WWURA News
Welcoming retired WWU Faculty and Staff and others
April 2022
President’s Notes:
“Giving and Receiving”… the WWU Give Day is scheduled for Thursday, May 26th. Give Day is a unique opportunity for supporting the University because any funds donated are matched (either fully or in part) from other funds, hence increasing the impact of your donation. There are many worthy areas to support but I’m hoping you can allocate some funds to the WWURA Scholarship Fund…please mark the date on your calendar to consider a donation.
More giving…I am asking you to think about other WWU retirees as potential members that would benefit from and provide support to WWURA. Our membership has been a bit stagnant over the last several years. Your personal outreach to potential new members will greatly benefit the group. Perhaps you would invite potential members to view a Zoom travelogue or observe a book discussion meeting or bring them on July 16th to the Annual “In-Person” Picnic/Meeting at Fairhaven Park.
More giving…with the pandemic receding the Board had considered restarting informal-dining program this Spring. Of course, then a new variant has emerged and we decided to hold off in-person activities until the Summer Picnic/Meeting. However, we encourage member to set up a small group; walks, coffee/cocktail meet-ups, and outside gatherings with other WWURA members as the weather keeps brightening. Unsure who to invite…select in random from the WWURA Directory. A smiling face is always a great gift.
What about receiving? Of course we all know that helping good organizations, meeting with potential members, and socializing with WWURA friends are all good things…and are rewards in themselves.
Kevin
For your Calendar
April 20th -TRAVELOGUE
Come join us on a trip to Peru with Veronica Wisniewski. You will remember her from the fascinating canoe trip she took with her husband, Edoh Amiran. Now she will take us from the Amazon to Cuzco to recently excavated sites on the northern coast. Some of it with Edoh's mother, WWURA member Minda Rae Amiran!
Time: 4:00 PM
Place: Zoom. You will receive a link the day before.
May 26 - WWU Give DAY
July 16th - Saturday Picnic
Join us at Fairhaven Park
September
For the travelogue, multiple members are invited to share various travels.
What will you contribute?
Contact: Evelyn.Ames@wwu.edu
WWURA Scholarship News
Interest Groups
Book Group
We will meet Apr 19th at 2:00 pm on Zoom - Lina will send a link.
April’s book is The State of Terror by Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny - discussion leader - Tamara Belts
May's book: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill - discussion leader - Suzanne Krogh
June's book is Facing the Mountain by David James Brown
Donna Moore
360-733-5769
dfmoore12@gmail.com
OPERA GROUP
- Turandot (May 7)
- Lucia di Lammermoor (May 21)
- Hamlet (June 4), new opera by Brett Dean
MET Opera Radio (10 am KING FM and 1pm on CBC radio 2)
April 2 (Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin)
April 9 (Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro)
April 16 (R. Strauss’s Elektra)
April 23 (Gershwin’s’ Porgy and Bess)
April 30 (Puccini’s Madama Butterfly)
May 7 (Puccini’s Turandot)
May 14 (Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg)
May 21 (Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor)
May 28 (Glass’s Akhnaten)
June 4 (Dean’s Hamlet -- new opera and Network Broadcast Premiere)
June 11 (Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress)
YouTube suggestion
How about some wonderful humor from Anna Russell?
Her analysis of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung or her “The (First) Farewell Special”.
WRITER'S GROUPS
The first writer’s group of six (five at present) has an opening for one writer.
We have decided to keep our group all female. We meet on second and fourth Thursdays from 2p.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 Massland
Lynne.Masland12@gmail.com
(360) 676-9821
A second writing group has started and is accepting new members. Unlimited gender. Usually meets twice a month, but recently has had one meeting every three weeks.
Interested?
Contact Bill Smith
360-920-5390
billsmith1545@yahoo.com
April's Book Review
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
(2021, Scribner)
If you enjoyed Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, I think you’ll want to read his Cloud Cuckoo Land. The books are similar in having children in peril as the principal protagonists, in dealing with ‘outsider’ individuals, in making the love between a father and daughter an important part of the story, and in skipping back and forth between different sets of characters and different times. But the stories the two novels tell are very different.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is the name of a tale supposedly written by Antonius Diogenes, a second-century Greek author, for his dying niece. He has based it on Aristophanes’ play The Birds, in which men leave earth to find a better life in a land in the sky. An orphan girl in mid-15th-century Constantinople finds a copy of the tale in the library of a wrecked monastery, and takes it with her when she flees the Ottoman attack on the city. An orphaned boy in 20th-century Idaho who joins the army learns about it from a man he meets as a fellow prisoner of war in North Korea, and, in his old age, translates it into English. A girl in a spaceship leaving the devastation on earth for a distant planet toward the end of our current century hears the story from her father. Doerr is writing about the power of narrative to console, to create a better world for its reader. And also about the joys of libraries, refuges for many of the novel’s children.
But he’s writing about a great deal besides. The connections among the three sets of characters are surprisingly many, and many interesting characters accompany the principals. There is the autistic boy determined to avenge the death of his beloved owl, killed when a voracious company destroys its habitat to build luxury housing. There is the 15th-century Bulgarian boy with a harelip, outcast because the villagers think him a devil, conscripted into the Ottoman army with his beloved pair of bullocks. Although there are no animals on the spaceship for the girl to love, the ship’s library is equipped with all-embracing and beautiful virtual-reality pictures of places on earth, in a contemporary version of Diogenes’ avian paradise. So beyond libraries and stories, the novel is about the beauty of the earth, about its violation by human greed and aggression, about love across species and among humans, and about the persistent determination to find a better kind of life. In Diogenes’ narrative, the shepherd who has found the birds’ paradise still decides to return to earth. Doerr reminds us that “paradise” comes from a word meaning “garden.”
