Editor: Susan Rauch
Associate Editors: Micky Josephs
Ariana Caragliano
Contributing Editor: Irene Sax
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Dear Members,
Thanks to all who joined us on Friday for the General Membership Meeting. I hope you found the breakout room conversations to be generative. The Advisory Board and I will continue to consider your ideas and questions for program operations and policy. If you missed the GMM, you can watch the recording here.
In the coming days, we will send a membership participation survey to members who joined the program from Spring 2017 through Spring 2021. This is an opportunity to reflect on your experience in LP2 and how the Advisory Board, committees, and GC staff can best support you. The review process was in place for many years when IRP had a director but has been on hiatus due to staffing and change in institutional home. If you receive the survey, it is important that you complete it and return it to our office by Monday, May 16. I will stay in touch to follow up. While we are playing “catch up” this year by sending to multiple classes, moving forward, the survey will be sent annually to members after their first year.
We ended a successful spring season of Fridays@1 on April 22, if you missed this past Fridays@1 with Dr. Ellen Zweibel you can see her talk here.
Thank you for your well wishes as I enter the last months of pregnancy. In my absence, Joanna Micek will be the main point of contact for LP2. Ariana will continue her work as an editor of the Observer and with Fridays@1 and the Diversity Committee on their event series. Monben Mayon will continue to offer administrative and operational support on a part-time basis. Questions and general emails should be directed to [email protected].
Registration for Summer classes will open this week – keep an eye out for an email with the link to register. We will open Fall registration in early June in sync with the Graduate Center’s classroom assignment cycle.
Thank you to our dedicated Advisory Board, committees, coordinators, and staff for a great semester despite inherent challenges. It’s been great to have a livelier campus and I look forward to seeing more of you in person in the future!
Have a wonderful summer.
My best,
Mariel
212-817-2474
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NOTE: In addition to coming to the building and using the library, you can use your Graduate Center student ID card to access Museums across the city at a discounted rate and take advantage of other student discounts.
How to request your Graduate Center student photo ID card:
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Email [email protected] from your Graduate Center email address. Put “ID Card” as the subject.
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The email body must contain your name, your program (LP2) and your mailing address.
- Attach a “passport type headshot” JPEG picture taken within the past six months.
To access campus, you must be fully vaccinated and have a Cleared4 pass for validation. In anticipation of the Fall semester, we would like to get all members in the system over the summer if they are not already pass holders. We will send instructions via email to those who need to register.
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Coming Soon to a Computer Near You: Summer and Fall Grids
In the Director’s Note above, Mariel announces that registration for Summer study groups will open this week. There will be an email containing the Summer Grid – ALL STUDY GROUPS ON ZOOM – and registration materials.
As announced at the GMM, the Fall Grid and Fall Registration will be available in early June. The June date aligns LP2 with the Graduate Center’s registration process.
In developing the Fall grid, the Curriculum Committee (CC) has provided a mix of modalities – study groups on-campus, on Zoom and on HyFlex. The Director and Board are very much aware of the range of needs among our members.
These have guided the CC in developing the grid, and the Advisory Board and Director in planning for the future.
The Director and Board value our LP² community and our planning takes into consideration the needs of all our friends and colleagues. The Town Halls at the recent GMM reflected the Board’s commitment to listen to members’ ideas and concerns. The Board will be reviewing the comments and suggestions from the Town Halls at our meeting on May 3. If you have any further comments, please send them to the Board member who led your Town Hall. As LP2 members, we must come together to best determine how to thrive in this changing environment.
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IER – The Institute for Education in Retirement, Inc.
cordially invites you to be its GUEST
at the 60th Anniversary Celebration of the IRP/ LP²
Location: Indoor-Outdoor Space (tba)
Required: RSVP reply and have Cleared4 Pass
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“Rain Date” Prelude to Tuesday With Friends
25 joyful LP2 members gathered on April 19 for a tease revival of the Tuesday With Friends (TWF) program. This gathering hosted by Barbara Marwell, featured Terry Perlin’s provocative talk – “The Perennial Moral Dilemma of Lying”.
