Michael Braun is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on communication technology, and how people use this technology through their life to facilitate interpersonal and family relationships. He is specifically interested in the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. Michael grew up in Algoma, WI, a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan. In his spare time, Michael is an avid blogger, reader, traveler, and news junkie.

Mark Copelovitch is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Professor Copelovitch studies international political economy and international organizations, with a focus on the politics of global financial governance, capital flows and financial crises, and the political economy of exchange rates and monetary institutions. He is the author of The International Monetary Fund in the Global Economy: Banks, Bonds, and Bailouts (Cambridge University Press, 2010), as well as articles in the Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and the Review of International Organizations. Professor Copelovitch is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. in 2005. Before joining the Wisconsin faculty, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Niehaus Center ‘, and Puerto Rico. Mr. Kurr is also the founding conductor for the Middleton Community Orchestra, teaches music appreciation classes through the UW Division of Continuing Studies, and served as principal violist for the Beloit-Janesville Symphony Orchestra for 15 years.

Bobby “Sugar” Hinds, the visionary founder of LifelineUSA and legendary “Jump Rope King,” pioneered the use of resistance bands and became their greatest advocate. Now, nearly 40 years later, Bobby’s premium bands permeate the training regimens of professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts all over the world.

Jesi Hirsh has been a Registered Nurse for 20 years and has been a patient advocate from day one. She strongly believes that quality of life, which involves good health, is something to which every person is entitled. Whether it is advocating for people or coaching clients about health and wellness, she educates people on their conditions, a range of treatment options, and coordinates care with physicians and other members of a client’s healthcare team. Jesi’s professional mission: To educate, to stress prevention, and to advocate for people to get the best healthcare possible. “My motivation stems from my desire to support people in making their own informed decisions because these are their lives and their bodies.”

Bruno Leone, Ph.D. has the good fortune to hold his degree and his academic loves in the same fields – European Intellectual History with specialties in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology. He has held teaching positions at the University of Minnesota, Metropolitan State University (both in Minnesota), St. Francis College (Joliet, IL), and is currently an adjunct professor at San Diego State University. He has been awarded several fellowships including a Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and National Endowment for the Humanities. He was also the recipient of two National Science Foundation Teaching Grants. He has had numerous publications in a wide area of academic interests including books on Evolution, Cloning, and Human Nature. Dr. Bruno Leone is also a very accomplished pianist who has played all over the country and accompanied Mel Torme in the early 70′s. Bruno is on faculty at SDSU

Robert McGrath is a licensed psychologist with expertise in health psychology, authentic happiness, mind/body wellness and stress. Mr. McGrath has been a professor for 21 years at the University of Wisconsin Madison, eighteen years as Director of Counseling and Consultation Services and three years as Coordinator of Mind Body Wellness. Professor McGrath was Director of Counseling at the University of Missouri Columbia from 1983-1990, and Training Director at the University of Tennessee from 1975-1983. He received his psychology degree from University of Illinois in 1975.

Lissa McLauglin is an award-winning author whose work includes prose poetry, short stories, and a children’s picture book which she also illustrated. Her prose poem book, Enough, was published in 2001 by tel-let chapbooks. Her collection of fiction, poetry and photographs, The Grouper, was issued by Avec Press in 1997. The same year, Sun and Moon Press awarded her a Gertrude Stein Award for her fiction. Tel-let Press continues to publish chapbooks of her fiction and prose poetry. She has taught fiction for adults and children for over 25 years in a variety of venues across the country, including at the Rhode Island School of Design, San Francisco State University, and the UW-Madison Department of English. She has an M.A. in fiction writing from Brown University. She was also a producer at Wisconsin Public Radio for two years.

John Peevehouse is a popular and well-respected political science professor who returned to the UW Madison in 2009. His main research interests lie in international relations theory, international security, foreign policy, international political economy, and political methodology. Specifically, Professor Pevehouse focuses on the link between international institutions and their political and economic outcomes whether at the domestic or international level. Topics on which he has recently published include reciprocity in regional conflicts, regional trade agreements, international influences on democratization, and economic interdependence. A high-profile professor, he recently co-authored International Relations: A Reader (2008) and Principles of International Relations (2008) with Joshua Goldstein, and published scholarly articles in World Economy and the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

Linda Revitz has been involved in the development of and teaching of health policy for over 30 years. She served two ‘tours of duty’ on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., working first as a legislative assistant in the House of Representatives, focusing on health and welfare issues, and later as a staff member of the Joint Economic Committee. She served as Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services from l983-86, an agency of over l0,000 employees which managed the state’s Medicaid, welfare, vocational education, corrections, mental health and community services programs, among others. Prior to her experience at DHSS, she served in various high level positions in three other state agencies.

