PRESIDENT'S CORNER: May 12, 2017

BP Oops: OK, so last Wednesday I am getting ready for my OLLI class and starting feeling a little strange…and ended up in the ER with out-of-control BP. They kept me two days to adjust and re-configure my meds…and that’s why I wasn’t able to write a column last week! One thing I learned is that at our age, many of us take quite a few pills and it makes a lot of sense to have someone you can turn to that has intimate knowledge of pharmacology so they could review your meds and help determine things that may be interacting wrongly with other meds. Be careful, folks!

Lots of old people don’t get wise, but you don’t get wise unless you age. [Scholar Joan Erickson]

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball—the further I am rolled, the more I gain. [Feminist Susan B. Anthony]

Mother’s Day is Sunday! To all of you that are mothers, we salute you and enfold you in many hugs and kisses! For those of you that passed on motherhood, may your friends and partners in life cherish you and all your child-like qualities.  I have found it so interesting that many of our WVU Commencements fall on Mother’s Day. As chair of my department years ago, I had to give a brief little speech at our CCA ceremonies and always found it essential to thank all the mothers in the audience, seeing their kids graduate from the university—a proud moment for any parent. One time, I exposed my left arm and showed my Bulova watch, given to me by my parents at my first college graduation in 1967, and told the crowd how my parents wanted me to have a lasting memory of that day, expressed in a fine watch.  It still works today, though it needs a good cleaning. Wait…has it been 50 years since I graduated? Scary.

Sixty years ago, I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. [Historian Will Durant]

Opera: Don’t miss “Der Rosenkavalier” tomorrow at 12:30 PM at the Regal Hollywood cinema. It is likely to be Renee Fleming’s final performance on stage, though she says she will continue concertizing and teaching and working with Chicago’s Lyric Opera Co. This is a new production that has had rave reviews, also featuring Elina Garanca, Erin Morley, Matthew Polenzani and Gunter Groissbock.

Jim Held, President