News From CALL September 2022

Photo by Henri Walhout, Facilitator CALL Digital Photography.
July 29, 2022. Double rainbow

CALL – Open for Business!

It’s time to renew your CALL membership and take advantage of the programs offered in the coming year. Interest Groups are the lifeblood of CALL’s learning mission and a great way to connect with other “kindred spirits”. The Interest Groups listed below are all accepting new members and would be glad to welcome you. Join in soon so you won’t miss out.

For further details and to register for a group, go to the Interest Groups and Study Programs page. Here you can also see which CALL groups are currently full but taking names for a waitlist.

• Activities: Coffee by Zoom; Tuesday City Walks; Sunday Urban Walks
• Brain Games: Asian Mah Jong; Hong Kong Mah Jong; Improvers Bridge; Intermediate Bridge; Wordfreaks – cSpace; Wordfreaks – Rosedale
• Current Issues: Alberta Views & Beyond; Hags & Crones (some sections); How Can You Think That? A Political Book Club; Alberta & Quebec Through the Looking Glass; World Events (some sections)
• Cultural Appreciation: CALL to the Cinema
• Creative Arts: Digital Photography; Needlecraft
• Social Sciences & Philosophy/Religion: Buddha, Body & Brain; Buddhism – Foundational Texts; Finding Peace & Joy Within; Not So Common Law
• Written Word: The Joy of Poetry; Our Lives, Our Stories (some sections); Prairie & Quebec Novels; CALL-ing all Poets; So Many Books, So Little Time; Variety Book Club; Short Story Reads: Great Women Writers

New Interest Groups

Short Reads – Great Women Writers
Meeting Online
Accepting New Members

This new 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 not valued but when women’s voices are heard, the full scope of human experience is shown. The group focuses on the short fiction (and occasional non-fiction) of master women writers mainly from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, paying 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.

The group will meet every third Thursday of the month from September 15 to June 15.
For more details and to register go to the Short Reads – Great Women Writers page.

Zentangles – a six-week Creative Projects Event
New members are welcome to join this Creative Projects event. Zentangles will be the focus for 6 weeks, beginning in October. No drawing experience necessary. Zentangles are beautiful patterns, that are drawn free hand and yet have a mathematical appearance. They inspire creativity through the engagement of meditative practices. Zentangles can be developed as an artform with many outcomes from personal cards to large murals on buildings.

The group will meet on Zoom, Wednesday mornings from October 5 to November 9.
For more details and to register go to the Zentangles page.

Film Noir 2022
Thursdays from October 20 – December 1, 2:00 – 4:00pm Online on Zoom
Facilitator: George Melnyk
Group size limited to 25

Film Noir 2022 will be an online experience. The series will be viewable at home. A link, readings and discussion questions will be provided by the facilitator the day before the meeting.

A focus of this Interest Group will be the evolution of this film genre from the mid-forties to the late fifties. We will also be discussing the portrayal of women over this period since several of the films have significant female roles.

George Melnyk previously facilitated Film Noir in 2018, 2019 and 2020 at the Globe Cinema.

For more details and to register go to the Film Noir 2022 page.

Coming Events

CALL Café returns on September 12 with an in-person Café at Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church

Dixieland, Swing and Bebop: The Hidden History of Jazz Patronage
Monday, September 12, 2:00pm
Presenter: Jeremy Brown
Sanctuary, Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church, 4612 Varsity Drive NW

In his café presentation, Jeremy Brown will challenge common assumptions about music patronage. Demonstrating through lecture and performance the unique way in which patronage functioned in the history of jazz and addressing why jazz patronage has been marginalized, he will show the impact of these overlooked patrons upon the evolution of jazz. What better way to launch CALL’s return to fall activities than to register now for Dixieland, Swing and Bebop? Whether you are a jazz expert or a novice, this café will bring you lots of intellectual stimulation and joy.