Heather Sabin As Tourism Coordinator, Heather Sabin has managed Monona Terrace’s tours, volunteer program, and educational activities for the past 11 years. She received her M.A.T. in Museum Education from George Washington University and worked previously at Chicago Botanic Garden, Rock County (Wisconsin) Historical Society, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s home Taliesin. Heather’s programs for elementary students have received national recognition. She enjoys teaching audiences of all ages how to look at their built environment in new ways.

Stanley K. Schultz is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. in History at the University of Chicago in 1970. Schultz is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the covered Pelzer Prize of the Organization of American Historians, runner-up for the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, and recipient of the Abel Woolman Award for that year’s best book in American Public Works and City Planning History. Most recently he has published a youth book The Great Depression and served as co-author with Jon Stewart of America (The Book), Teacher’s Edition: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction. Schultz won a National Telly Award for “Best Educational Non-Network Programming” for his cable television course “American History, Civil War to Present,” broadcast regionally by Wisconsin Public Television.

Mike Wilkinson, M.A. has been involved with teaching Shakespeare in one form or another for the last 38 years. He has led thousands of students to understand and embrace the plays of the Bard. As an Advanced Placement educator, an adjunct professor at Seattle University and Southern Oregon State College, he has annually developed teaching curricula featuring Shakespeare and taken students and adults to the Oregon Shakespearean Festival for over thirty years. His Shakespeare class was taught to adults at The Learning Curve in Tucson in 2012. In 2007, he was awarded the Pierce County Arts Educator of the year award, as well as, having been selected as his institutions first Exemplary Teacher for his work with his students.

Nancy Wilkinson has been teaching yoga for over 6 years in studios, schools, churches and one-on-one in students’ homes. She has her 200 hour certification and is working on her 500 hour with Kripalu, the largest yoga school in North America. Her journey with yoga began in India on a Fulbright. She believes life is a sacred pilgrimage and yoga is a good tool to help along the way.

Michael Xenos earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington in 2005. He is an associate professor in the department of Communication Arts and the director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on how political communication influences the quality of democratic deliberation, public opinion, and civic engagement on a variety of issues. He is particularly interested in how new forms of media and new communication technologies enable or constrain democratic processes.

Douglas Card recently retired from teaching sociology at the University of Oregon, from which he had also received his PhD. A former Neighborhood Leader in Eugene, Doug now lives in nearby Veneta and concentrates on researching, writing, lecturing, leading tours on local history, and is a member of the newly formed “Eugene Preservation Collaborative”. He recently published From Camas to Courthouse, Early Lane County History.

Jane Cramer

Dorothy Dworkin holds a master’s degree in counseling and an MSW in social work. Her stories have been published in the New York Times, New York Newsday, The Oregonian, Florida Sun Sentinel and numerous magazines and journals. Ms. Dworkin has been teaching memoir writing to mature learners for over twenty years. She facilitates groups in adult education programs, retirement communities, libraries and community college programs. She currently divides her time between Florida and Oregon.

Stephen Rust is a Post-Doctoral Instructor at the University of Oregon where he teaches cinema studies and composition. He is lead editor of the collection ‘Ecocinema Theory and Practice’, which will be published in August, 2012 by the American Film Institute and Routledge Press. Steve’s work has appeared in such collections as ‘Avatar and Nature Spirituality’ (2012) and such journals as Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Film & History, and Jump Cut. His current book project examines popular cinema and global environmental change. Steve and his family are soaking up every minute of their time here in Eugene while he searches for a permanent tenure-track faculty position.

Rabbi Jonathan Seidel

Nathaniel Teich, Professor Emeritus of English, retired from the University of Oregon after teaching literature and writing courses for 32 years. He areas of specialization are 19th century British romanticism and contemporary communication theory. He was one of the founding directors of the Oregon Writing Project, which was partly federally funded through the National Writing Project. It provided continuing professional education programs for K-12 teachers to improve writing and literacy.

