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News From CALL Mid‑December 2022
Bull moose in Spray Valley, photo by Jim Springer, member of the Digital Photography Interest Group
Message from the CALL President
As we wind up another very busy fall session of CALL programming, I’d like to thank the many volunteers who continue to make CALL such a successful organization.
- Facilitators – without you our 50+ Interest Groups, Study programs and Speaker events could not happen. Your groups are the heart and soul of CALL.
- Committee Chairs and Coordinators – who play an essential role organizing speaker events, booking venues, communicating thorough the website and newsletters, supporting facilitators, providing technical support and serving on the Board.
- Members – many of whom have stepped up to help with extra tasks when asked.
- Board Members – who are working tirelessly to keep the CALL ship on course.
In the new year, your Board will be working to develop and implement a road map for CALL going forward. We need your input. Please watch for a survey in January where we will be asking your opinion on a number of important questions to help guide our planning. Take a few minutes to think about how we can continue to improve – and how you might like to be involved in this exciting process.
On behalf of the Board – I wish you and your families a most peaceful, happy and healthy holiday season and New Year.
December Events
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.
CALL Café Online Arctic Security: What Comes Next?
Monday, January 16, 7:00pm to 8:30pm Online with Zoom
Speakers: Rob Huebert & Will Greaves
Register now for the January CALL Café and hear two political scientists’ different perspectives on Arctic security in the 21st century.
In his presentation “The Return of Great Power Politics in the Arctic and Renewed Threat of Nuclear War,” Rob Huebert (University of Calgary) will examine how the war in Ukraine has created a dangerous security environment and what it means for Canada as a member of NATO, NORAD, and as an Arctic nation. In “When Great Power Fails: Russia, Ukraine, and the New Arctic Geopolitics,” Will Greaves (University of Victoria) will provide a different perspective by proposing that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has cemented a new Arctic geopolitics which offers 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. 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.
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!
In May/June 2022 Carla was finally able to complete her trek of the Camino Frances from St Jean Pied de Port, France, to Fisterra, Spain, after two years of postponements. She’s a person who likes a plan, but 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!
She is excited to share her mostly solo experience with you, what she planned, what changed, and what she learned over many hours of just walking.
For more information, go to the Treks and Travels page. This is an in-person event, registration not required.
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 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.
This event will emphasize mindfulness, affordability, nutrition and strategies for making connections. Calgary’s very own Canadian food writer, Julie Van Rosendaal, will be the keynote speaker.
Light refreshments will be provided.
Commuting and/or 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
Did You Attend these CALL Events?
CALL Open House – December 3
By Mary Ndlovu, CALL Communications Committee
All was a-buzz at C-Space on Saturday afternoon December 3 as CALL members gathered for an Open House. In spite of some doubts about how many would attend, the turnout exceeded expectations. No one kept a strict count, but an estimate would put the numbers at between 70 and 90. The cautious were masked, while others felt comfortable without, but all enjoyed getting together again to socialize after too long a time. There was no programme, and we didn’t really need one; friends, old and new acquaintances, coffee and chocolate bites filled the afternoon. Some beautiful creations from the various art groups were on display, and Christmas cards for sale. There was a constant coming and going, as we spilled over from Room 310 into the hallway. Some renewed acquaintances after many years, some had chats about joining groups, and some of us met in the flesh members whom we had only been acquainted with via e‑mail and Zoom. All in all, a great success and a very good way to start out the holiday season.
Let’s do it again some time!
Science and Environment Speaker Series: Bird Parasites, Spies, and Super Reproducers!
By Marj Wing, CALL volunteer and avid birdwatcher
Did you know that:
- Brown-headed Cowbirds have completely lost the ability to make nests and raise their own young? Instead, the female cowbird will secretly spy on nests of other species. Once she sees that the eggs have been laid, she will sneak up when the adult birds are not around and remove a couple of the host’s eggs. She then quickly lays her own egg in the nest.
- Cowbirds can lay an egg in less than a minute, while other birds take about 20 minutes to lay an egg. This is just one of the adaptations that cowbirds have made so that they can avoid the demands of raising their own chicks. Cowbirds often parasitize the nests of much smaller birds and you may have seen a tiny bird such as a Yellow Warbler working very hard to feed a much larger chick. Most likely, the chick is a cowbird.