Jeremy Brown is an internationally recognized Canadian saxophonist, flutist, woodwind doubler, professor, author, composer and conductor. As is evident from his May 2020 JazzYYC contribution Creating a Diverse Life in Music: Performing, Teaching, Conducting and Writing, he is also an advocate of lifelong learning. Please note that before you register for this event, you must have renewed your membership.

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

NOTE: You must be a CALL member to register but the registration process allows you to bring one to four 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.

Treks and Travels: Ethiopia South

Wednesday September 21, 7:30pm
In-person at Varsity Presbyterian Church and Online by Zoom. Please register no matter how you wish to attend.
Speaker: Richard King

After two long years of online only CALL presentations, we can meet again face-to-face! Members can attend September's  Treks & Travels either in person at Varsity Acres Presbyterian Church or online via Zoom.

Richard King spent five weeks in 2019 touring Ethiopia. In this presentation he will share photos and stories of the people and the natural beauty of the southern regions.

For more details and to register go to the Treks and Travels page.

CALL Housekeeping Notes

DID YOU KNOW?

Welcome back! We are pleased to be moving back to meeting in-person for CALL events. Check the parking information at our venues.

Pivoting Boomers Into Zoomers: Next Steps

by Lilly Wong and Michael Taylor

COVID-19 required CALL to rapidly pivot from hosted events at cSpace, Varsity Acres Church and the like, to two-dimensional events, hosted on the Zoom platform. Back then as the newly formed Zoom Help Team, we quickly learned how to use the ever-evolving Zoom platform and learned to present professional quality broadcasts for CALL members. Initially we spent a lot of time helping CALL members become familiar with using Zoom as it was such a new experience to everyone. With our help, CALL event organizers have offered members thought-provoking content at home as we all waited out the pandemic. Behind the scenes, the CALL Zoom Help Team facilitated a smooth transition to on-line meetings by setting up Zoom training sessions and running rehearsals with guest speakers. We became the invisible technical support team for running Zoom events.

With the pandemic becoming more manageable and the prospect of returning to in-person meetings, the Zoom Help Team has been greatly reduced through attrition. With a smaller team, we will no longer be able to offer quick responses to messages sent to our Zoom Help email account. If you message us through that email, you will get a response within 24 hours.

Stay tuned to our article in the next newsletter where we will give you tips on how to avoid Zoom problems while attending an event.

From CALL Members

CALL to the Garden

Article and photos by Frankie Thornhill

The CALL to the Garden group was treated to an informative and interesting tour of the Coutts Centre for Western Heritage on July 14.

The Coutts Centre is on a quarter-section near Nanton that was donated to the University of Lethbridge in 2011 by Dr. Jim Coutts, grandson of the homesteader, who settled there in 1904. Visitors are treated to colourful gardens and an eclectic array of original and repurposed buildings featuring items salvaged from the area. The public is welcome to visit any time. The facilities can also be booked for weddings and other events. Check out couttscentre.ca for all the details and history.

Pond	Custom-built bar	Centre director John Stoll and horticulturist Kara Matthews, to his right, led the tour.	Poppy garden

It’s a fascinating and beautiful spot with an elm tree allée, multiple specialty gardens featuring roses, poppies, hollyhocks, sunflowers, vegetables and a medicine wheel of plantings, as well as a series of plots showcasing 32 native Western Canadian grass species. The buildings include an event centre for 120 people and a cabin available for a writer’s or artist’s retreat.

My Writing Journey

by Sally Shah

Sally Shah was one of the co-founders of Our Lives Our Stories Group 1.  It is still very active, with a group of dedicated amateur writers, and Sally has been a key member until recently.

Before moving back to Canada in 2006, I decided that one of my retirement plans was to write the story of my life - not because I thought that my life was so fascinating, but because I wanted my children to know the facts or, at least, the facts I choose to share.