Naomi Zack received her BA from New York University and her PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University, NY. She has taught at the University at Albany, SUNY, and has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon since 2001. Zack’s latest books are: The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality after the History of Philosophy (2011); Ethics for Disaster (2010) and The Handy Answer Philosophy Book (2010), a popular reference book on the history of philosophy. Zack specializes in work on race and race relations, philosophy of science, feminism and the history of philosophy. Since the early 1990s, she has published 12 books and numerous scholarly articles and spoken and lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad. Zack is also the executive producer and founder of Philosophical Installations, a website of streaming videos of philosophers performing their work outside of the classroom.

Mary Mortensen Diecker is a native New Mexican, born and raised in Albuquerque. She attended the University of Oklahoma, and has owned her own business for 15 years specializing in graphic arts and information. Since 2000, Mary has written two books entitled “Roadrunner Tales,” and “Roadrunner Tales 2.0,” each one containing 366 stories about New Mexico (one for each day of the year), and just finished writing 268 more, which brings the grand total to 1,000 stories about New Mexico! These are short stories (she calls them “shorticles), that people can read quickly and learn something new every day about this wonderful, unique and beautiful state. Mary is a member of the New Mexico Humanities Council’s Chautauqua/Speakers Bureau and has taught for Oasis (sponsored by Macy’s), Central New Mexico Community College, University of New Mexico Continuing Education and Senior Summer School. She has spoken to two national conventions as well as given presentations to many groups in Albuquerque and across the State of New Mexico. She, of course, loves history, and also enjoys reading, crocheting, painting and football (can’t go to the University of Oklahoma without learning to love football. Mary says she thinks it’s a state law!!)

Joan Elder is a life-long teacher. After 30 years of teaching elementary and middle school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Joan led math workshops for teachers throughout the country. Recently she has taught in SaddleBrooke (her Tucson retirement community) and as part of the Utah State University Summer Citizen program in Logan, Utah.

Ronda Gates is one of the most respected health promotion and weight management consultants in the U. S. Her company, LIFESTYLES by Ronda Gates, develops and delivers programs and products that support a healthy lifestyle. Ronda, a professional member of the National Speakers Association, is best known for her ability to weave through the labyrinth of lifestyle issues and make them easy to understand. Each year she travels internationally to deliver presentations on exercise, nutrition, weight control, motivation, pharmacy-related subjects and corporate fitness to a variety of organizations. Ronda now spends as much time as possible practicing what she preaches. She teaches an aerobic conditioning class, plays tennis and cycles daily. Ronda enjoys hiking in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains as often as possible. Her less active pursuits include woodworking, beading and participation in a bluegrass group.

Dirk C. Gibson Ph. D. is an Associate Professor of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico. He is Course Director for the undergraduate programs in Persuasion, and also directs the Interviewing classes. His main research interests include consumer product safety and recalls, litigation public relations, serial murder and commercial space tourism.

Peter Gregory Ph.D.  is a Professor Emeritus of Economics of the University of New Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He previously was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota and has held visiting posts at Yale and Cornell University’s Program at the University of Chile. He has served as a consultant abroad for various international agencies, among others, The World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Latin American Development Bank, the International Labor Office as well as to governments of developing countries in five continents. He currently lectures locally in several educational programs for seniors on a wide variety of economic issues with the goal of making economics understandable to laymen.

Alana Cordy-Collins, Ph.D. is a graduate of UCLA (1976). She is an Anthropologist whose specializations are Peruvian archaeology and shamanism. Alana is a Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of San Diego where she has taught since 1979. She is Director of the David W. May American Indian Gallery and Collection at USD. Alana has published over 35 articles and book chapters. She conducts fieldwork in Peru and Northwest Europe.

Ronda Gates is one of the most respected health promotion and weight management consultants in the U. S. Her company, LIFESTYLES by Ronda Gates, develops and delivers programs and products that support a healthy lifestyle. Ronda, a professional member of the National Speakers Association, is best known for her ability to weave through the labyrinth of lifestyle issues and make them easy to understand. Each year she travels internationally to deliver presentations on exercise, nutrition, weight control, motivation, pharmacy-related subjects and corporate fitness to a variety of organizations. Ronda now spends as much time as possible practicing what she preaches. She teaches an aerobic conditioning class, plays tennis and cycles daily. Ronda enjoys hiking in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains as often as possible. Her less active pursuits include woodworking, beading and participation in a bluegrass group.