COOKING FOR ONE (or two)
Susan, my California daughter-in-law, is a devoted vegan who is always looking for new ways to satisfy the taste buds and empty stomachs of an athletic household: one bike racing husband, three almost-grown sons engaged in various seasonal sports. We all agree that this is one of her most successful recipes. To make everyone happy, the dish needed to be healthy, hearty, easy to make, and creamy…but with no cream (to retain its vegan status).
While she rarely finds herself cooking for one, Susan often cooks for two because family members are frequently headed in multiple directions, with meals often eaten elsewhere. Thus, this recipe for two frequently comes in handy. I’ve elected not to downsize it for the Newsletter because any leftover sauce is also quite delicious.
The list of ingredients looks a bit long and scary, but you just have to dump everything in the blender and you’re done.
- Suzanne Krogh
SUSAN NYMAN’S PASTA ALFREDO FOR TWO
Ingredients
2 cups (about 5 ounces) fettucine or your favorite pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 medium onion
1/2 cup raw cashews soaked in advance for at least 4 hours 4 garlic cloves or garlic powder to taste
1/2 teaspoon white miso paste 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup vegetable broth
1 cup peas or broccoli florets 8 ounces mushrooms
Instructions
- Cook pasta according to package directions. Add peas or broccoli during the last minute. Drain and return to pan, leaving heat off.
- Heat the oil in a small frying pan. Slice onion and garlic in medium pieces and cook over medium-low heat until soft and cooked through.
- Place onions, garlic, cashews, miso, yeast, nutmeg, salt and broth in a blender. Blend until smooth.
- Slice mushrooms and saute them in a little oil until cooked through. Salt to taste.
- Add Alfredo sauce and mushrooms to pan and toss with pasta. Serve in two bowls with parsley sprinkled on top.
Tip
- This recipe works best if you have a high-powered blender. I lack a blender but have a food processor. Made in the processor, the sauce is not quite as smooth, but still delicious.
- If your blender is truly high powered, soaking the cashews is unnecessary.
Health Notes by Evelyn Ames
Cannabis, Cannabinoids (CBD) and Medication
“Cannabis” refers to all products derived from the plant Cannabis sativa. Cannabis sativa contains substantial amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the substance primarily responsible for the effects on a person’s mental state. Some cannabis plants contain very little THC. Under U.S. law, these plants are considered “industrial hemp” rather than marijuana. The FDA has not approved the cannabis plant for any medical uses. But it has approved several drugs that contain individual cannabinoids such as CBD. CBD is readily obtainable in most parts of the United States, though its exact legal status has been in flux. All 50 states have laws legalizing CBD with varying degrees of restriction. In December 2015, the FDA eased the regulatory requirements to allow researchers to conduct CBD trials. In 2018, the Farm Bill made hemp legal in the United States, making it impossible to keep CBD illegal. This is like making oranges legal but keeping orange juice illegal.
Approved medical uses of CBD include Epidiolex. It contains a purified form of CBD derived from cannabis. It was approved for treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome or Dravet syndrome, rare/severe forms of epilepsy. FDA approved Marinol and Syndros. They contain dronabinol (synthetic THC) and Cesamet (contains nabilone, a synthetic substance similar to THC). Dronabinol and nabilone are used to treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy. Dronabinol is used to treat loss of appetite and weight loss in people with HIV/AIDS.
Are cannabis and cannabinoids helpful in treating health conditions?
Pain
Past reviews of studies assessing chronic pain generally showed improvements in pain measures in people taking cannabinoids but no statistical significance. The number of patients who reported at least a 30 percent reduction in pain was greater with cannabinoids than with placebo.
Chronic pain. Further human studies are needed to substantiate claims that CBD helps control pain. One animal study from the European Journal of Pain suggests CBD, when applied to the skin, could help lower pain and inflammation due to arthritis.
Glaucoma
Early reports suggested using CBD (and THC) to treat glaucoma. Currently, limitations are suggested because cannabis-based products only affect pressure in the eye for a brief period of time. A recent animal study showed that CBD, applied directly to the eye, may cause an undesirable increase in pressure in the eye.
Nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy
Studies on the use of cannabinoids for treating nausea and vomiting showed they were more helpful than a placebo and similar in effectiveness to other medicines used for this purpose. More people had side effects such as dizziness or sleepiness when taking the cannabinoid medicines. Currently, other drugs are used.
Addiction
Some studies in humans have shown CBD can help lower cravings for tobacco and heroin under certain conditions. Animal models of addiction suggest it may help lessen cravings for alcohol, cannabis, opiates, and stimulants.
CBD comes in many forms, including oils, extracts, capsules, patches, vapes, and topical preparations for use on skin. CBD patch or a tincture or spray that is designed to be placed under the tongue allows CBD to directly enter the bloodstream.
Is CBD safe?
Side effects of CBD include nausea, fatigue, and irritability. CBD can increase the level of blood thinning and other medicines in the blood by competing for the liver enzymes that break down these drugs. Grapefruit has a similar effect with certain medicines. A significant safety concern with CBD is that it is primarily marketed and sold as a supplement, not a medication. Recall that the FDA does not regulate the safety and purity of supplements. It is buyer beware. Buyers cannot be sure that the product has the active ingredients at the dose listed on the label. Products may contain other unknown elements. Also, it has not been determined what the most effective therapeutic dose of CBD is for any particular medical condition.
Sources:
Cannabis (Marijuana) and Cannabinoids: What You Need To Know
Western Washington University Retirement Assoc. (WWURA)
516 High Street
Bellingham, WA 98225-9020