WWURA NEWS
Western Washington University Retirement Association
- - Welcoming Retired WWU Faculty and Staff and others - - DECEMBER 2022 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * wwura.wwu.edu
Inside:
Calendar
President's Notes
Interest Groups:
Health Notes
Cooking for One
Book Review
From the Writers
Getting to Know Members
* For Your Calendar *
Register for the WWURA Team:
Wednesday, DEC 14th - WWURA HOLIDAY PARTY
11:30 AM Arrive and Social Time
Potluck feast and party at
The Mt Baker Theatre ENCORE Room Entrance at 112 Champion Street
[Reservations are in, but ask Kevin about open spaces.]
President's Notes
This morning I coordinated the WWURA Board meeting for December; well “coordinated” might be a bit of an overstatement. My mind was going in 6 or 7 directions at once, in fact it felt like I was starting one sentence but then ending up on a different topic to end the sentence. The good part was that the Board members picked up the slack and helped me in bringing the meeting to a successful conclusion. It has been a long haul for this Board during the age of Covid…”How do we organize activities that bring WWURA members in face-to-face contact at a time when we really couldn’t get together?” Your Board members have done an amazing job between “Zooming” and limited events, keeping the Newsletter informative and interesting, and shepherding the organization through this troubling time. It is a great group of people and I encourage you to thank them when you have the chance this holiday season.
For myself…I want to thank the membership for sticking with WWURA during these recent troubling times. And look forward to a “more normal” future of activities as we continue into 2023. My wish is that you each have a positive and heartfelt time over these holidays…and that means reaching out to others who might be alone or facing challenging times. It also means taking care of yourself, perhaps you feel you are one in need of some support but others might not realize it. So call up a friend and get together for coffee, a walk, a hand of cribbage, or finally taking out that 1000 piece puzzle that is too daunting for one to face alone!
Stay safe and take a deep breath as we approach the New Year,
Kevin
INTEREST GROUPS
If you are interested in one of the groups please call or email the contact person.
BOOK GROUP - Donna Moore, 360-733-5769 dfmoore12@gmail.com
Meet at 2 PM on Tuesday, Dec 20th at Donna's home.
The 2023 Book list will be discussed and decided. Each member should send to Donna two choices of books they would like to have our group read so that she can have a list ready for the meeting.
INFORMAL DINING - Anyone interested in starting it up again?
OPERA GROUP - Evelyn Ames, 360-734-3184, eames@comcast.net
2022-2023 Opera season: King FM and CBC Radio 2 broadcast
Metropolitan Broadcasts air starting December 10, at 9:55 am Pacific Std time:
(Note: Jingle Bell Run will be finished in time to make it to both events!) MET HD at Regal Theater:
The Hours (Dec. 10), Fedora (Jan 14), Lohengrin (Mar 18), Falstaff (Apr 1),
Der Rosenkavalier (April 15), Champion (Apr 29); Don Giovanni (May 20),
Die Zauberflote (June 3).
A must see/hear for opera lovers: “Renée Fleming makes her highly anticipated return to the Met in the world-premiere production of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’s
The Hours, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. … “The powerful story follows three women from different eras who each grapple with their inner demons.” A short segment was shown on PBS NewsHour. When completed, the reporter exclaimed “WOW.”
WRITING GROUPS
- The original group is all female. We meet on second and fourth Thursdays from 2 p.m till about 4 p.m. If you would like to be part of a supportive group where your writing can be heard and receive feedback, as you wish, at every meeting, we welcome hearing from you.
Contact: Lynne Masland: Lynne.Masland12@gmail.com (360 676-9821)
- The second writing group welcomes any gender.
Usually meets every two to three weeks.
Contact: Bill Smith 360-920-5390, billsmith1545@yahoo.com if interested.
HEALTH NOTES by Evelyn Ames
Feelings about holidays are quite personal. They can cause one to feel happy, sad, or ambivalent. Holidays may lead to over-scheduling, overindulging, and overspending. A person may assume multiple entertaining roles, spend too much or too little time with family, have personal or family illness to contend with, or have expectations of what one should or should not do.
Here are ten tips (recommended by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine) to make the most of your holiday season.
1. “Reflect on what is important to you during the holidays.” Ahead of time, ask yourself who
you would like to spend time with and who you would not. Think about how you would like to spend the time.
2. Plan ahead. Be sure to plan at least one activity that is important to you. Planning ahead gives you something to look forward to doing as well as giving you a sense of control.
3. “Communicate clearly how others can assist or support you. Accept offers to help shop, wrap, or cook. Some people may not know how best to help, especially if your needs and desires have changed from last year. Most people are happy to help as long as they understand clearly what you want, and they have enough time to provide the support.”