Bruno Leone, Ph.D. has the good fortune to hold his degree and his academic loves in the same fields – European Intellectual History with specialties in the History of Medicine, Science and Technology. He has held teaching positions at the University of Minnesota, Metropolitan State University (both in Minnesota), St. Francis College (Joliet, IL), and is currently an adjunct professor at San Diego State University. He has been awarded several fellowships including a Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and National Endowment for the Humanities. He was also the recipient of two National Science Foundation Teaching Grants. He has had numerous publications in a wide area of academic interests including books on Evolution, Cloning, and Human Nature. Dr. Bruno Leone is also a very accomplished pianist who has played all over the country and accompanied Mel Torme in the early 70′s. Bruno is on faculty at SDSU.

Rick LeVine is an attorney in San Diego. He was also a San Diego newscaster for 15+ years. Mr. Levine teaches many different current events classes around the area for various programs and has a strong reputation. He holds a degree in communications from the journalism school at the University of Illinois, has worked in Washington for the Voice of America as a writer and reporter, and has worked as a newscaster for several San Diego stations. He also holds an MBA and a law degree, is a member of the faculty of Keller Graduate School of Management teaching MBA candidates, and has taught at two local law schools. Additionally, he has served for 16 years as a Hearing Officer for the S.D. Superior Court.

Professor Yi Sun, PhD. has been a member of the History Department at USD since fall 1997. She teaches a number of undergraduate courses on East Asian history and U.S.-East Asia Relations. Currently she also serves as the coordinator for the Asian Studies Minor program. Her research interests include Chinese women and modernization, Sino-American relations, and globalization. She has served on the executive board of several academic organizations, including the ASIA Network, Chinese Historians in the United States and the Association of Third World Studies, and presently is the associate editor of the Asian section for the Journal of Third World Studies.

Bobbi and Muff Warren, Nationally Board Certified Reflexologists Since the 60’s, Mother and Daughter team, Muff and Bobbi Warren, have studied, practiced and spread worldwide the news about Reflexology’s ability to heal through the feet and hands. One of the top Seminar Trainers of the Ingham Method® for almost 30 years for the original school of Reflexology – The International Institute – Bobbi has traveled throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Both Bobbi and Muff are nationally board certified (ARCB) in Reflexology and have been active in various professional reflexology organizations, inadvertently becoming Reflexology activists in their own backyard of San Diego, CA. The Warrens have appeared in numerous newspapers, on TV and radio and are sought after speakers on various topics at state and national conferences. In 2008, Muff, age 81, received the field’s highest recognition—The Eunice D. Ingham Award for her lifetime support and community service in the field of reflexology. Bobbi, who admits to being a junior-senior, is the author of What My Feet Say About Me—The Art of Foot Reading to Better Understand Yourself and Others. They also incorporate Wellness Coaching in their practice as well as Detoxification through the feet. Their goal is to heal the planet one pair of feet at a time!

Philip Eil was raised in Providence and he has the Little League Opening Day photos with Mayor Buddy Cianci to prove it. After a number of years traversing the United States, he has returned to his hometown in time for the city’s 375th anniversary. During the Fall of 2011, his “Writing Providence” seminar will explore the literary history of this place that has been called “a shelter for persons distressed for conscience” (by Roger Williams, the city’s founder), a “smudge in the fast lane on the way to Cape Cod” (by the Wall Street Journal, in 1983), and “New England’s Coolest City” (by British newspaper, The Telegraph, in 2011). Phil’s essays and articles have appeared on Rhode Island Public Radio and in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Providence Phoenix, The Jewish Voice & Herald and The Providence Business News. His interests include: paranormal activity, public libraries, documentary films, the murals of Diego Rivera, the music of Booker T. & the MG’s and the writings of Janet Malcolm. He is currently working on a true crime story about prescription drug trafficking in Southern Ohio.

