Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

E-News31-14

About OLLI E-News

OLLI E-News was created by Rod Zumbro, who served as its editor from 2005 to 2013.

Editorial Staff

Chief Editor/Technical Editor: Irene Osterman
Associate Editor:
Weekly Editorial Team: Paul Van Hemel, Sheri Siesseger, Leslie Vandivere,
Proofreaders: John West, Gordon Canyock, Susan Van Hemel
Backup Chief Editor: Sheri Siesseger

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OLLI E-News October 31, 2014
Print a condensed .pdf copy of this newsletter, two web pages per sheet of paper.
Scenes from Board of Directors Meeting, OLLI Reston, October 24

October 31, 2014


Editor of the Week: Paul Van Hemel
Table of Contents

Alerts & Notices

  • While the member portal is down, check the What's New page of the OLLI website to see course changes.
  • OLLI Town Hall Meeting, Tallwood TA-1, Fri, Nov 7, 10:00 - 1:00
  • Registration begins Dec 2 and ends Dec 16 at noon

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Host an International Student for Thanksgiving


By Glenn Kamber, OLLI President
and Chair, Board of Directors

Fellow Members: Thanksgiving is a month away and the Mason Center for Global Education is looking for families to host one or two international students. I encourage OLLI members to help with this special holiday request from Mason. It will provide both a warm and welcoming experience for students far from home and another opportunity for OLLI to demonstrate support for Mason and its programs.
 
I recently had an opportunity to tell Mason President Angel Cabrera that OLLI would be informing members of the opportunity to host international students at Thanksgiving. Dr. Cabrera expressed his gratitude for our support and told me that this effort has a special place in his heart. It turns out that he was invited as an international student from Spain to share a Thanksgiving meal with an American family and ended up marrying their daughter! 
 
If you want to invite one or more students to Thanksgiving, please contact Daria Stepanova at Mason for more information -- (703) 993-2161 or dstepan1@gmu.edu
 
And, let our office know how it goes so we can get some sense of overall OLLI participation. Thanks.

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Board of Directors Meeting Highlights


By Irene Osterman, Board of Directors Secretary


The Board met Friday October 24 at Reston. Recent safety issues at Tallwood regarding parking as well as pedestrian safety were discussed. Steps are being taken to address these issues.

Mason’s engineering review of TA-1 has been completed and it found the building is safe for the foreseeable future.

The new registration system is now expected to be ready for spring 2015 registration.

The Board approved specific grants for student scholarships to Mason departments whose professors have taught at OLLI-Mason in the past year.

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Friends of OLLI Annual Fall Fundraising Campaign is Now!
OLLI Needs Your Friendship!          

By Lesley Bubenhofer, Development Committee Chair


Many thanks to loyal supporters who have already befriended OLLI this year. Your generosity is sincerely appreciated.  

If you have not yet become a Friend in 2014, please think about how much OLLI has enriched your life and what has been and can continue to be accomplished with your gift to the Friends of OLLI (FOLLI).

Together we can and will achieve so much. Please join our fellow OLLIs so we can help keep our OLLI a top-notch, dynamic and highly successful Lifelong Learning Institute.

Your contribution to Friends of OLLI is a gift for you, for our friends and colleagues, and for our partners in the community.

Your contribution is tax-deductible.

Thank you for your friendship with our OLLI.

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Important Job Opening!


By Martha Powers, Liaison Committee Chair


OLLI Loudoun needs a Liaison Coordinator to manage the liaison assignment process during the two weeks immediately before each new term begins. This position comes with a generous compensation package that includes:
  • the admiration and appreciation of your fellow OLLI Loudoun members,
  • the knowledge that you’ve helped maintain or improve the quality of OLLI classes, and
  • the undying gratitude of the Chairperson of the OLLI Liaison Committee (based at Tallwood). 
 
The job is simple: you just contact (by phone and/or email) the OLLI Loudoun class members who have volunteered to be liaison (information that is provided by the OLLI office via email), or request help from other class members if no one has volunteered. 
 
Many OLLI instructors and coordinators will serve as their own liaisons, so no more than perhaps 20 liaisons need to be found each term (probably far fewer).
 
This important process can be managed by one person, or you can choose to form a casual “committee” of helpers who each contact a few prospective liaisons. 
 
Please help us keep OLLI classes up to par by finding liaisons! 
We need YOUR help.
 
Contact: Martha Powers, Chair of the Liaison Committee  marthapowers@verizon.net

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Idea Roundup


By Kathryn Russell, Program Committee Co-Chair


If you’ve been a member of OLLI for the last couple of years, you’re familiar with Idea Week, the time when program planners invite everyone to offer up their fondest wishes for future courses. You may recall writing suggestions on “sticky notes” in the classrooms in the past. Well, we’ve gone digital to make it easier for you to participate in this “idea roundup.” Program planners are always on the lookout for new ideas for future courses. This is an opportunity to become involved in planning and to have direct impact on upcoming terms. Program planning is truly a cooperative effort, and we encourage you to get involved. OLLI’s outstanding program can be sustained only when we have input from our members. We’ll be gathering ideas for the next two weeks. So come up with your best suggestions and click the following URL: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MDZ77C8 or copy and paste the link into your browser. If you have questions or problems, please contact Russell Stone: rstone@american.edu.

