PRESIDENT'S CORNER: July 7, 2017

Reflections / The End: This is my final President’s Corner. On Monday, we’ll be electing a new set of officers. We’ll let you know how that goes. Monday we’ll also welcome some new Board members, say farewell to others, and try to introduce our new or returning Board members to each other and to where we stand financially and in our progress as an OLLI.

With this column, I have written 96 of these mostly weekly missives. They will not be collected in a leather-bound souvenir edition available for $29.95 at your local OLLI. If you have followed them, you’ll remember that I have tried all sorts of things: book reviews, quips, movie reviews, opera notices, poems for many occasions, seasonal bits and paragraphs that I hoped would be informative, if not a bit humorous. I tend to have a very sunny disposition, but I am not always as patient as I wish I could be, especially at that @#$%&! round-about on the Mileground. Does no one in this town know what a YIELD sign means? Anyway…I have tried to be a cheerleader for our OLLI and encourage everyone to volunteer or teach for us.

I thank you for the opportunity to serve you.  It has been more fun to do this than to be the chair of my WVU department. I found I just didn’t have the temperament for life-long administration. Now I will just keep sharing things with you in classes that interest me, and keep showing films.

Trying to hand on to youth, trying to hang on to what was really great twenty years ago, throws you totally off. You’ve got to go with it and seek the abundance that’s in the new thing. If you hang on to the old thing, you will not experience the new. [Scholar Joseph Campbell]

So…the house projects are done (except for the deck staining and trim), and the clean-up process is underway. That means it is close to the time when we are going to want to adopt a pair of kittens. I have been telling anyone that would listen that I would especially love to have some Siamese cats again, but so far, no news…anyone? We’ll adopt, as we have in the past and be quite happy. Meanwhile, I’ll see you around. Next week, if there’s a column from me, it’ll be called something else…”The Cave of Wonders,” or “Just Jim,” or some such…

Good days are to be gathered like sunshine in grapes, to be trodden and bottled into wine and kept for age to sip at ease beside the fire. If the traveler has vintaged well, he need trouble to wander no longer; the ruby moments glow in his glass at will. [Writer Freya Stark]

Jim Held, President (for 3 more days)!