Fast forward to the summer of 2011, I realized that I had done nothing towards meeting my self-imposed goal. Nothing. I knew myself well enough to know that I needed an external structure to get moving on this project and so I looked for a program. I found a course at U of C Continuing Education department—ten weekly classes. The instructor, Mary, would provide prompts for writing and we students would share our writing. Perfect! But it wasn't. It was hard and I struggled. I found it impossible to put more than a few words on a page and those words were so disjointed. It seemed as though everyone else had stories pouring out of them, but not I. Halfway through the course, I wrote a piece I was happy with and that convinced me I needed to persevere.

A few of us from the class continued to meet to share our writing, but finding times to meet was challenging. Only Susanna and I were left. Could we rent a room somewhere and invite people to join us? How would we find these people? We were neither published writers nor writing instructors; why would anyone join us? In 2013 I heard about the newly-founded CALL from Zina Barnieh. I asked her if she thought they might be interested in our proposal for a life writing group. Susanna and I met with two people from the Program Committee and explained what we wanted to do—a group of people writing about their lives in response to prompts, sharing their stories and learning how to improve them. Oh, and we would place a limit of twenty-five hundred words on each piece. "You'll be lucky to get 250!" was the response.

Susanna and I joined CALL and promoted the group, now called Our Lives, Our Stories, which began in January 2014 with six members. I think it would be fair to say that the numbers wobbled quite a bit in the early months as people joined, realized it wasn't for them and left. As the popularity of the group grew, three more groups were formed, each with their own approach to writing and sharing.

What have I learned over the last eight years or so? Everyone's life is interesting, maybe not in dramatic ways but in the way they write about it. Any prompt will produce as many different approaches as there are writers. Every reader wants different things from a story—more detail, more description, more feelings, more background.

What have I learned about me and my writing? Most importantly, even bad writing is hard work; it takes thought and time. Some stories are begging to be told, but some have to be tweezered out of our memories. I've learned that I will never satisfy those who want more emotions from my writing. I do occasionally go back over my stories and add in the emotion! I know that my writing has improved over the years; my beginnings and endings—always my weak point—are better. I'm often dissatisfied because I can't convey details with the precision I seek. I'm my own most demanding editor, constantly rewriting and changing phrases, sentences, the order of ideas. Even today, I don't like my title. Why have I called this piece My Writing Journey? We overuse the word 'journey'—My Cancer Journey, My Journey through Addiction etc.

What have I learned about me through my writing? I've learned that I use a more educated vocabulary when I speak than when I write. My sense of humour doesn't work for everyone, but I've known that for a long time. However, my sense of humour is an important part of who I am and needs to be expressed in my writing. The writing that has come to me most easily has been writing about my passions—learning languages, living in other cultures, literacy, and empowering students to see the world in a different way through language.

I would like to thank all of you who have accompanied me on this journey—definitely the right word—taken an interest in my writing, helped me to improve it and asked me for more.

CALL Volunteers

Coordinator for Open Rehearsal of the CPO

Do you like going to the symphony? Are you interested in sharing the experience with others and discussing the music after the concert? CALL needs a volunteer to coordinate members’ attendance at Open Rehearsals of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. There are 7 Open Rehearsal concerts scheduled from September 2022 to June 2023. Tickets are only $15. Group participants will attend the concert and then gather afterwards for a discussion that you will facilitate.

If this appeals to you, please contact Julia Melnyk

Pat Hogan: CALL Volunteer par excellence!

They say that no one is indispensable, but that’s not entirely true, especially in the case of Pat Hogan and CALL. As a member of the Steering Committee that was created in 2010 to consider if it was feasible to establish a lifelong learning group in Calgary, and what it might look like, Pat was instrumental in creating CALL.

Moreover, since the group’s official founding in 2011, she has contributed enormously and continuously to the organization’s success. She has done this in many ways, and in various parts of the organization, having served in many capacities, including being a member of the Board of Directors, the Program Committee, and the Communication Committee, as well as being an Interest Group Facilitator, the Coordinator of the Arts and Humanities Interest Area and a thoughtful contributor to the various Interest Groups in which she has participated.

