June 12, 2015

• Alerts & Notices
• OLLI Celebrates the Arts
• E-News Proofreaders Wanted
• OLLI Bake Sale: A Fundraiser Winner for Friends of OLLI Projects and Fun for All
• Audiovisual Support Committee Needs You!
• Honor Flight Fall Preview
• Meet Multi-Talented Martha Powers, New OLLI Board Member
• Computer Club
• Photography Club
• Poet's Corner       
• Arts & Music at George Mason
• Meetings & Clubs
• About OLLI E-News

Alerts & Notices

“Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it,” said Charles Dudley Warner. Well, if you attend the special presentation on weather by WJLA TV’s Brian van de Graaff, you may learn why this may or may not be true. He will clue you into all sorts of weather forecasting methods and discuss some of the horrific weather patterns being seen worldwide. There’s still space in the June 24 presentation at Tallwood, 9:40 am, Class F814, so sign up now.

For the next two weeks, it is particularly important that submissions be made by the Tueday at 6 deadline.
 

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OLLI Celebrates the Arts

E-News Proofreaders Wanted

OLLI Bake Sale: A Fundraiser Winner for Friends of OLLI Projects and Fun for All 
 

By Lesley Bubenhofer
Development Committee Chair

The Friends of OLLI bake sale on May 29 at the Fairfax Creative Aging Festival event at Tallwood was a "spectacular" success. Thanks to talented, hardworking, and generous contributors and some very lucky customers who enjoyed lots of fabulous "goodies," the bake sale produced a profit of $571 for Friends of OLLI. And it was a lovely, very enjoyable event. 

Many thanks to those who contributed and gave so generously of their time and effort and skills: Toni Acton, Florence Adler, Michelle Blandburg, Suzanne Brooks, Lesley Bubenhofer, Alice Slayton Clark, Mary Cocker, Beverly George, Peg O'Brien, Karen Nash, Eleanor Pascale, Martha Powers, Roslyn Schmidt, Susan Todenoft, Rita Way, Thelma Weiner, and Doris Weisman.

We plan to have more bake sales and hope you will be able to join us and enjoy some mighty tasty treats.  

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Audiovisual Support Committee
Needs You!

Honor Flight Fall Preview

 Coming up this fall to celebrate Veterans’ Day, Martha Powers is planning an event that focuses on the Honor Flight program. If you didn’t know, this is a privately-funded national program whereby World War II veterans are flown into Washington, DC, and given a tour of the WWII Memorial. Preliminary planning for this OLLI event includes a film describing this important journey for these veterans, saluted as “the Greatest Generation” by Tom Brokaw.

If you would like to participate in an Honor Flight this summer or fall, you can join many other local residents who welcome each flight to Dulles or Reagan National airports. It’s an experience like none you’ve ever had! You can find the schedule of Honor Flights and sign up at the website http://heroeswelcomeiad.com/2015-schedule-2/. If you have questions about participating, please contact OLLI member John Nash, [email protected]. 

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Meet Multi-Talented Martha Powers,
New OLLI Board Member

By Sheri Siesseger,

You should recognize both the name and face of newly elected Board member Martha Powers. She has been a significant presence at OLLI-Mason since joining in January 2013, and her photo has appeared often in this newsletter! Since her arrival at OLLI, Martha has jumped in with both feet. In addition to co-chairing the Member Services Committee and serving as chair of the Liaison Sub-Committee, she is co-editor of the summer 2015 course catalog (Publications Committee), participates in the Poetry Workshop, hams it up with the OLLI Players, and writes frequently for E-News. If that’s not enough, she is also a member of the Outreach, Hospitality and Development committees, is a volunteer note taker at Board meetings, and has coordinated and taught many OLLI classes and events. Between-term events are a pet project and Martha would like to see these expand. Clearly she has gained significant insights into the OLLI community that will position her well to become a valuable member of the OLLI Board.

Born in Washington, DC, Martha has lived in the area most of her life, primarily in northern Virginia. Her first career was in music. She initially played piano, following in the footsteps of her mother, a concert pianist/organist. As a student at Annandale High School, Martha switched to percussion. She won a US Navy Band scholarship and studied performance on percussion instruments at Indiana University and received her bachelor’s degree from American University. She once performed with the Navy Band and has been a freelance musician at Wolf Trap and the Kennedy Center. An MBA in marketing from Virginia Tech led to a career change that offered steadier work. Her experience includes advertising and product development. Specializing in mail-order catalogs, she turned the AARP Pharmacy Service catalog into a money maker. Martha also served as VP for marketing for the Internet retail pharmacy Rx.com.

Martha’s husband, Larry Gomberg, is still working, though he plans to join OLLI. He enjoys visits to some of Martha’s one-time classes and the Poetry Workshop. Initiative apparently runs in the family—he’d like to start an OLLI poker club, presumably for bragging rights! Favorite pastimes for Martha and Larry include the word game Super Big Boggle and playing with their 17-year-old cat Dipper.

Dipper, as well as the couple’s previous cats, was adopted from an animal shelter. Dipper arrived in the household shortly after the loss of their 20-year-old cat—a sad event that prompted Martha to found Operation Happy Sock (ohappysock.blogspot.com). Happy Sock recruits volunteers to make and deliver socks containing polyfill and a pinch of catnip. The effort is now 10 years old and has distributed an estimated 500,000 catnip sock toys to cats in animal shelters in the US and other countries.

Martha admits to an impatient nature, and she would like to see the Board push its agenda faster! She would also like to bolster OLLI-Mason’s financial situation. With fundraising in her background, she probably has some ideas in mind! Despite its challenges, she loves Tallwood and is pleased that the facility will continue to be home to OLLI for the foreseeable future.

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Computer Club

By Paul Howard, Computer Club Coordinator
 

Photography Club

By Robert Kelberg, Photography Club Member
 

On Friday, June 12, 9:30 am, Tuan Pham, a juried photographic artist, will give a presentation to the OLLI Photography Club in TA-1. Tuan Pham spoke at our club in November 1912. He is back today with another one-of-a-kind presentation entitled Beauty of Imperfection. He will share with us his Zen approach to photography and his collection of images taken in and around the Washington metropolitan area that cameras often overlook.

Tuan is a member of the Northern Virginia Photographic Society (NVPS) and Getting It Right in the Camera (GRC). He learned photography largely by reading books and occasional workshops on creative vision from Joseph Miller and Freeman Patterson, among others. He also draws inspiration from the works of photographers John Daido Roshi, Minor White, Japanese haiku Master Matsuo Basho, and above all, from Buddhist teaching on “skillful attention,” also known as seeing.

All OLLI members are welcome.

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Meetings & Clubs

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