News From CALL December 2022

Drawing by Maria Seiler-Huizing, Sketch Club Interest Group

December Events

CALL Open House

Saturday, December 3, 1 – 3pm
Room 310, Third Floor, cSpace, 1721 29th Avenue SW

Whether you are a new or long-time member of CALL, please join us on Saturday, December 3.
It's a chance to enjoy some light refreshments as you:

• chat with a Board member and share your ideas of how CALL can continue to evolve;
• learn more about CALL offerings;
• socialize with other CALL members;
• check out CALL’s Room 310;
• wander the halls of cSpace.

Please go to the CALL Open House page to register so we can better manage our logistics.
You are welcome to drop in even if you haven’t registered and to bring guests who may be interested in learning more about CALL.

Science and Environment
The Evolution of Parental Care in Birds

Tuesday, December 6, 7:30pm – 9:30pm Online via Zoom
Speaker: Dr. Dorothy Hill

Animals that provide parental care greatly increase the likelihood that their offspring will survive to adulthood. Birds are well known for their parental care and in many species both members of a mated pair will share the parental duties of feeding, brooding, or defending the young from predators. However, providing parental care is not cheap! It takes time and energy to raise offspring and this means there are fewer resources available for other activities such as self-maintenance, defending territories from competitors, or producing a greater number of offspring. This conflict between the needs of the offspring and the impacts on the caregivers has helped shape the mating systems of birds and has resulted in some fascinating alternative reproductive strategies.

For more details and to register go to the Science and Environment page.

CALL Café: Shoes and Stories of Immigrant and Refugee Women

Monday, December 19, 2:00pm
Sanctuary, Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church, 4612 Varsity Drive NW

At the December CALL Café, Katherine Govier and Sheila Qayumi will provide two different perspectives on The Shoe Project. In 2010, Katherine, an award-winning author and member of the Order of Canada, started a writing and public speaking workshop for immigrant and refugee women. In her presentation, she will describe how The Shoe Project began and grew to become a nation-wide initiative with chapters in 8 Canadian cities (including Calgary). Her presentation will include two short videos of performances by The Shoe Project alumnae.

The second speaker, Sheila Qayumi is one of those alumnae. Evacuated from Afghanistan on a military flight in August 2021, Sheila arrived in Canada stressed and uncertain how to start her new life. In her presentation she will recount the impact of The Shoe Project and how she now often tells others that The Shoe Project was the starter of her life journey in Canada.

Celebrate the holiday season by attending this in-person café and be inspired by the initiative and accomplishments of these two remarkable women.

You must be a CALL member to register but the registration process allows you to bring 1 to 4 guests. If you decide to invite guests after you have registered, you will need to cancel your registration (Cancellation Tips) , then register again and indicate the number of guests that you will bring.

To register and for more information, go to the CALL Café page.

January Events

Science and Environment
De-Extinction

Tuesday, January 3, 7:30pm – 9:30pm Online via Zoom
Speaker: Jay Ingram

Plenty of money is being poured into the effort of bringing back to life a selection of extinct animals, including the wooly mammoth and the Passenger Pigeon. The justification is ecological restoration, but does this make sense? Listen to well-known science broadcaster and founder of Calgary’s Beakerhead, Jay Ingram, explore this topic.

For more details and to register go to the Science and Environment page. Registration opens December 7.

CALL Recorded Events

CALL is now recording some of its speaker events and you will find them posted on the CALL Event Recordings page. Please note that the recordings of the October CALL Café Economics for a Planet in Peril and the panel discussion Whither Democracy are only available until November 28. CALL’s Policy is that recordings and all links to them will be deleted 30 days after posting.

Interest Groups Welcoming New Members

Short Reads — Great Women Writers

This CALL group is based on the idea that it is essential to hear both women’s and men’s voices. Historically, women’s voices were unheard or far less valued than men’s. As Elizabeth Lesser puts it in her book Cassandra Speaks, when women’s voices are heard, the full scope of human experience is shown. Women’s voices need to be heard equally.