- While hard working “hosts” are raising the cowbird babies, the adults have left town. It is generally believed that the cowbirds traveled with the bison herds and so had to keep on the move. It is unclear whether cowbirds started to parasitize other species nests so that they could follow the bison, or whether they were able to follow the herds because they had already stopped raising their own young.
Dr. Dorothy Hill, an Associate Professor and the Current Chair of the Biology Department at Mount Royal University, shared a wealth of fascinating information about birds as parents in her talk The Evolution of Parental Care in Birds which was the topic for December in the Science and Environment Speaker Series.
In a most engaging presentation, Dr. Hill spoke of the many ways in which birds have evolved and adapted to enhance their “fitness” – the ability to pass on their genes to subsequent generations. This includes multiple copulations (over 600 times in a 24-hour period for one species!); development of enormous testes (in order to accomplish this); and pecking at her cloaca to get a female to expel the sperm of other males. Female chickadees have been observed to sneak off before dawn to mate with a neighbouring male. A female robin will leave the male to feed the juveniles in a first clutch while she goes off to build a nest and lay a second clutch.
Tiny, just hatched cuckoos, which have been covertly laid in another species’ nest, are able to push the eggs and chicks of the host bird out of the nest and destroy them. If they are unable to push them out, a parasite chick will peck holes in the other eggs in the nest. Robins have developed the ability to identify cowbird eggs and remove them from their nests. Other species which are frequently parasitized have also built-up defenses. They have learned to identify intruders’ eggs and will peck holes in them to kill the chick. But in the ongoing evolutionary battle, the intruders have developed eggs with extra thick shells to prevent this! Some parasitizing species are able to lay eggs which match the colour and pattern of the host eggs.
There was a wealth of fascinating information in Dr. Hill’s talk for birder and non-birder alike. She presented reliable, scientific information in an engaging and accessible manner.
The next Science and Environment talk will be presented by Jay Ingram, former host of Quirks and Quarks on CBC Radio. His topic is: De‑Extinction. The presentation will be on January 3, at 7:30. Registration is open on the Science and Environment page.
New Programs and Interest Groups
Preparing to Vote!
Are you interested in becoming a more informed elector? The next Provincial election will soon be with us, and the 2023 election may be one of the most consequential in a generation, with starkly different visions of Alberta's future being proposed by the main contenders.
If you are interested in meeting with others to explore the issues at stake, then this study program is for you. The group will meet at cSpace on the second and fourth Mondays of the months leading up to the May election. Participants will select an area of policy and share their findings on party positions on the issues, ensuring that all views are fairly represented.
If you are interested, plan to attend an organizing meeting at cSpace Rm 310 on Monday January 23 at 1pm. To Register go to the Preparing to Vote page.
Open Studio Interest Group: New Members Welcome.
These drawings are done with the Zentangle method. The foreground drawings were done by Tony Campos and Heather Compton with contributions from 20 others in the background. The course was taught by Barbara Amos and designed to engage new visual learning patterns.
This work will be developed further through independent study in Open Studio. It seems appropriate to quote Albert Einstein, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
The Open Studio Interest Group will meet every Wednesday, January 18 to June 28 via Zoom. For more information and to register, go to the Open Studio Interest Group page
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, recreation, 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 the Finding Peace and Joy Within page
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 in Room 310 at cSpace, from 9:30 to 11:30am.
Drop-ins welcome.
If you have questions, contact the facilitator.
Dual Delivery for CALL Groups – Think Small!
By Wayne Murphy, CALL Operations Committee
Our "think small" Dual Delivery solution consists of a Speakerphone and an external camera. It was originally intended to improve the audio for small In-person discussions that also have remote Zoom participants. In addition, the external camera provides an alternate camera to the fixed laptop cameras.
Setup is fairly simple – each piece uses a USB port (also have adapters to USB-C ports in Macs). Selection of the audio device (Speakerphone) is done through Zoom and likewise the external camera is selected through the Video option on Zoom. Any additional devices besides yours in the same room must be muted (speakers and microphones), otherwise there will be bothersome feedback.
If you want to try it, I can meet up with you sometime before your sessions start. The equipment will be kept at C-Space 310 in a small black "lunch" kit in the "wooden" cabinet nearest the windows.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me, cwmurphy1@gmail.com
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:
- January 13/27
Meanwhile, be well, stay well in every sense of the word.