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How We Are Coping:
OLLI Members Report
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Our Voice staff member receives masks
from Susan Poole
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Susan Poole is former College for Seniors program director and long-time NC Center for Creative Retirement and OLLI member, long-time volunteer and advocate for Our VOICE. Susan writes "I've made 250 masks and have given them to family, friends, the United Way, Pisgah Legal, Helpmate, and Our VOICE. It's been an effort of love-and actually one of selfishness because it made me feel so good to make them."
We hope that you will click here to learn more about Our VOICE,a nonprofit founded in 1974 whose mission is "To inspire hope and healing while ending sexual violence and human trafficking through education, counseling, and advocacy."
We value the stories of our kind, creative, and resilient members. Let us know what you are doing to stay busy, engaged, and connected at this time. Send us an email at cfrank@unca.edu
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Meditation SIG
Functional Meditation- Part 2 of a 3 Part Series Presented by Jacquie Wollins
Moderator: Sally Ekaireb
Monday, June 8, 4:30-5:10
(upcoming) Monday, June 15 4:30-5:10
This period of social distancing is a great opportunity to get quiet and meditate.
Jacquie
Wollins will present
content from her
Functional Meditation
course to establish a foundation to this meditation practice.
We are in stressful times, and we all react differently. Starting from
the beginner perspective, Jacquie will lead you to your meditative state
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to a place where you can find refuge and appreciate your strengths and vitality while taking away the mystery of meditation
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There will be three successive programs in this series.
You will learn how to get to your
Alpha meditative state
and develop your skill and achievement for easy access.
You will also learn how to use your meditative state, that's
where the "functional" aspects come in
.
Jackie has been teaching
Functional Meditation for many years at OLLI. This practice is based on the Silva Method and incorporates different aspects of the Feldenkrais Method.
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Link to Join Zoom Meeting to join on June 1:
Meeting ID: 726 8736 4915
Password: 531629
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For questions and the link for this series, get in touch with Meditation SIG contact: Sally Ekaireb:
skekaireb@gmail.com
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Social Bridging Project Volunteer Trainings
Tuesday, June 9, 9-11 a.m. and
Thursday, June 11, 9-11 a.m.
See information below for contact to participate
and information about how to take advantage of this service
Join UNC Asheville, Healthy Aging NC, the NC Center for Health and Wellness and UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC in volunteering for the Social Bridging Project. This project connects isolated older adults with trained volunteers for a friendly check-in, referrals to community resources, and help troubleshooting basic technologies to stay connected. This is an opportunity to help in your community and volunteer from wherever you are to support socially isolated older adults and others.
The commitment includes a one time four-hour training, weekly 30 minute team check in, and you can sign up to make calls on your own schedule. The next training takes place Tuesday, June 9th from 9-11am and Thursday, June 11th from 9-11am. Contact Jordan Perry at jperry2@unca.edu for more information or to register.
2) Would you be willing to support our training by being a callee again? This time we are building time for the practice calls into the second day of training (Thursday morning between 9:30 and 11:00).
Please contact Amy Lanou (
alanou@unca.edu or 919-306-5162) or Jordan Perry (
jperry2@unca.edu) if you are interested in participating as a volunteer caller or a practice callee (again); this time during our training.
I
f you or someone you know would like to receive a call as a check-in, to get some training on technology that helps you connect to others or allows you to take advantage of telehealth opportunities, or if you need access to resources and are not sure where to begin, please contact Dr. Tasha Woodall
at (828)771-3445 or send an email to
Tasha.Woodall@mahec.net with your
phone number and preferred day and
time for a phone call.
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Plant-Based Living SIG
In this group we provide information and support for anyone interested in following a more plant based diet along the lines of Drs. Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman, Neal Barnard, John McDougall, Michael Greger, etc. and T. Colin Campbell, PhD.
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Link to Join Zoom Meeting:
Meeting ID:
788 0200 4031
Password:
1bTbtZ
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For questions, get in touch with the SIG contact:
Bonnie Wheeler
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The Forum SIG - Virtual Edition!
Friday, June 12, 1 p.m.
Online
Topic:
June 12 : What are the effects of Trump's "war on the deep state" - congress, executive agencies, and the
media?
