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News From CALL January 2023
Sketch by Susan Carpenter, a member of the Sketch Club Interest Group
From the CALL Board
Recording Interest Group Zoom meetings
A reminder that CALL’s Policy does not allow recording of Interest Group Zoom meetings. Please ensure any personal software (such as Otter) that you may have installed on your devices does not inadvertently record these meetings.
January Events
CALL Café Online Arctic Security: What Comes Next?
Monday, January 16, 7:00pm–8:30pm Online with Zoom
Speakers: Rob Huebert & Will Greaves
At the January CALL Café, political scientists from the University of Calgary and the University of Victoria will offer different perspectives on Arctic Security. Register now and learn why Rob Huebert regards the Arctic as one of the most important and dangerous regions in the world and why Will Greaves thinks that environmental diplomacy offers valuable opportunities to advance environmental and climate goals.
You must be a CALL member to register but the registration process allows you to bring 1 to 4 guests.
To register and for more information, go to the CALL Café page.
Intergenerational Speaker Series: Moving through Challenging Times
Wednesday, January 18, 11:00am–1:00pm
Mount Royal University in the Lincoln Park Room (J301)
Come to hear Calgary’s very own Canadian food writer Julie van Rosendaal talk about Moving Through Challenging Times. The focus of the event is to discuss the challenges of affordable living, gain knowledge on maintaining sustainable well-being and promote intergenerational discussion, participation and enjoyment.
Light refreshments will be provided.
If you are commuting and concerned about parking fees, please inquire via our email (igss@mtroyal.ca) for assistance.
The series is being funded by the New Horizons program and is a joint project between the Calgary Association of Lifelong Learners (CALL) and Mount Royal University, Faculty of Nursing.
Register at https://sites.google.com/mtroyal.ca/igss/events#h.of4isenuk63y
Contact us at igss@mtroyal.ca
Treks and Travels
Wednesday, January 18, 7:30pm–9:00pm, Varsity Presbyterian Church
Speaker: Carla Bolen Anderson
Members of the public are welcome to attend for $5.
The Camino Frances: well, that’s the plan!
Carla was finally able to complete her mostly solo trek of the Camino Frances from St Jean Pied de Port France, to Fisterra, Spain, after two years of postponements. She found that the key to doing a 900 km trek is to accept that changes may need to be made to said plan…and that’s okay!
For more information, go to the Treks and Travels page. This is an in-person event, registration not required.
Thanks Dorothy and Welcome Judy
– Adrienne Kertzer, Chair, Program Committee
A big thank you to Dorothy Whitson who is leaving her role as coordinator for the popular Treks and Travels series. Dorothy’s willingness to take on the challenges of maintaining a high-quality program through the trials of COVID and managing the transition to return to in-person presentations is much appreciated. Thanks as well to Judy Hoad who will be taking on the role starting in January. Your stepping up will ensure that Treks and Travels will continue to inspire us as we learn about CALL members’ adventures and undoubtedly will prompt some of us to start planning our own. The next Treks and Travels will take place Wednesday January 18 at Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church.
February Events
Science and Environment
Fighting in Tyrannosaurs: Evidence from scars on bones
Tuesday, February 7, 7:30pm–9:30pm Online via Zoom
Speaker: Dr Caleb Brown, Curator of Dinosaur Systematics and Evolution at the Tyrell museum in Drumheller
Embedded teeth in bones and scars caused by tooth marks on skulls of Tyrannosaurs intriguingly suggest that bites were inflicted by other tyrannosaurs, probably members of the same species. The preserved behavioural evidence helps to reconstruct aspects of intraspecific aggressive behaviour in tyrannosaurs, and across a broader sample of theropod dinosaurs.
For more details and to register go to the Science and Environment page.
Treks and Travels
In Search of the Exotic
Wednesday, February 15, 7:30–9:00pm Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church, 4612 Varsity Drive NW
Reg Brehaut will explore the ethical dilemma of tourism and photography in his presentation on travel and photography in China and other locations.
Exploring the CALL Website
The CALL Calendar
Have you ever clicked on this image on the CALL website? When you do, a colour-coded calendar of all CALL events and meetings shows up. Do you want to know what has been scheduled for February 2023? Click on the Calendar, then click on ‘Next Month’ and all the currently scheduled events show up.
Interest Groups Welcoming New Members
Preparing to Vote
First meeting will be at 1:00pm January 23, Room 310, cSpace to discuss potential topics to be explored in this group.