4. Pace yourself! The holiday season is a marathon, not a sprint! Avoid compromising physical and mental health by engaging in extra social gatherings. Remember you can’t do everything or be everything to everyone. Ask yourself if you are a person who can say “no” and feel no guilt! “Allow yourself the opportunity to grieve the loss of giving up some activities.”
5. Maintain a healthy lifestyle by continuing your daily routine. Maintain regular diet, exercise, rest, and sleep as usual.
6. Manage spending. “It’s easy to feel the pressure of consumerism during the holidays. Decrease the financial stress by making and sticking to a budget. Thoughtfulness need not
come with a hefty price tag. Gift solutions include: reducing the number of gifts; initiating a gift exchange; giving to a favorite charity in family members’ names; and providing gift certificates for babysitting, snow shoveling, a home-cooked meal, or time together.”
7. Monitor alcohol and medications – individually and when combined. During holidays, it is easy to overindulge in alcohol. It is very important to know how alcohol may affect the medications an individual is prescribed and the OTC drugs one uses. Moderation is key as well as knowing the interactions. During holidays one may be tempted to skip a usual medication. Remember missed doses may cause a medical issue that requires emergency care.
8. Manage expectations of family gatherings. When multiple generations and multiple families celebrate together, it can be challenging to feel being part of the conversation or to be heard and understood. Be flexible in being part of the “conversation”.
9. Think ahead about stories or observations from the past that you would like to share. You may know how a specific family tradition began or have a funny story to tell about the holidays when you were a child.
10. Following the holiday, reflect on what went well and what didn’t. Jot down the improvements you would like to make for next year.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/stories/ten_tips_for_enjoying_holidays.html#:~:text=Ten%20Tips%20for%20Enjoying%20the%20Holidays%201%20Reflect,medications%20%E2%80%93%20individually%20and%20together.%20...%20More%20items
COOKING FOR ONE (or two) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Suzanne Krough
Few things brighten a cold, dark winter day better than a fresh, homemade cookie with a side of cocoa. Helpfully, winter brings with it a collection of holidays just asking to be celebrated with some appropriately themed cookies.
Less helpfully, cookie recipes typically call for enough ingredients to yield 50-60 cookies. For us cooking-for-one home bakers, cutting the recipe down can be tricky If ingredients such as eggs are involved…and they frequently are.
So, here is a basic eggless cookie to shape and decorate as your own personal holiday interests dictate. It will yield 6-8 cookies depending on your choice of cookie cutter. That should be just enough for one-person indulging or a two-person afternoon treat.
NAME-YOUR-HOLIDAY COOKIES FOR ONE (or two)
Ingredients
4 tablespoons very soft butter
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup flour
Holiday sprinkles or jimmies of your choice
Instructions
1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Stir the butter, sugar, and vanilla until thoroughly blended.
3. Add the flour and mix thoroughly with hands.
4. Pat or roll dough flat on a baking sheet about ¼ inch high.
5. Cut into shapes with a cookie cutter. (Cookies don’t spread and can bake close together.)
6. Shake sprinkles or jimmies over the cookies.
7. Bake in a toaster oven 10 minutes, or in a standard oven 12 minutes.
Tip: When mixing the dough, if it seems too dry or won’t adhere successfully, you can add a tiny amount of milk.
BOOK REVIEW by Minda Rae Amiran
Afterlives, Abdulrazak Gurnah (2022, RIverhead Books (Penguin Random House))
Afterlives is Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first book since he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2021. It’s a novel, but not the kind we are used to, the kind that puts us inside the principal character, whom we meet in the first chapter, and which has many scenes conducted through dialogue. Instead, it’s a narrative that mostly tells, not shows, and it seems to relate as much to African oral story-telling as to European fiction.
The story is set in Germany’s colony of East Africa (Tanganyika) at the start of the 20th century, and it’s told entirely from the point of view of the native inhabitants. We meet the principal protagonist, Hamza, on page 55, as he starts his training in the native army raised and officered by the Germans, the schutztruppe. But we begin with Khalifa, a man trying to make his way as a merchant’s clerk, and then we meet his friend Ilyas, and Ilyas’ little sister, Afiya, whom Ilyas rescues from the abusive family that took her in at her dying father’s request after her mother died. Ilyas had run away from home before Afiya was born, been kidnapped by the schutztruppe, and educated by a German settler who took him away from the army unit that caught him. The intricate relations between the people and their German colonizers are the warp of the story, and its woof is World War I.
If, like me, you know little about that period in eastern Africa, you will learn a great deal about the way people lived in the towns and countryside, about the workings of the area’s economy in daily life, and the way the war affected everyone. To me, it was quite fascinating. We get only summaries of the characters’ reactions, but in this kind of storytelling, that restraint is suitable. The restraint is even more strongly felt in the story’s dealings with the horrors of colonialism and war: it avoids gory details, saying, for example, that there were many corpses, and leaving the rest to our imagination. The ending is unexpected but, in a way, hopeful.