June 19: Fake news: How can traditional freedom of expression survive?
June 26: How can we help Asheville recover from the current situation?
July 3: Current events and selection of topics for July.
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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Elisha Mitchell Audubon Society (EMAS) Special Program
"A Murder of Crows, and Other Clever Corvids"
Tuesday, June 16, 7 p.m.
Facebook account not necessary
The Elisha Mitchell Audubon Society invites you to join international bird guide Aaron Steed for an informative
talk
about the fascinating Corvid family. Crows, ravens,
and blue jays
have long been maligned, mythologized and misunderstood. Often living near
people, they are easily recognizable but not necessarily the most beloved of birds. Recent research has shown that they are highly intelligent birds. Their behavioral traits, unusual in most bird species, include cooperative breeding, long-term pair and family bonds, caching of food and use of tools. Aaron will provide insight into the complex behaviors, social structures, and incredible intelligence exhibited by members of this group. A special focus will be given to those species which occur in WNC, and how to identify them.
Blue Jay by Brian Kushner/Audubon Photo Awards
Aaron Steed is a graduate of the UNC-Asheville Biology Department and has worked on ornithological field research focused primarily on endangered species. Aaron is currently office manager and tour guide at Ventures Birding Tours in Asheville. He has led international bird tours to Panama, Belize, Peru, Cuba, and Spain as well as tours all across America.
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The Future of Intercollegiate Athletics
Wednesday, June 17, 11 a.m.
Have you wondered what the landscape of intercollegiate athletics will look like this fall and beyond?
will be joined by North Carolina's Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham and North Carolina A&T's Athletic Director Earl M. Hutton III in a Virtual 101 Webinar. The webinar will be hosted by Larry Griswold, formerly with Sports Illustrated and Sports History Instructor at the College of Seniors/OLLI Center.
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How We Can Help:
Community Volunteer Needs
We know that OLLI members are for the most part over 60 and therefore considered particularly susceptible to COVID-19, even as organizations and businesses begin to re-open. We suggest that before you sign on for any volunteer opportunity that you gain a full understanding of the precautions that will be taken to protect volunteers and diminish spread of the virus.
Become a Reading
Tutor
with Read to Succeed
Asheville/Buncombe
OLLI's Civic Engagement Committee Chair Kathleen Mainardi writes with the following request from Read2Succeed, a group the committee partners with.
Did you know that children who aren't reading on grade-
level by the end of 3rd grade are 4x more likely to drop out
of school? You can help close the literacy achievement gap
and give students both the skills and confidence they need to
succeed in school and life. Become a volunteer reading tutor
with Read to Succeed Asheville/Buncombe and work one-to-one with a kindergarten-third-grade student in one of our local Asheville City or
Buncombe County schools 1hour per week. Young students are going to need literacy support more than ever following the COVID-19 crisis, and you can make a difference!
To learn more about this unique opportunity and upcoming volunteer training dates, contact Julie Claywell, Volunteer Coordinator, at julie.claywell@r2sasheville.org /
We appreciate the spirit of OLLI members who want to help, while we urge caution as we learn to live with the virus.
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Staying Together Apart
We realize that we would all like things to be "back to normal" as soon as possible, to be back in our "home away from home," especially at this beautiful time of year. We also realize that the best way to stay safe is to stay home except for essential travel. We here at OLLI are trying to make the most of this challenging time by finding ways to use technology like Zoom and social media platforms to stay connected and to understand "creative retirement" in new ways. We encourage you to try all of these new ways to capture a feeling for our OLLI community even while we have to stay apart.
We all look forward to being back together at the Reuter Center, but until then, we want you to feel connected and to continue to look to OLLI for great opportunities to learn "together apart."
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Gray Matters: Creating Connections
OLLI at UNC Asheville members, as we know, have come to us from all corners of the globe. Over so many lifetimes, you've lived stories that are compelling and unique. You've witnessed history; you've made it, too.
Our Gray Matters team, a project of OLLI's Planning Committee, is in the process of collecting and recording these stories--your stories--and begins rolling them out on video, in this issue of the Observer.