The group will meet at cSpace, on the 2nd and 4th Mondays, January 30 – April 10, 2023.
Would you like to become better informed about the issues in the upcoming provincial election? Be better able to state your views and the reasoning behind them? Then join with other CALL members as we examine the issues and ideas that inform the platforms of Alberta’s political parties.
Check out the Preparing to Vote webpage for more details and to register.
Finding Peace and Joy Within
There is a universal human desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. And for the wise, this desire extends to those we love and our community. We try to fulfill that desire through our outer world – family, career, service, hobbies, recreations, etc. Through modern technology, we now have wealth and health to an extent that our ancestors (and many in developing nations) could only dream of.
Yet which of us is truly happy and free of suffering? Do you have the feeling that “something“ is missing?
We have known since we were small children that we have a mind and a body. However, we have a third, inner resource that we easily overlook, that can provide a source of uncaused joy and respite from suffering.
Please join us at Finding Peace and Joy Within to have a direct experience of this resource to help you have a happier and more fulfilled life. We meet 7:00–9:00pm Thursdays, January 19–March 9 in Room 310 at cSpace and online via Zoom. Drop-ins are welcome.
For more information and to register, go to Finding Peace and Joy Within.
Never Too Late
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
Igniting creativity is the topic of Julia Cameron’s book, It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Mid-Life and Beyond. We will begin this term’s discussion with Chapter 4.
The group meets from 10:00–11:30am, Thursdays, January 12–June 6. Online via Zoom.
For more information and to register go to the Never Too Late page.
NOTE: Registration open only to those who took Part One in Fall 2022.
Guitar Jam
Is your guitar sitting in the corner gathering dust? Do you find yourself playing with YouTube more than with real people? Come join CALL’s Guitar Jam!
This group is for guitar players and other acoustic instruments like banjo, harmonica, mandolin, bass, all with some experience, as it will not include a teaching component.
We meet Thursday mornings at cSpace, from 9:30–11:30am Drop-ins welcome.
From CALL Members
Lifelong Learning—Reasons for Enrolling
– E. Alana Gowdy
In colleges and universities across the United States there are non-credit, examination-free organizations called Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLIs). Each OLLI is funded by the Bernard Osher Foundation, created from the enormous wealth of businessman Bernard Osher.
Spread over all 50 states, there are currently 125 OLLIs, each with a name indicating their home base. For example, OLLI-RU is based in Rutgers University, New Jersey. OLLIs offer a wide variety of programs on the stated foundation that “It is learning solely for the joy of learning.”
Recently much research has examined the impact that involvement in lifelong learning has on OLLI enrolled seniors. It is a fair assumption that the results of these studies can be considered relevant to members of the Calgary Association of Lifelong Learners. As a CALL member, you may be interested in some of the findings.
When compared to the general senior population…
- Lifelong learners were less likely to experience the negative effects of depression and isolation
- They took fewer medications
- They showed more resiliency
- They had a higher level of dementia deferral
- They indicated a higher level of life satisfaction and happiness
- They had a stronger sense of well-being
- They were more optimistic
- They had a more positive outlook on life.
So, when asked why you are a member of CALL, you now have some definite answers. And of course you can always reply, “CALL? It’s just good for me!”
[An examination of the research on OLLIs can be found in the Summer 2018 edition of the Alberta Journal of Educational Research - Directions for 21st Century Lifelong Learning Institutes: Elucidating Questions from Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Studies by Craig A. Talmage, Robert Jack Hansen, Richard C. Knopf, Steven P. Thaxton.]
Winter is Not People Time
– Fern Phillips
Fern is a member of Our Lives Our Stories 1 and writes about her childhood on a ranch in the foothills along the Ghost River
The dangerous cold brings its own survival lessons home to me.
Icicles sharpen and drop. Our roof is lined with them. It's midday. The sun has heat even though it's on the down side of minus forty degrees. The warm roof melts the snow and a border of icicles form at the edge and reform, growing yellow with age. Frost rims the windows making country scenes of trees, lakes and fields in a miniature ice garden. I am not afraid. The bears sleep in winter. My night fears, that the bear will appear at my bedroom window, are sleeping now.
I like the muffled country sounds, animals mutter in their sleep, the pure trackless snow. I can see the squirrels and the coyote tracks. I see death written in blood when coyote tracks meet the mice tracks. The snow is like a storybook, telling more than the dry dust of summer. In winter on snow the tracking is easy.