Dennis Hogan received his Bachelor of Science degree in sociology at the University of Iowa in 1972. Following this he attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning his doctorate in sociology (demography) with a minor in development economics (1976). His first academic appointments were at the University of Chicago (1976-87) and Penn State University (1987-95) where he was distinguished professor of sociology and director of the Population Research Institute. Hogan joined Brown University as director of the Population Studies and Training Center (1995-2000) and has served as chair of the Sociology Department (2000-01, 2008-11. Hogan is interested in the life course of American adolescents. His research includes studies of the health and disability of children and adolescents. His research interests in developing nations and on the lives of adolescents have resulted in studies of women’s reproductive behaviors and dangers to their well-being in several populations, most recently in Ethiopia.

Lissa McLauglin is an award-winning author whose work includes prose poetry, short stories, and a children’s picture book which she also illustrated. Her prose poem book, Enough, was published in 2001 by tel-let chapbooks. Her collection of fiction, poetry and photographs, The Grouper, was issued by Avec Press in 1997. The same year, Sun and Moon Press awarded her a Gertrude Stein Award for her fiction. Tel-let Press continues to publish chapbooks of her fiction and prose poetry. She has taught fiction for adults and children for over 25 years in a variety of venues across the country, including at the Rhode Island School of Design, San Francisco State University, and the UW-Madison Department of English. She has an M.A. in fiction writing from Brown University. She was also a producer at Wisconsin Public Radio for two years.

Rory Raven was a solitary, imaginative child who grew up in his own little world… Things have yet to change for the grown-up Mr. Raven. A life-long interest in all things psychic and paranormal led Rory to pursue a career as a mentalist and mindbender. His goal is to reproduce the kind of effects parapsychologists have been researching for years – only he wants to do them live and onstage.

As Rory says, “I’m skeptical about paranormal activity. But a background in theater and an interest in esoteric subjects help me to bend the audience’s minds.” Rory’s work has brought him to a number of wonderful places over the years. From Salem to Manhattan to Istanbul – he has performed for bar patrons, educational groups, nightclub crowds, champion bridge players, and even a coven of witches!

Throughout his travels, Rory says that one thing has always intrigued him. “What I find interesting is that everyone has an opinion about whether or not telepathy exists. The great thing is that you don’t have to believe in order to find mentalism compelling, any more than you have to believe that the actor onstage really is a melancholy Danish prince in order to get completely caught up in that experience. Remember, we’re in the Theater of the Mind, and not just my mind… but yours as well.”

Among the highlights of the Albuquerque session will be field trips to the historic Old Town and Nob Hill shopping districts. These areas are arguably the two sites with the most historical impact on the city, and they represent two distinct and, one could say, diametrically opposed urban planning models. Each has its own aesthetic architectural appeal, and each has survived and revitalized into a chic, popular, modern-day destination attraction.

Old Town Albuquerque is an area of about ten blocks of adobe buildings surrounding the plaza – historically, a wide-open space in the middle of a Spanish town – that looks much the same as it did when it was founded in 1706 by Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdez. On the north side of the area you’ll find the San Felipe de Neri Church, built in 1793, to replace the original church that collapsed during the long, rainy summer of 1792. The church is the oldest building in the city. Old Town’s Pueblo-Spanish style architecture is a perfect example of the famous Southwestern style, with its adobe, flat-roofed buildings, their long, open porches and welcoming built-in benches – evocative of both ancient native traditions and the Spanish Europeans who first came to the region.

Old Town is where Albuquerque began, and for nearly three centuries it has been a crossroads of the Southwest. Today, the area houses a quaint, popular shopping district that offers a little bit of everything:

• Restaurants – as you can guess, New Mexican fare is a specialty, though there’s a variety of cuisines

• Shops – Antique stores, Southwest-themed boutiques, jewelry and art galleries, plus much more;

• Museums and Cultural Centers, including the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, New Mexico Museum of Art and Science, The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and the largest Rattlesnake Museum in the world (with live rattlesnakes!)

• An outdoor artisan market

But simply wandering around Old Town is a Southwestern experience not to be missed – full of charm and whimsy, with winding paths, adobe nooks and crannies, and the pretty, welcoming details that hark back to the days Albuquerque was first formed by the diverse mix of cultures and influences who met here. Hanging dried chiles, bright painted benches, terra cotta accents and adobe arches are just a tiny peek at the distinctive elements that make Old Town Albuquerque fun, unique and beautiful! Discover more:

http://albuquerqueoldtown.com

Nob Hill

A couple of miles west geographically, but a couple hundred years forward historically, you’ll find Nob Hill, a neighborhood originally anchored by a shopping center that represents a very different architectural style, as well as the shift in the American lifestyle that moved away from the traditional pedestrian city-center to a post-WWII decentralized, automobile-oriented suburban plan.