Gray Matters' official name is Gray Matters: Creating Connections, and in this time when in-person connections are severely limited, videos seem a perfect alternative. Connect with OLLI members you may or may not yet know via these videos.
- What it was like to live on the Soviet border during the height of the Cold War.
- What I learned about women at the 2017 Women's March in Washington.
- I was in a Georgia public schoolroom in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional.
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Hillary Does the Macarena, with Chris Skoczynski
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Lewis Rothlein |
What Goes Up...
by Judy LaMée
Lewis Rothlein knows that "What Goes Up Must Come Down," the title of the most recent crossword puzzle this multi-talented man has constructed. It was the featured crossword in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. He constructs the puzzles not for the money, he says, but to bring joy to people. He surely experienced great joy himself when his puzzle got the "Yes!" from Times puzzlemaster Will Shortz. Want to see the puzzle? Want to solve the puzzle?
Lewis's puzzles have also appeared in the
Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune
and Boston Globe.
Jeff Chen, a Seattle-based writer, and Lewis co-constructed the Sunday puzzle by email, exchanging more than 100 of them over a 4-week span. Together they have constructed four puzzles inside three months.
Lewis moved to Asheville in 2011 with his wife Susan. He has taught eight "The Art of the Crossword" classes at OLLI, Levels 1 and 2, and was scheduled to teach Level 3 in our recent spring term that, unfortunately, was cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He wore many hats across a broad range of fields during his career: syndicated newspaper columnist, financial journalist, sports magazines editor and yoga instructor. When he realized he was spending too much time away from his three children, he shifted gears and taught elementary school so he could have summers and vacations with them. His voice brightens when he talks of those years, "I loved it. I love kids," he beams. Oh, wait, there's more! Lewis and Susan operated a yoga studio in Florida for 20 years after Susan got him hooked on yoga. Now in Asheville, he teaches a live-streaming yoga class Wednesdays from 2:30 - 3:45 p.m. with the Asheville Yoga Center. Click here to find out more about Lewis's streaming yoga classes.
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Dr. Keith Krumpe in a classroom in Karpen Hall set up to maintain social distance. |
What's Next for College for Seniors
We are working with the university to make the best possible decisions about what our fall term might look like. Nationally, almost 30% of OLLI programs have made the decision to operate with only remote learning possibilities. About 23% have made the decision to offer some online and some in-person learning. About 47% (OLLI at UNC Asheville among them) have not yet made a decision. No one has made the decision to open with face-to-face instruction only.
We recognize that UNC Asheville will reopen for undergraduate education, beginning on Monday, August 10 and ending the fall term on Friday, November 20. Our university's senior staff and emergency operations team are managing a staggering number of decisions and details to maintain the university as a vital and important institution in our community. University leaders have to manage best and worst case scenarios that include enrollment numbers, finances, and state appropriations. They are working with guidance from the UNC System, UNC Healthcare, MAHEC, and Mission Health to make good decisions about safety protocols based on the best available data and our community's capacity to care for people who contract the virus. They are designing classrooms for social distance and safe entrances and exits, designing and ordering masks and hand sanitizers, creating protocols to serve food and manage libraries, and planning how to manage spikes in cases. They even have to figure out how to manage restrooms so that we all work together to maintain the health and safety of our community as a whole.
Reopening OLLI at the Reuter Center would require that we manage all of these details and consider additionally the risks and rewards for the OLLI demographic. We have to consider that we will be operating with a staff of five people and would have to determine how best to use the effort and energy of everyone to be best prepared for a wide range of scenarios.
We have asked our instructors and curriculum committees to plan for a scenario not only with a limited face-to-face instruction but potentially to continue with only remote instruction in the fall.
We know that many of you will be disappointed if we cannot gather face-to-face. It is likely that many will not feel comfortable returning to shared public spaces, particularly people over 65 and those with underlying medical conditions, as long as there is no cure and no vaccine for COVID-19. Some people have already told me that if the university opens we should open, even if we have a very different financial model and different epidemiological concerns. I have been so grateful for the positive and entrepreneurial spirit that we are seeing from committees who persuade instructors to give remote learning a try and for the people who participate in our Zoom Café meetings to get comfortable with new technology. I am also grateful to those who continue to ask good questions about how we are making our decisions and who remind us of the great value in the ways we have traditionally gathered.
