Sosebee
Thursday, April 23, 7-9 p.m.
It was originally to be a face-to-face event, taking place on March 19th, but due to the pandemic, we are holding it as a webinar instead. Everything else remains the same: the topic - "Beyond the Seduction of Violence as Virtue" and the speakers Gareth Higgins, Thomas Griggs and Avery Sosebee, although the group plans to include some reflections on our current health crisis. The webinar will be held on the Zoom platform, and participants will receive an invitation to join the webinar nearer to April 23rd. Please contact Sophie Mills directly (smills@unca.edu) if you have more questions.
"The Odyssey Project" is a series of interactive community dialogues using Homer's
Odyssey as the context for exploring some of the most fundamental
societal challenges we face. The series is sponsored by the
NC Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, UNC Asheville, The Mankind Project, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNC Asheville, and Odyssey Community School.
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The Forum SIG - Virtual Edition!
Apr. 24 Topic:
The corona virus -- The whole nine yards
- May 1: Are there measures that might be applied which would mitigate the economic inequality produced by unrestrained capitalism?
- May 8: Preserving our elections against inappropriate intrusions, foreign and domestic including voter suppression.
- May 15: Environmental issues: Are we trashing the planet and what can we do about it? --Solutions to pollution.
The weekly Forum encourages a free-flowing dialogue designed to enrich and expand participants' thinking on a wide variety of topics; the group frequently focuses on current events. All OLLI members are welcome to attend. Contact
Beth Johnson, the Forum SIG coordinator, to get a link for the meeting: johnson1ea@earthlink.net
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AVL Watchdog Seeks Journalists
and Content Experts
Are you a former journalist or expert in your field and believe in the need for an independent and robust press?
OLLI member Steve Keeble and Bob Gremillion need your help! AVL Watchdog is a new nonprofit news organization dedicated to in-depth reporting on the issues that matter most to Asheville and Buncombe County. They are a group of award-winning journalists and media executives, who like many of you, chose to retire in this idyllic place and want to ensure our community rebounds and prospers, takes care of its residents, and spends its tax money responsibly. We want to engage, enlighten and inform with news that supplements and enhances the existing coverage.
Steve writes, "This is a moment of deep crisis for local news, which was already reeling from layoffs and shuttered newspapers before the coronavirus crippled ad revenues. Just in March, the Mountain Xpress significantly cut its staff and the corporate owner of the Asheville Citizen Times announced furloughs for employees and pay cuts for executives.
"Yet the need for top-notch reporting has never been greater. Journalists around the country are risking their lives to report on this pandemic and hold government accountable for its actions. And this is just the beginning.
"As Asheville and the country emerge from this crisis, the need for strong local journalism will be critical. The AVL Watchdog volunteer board is looking to draw on the incredible wealth of experience in the OLLI community to help them succeed. They want to create a talent pool of retired journalists. They are also looking for people with expertise in a particular area - government, industry, health care, you name it, to help their journalists with background information and questions that need to be asked."
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How We Are Coping:
OLLI Members Report
 OLLI member Bob Riddle is one of our most physically active participants. He has hiked the Camino de Santiago and takes impressive bike rides here in Western North Carolina. He wrote the following story which suggests the power of small gestures of kindness in challenging times.
"I have always had a hunger for Tootsie Pops. You know, the kind that have a chocolate center. This fetish was somehow connected with bike riding, as I often stopped at the Shell station on the way to a bike
ride where I would buy three to take with me. My favorite colors were red and purple and my practice was to buy two reds and a purple
or vice versa.
"Since the Corona virus I have avoided going in the Shell convenience store, practicing good health habits. Today I stopped at the Shell station for gas and got out my wipe to carefully clean the gas handle in order to fill up my car. Just as I was pulling away, an elderly lady who works at the store came out clad in a mask and rubber gloves and signaled me to stop. When I rolled down my window she handed me three tootsie pops, two purples and one red, no charge just a gesture of kindness."
 Annie Houle wrote last week to share a little bit of the season (and be sure to see our poets' creations on the Easter theme). Annie writes, "My granddaughters, Ellie and Fern Sieburg, and I made Easter Lamb cupcakes and shared with neighbors and family! Great fun and they were delicious."
We love the kind, creative, resilient and sweet stories that our members share with us at this time.
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Watch for details for ways to join our online meeting
OLLI Celebration of Community
We have traditionally held a Town Hall Meeting in the spring term
to review the highlights of our committees and programs, to review
our finances, to discuss our member survey, and to present our slate
of officers for the coming year. This year we will shift the title and
the tone of this meeting to celebrate and engage as many people
as possible in planning for the future of our organization. Come to
share ideas, ask questions, learn how OLLI works, and celebrate our
community. We will share our meeting agenda and questions soon.