Central Avenue was already a burgeoning commercial district when Route 66 was redesigned to include the road as part of the stretch from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1937. The neighborhood grew steadily until the war halted most building projects, then blossomed again through the post-war prosperity years. The Nob Hill Shopping Center was built in 1946-7 and was designed as the first modern shopping center in New Mexico. The goal was to provide space for separately owned businesses with integrated, on-site parking in an architecturally unified structure. It’s organized in a U-shaped layout with an interior parking lot facing Central Avenue.

Architect Louis Hesselden, known for his work on many of the city’s public schools, designed the streamlined Moderne-style center, with its white-stuccoed walls, architectural neon, decorative brick courses, bands of terra cotta tile, and large expanses of plate glass display windows. Two pairs of decorative towers rise from the structure’s four corners.

At the time, the project was dubbed “Waggoman’s Folly” (after developer Robert Waggoman) because it was so far from the center of town, but the shopping center turned out to be a major success and encouraged the growth and vibrancy of the neighborhood around it. Today Nob Hill remains a popular destination for residents and tourists alike. The Nob Hill Shopping Center has been added to the National Registry of Historic properties as one of the last and best remaining examples of 1940s auto-oriented shopping centers, and still retains many vintage details, including original neon store signs, and the deco-inspired corner towers.

Learn more about the Nob Hill Shopping Center and neighborhood here:

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/route66/nob_hill_shopping_center_albuquerque.html

http://rt66central.com/history.html

They met on a blind date in Boston that wasn’t exactly blind. “We’d seen each other before, we knew who the other one was,” Fred notes with sly humor. “I kind of asked a mutual friend to arrange it. My instincts were right. It worked out well.”

At the time, Fred worked for IBM, though after the company transferred him to New York City, he moved to JP Morgan. Estelle was a teacher. They settled in Stamford, CT, where they raised one son. “It was a bit of a commute for Fred,” Estelle reflects, “and it left a lot of the day-to-day details of running the household up to me. But it was a good life. We didn’t want to live in the city. We’d lived in a smaller town in the Boston area, and we wanted the same kind of community when Fred transferred to New York. Stamford was a good choice.”

They lived there until they retired to Florida twenty years ago, and filling their time is never a problem, of course. “We’re in a very active senior community with thousands of retirees, so we always have something to do. We’re part of a group called The Culture Club, and that really keeps us on our toes. We go to a lot of local theater and other cultural events. We’re part of the Opera Club. We love to watch movies. There’s always something to do. Sometimes the problem is actually keeping up with it all.” Fred laughs.

“We’re avid readers, too,” Estelle adds, “and we’re always going to lectures. We love to learn – we always want to be developing, to stay intellectually stimulated. And of course we go out to dinner about six nights a week. For one thing, sharing a meal is really a social event here. And for another, I don’t cook. When I retired, I took cooking off the schedule.” She smiles.

All of these things are the very same things Fred and Estelle appreciate about Senior Summer School, a reason they’ve been coming back to the programs for nearly fifteen years now. “It hits all the important points,” Fred explains. “There’s a social aspect to it, which is important. And the people we meet in Senior Summer School share many of the same values we have – particularly an intention to remain intellectually curious. We always learn something new in the lectures, and sometimes the lectures that are the most interesting and enlightening are the ones we expected to get the least out of. Isn’t that the way it goes sometimes?”

“The locations aren’t always what you expect from a tour, either,” Estelle adds, “and that’s a good thing. Everyone goes to New York or Chicago or LA. Madison isn’t exactly a first-choice destination for a lot of people, but it’s perfect, really. It’s laid back, and pretty, with a lot more going on than you’d think. We love it! But it’s not really a place we’d likely pick up and decide to go on our own. Senior Summer School gave us the opportunity to discover it – and other parts of the country, too. Last year, we went to the Eugene, Oregon session. Again, not really somewhere we’d pick on a map and say, ‘let’s go!’ but we had a lovely time and there was so much more there to see and do than we would’ve expected – or probably would have found on our own. It was a really nice trip!”