Following the talk and a lively Q&A, members, wine and refreshments in hand, caught up with old friends and met new friends in one of the largest in-person social gatherings of LP2 since the pandemic. (In the interest of safety, all attendees were asked to “COVID test” prior to attending.) Participants felt that “[i]t was a great success and wonderful to see so many of us in the flesh” and described “[a] spectacular afternoon seeing friends face to face after 2 years. What a pleasure!”
So… why didn’t you have a chance to sign up for this TWF? This get-together, planned in conjunction with preparation for the upcoming 60th anniversary celebration, drew on guest lists from the cancelled events of 2020. Tuesday With Friends is hoping to be back in full operation in the fall, so look for announcements of future programs.
Carolyn Preiss, Ruth Clapper and Lesley Herrmann have served on the TWF Committee for many years and are ready to “pass the torch”. Nancy Small and Eva Vogel remain on the committee and look forward to working with new committee members in planning and delivering this popular LP2 community activity. See the TWF Committee description here. If you are interested in joining, please contact Carolyn Preiss for more information. [email protected]
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PhotoSIG Field Trip
Venue: Studio of Beowulf Sheehan
Address: 64 East 3rd Street, 2nd Floor
Transportation:
Subway: F to 2nd Ave.
Bus: M15 (via 2nd Ave.) to E. 3rd St.
Tuesday, May 3, 2 sessions @ 10AM & 11AM
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Science Seminar Series
Eleanore T. Wurtzel, Vitamin A Deficiency, Synthetic Biology and the Coming Green Revolution
Monday May 9, 2022 @ 4PM
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The world population is expected to increase by as many as 3 billion come 2050. The question is how to feed those growing numbers. For reasons having to do with climate change, the shrinkage of arable lands and a host of other confounding elements, traditional agriculture won’t cut it. A major part of the solution is expected to lie with synthetic biology, a relatively new-to-the-scene multidisciplinary pursuit aimed at substantially increasing plant productivity in an environmentally sustainable fashion. Among those at the forefront of that effort is Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel, Professor of Biology at CUNY’s Lehman College and the CUNY Graduate Center Biochemistry and Biology Programs, whose research centers on crop-enhancement strategies designed to combat Vitamin A deficiency, the underlying cause of blindness and increased mortality, currently affecting 250 million children world-wide.
Dr. Wurtzel has a PhD in molecular biology from Stony Brook University and has undertaken postdoctoral fellowships in plant biology at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
This Webinar event is open to LP2 members only. For more information, contact Lorne Taichman at [email protected]
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Update Your Profile! A Workshop on Making Yourself Findable
Wednesday May 11 & June 15 | 3:00-3:30PM | Zoom
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What do you read? What are your interests? Where do you live? LP2 members want to know! Make yourself findable and make new friends. Learn how to update your Profile Photo, Cover Photo, Bio, Interests, Skills, Neighborhood, Contact info and more in the new LP2 Member Directory. In this half-hour Zoom Workshop Denise Waxman will give a full tour of the new Member Directory, show you how you can search in ways you couldn’t do before, find out more about members you have met in Study Groups and other ways to contact them others. Most important you can learn how to make yourself more findable by updating your photo and sharing what you want others to know about you. There will be an opportunity to get your questions answered and one-on-one help. You might even learn another computer trick or two.
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The Abraham Accords: A New Development in the Middle East
Thursday, May 19, 4:00 pm
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Bill Siegel, an LP2 member, has invited Benjamin Rogers, the American Jewish Committee Director of Middle East Initiatives, to discuss the impact of the Abraham Accords on the future of Middle East engagement. Signed in the Fall of 2020, the Abraham Accords are a series of diplomatic agreements between the State of Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco.
The conversation will explore how these normalization agreements emerged, their impact on Israeli-Palestinian relations, and their long-term effects throughout the region.
