PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

President’s Corner for June 23, 2017

Annual Meeting: We hosted about 70 members and friends at our Annual Meeting on Wednesday at the Erickson Center. We were entertained by our relatively new MonRiver New Horizons Band and enjoyed a very nice lunch of salads, wraps and a selection of yummy brownies. In our business meeting, we passed some simple edits to the By-Laws, voted for the slate of new or returning Board members, celebrated the 70th wedding anniversary of Art and Barbara Pavlovic, and gave me a nice little thank you for serving in this office: movie tickets!

Seriously, folks, it has been my honor to serve you. I deeply appreciate the support that so many of you have offered and I am somewhat overwhelmed by the number of people that do not want this column to cease. So…I have a present for you…with Jae’s encouragement, I will continue it, but it may not be every week, and I do not want to step on the toes of our new president (to be revealed July 10) who may wish to write his/her own column. That said, What I do will have to change, so maybe we’ll call it Jim’s Corner or Basement or Bastion of Liberal Claptrap—that sort of thing. Stay tuned.

Remember…Summer is Icumin in, a Medieval English round or rota, also known as the Summer Canon or Cuckoo Song? Here’s a modern English translation:

Summer has arrived,

Sing loudly, cuckoo!

The seed is growing

And the meadow is blooming,

And the wood is coming into leaf now,

Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe is bleating after her lamb,

The cow is lowing after her calf;

The bullock is prancing,

The billy-goat farting,

Sing merrily, cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo,

You sing well, cuckoo,

Never stop now.

Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo;

Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now!

*

So, there’s a little ditty to get your heart started about summer.

 

Charleston: A couple of our Charleston members were with us on Wednesday to receive the Extra Mile Award. I said well over a year ago, when the whole Charleston branch was still in some doubt, that if we were to continue with any branches in the state, that each one would have to have a local committee to “carry the water,” as it were in support of their own program. We are thrilled that the Charleston committee of 8 dedicated members, has stepped up and is managing very well, planning its program and recruiting new members.  It is our hope that in the near future, we’ll be able to share some of our Morgantown program with Charleston via TV link-up. So, thank you to the Charleston committee and all their local membership!

 

Sylvia: You can still catch a performance of this A. R. Gurney play being presented at the CAC by the WV Public Theater group, now in residence there. We were saddened to find that playwright Gurney died around June 14, so this can be a reminder of his fine work. A former faculty colleague, Joe Olivieri, now at UCLA and former grad student, Joe Mortimer, are in the cast, along with a current faculty member, Cathy O’Dell. It will play through the Sunday matinee this weekend.

 

Remember to come by and join in the clean-up of our whole facility on Monday, June 26…all day. You could get a free lunch… Jae reported that a new lease has been signed with the mall management for 3 years at an affordable increase and we’ll retain first right of refusal at the end of the new lease.  Good show!

 

Jim Held, President