Winter is the longest season. The shallow lake freezes solid, the ice six feet deep, which is more than the depth of the water for most of the lake. On our corner of the lake there is a ‘swimming hole’, deeper than most of the lake, which becomes the cattle watering hole when it’s this cold. The long-handled axe swings into a tunnel of ice, finally the water boils up under force the ice has created and thirsty stock crowd around, battling for the first drink.
"BOOM, BOOM, SNAP," the lake is frozen deep, so deep the cold heaves and breathes and breaks to the surface noisily. It talks the loudest on the coldest nights, the winter song. The lake is a highway to my old hockey skates. November is the best skating, before the snow spoils the shining surface. I have two miles to move, as fast or slow as I care. I am barely walking and am taught to skate. I skate with boy’s skates, because the rough raw ice is not safe for girls’ figure skates. I skate for miles a day whenever the winter conditions allow. I find many beaver lodges and play in the weeds beside them. When I skate to the other end of the two-mile-long lake I see coats and a goal net. There are people living in a cabin at the end of the lake. If I had known, I would never have gone there. I prefer the clean alone feelings. When there are other people around, I can't play in the dead rushes and pretend they are city houses. I can't sing or talk to my dog, what would they think? I return to the middle of the lake where they can't see me. The "narrows" pushes up a jump ramp. It's great fun to take it at speed. On windy days I can go east without skating at all, letting the Chinook push me, then I work extra hard to skate west.
Cool green and smooth, the lake ice stretches before me. I have two miles before I have to turn back if conditions are good. The best ice for skating is when there has been no snowfall. The boy's skates are brown, obviously not white, and there is no way to disguise them, make them look ‘normal’. I see a black hump in the ice, muskrat homes. Beaver have built larger lodges nearer the shore. Bullrushes don’t grown here, but there are tall marsh grass wind shelters that appeal. The houses are fun to explore and skate around. I can almost see the muskrat skidding down their frozen mud slopes and the beaver stripping their food from buried poplar limbs under the ice. But the cold drives the ice right to the bottom of the shallow lake.
How fast can water freeze? Likely before it hits the ground. Breath turns to frost and gets caught up in beards and hair, the rim of parkas and makes us look strange. My mother says that anyone wearing jewelry will get frostbitten faster than not. A finger, an ear, the throat, they are all at risk when cold seeps into the metal. "You can lose a finger wearing a ring that way!"
Crystal ice shines on the river, the sun seems to never stop beaming in winter. Out of the wind it is almost comfortable. Between walls of golden-brown grass and red-brown greasewood bushes a narrow game trail leads west. Turquoise light emits from the deeper pockets of Le Swear creek, a walk of a about six miles into the river canyon. That creek has the best ice. Ruby rocks lie under clear water. My single track is stark in the snow on the dry riverbed, the floodplain of the Ghost all barren gravel now and easy terrain for walking. I touch the edge of a footprint and it is already crusting and firm to the finger. As a woodsman I know how to determine if a track is day old or fresh.
It's too cold and the squirrels have gone to hibernation. Falling snow is a blanket that I can pull around myself, a shield against sound and activity. Snow has a smell, soft and crisp at once, a damp chilling breath, astringent. Snow has a hush sound. Amazing that one can hear it falling. My lips are dry and cracked. My cheeks flush with broken and frozen capillaries.
The deep bitter cold is quick to attack. To stop moving, to stop the heat of muscle, means that the cold gets into flesh and bone. Then it is hard to move, the body stiffens quickly. Muscles start to tremble and shiver uncontrollably as hypothermia sets in. Walking in deep snow requires extreme physical strength, including ankle power for uneven terrain. I walk close to the evergreens where the snow is thin. The beauty of a winter walk in bright sunlight has no substitute. The risk is part of the exhilaration. A misstep in the snow-covered underbrush can mean a sprain or bone break with no way home. The sun on built-up river ice makes it translucent. The LeSueur Creek (it has many spellings; we pronounce it LeSwear) is a short hike in summer, an arduous six miles in winter to where it merges with the Ghost River; on foot it can be a death sentence if I come unequipped. I carry axe, matches in waterproof containers, a jackknife, first aid supplies, a can with a square of bouillon and anything else I can think of that's readily available and small enough. As a wilderness dweller, my pockets carry no money, no makeup, no candy and no hankie.
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.
Meanwhile, be well, stay well in every sense of the word.