Bill is a retired attorney and longtime member of the American Jewish Committee's National and New York board of governors and a member of the AJC International Affairs steering committee
Benjamin Rogers is the Director for Middle East and North Africa Initiatives with the American Jewish Committee's Department of Policy and Diplomatic Affairs. In this capacity, he supports AJC's diplomatic outreach, policymaking, and Middle East advocacy.
Rogers has held positions at the Israel Policy Forum, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies, United Nations Development Programme and Capitol Hill. He holds an M.A. from Tel Aviv University in public policy and Israeli politics and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in political anthropology and archeology.
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ArtSIG Event
Back by Popular Demand: ARCHITECTURE WALKING TOUR
Architect and LP2 member Patrick Siconolfi
Will repeat his tour down Broadway
Wednesday, May 18 @ 2:00PM
Meet: Broadway at 32nd
End with a glass of wine near the Flatiron Building
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LP2 Website Basics: How to Login, Bookmark, and Use It!
June 2 | 3:00PM | Zoom
After May 13 the Zine will be retired; not accessible; gone; history. If you want to check the Member Directory and Faces on the new LP2nyc.org
website you’ve got to take the plunge! Learn how to create and save a new personal password for the site, how to come up with a secure and easy-to-remember password, how to reset it yourself if you forget it, how to bookmark the site (or make it a favorite) so you can get to it with a single click, how to get help 24/7 if you forget any of this. All that in a ½ hour, small-group workshop. There will be an opportunity to get your questions answered and one-on-one help. If there is time we will tour a few pages that you might find most useful and answer other site-related questions.
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Go Set a Watchman, Mockingbird, the search for Atticus Finch with Arlynn Brody and Steve Kalinsky
Tuesdays at 4PM: May 10, 17, 24
We’ll spend most of our time examining Harper Lee's second and final published novel, Go Set a Watchman, which somewhat mirrors the To Kill a Mockingbird story but is updated by 20+ years. Published in 2015, it is Harper Lee's last published novel and is set before "Mockingbird" and presents a very different view of the "Atticus Finch" that we all know and appreciate. We look at race relations in the American South in the 1930s to 1950s.
Required reading: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.
Optional reading: To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee and Atticus Finch, The Biography by Joseph Crespino.
You’ll receive a Zoom invite before the first session.
Monday Afternoons En Plein Air with Carol Borelli
LIVE: Gardens in NYC
Mondays from 2PM to 4PM:
May 16 and May 23
Bring your materials and spend a Monday afternoon or two, sketching or painting in one of NYC's beautiful gardens. Our locations will be determined by the size of the group.
Stories Aloud with Sharon Girard
Mondays at 3PM: July 18, August 1, 15, and 29
Welcome to the pleasures of stories read aloud by volunteers from our group. The stories are emailed in advance. During pauses, we enjoy general comments and questions, not to mention one-liners and insights wise and dumb. Readers change from session to session - giving an opportunity to read to all who wish to do so.
Each Monday, we’ll Zoom for about an hour and a half. This summer, we're considering stories by Grace Paley, Felisberto Hernandéz, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Eisenberg, Nikolai Gogol, Nicole Krauss, Eudora Welty, Italo Calvino. We welcome your suggestions.
Please email Sharon at [email protected] for the Zoom link; also, indicate if you would like to be a reader.
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Call for Break Activities between Semesters
The Community Building Initiative seeks volunteers to lead activities during either or both of the two breaks from May 16 - 27 and July 12 - August 31.
Your activity can meet once or multiple times. Whether it’s a book or movie or current events discussion, a travel adventure, art presentation, an encore from a prior study group or something different, LP2 members will appreciate your efforts. Tech help is available to set up and assist you run the Zoom session. You’ll receive a Zoom link to send to participants. To propose your activity, contact Jane Case Einbender at [email protected].
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ONLINE ART SHOW
From: Susan Rauch
Title: I Hop on Pop
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Susan says: I think my favorite thing about this photo is the head of the little guy peeking out from the upper left-hand corner.
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Calling All Painters, Sculptors, Photographers, Block Printers, Ceramicists and Textile Artists!