We have decided to use a Zoom meeting platform. Stay tuned.
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Hanan Shabazz preparing food to deliver nutritious meals to seniors living in Asheville Housing Authority residences. Photo by Mark Rosenstein.
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What Can I Do?
Many of our members are in the age considered to be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. We have included some information about options for volunteering, but in-person volunteering can be risky at this time. But you can call someone you know might be alone. If you are going to the grocery store anyway, see what you can pick up and leave on the doorstep for a neighbor. Share your wisdom about where to find garlic or rice with the other folks on OLLIChat. Think about your family and use this quiet time to put photos in order or write down and share some of those stories you would like to go to the next generation, whether that's in your family or somewhere else.
If you need help, ask a friend who might be able to assist. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give is to trust someone else to ask for their help.
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Staying Informed
Where Can I Go to Enjoy the Spring
We have run this for a couple of weeks but thought it might be helpful to run again. We know that this is a beautiful time of the year here in Western North Carolina. Many of us may feel drawn out of our regular schedules and "cooped up." As we seek to find ways to stay active, we may have wanted to get out to our favorite trails and parks, with the reminder to keep appropriate social distance. Some parks have had to close, however, as people crowd outside,and it has been hard to allow people to maintain physical distance. A
ll Asheville City
dog parks, playgrounds and outdoor courts have closed;
greenways and walking trails will remain open. Check the following websites before you head out to hit the trail. Be aware that even if parks are open that facilities may not be.
See other blocks in this newsletter for information about restaurants that still offer takeout and shopping hours for older adults at some local markets.
Also see information in this newsletter about how to join OLLIChat. Members of that group have been actively sharing their experiences trying to find the most sought-after items.
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The Astronomy Club of Asheville
When the Reuter Center is open, we count The Astronomy Club of Asheville as one of our best programming partners. They meet usually on the first Thursday of the month with interesting speakers and presentations, The club also offers star gazes, with club members on hand to advise and assist participants in the basics of astronomy and the techniques of observing celestial phenomena.
We wanted to pass along this message from Knoxe Worde, President of the Astronomy Club of Asheville.
"Normally, the Astronomy Club of Asheville is very active with public outreach events, including nighttime and solar viewing. We are requested by local schools and organizations quite frequently. One club member is very active working with local Girl Scouts helping them earn their Astronomy badges. There are telescopes available at local libraries that anyone with a library card can check out and take home. Pack Library, downtown Asheville, has three; Nantahala library system has one at each of their branches with three at the Macon County branch.
"Nationally, the Astronomy Club of Asheville is usually one of the top five (and often top three) organizations in the country in the number of events offered to the public.
We try to keep people entertained and informed with our club website, Facebook page and newsletter, The Asheville Skies (which one can sign up for on home page of our website).
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During this time of school and closures of public areas there is still much anyone can do to learn and enjoy the night sky and everything Astronomy. Click here to go to the website for the Astronomy Club of Asheville.
The "Resources" tab has links to numerous educational and informational sites for all ages.
There are good free planetarium programs for your personal computer that can be downloaded so that anyone can view and study the night sky while stuck at home.
Stellarium
is a good one.
There are numerous good apps for your phone that can also be downloaded. Sky Safari is a favorite among some of our members.
"NASA has many education and informative links for all ages. The agency has made its entire media library, pictures and videos, publicly accessible and copyright free! You can view images of our Sun in real time at NASA SOHO mission website.
"We encourage anyone who has an interest in Astronomy to be proactive in discovering and exploring the many opportunities that exist even from home. We hope that
soon we will once again be able to gather at public meetings and star gazes. Meanwhile, throw down that TV remote, explore and enjoy with your family and children those options freely available for discovering more about our vast and amazing universe.
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| From Getty Images, via NPR |
Learning More about Coronavirus
Many online newspapers are making all information on the coronavirus available, even to those without a subscription.
 OLLI member, College for Seniors instructor, chair of OLLI's Life Transitions Committee and active member of the Aging in Place Special Interest Group, Meridith Miller sent along a link to
TED Connects: Community and Hope. As the authors of the website explain, this service
features experts whose ideas can help us "reflect and work through this time with a sense of responsibility, compassion and wisdom." If you missed these conversations last week, you can still hear them and sign up for updates with recommendations for talks from the vast TED library.