We can still dream big and be part of a community of learners, even if temporarily that may look different than populating the Reuter Center. We will always strive to preserve the best of who we are, and we are learning all the time about the possibility to add new communities and tools to the work we do. 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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Sharing the Talents of OLLI Members
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Gretel Timan's poem this week ends with the line "I am witness and hostage to time and its eternal rhythm, it's tick-tock.
But where does it go?
Oh, where does it go?" |
Click here to read poems by Carol Booth, Gretel Timan, Michael Smith, and Mamie Hilliard.
Many thanks to OLLI members Jay Jacoby and Nelson Sartoris who compile this weekly showcase of the work of our talented OLLI poets. We have asked each of the poets to give us a short biography and to tell us why they have chosen to share their specific poems.
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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This Day in Sports History
by College for Seniors Instructor Larry Griswold
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Toronto's Sky Dome |
June 7, 1989:
Four days after opening ceremonies and two days after the first game was played there, baseball's first game to start outdoors and
end indoors was played in Toronto's brand new Sky Dome, the first stadium with a retractable roof allowing games to be played in any weather.
Just over an hour in to the game in which the Blue Jays beat the Brewers, 4-2, the roof which closed or opened in 20 minutes, was closed.
June 7, 1992:
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Jim Courier
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One year after defeating Andre Agassi to win the French Open men's singles tennis championship, 21-year-old
Jim Courier successfully defended his title with a straight set victory over Czech player Petr Korda. The French Open is the
second of four annual tennis grand slam events, and Courier was inducted in to International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2005.
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Upcoming AARP Mountain Region Events
Weekly Series: Caregiver Chat: Virtual Connections
Tuesday, June 9, 10 AM
: Yes You Can! Prevent Falls for Caregivers and Loved Ones
Stay safe and boost confidence through tips for fall prevention
Join us for a series of informal discussions with other caregivers and resource specialists in Western North Carolina. Each week provides a light-hearted message or experience, practical tips and an opportunity to informally connect with other caregivers.
Click Here to Register
, or call: 828-251-7441 (You can register for one or more)
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The Leadership Is In
Tuesday, June 16,
2-3 p.m.
We will include a link and instructions for joining in next week's newsletter
We are entering a new phase of our programs that is at least temporarily very different from our familiar territory. We want to find new ways to hear what you are thinking and to talk about our OLLI community's plans, our hopes, and our challenges. Our first two calls went well, and we hope to continue for a while.
We will have members of the OLLI staff and steering council and hope also to invite guests from the rest of the university to share their ideas about planning for the future. You don't have to have a question or idea.
Feel free just to stop by to say hello.
We want to know how you are thinking, feeling, and coping, and to stay connected to the organization that we create together.
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Wishing They Were Here
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Michael B. Jordan (playing Bryan Stevenson) and Jamie Foxx (playing Walter McMillian) star in the film version of
Bryan Stevenson's
Just Mercy
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We have featured links to articles and talks by attorney Bryan Stevenson before in this ongoing section of our newsletter, but this week we felt it important to focus on the website of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). The following information comes from the
EJI website:
"Founded in 1989 by
Bryan Stevenson
, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. We challenge the death penalty and excessive punishment and we provide re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people.
"EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment. We are committed to changing the narrative about race in America. EJI produces groundbreaking reports, an award-winning wall calendar, and short films that explore our nation's history of racial injustice, and we recently launched an ambitious national effort to create new spaces, markers, and memorials that address the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, which shapes many issues today.
"EJI provides research and recommendations to assist advocates and policymakers in the critically important work of criminal justice reform. We publish reports, discussion guides, and other educational materials, and our staff conduct educational tours and presentations for thousands of students, teachers, faith leaders, professional associations, community groups, and international visitors every year."
Our time apart has helped put in perspective the many enriching experiences OLLI members enjoy both at the Reuter Center and throughout the university, and we hope you enjoy these reminders and begin to look forward to the time when we can again share these experiences in person.
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Food and Shopping Options
Special Shopping Hours and Delivery Options
 Who Is Still Offering Takeout?
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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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