The group focuses on the short fiction (and occasional non-fiction) of master women writers mainly from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

The meetings pay close attention to such qualities as the narrator, tone, mood, theme, symbolism, imagery, word choice, character creation and motivation in order to deeply understand and learn from the writer’s vision.

So far, we have read and discussed the works of Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and Carol Shields. Between December and February, we will focus on Joyce Carol Oates, Lisa Moore and Katherine Mansfield. The authors we study between March and June will be selected by group members.

We meet on Zoom on the third Thursday of the month from 10:00 to 11:30 am.
To register or for more information contact: Zina Rosso or Melvin Pasternak.

CALL Volunteers

Maureen Osis: CALL Social Media Postmistress

By Fran Genereux, CALL Communication Committee

How do we spread the word about CALL events and Interest Groups? This is a question that the CALL Communication Committee has explored. One member of the committee, Maureen Osis, is the interface between CALL and the larger community, introducing people to the scope and diversity of programs offered through posts on Facebook where we have 654 followers. Her goal is to let people know about CALL in order to increase awareness and membership.

Maureen is now retired from a successful career, first as a nursing educator followed by gerontological nursing. Gerontological nursing is a unique field in nursing which requires nurses to work collaboratively with families and the older population, focusing on healthy aging and quality of life. Maureen also obtained a degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and worked in a variety of settings as well as spending time as an author and public speaker. At all times Maureen’s work focused on healthy relationships, and healthy living.

Maureen has written several articles including:

• Monthly articles in the Canadian Gerontological Nursing Association Newsletter called “Ask a Therapist”.
• Chapter in Boomers and Their Aging Parents. Vol 3. 2003. Alfano, A. & Glover Scott, K. (Eds.) “Expert women who speak – speak out!”
• Healthy Child YYC, an article “Nurturing a Child’s Development’. Maureen is on the board of directors of the Calgary Society for Healthy Child  Development
• Your Aging Parents a variety of articles on the website she set up during COVID
• “How to Learn and How to Listen: Conversations with your Aging Parents” written by Maureen and her daughter Lara.

Always learning, Maureen has recently learned to play the piano, is researching and exploring family history, is volunteering with CALL and the Calgary Society for Healthy Child Development, and is enjoying time with her husband, three grown children and two grandkids. In fact, she credits her granddaughter as her trainer in social media allowing her to become confident and competent in her role with CALL. She is a true lifelong learner, applying her skills in new areas.

Maureen was aware of CALL through friends but only realized the amazing diversity and scope of quality programs offered when she attended a CALL Open House She is grateful to the organizers of CALL and those who keep it going as she sees how the programs offer opportunities to a wide range of people and is always confident when sharing CALL information that anyone participating will benefit from their experience.

CALL by the Numbers

Numbers can tell a story.

• At the end of October 2019 CALL had 1047 members.
• At the end of October 2022 CALL had 736 members.
• Where we live in Calgary:
  NW 392
  NE 40
  SW 377
  SE 81
  Members residing outside of Calgary in Alberta: 45
  Members residing outside of Alberta: 11
• Current CALL members by the year they joined CALL:
  2011 – 28 members
  2012 – 12 members
  2013 – 21 members
  2014 – 33 members
  2015 – 32 members
  2016 – 102 members
  2017 – 86 members
  2018 – 86 members
  2019 – 115 members
  2020 – 41 members
  2021 – 46 members
  2022 – 146 members

What stories do these numbers tell? Send your answers to newsletter@calgarylifelonglearners.ca.

Your CALL Newsletter

The CALL Newsletter is our way to communicate what is going on in our community. It's a way to highlight events of interest, ‘peek behind the curtain of CALL’ and to give some general information about CALL groups and members.

You are invited to send your ideas and suggestions for future issues to newsletter@calgarylifelonglearners.ca. We reserve the right to edit submissions and to determine when submissions will be published.

CALL Newsletter dates for posting:

• December 16
• January 13/27

Meanwhile, be well, stay well in every sense of the word.