Getting to know Our Members by Lynne Masland
Meeting WWURA Members: MARCIA AND LOU LIPPMAN
WHERE DID YOU GROW UP AND GO TO SCHOOL? Marcia grew up in Lansing, Mich. She attended Michigan State Univ. for BA and MA (Experimental Psychology). She earned her PhD (Psycholinguistics and Human Development) from UBC in Vancouver. Lou grew up in San Diego. Studied classical piano through high school. Attended Stanford for his BA in Psychology. MA and PhD (Experimental Psychology) were obtained at Michigan State University. Met Marcia at MSU, married in 1965, moved to B’ham in 1966.
WHAT WAS YOUR JOB AT WWU? Joining the faculty in 1966, Lou taught Learning and Statistics & Experimental Design. His research evolved to include study of factors influencing skill development (e.g., sport and musical instrument performance) and study of factors influencing humor. Lou supervised many theses, he included many students in his research projects and played an active role in curriculum development. Marcia joined the Psychology faculty in 1969. She taught Human Development (for majors and for teacher ed. program) and upper-division special topics seminars (e.g., Children and War; Language Development). Marcia played a role in the establishment of a childcare center on campus and represented WWU on the Whatcom Center for Early Learning program Board.
WHAT DID YOU LIKE BEST ABOUT WWU? Marcia and Lou both especially enjoyed the opportunity to work 1:1 with MA thesis students. Appreciated support for presenting research in US and internationally. The camaraderie among faculty during the early years was a real plus.
WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING SINCE RETIRING? Marcia spent first year catching up on pleasure reading, followed by doing volunteer work with grade-school children, helping Lou’s deaf and nearly blind mother reach 100, serving on Beth Israel Synagogue committees and Board, and, her favorite, providing childcare for their granddaughter. Lou discovered that he enjoyed playing a variety of styles of music, including Klezmer, 40s to 50s oldies, and Dixieland. He plays in several groups in a variety of venues and solo or in duos for people in assisted living facilities. Many good friendships have grown out of doing music. In retirement Lou continued a long-time hobby of creating pun stories structured in a research-based way. The outcome was a book of pun stories
(Wince—A Pun on Thyme: scientifically crafted tales). Long walks are a daily part of Lou’s retirement.
***The heading was missing in the printed version of the November issue's 'Member'.
For anyone that didn't recognize her from her interview, here is the heading:
Evelyn Ames, Professor of Health Education
From the Writers
The Heart
Splash, splash, woosh
Splash, splash, woosh
I lay on the bed
Diodes pasted on my chest
Watching the screen.
Splash, splash, woosh
The shadowy picture of the heart,
The flaps, the valves, the beat,
The little machine
The size of a fist
Four chambers to process the blood
.
Splash, splash, woosh
It begins before I am born
Never stopping ‘til death.
No vacation, no rest,
Night and day, day and night
81 years and more.
Splash, splash whoosh.
Lynne Masland
Feb 23, 2022
* Two events sparked this poem. First, the echocardiogram which I watched with amazement. Secondly, meeting with my cardiologist afterward. I asked him why he chose cardiology as a specialty. He replied that he’d majored in physics as an undergraduate and that the heart was mechanical, like a machine. I’d never thought of the heart in that way before, but it fit with the regular rhythms and need for continuous lifetime performance that life demands. Both ideas underlie this poem, whose splash, splash, woosh is better read aloud.
Poem and Picture generated by AI site GPT-3
[Sent by Patrick Murray to Lynne Masland]
I had a home once
A manor, overlooking the sea
Upon the world, this was a vestige
Calling forward onto strangled ears
But when the skies turned dark, the house was taken by the sea
A pillar truncated
Cast down into the seabed with all the other forgotten things
But I remember
Fleeting shells sinking ever slowly
Folding downwards, into themselves
Forever tearing along the seams of the sky
Until nothing remains except the eternal ghost
And you ask yourself:
Could there ever be anything greater than this?*
***This poem and the picture were generated by an artificial intelligence site GPT-3 at https://beta.openai.com/playground. It’s based upon Patrick’s prompt “Write a short philosophical poem about the limits of human perception.”
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The Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) is a volunteer-led community providing a
variety of educational and cultural programs in a pressure-free environment.
No stress - no tests
Anyone can enjoy these great "classes" - check out the current programs:
https://oce.wwu.edu/academy-lifelong-learning
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A note about your WWURA emails: If you would like to add an additional family email address to receive this Newsletter and/or to be in the future WWURA Directory, please send it to;
. . . . . Newsletter editor, Barbara D: B_Davidson33@Hotmail.com
and/or Directory editor: Barbara E: BarbandHoward@Comcast.net
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