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Drones: Our New Toys, Tools, and Robot Companions
Back by Popular Demand!

By Martha Powers, OLLI Member
and Liaison Committee Chair

If you missed this eye-popping event in September, now you have a chance to catch it in December! The class, to be held Wednesday, December 10, from 1:00 to 2:30 at the Church of the Good Shepherd, will include:
  • A fascinating one-hour slide show about drones (history and current uses),
  • An indoor display and demonstrations of small drones, and
  • A fun outdoor demonstration of larger drones in action (weather permitting).
Check out the article and photos from when this class was held on
September 24; use this link.

The instructor, Christopher Vo, is a PhD candidate and roboticist at George Mason, where he is also a drone technology educator who develops motion planning algorithms for autonomous swarms of drones to fly safely, quickly, and robustly. As the Director of Education for the DC Area Drone User Group, he has taught hundreds of everyday users how to build and fly their own drones.
 
We have long been fascinated with the ability to see from the sky. Since the development of powered flight, we have used balloons, kites, planes and helicopters to get ourselves and payloads like cameras into the sky for a new perspective on the world. We are now interested in drones as a safer, easier, less expensive way to get this perspective. Today, drones are being used in many creative ways: by winemakers to monitor their vineyards; by civil engineers to inspect structures such as bridges for abnormalities and cracks; by humanitarian relief workers to survey the damage after natural disasters; and by photojournalists to safely deliver timely coverage of a scene. The class will explain the factors that have made this technology so rapidly accessible to us, the design and engineering considerations that are needed to make drones safer and more intelligent, and cutting-edge ideas to integrate them into our lives and use them in socially beneficial ways. It will also feature live demonstrations of drone technology.
 
Please register for this class at the OLLI website; see this link.

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Meeting of the History Club


By Beth Lambert, History Club Coordinator


The History Club will meet on Wednesday, November 5 at 2:15 in TA-1. Our speaker will be Fred Kaiser who will be talking on the subject of “Henry Wallace: An American Original.” Wallace, Vice-President in the Roosevelt administration, was a controversial figure in his own day and for modern biographers. In truth, he was “an American original.”

All OLLI members are invited to History Club meetings. Come and bring a guest.

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Correction/Clarification

Please note that the quote in last week’s E-News article on “The Wright Stuff” should have been attributed to Doris Bloch, not Susanne Zumbro. Also, the people in the photo accompanying the article are instructor Claudia Day and presenter Tom Wright.
   --Alice Slayton Clark
Poet's Corner
Courtesy of the Poetry Workshop

Comfort Food
 
Macaroni and cheese was
manna from heaven 1929;
the economy swallowed
by over-speculation.
Grace was plates of hash
shared by down and out
out of work itinerants;
their all night blazes
licking like hellfire.
 
Sarah Munson
 

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Arts & Music at George Mason

Performances, next two weeks

By Shelly Gersten, OLLI E-News Staff Writer

For tickets for either CFA or Hylton, call 1-888-945-2468, buy tickets online through the event calendar (see links below), or visit the venue's box office. For more information see the CFA ticket page or the Hylton ticket purchase page.
At the Fairfax Campus Venues
The National Acrobats of the People's Republic of China:
Cirque Peking
Fri, Oct 31 and Sat, Nov 1, 8:00
Sat Nov 1, 2:00
Pre-Performance Discussion: Wang Dan; Executive Director Concert Hall
Admission: $48, $41, $29
 
Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Allen Toussaint: New Orleans Legends
Sun, Nov 2, 7:00
Pre-Performance Discussion: Benjamin Jaffe; Member of Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Concert Hall
Admission: $48, $41, $29

Martha Graham Dance Company
Fri, Nov 7, 8:00
Copeland's Appalachian Spring Suite
Graham's Cave of the Heart
Graham's Maple Leaf Rag (Graham's last work)
Foniadakis' Echo
Pre-Performance Discussion: Janet Eilber, Martha Graham Dance Company Artistic Director
Concert Hall
Admission: $46, $39, $28
 
David Gaines (Writer and Performer): A Little Business
at the Big Top
Fri, Nov 7 and Sat, Nov 8, 8:00
TheaterSpace
Admission: Adults, $25; seniors, $15
 
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra: Luke Frazier, guest conductor
Sat, Nov 8, 8:00
Harris Theatre
Admission: $60, $45, $25
 
Keyboard Conversations® with Jeffrey Siegel:
Three Great B's – Bach, Beethoven, and Bartok!
Sun, Nov 9, 7:00
Admission: $40, $34, $24

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Still more at the Center for the Arts Concert Hall, Nov 8, 8:00 . . .