Perhaps first and foremost, Pat is an “ideas person”—someone who sees the big picture, “thinks outside the box” and envisions possibilities. She is also a powerful leader—open to suggestions while at the same time being strong willed and determined when she knows what should be done. Given these qualities, Pat has had considerable influence on how CALL has developed—its organization, its processes, and its programs.

Without a range of quality programs there wouldn’t be a CALL organization. There would be no programs without the Program Committee and CALL wouldn’t be the success it is without Pat’s relentless enthusiasm regarding developing and facilitating programs. Not only does she actively search out and bring on board facilitators, she mentors, supports and encourages their long term involvement in CALL.

In 2016 she initiated a popular discussion group, Conversations About Change, for which she collaborated with Self Connection Books to present a video conference (an early example of a hybrid presentation) with Norman Doidge, the author of The Brain That Changes Itself.

One CALL member says, “I joined CALL at the beginning and took Pat’s highly successful program at Self Connection Books. I was ‘hooked’ on CALL from the beginning. It wasn’t long before Pat was gently persuading me to become more involved. It took a couple of years of persuasive discussions before I succumbed to her charms. I’m grateful for her persistence as I have so enjoyed my active involvement in the organization as well as a participant in programs.”

Passionate about social justice, particularly Truth and Reconciliation, Pat initiated and mentored others who are interested in expanding their awareness of Indigenous history, culture and issues to create of the very active Indigenous Awareness Interest Group.

Her interest in philosophy and spirituality and her conversations with Melvin and Carla Pasternak resulted in their course on Advaita Vedanta which ran during two separate years. Other conversations with Dr. Eva Neumaier led to an Interest Group on Buddhism.

She wrote in a CALL newsletter about how she initiated the Interest Group Hags and Crones. She was interested in bringing women together to share stories and discuss public issues and personal challenges. Discussions with others over tea and cookies evolved to an “Are You Interested” item in the newsletter, then to a meeting of ten interested people, then over time to the current three active groups. She wrote, “What started as my personal need and interest has been taken up by about 60 women. But my story is not an unusual one. It’s how any CALL interest group can begin, with an idea, an interest, a conversation.”

Pat, the “ideas person”, doesn’t live in an ivory tower. She doesn’t shy away from the hard, detailed work of making things happen ‘on the ground.’ She can always be counted on to make sure that whatever needs to be done for a particular event to take place not only gets done, but on time, on budget, and with style.

Pat is also someone who takes time to be a real friend to her fellow CALL members. Many of us have been cheered by her e-mail messages, phone calls, and conversations over coffee or lunch.

“I have heard it said that it becomes more difficult to make friends as one ages. That certainly does not apply to Pat Hogan. New to CALL, I first met Pat as we were leaving a meeting. One thing led to another and before I knew it, we were having coffee at a local coffee shop and making plans to start another Our Lives Our Stories group. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘how hard can it be?’ For Pat, not hard at all. Pat has a knack for connecting to people, and combining that with her genuine love of learning has resulted in  a myriad of CALL initiatives. But more importantly for me, she has become a treasured friend.”

Her extremely positive attitude is one of her distinguishing features which keeps people optimistic when times get tough.

“What I would say about Pat is that CALL is the culmination of her lifelong efforts to create community in Calgary.”

“She’s a real ‘can-do’ kind of person! Always a pleasure to work with Pat.“

“Pat Hogan epitomizes what is nourishing about CALL.”

In short, Pat is someone who exemplifies the essence of CALL—a passion for learning for the sheer joy of it, combined with dedication to enhancing the lives of others and the larger community.

-With contributions from Tamara Seiler, Arlene and Bob Stamp, Mary Lou Kerr, Melvin Pasternak, Maurice Yacowar, Terry Lende, Mary Ndlovu, CALL Communications

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:

• September 9/23
• October 14/28
• November 11/25
• December 16
• January 13/27

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