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Dear OLLI Members,
We are grateful to be able to announce so much more original programming in this Sunday newsletter. The Meditation Special Interest is offering its meetings online at a time when we may be needing to develop practices of mindfulness. "The Odyssey Project" is offering its final lecture online. Congregation Beth Israel is offering Yom HaShoah programs online, including a presentation by Holocaust survivor Walter Ziffer. You can learn more about gardening online. And we are most excited that Hannah Furgiuele will offer an OLLI Online Open Mic night this Thursday; sign up on the link for an "invitation" and to learn more about the performers. We are still working on the timing for our Celebration of Community, so thanks for your patience. It has been an interesting exercise in planning without all the kinds of certainty that we could count on just a couple of months ago.
We also want to call your attention to the Convivial Creativity workshops being offered by Carl Nordgren and encourage you to learn more about the AVL Watchdog organization being formed by OLLI member Steve Keeble and Bob Gremillion.
We are truly thankful for the wonderful community we create together, even when we are apart. We miss you and are eager to learn how to connect while we are apart and also eager to gather together again.
Catherine Frank
Executive Director
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What's Next for College for Seniors
The fate of summer programs at UNC Asheville and at OLLI remains uncertain, but we continue to plan and hope. College for Seniors Program Manager Herb Gunn has worked on a Summer 2020 online catalof; we have about 10 instructors who have agreed to offer online courses.
We convened a task force made up of OLLI members Larry Bruce, Bob Davis, Margaret Davis, Marilyn Laken, and Julia Loughran this week to talk about best practices for online courses and also set the ambitious goal of considering new kinds of offerings that might benefit from our current physical distance.
We are optimists. We anticipate that we will come back with the potential for both online and in-person courses. We are considering how we will have to pay for and charge for new services and who is best equipped to help us navigate a "new normal."
Our staff has been dedicated to creating a community of people who have had the luxury of gathering in person to learn and connect. We may have taken for granted the luxury of having a space designed and built for our use by staff and members who were able to dream big and achieve their goals. Now we realize that we can still dream big and be part of a community of learners, but that will look very different in the future. Thanks so much for your patience and creativity as we enter a new phase of lifelong learning.
Stay tuned. Stay positive. Stay together apart.
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Carl Nordgren |
Convivial Creativity
A Free Webinar Series to Help You Live Happily and Successfully in this New World Of Ours
Mondays, April 20 -
May 11,
10-11:30 a.m.
From your home computer!
Many of you had signed up for the series of creativity workshops that Carl Nordgren was scheduled to hold in March, just as we were closing down in efforts to flatten the curve for COVID-19. You are in luck, but you can now participate in "Convivial Creativity," a FREE four-part webinar series developed to help you live happily and successfully in this new world of ours.
Last year nearly 100 OLLI members attended Carl's two-hour creativity workshop at the Reuter Center, "Becoming a Creative Genius (again)." Carl has now partnered up with Mark Tully, whose insights into neuroscience will help you get more satisfaction from your daily behaviors and become a better learner. They are offering you four 90 minute webinars that will:
* Review three recent neuroscience research projects, each one revealing biological changes to a 55+ brain that invite a significant creative renewal.
* Share Convivial Creative concepts and behaviors that will 1) enrich your life, 2) cultivate your imagination, and 3) help nurture creative relations between you and other individuals. These concepts will help accelerate and sustain your creative renewal.
*Provide a framework that invites participants to work together in anticipation of the end of our social isolation, considering all the good answers to the all important question of the moment, "How can we make things better than they used to be?"
Each webinar will be fun, fast paced, and as interactive as the technology allows.
Webinars will occur on the following schedule: Monday, 4/20, 4/27, 5/4, and 5/11 from 10 am to 11:30 am.
Please click here to register at the Convivial Creativity Eventbrite page. When you click on the orange "Select a Date" button you will see the four dates listed above-you can sign up for all or select individual webinars if your schedule won't permit your full participation. You will share your email with us at registration and on Friday before the first webinar we will send you the link for the webinar.
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 TODAY:
Yom HaShoah
Program Featuring Judy Marx
This year's Yom HaShoah commemoration begins with voices of the next generation. Two teens, Abe Goldstein and Alex Reich, who were scheduled to be in Poland this year to commemorate the Shoah, will share some thoughts on how they view their role in our collective responsibility to remember.
The featured speaker is Judy Marx. Judy will share her story as a "2nd generation" survivor, as well as her father's story who was a Holocaust survivor. As part of the program, she will read excerpts from her father's memoir, published in honor of his 90th birthday. There will be an opportunity for questions at the end.
Yom HaShoah Service Featuring Walter Ziffer
Monday, April 20, 7 p.m.
This service will feature music, prayers, and candle lighting woven together to create a meaningful opportunity to reflect and accept a collective responsibility to honor and share the stories of the Holocaust. The service will include remarks from survivor Dr. Walter Ziffer.