Display the creative work you have been doing this summer in the Online Art Show. Send a photograph of your work with a title and a brief statement about it to Carol Millsom at [email protected]. Art works appear in The Observer in the order in which they are received.
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MISSING LINKS DIRECTORY
Linkedin Learning (formerly known as Lynda)
What links would you like to see included? You don’t have to know the actual link, just what you’d like to be able to link to without cleaning out your desk to find the paper you wrote it down on.
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Phyllis Holloway suggests this summer novel:
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jefferies.
Jacqueline Woodson calls it “Sweeping, brilliant and beautiful.”
From Carol Groneman
If you are interested in learning how to sight read music, consider taking this class. Carol has been part of the choral group, led by Bernadette Hoke, a professional choral conductor and pianist, and will be taking the course.
MUSIC SIGHT READING CLASS
4 weeks, 1 hour and 15-minute classes
Wednesdays @ 1PM
May 18, 25
June 1, 8
Cost: $40 for 4 weeks
Location: OPEN JAR STUDIOS
48th and Broadway
For more information and registration please contact
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Another musical opportunity from Carol Groneman:
LP2 members are invited to the Encore Spring Concert, featuring hymns and spirituals as well as Broadway show tunes.
Date/Time: Saturday, May 7 at 3PM
Location: Broadway Presbyterian Church
601 W. 114 St.
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GC-CUNY Campus Covid Protocols
For those who are coming to campus:
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Masks are no longer required in all campus spaces.
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The rest of the Covid-19 policies remain in place. If you do not have a Cleared4 Pass, email [email protected] a week before your intended visit. Cleared4 Pass (or “Blue Pass”) system automatically renews passes on their expiration date, If you lose your pass, email [email protected] to manually extend it.
- Bring GC-CUNY ID or other official ID.
Additional Campus Operations Info: Reporting positive cases and contact tracing:
- If you are feeling sick, DO NOT come to class.
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If you come into close contact (within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes total, even if in segments) with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, please be sure to wear a close-fitting mask around others and test at least five days after exposure (regardless of symptoms). You do not need to stay home unless you develop symptoms.
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If you test positive for COVID-19, do not come to class and isolate for 5 days before testing. Take precautions until day 10 including wearing a well-fitting mask when around others. Please email me at [email protected] so that I can manage contact tracing while maintaining your privacy and give further guidance per CUNY’s policy, following CDC guidance.
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Unfortunately, the COVID-19 testing centers on CUNY campuses are not available for use by LP2 members at this time. I will update you if this changes. NYC offers free COVID-19 testing and all New Yorkers can receive a free COVID-19 virus PCR test. Diagnostic tests are available through NYC COVID Express sites or through other public and private sites (search via the COVID-19 Test Site Finder). Further information on free testing can be accessed by calling 311 or the NYC Health and Hospitals website.
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The Women’s Group meets at 3:45PM on Thursdays. Contact Arlyne LeSchack at [email protected].
The Men’s Group meets at 3:45PM on Wednesdays. Contact Jay Fleishman at [email protected].
Stitch Away Stress meets at 4PM Tuesdays. Members share skills and enjoy the meditative benefits of handwork. Contact Michelle Harris at [email protected].
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Schedule for submitting articles for The Observer and Website
Members wishing to submit information for publication in The Observer or listing on the Website have a new deadline: the Wednesday before the Monday publication date. In addition, we urge you to send us your material as early as possible so that it can be entered onto the LP2 calendar, which is managed by the Graduate Center. If you have an event to publicize, please notify Micky Joseph at [email protected] at least one month in advance to ensure that the event receives maximum publicity.
Online Art Show Submissions: Send Online Art Show entries and suggestions for tours to Carol Millsom at [email protected].
Member Forum Submissions: If you have something to share with the LP2 community, e.g., a photo, an article, a book or a web site that you’ve discovered and think would be interesting to members, send it to Micky Josephs at [email protected] for inclusion in the Member Forum.
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