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Mason Student & Faculty Performances
(see music.gmu.edu for additional student recitals)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Fri, Oct 31, 8:00
Sat, Nov 1, 2:00 and 8:00
Biannual event presented jointly by Mason's School of Theater and School of Music.
Merchant Hall (Manassas Campus)
Admission: Adults, $25; seniors, $15
 
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The classic film with live score by Mason composers
Fri, Oct 31, 9:00
deLaski 3001
Admission: Free
 
University Singers & Chorale Concert
Sun, Nov 2, 7:00
Harris Theatre
Admission: $10

Honors Music Festival Opening Concert
Fri, Nov 7, 7:00 – 9:00
deLaski 3001
Admission: Free
 
Honors Music Festival Final Performance
Sun, Nov 9, 3:00 – 5:00
Concert Hall
Admission: Free

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At the Hylton Center

Nature Visions Photo Expo
Sep 28 – Nov 16
The Buchanan Partners Art Gallery is open to the public Tue – Sat,
10:00 – 6:00; Thu, 10:00 – 8:00; and two hours before performances. 
Admission: Free

Prince William Little Theatre: The 39 Steps
Fri, Oct 31 and Sat, Nov 1, 8:00
Sun, Nov 2, 2:00
Fri Nov 7 and Sat, Nov 8, 8:00
Sun, Nov 9, 2:00
Gregory Family Theater
Admission: Adults, $20; seniors, $17
 
Deana Martin: A Tribute to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra
Sun, Nov 2, 7:00
Pre-Performance Discussion: Deana Martin
Merchant Hall
Admission: $48, $41, $29

Manassas Ballet Theatre: COLIN: Son, Marine, Hero
Fri, Nov 7 and Sat, Nov 8, 7:30
Sun, Nov 9, 3:00
Merchant Hall
Admission: $45, $35, $25, $15

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For further details on any of the above events, please see the CFA event calendar and the Hylton Center event calendar

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Mason Highlights

Other Mason events, next two weeks

By Helen Ackerman, OLLI E-News Staff Writer

Lecture. EcoScience + Art. Eco-artist Jackie Brookner discusses her ecology-based work which she develops in collaboration with ecologists, engineers, design professionals, communities, and policy makers. She creates water remediation / public art projects for wetlands, rivers, parks, and storm-water runoff. Her works are living water filtration systems that restore habitat, reclaim polluted water and create multifunctional public spaces.
Tue, Nov 4, 6:00, presentation by Thomas Faha, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality; 6:30, Reception; 7:00, Brookner lecture.
Research Hall, Room 163.
Admission: Free.

Talk. Independent Media in a Time of War, Climate Change, and Elections. Amy Goodman, American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author, has covered crises around the globe. Since 1996 she has hosted “Democracy Now”, an independent global daily news program. She has received many awards for her work.
Thu, Nov 6, 2:00 to 4:00.
The Hub, Front Ballroom.
Admission: Free.
 
Veterans Day Luncheon. All veterans are invited to attend the lunch, hosted by the Office of the President. Keynote speaker is Colonel Tom Brown, US Army War College Fellow.
Tue, Nov 11, 11:45.
Concert Hall Lobby.
Admission: Free (RSVP required to Conrad Brown at cbrown57@gmu.edu or via phone at 703-993-2709).

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Meetings & Clubs


The following list covering the next two weeks is extracted for your convenience from the master online calendar maintained by the office, with direct web links added when available. The list is accurate as of mid-week but to check anytime for the latest information, please view the latest forecast of upcoming events on our website (News/OLLI Calendar). Note: All OLLI members are welcome at, and encouraged to attend, meetings of the Board of Directors, committees and resource groups, Kickoff Coffees, etc. (bolded below).
This
Sat Nov 1 10:30am Tai Chi Club–TA-3
Tue Nov 4 10:00am Knitting and Needlework Club–Panera, Herndon
Wed Nov 5  1:30pm
 1:45pm
 1:45pm
 2:15pm		 Mah Jongg Clib–TA-2
Bridge Club-TA-3
Special Events Committee–Annex
History Club-TA-1
Fri Nov 7 10:00am
10:00am
11:00am		 Craft and Conversation–Cottage
Town Hall Meeting–TA-1
Moby Dick Club–TA-2
Sat Nov 8 10:30am Tai Chi Club–TA-3
Tue Nov 11 10:00am Knitting and Needlework Club–Panera, Herndon
Wed Nov 12  1:30pm
 1:45pm		 Book Club–TA-2
Bridge Club–TA-3
Thu Nov 13  1:30pm Loudoun Program Planning Group
Fri Nov 14  9:00am
 9:30am
10:00am
11:00am
11:00am		 Recorder Consort–TA-3
Photography Club–TA-1
Craft and Conversation–Cottage
Homer, etc–Annex
Moby Dick Club–TA-2

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OSHER LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUTE
AT GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

4210 Roberts Rd. Fairfax, VA 22032-1028
Phone: (703) 503-3384
Email: olli@gmu.edu

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