Walter, born in 1927 in Czechoslovakia, survived multiple camps during the Holocaust. After the war, he received an engineering degree from Vanderbilt University, two master's degrees from the Graduate School of Theology of Oberlin College and a doctorate in theology from the University of Strasbourg. He is the author of many books including
Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor's Search for God. He speaks regularly throughout Western North Carolina regarding his experiences throughout the Holocaust.
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Send us your favorite online resources!
Every Wednesday we will send out emails while our planned activities are suspended and provide links to resources to encourage you to continue learning and satisfying your intellectual curiosity. We can use your help. Send us your favorite podcasts or other fun shareable media.
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Grow Your Own Food
Free access to Wild Abundance online course
Permaculture + homesteading school
Wild Abundance is sharing a free online course on how to grow food. The roughly 90-minute long course, "Top 10 Vegetables to Plant That Will Really Feed You," features a 24-page detailed course manual and is taught by two instructors who have decades of experience with gardening and offers general growing guidelines, ways to scale it up or down depending on your needs, and tips for preserving your harvest
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Food and Shopping Options
We know that many of you may be concerned about safety when you venture our. We found
this NY Times article to be helpful in understanding more about the spread of the virus and the most effective ways to keep ourselves and others safe.
Special Shopping Hours and Delivery Options
Who Is Still Offering Takeout?
The
Asheville Independent Restaurant Association
(AIR) has compiled a list of area restaurants offering takeout and delivery services - as well as those offering free meals for kids in need. Check it out here!
Please note that businesses are changing daily so it makes sense to call ahead to make sure that your favorite is still offering takeout (and if you order ahead, many places will bring your food curbside.)
Farmer's Markets
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For COVID-19 updates:
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This Day in Sports History
by College for Seniors Instructor Larry Griswold
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Plaque to Babe Ruth |
April 19, 1949: Just eight months after his death, a monument is erected for Babe Ruth in center field at Yankee Stadium, known
as "The House that Ruth Built" when it opened in 1923. Plaques were also put up for teammate Lou Gehrig, and Miller Huggins,
manager for the Yankees first three World Series wins, all in the 1920's. Today, Monument Park in the new Yankees Stadium that
opened in 2009 honors 37 members of the organization.
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| Tom Longboat |
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April 19, 1907: In spite of having a cold, 19-year-old Onondaga distance runner Tom Longboat from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario,
Canada, finished first among the 124 participants in the Boston Marathon, taking more than five minutes off the event's previous best time.
Completing the course in 2:24:20, Longboat crossed the finish line three and half minutes before the second place finisher.
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Sharing the Talents of OLLI Members
Please keep sharing stories of how you are staying in; just send them to me at cfrank@unca.edu. We want to know how you are staying safe and learning. Pictures and even videos are encouraged. We would love to hear from you.
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Wishing They Were Here?
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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. |
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David Blight |
In 2017, Yale professor David Blight appeared as part of "Zebulon Vance Reconsidered" sponsored by UNC Asheville's Department of History and the Vance Birthplace State Historic Site. You might enjoy
this piece from the NY Times on what America owes Frederick Douglass, and suggest you might be interested in Blight's 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning definitive biography
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. If you want a taste or a reminder of Blight as a lecturer, you might enjoy
this 2018 discussion of the book recorded at Washington, DC's Politics and Prose Bookstore.
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Join OLLIChat, the replacement for OLLITalk.
It's free for all 2019-20 OLLI members and easy to use. It's also a great way to stay connected as we are all trying to find ways to manage unprecedented challenges.
OLLIChat is an online community where OLLI at UNC Asheville
members may share information of common interest with each other. It is designed to look and function like the old OLLITalk.
Introducing OLLIChat Companion
Several times a week, the volunteers at OLLIChat send entertaining content to our subscribers - humor, old movie clips and games. The service is free. Please email
OLLIChatAVL@gmail.com
and a volunteer will reply and send you an invitation.
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We are postponing making decisions about this program until we know more about the ongoing impact of COVID-19
Visit olliasheville.com/exploring-ccrcs for more information.
"Exploring Continuing Care Retirement Communities" will meet for eight sessions over the course of seven weeks. Three of the meetings will be held at the Reuter Center where we will set a context for better understanding the advantages and challenges of life in a CCRC. For the other meetings, participants will travel to representative communities to hear both from marketing directors and from residents to gain a clearer understanding of quality and character of individual communities.
Click here to register through OLLI's online registration system.
For more information, contact Hannah Furgiuele at hfurgiue@unca.edu
or
828-250-3871
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