Going to Oregon also gave them the opportunity to visit their son and his family, who live in Portland. And don’t forget the added bonus of retreating from the Florida heat. “We love Florida,” Fred stresses, “but being somewhere else during the summer is always a welcome, refreshing change.” (And, of course, at Senior Summer School, no one has to cook.)

Over the past decade and a half, Fred and Estelle have visited a number of Senior Summer School locations, including San Diego, Santa Barbara, Pittsburgh, Appalachia, Eugene, and, of course, Madison – where they’ll be returning this summer for the fourth time.

We’ll be happy to see them again!

It stands to reason that they do, however, since she and her husband, Al, made a point to instill that interest in their kids (a son and a daughter) and six grandkids (ages 18 – 31) from an early age.

“In the mid-70s, we’d collect cans and bottles and get the five cent refund, save them all up and use the money to take a vacation. We started when the kids were still pretty little. The first year, we stayed at home but did day trips around Miami. The next year, we did a trip around Florida. It grew from there, but we took a trip every year.”

The year her kids were 11 and 13, Betty took them across the country on a Greyhound bus. “I was planning a trip to visit a friend in Colorado, and looked into the cost of taking the bus. They had a special deal – for $99 you could go anywhere in the country for three months – and so off we went. Al couldn’t make it. He had to work. But I was a teacher and I had the time off. It was an amazing summer. We all had a great time. We couldn’t go everywhere, of course, but we made it to a number of states – all the way out to California – and several National Parks.”

In fact, that experience made such an impression on her that she and her husband decided to take each grandchild on a cross-country trip when they were 11 years old. “We took them one at a time and we’d do some crazy fun things but also made sure they had the opportunity to learn, too. It was a very special time with each one of them. I’m very close to all of my grandchildren, and I believe those summers helped establish a stronger bond. In fact, when my first great-grandchild was born, I asked my daughter if she planned to take her grandchildren across the country like her father and I had done. She laughed and told me she really didn’t think she had a choice. Her kids had such a terrific experience it was pretty much expected that she’d do the same thing for their kids.”

Unlike many people who retire to Florida, Betty moved there from Connecticut when she was 23. “My parents were moving, so I just came with them.” She’d received a degree from U Conn and had already taught a year, so she expected she’d be able to get a job. She met her husband on the beach in Miami soon after she’d moved there and while he was on vacation. He proposed to her on their first date. “I didn’t say ‘yes’ that night, but I also didn’t resist him for long. We got married two months after we met. He was the best husband in the world, and we had fifty wonderful years together.”

The early years were tight, but Al went into the retail uniform business and ultimately wound up owning his own business. This gave them the ability to travel more, which they did as often as possible. “We were huge fans of the National Park system, and we visited so many of them. They’re such beautiful places, and a wonderful resource for our country. We visited all fifty states and started traveling more internationally. Once he retired, we were away more than we were home,” she laughs. “Our kids got used to not knowing where we were. We had a good life. I’m very blessed and lucky. I never win raffles, but I won the lottery of life with my husband.”

Al died eight years ago, but made it clear to Betty that he expected her to keep traveling. “One of the last things he said to me was, ‘Go to China.’ I did.”

Betty has slowed down a little in the last few years. “National Parks are a little harder for me these days,” she says, a little wistfully. But she still manages a full calendar of trips, tours and cruises. She’ll be joining Senior Summer School for the third time this year, in Madison. “I enjoy the program. The lectures are interesting, and it’s nice to be able to experience new places with the educational element added in. I like that Senior Summer School sets their sessions in places I might not otherwise visit, and that they have classes in things I might not learn about otherwise. I enjoy the sessions. I look forward to seeing Madison again.”

And we look forward to seeing Betty again, too.

“I discovered early on that I loved to travel, and I’ve always found the time to do it. Senior Summer School is a particularly nice program, though, because while it’s planned for seniors, the ones who sign up tend to be the type I refer to as ‘un-aging’ seniors. They’re inclined to be more active, more intellectually curious. I’ve met some of the most wonderful people there. They’re fun and engaged and, like me, they appreciate the academic aspect of it.”

Some of the charm of Sharon’s Senior Summer School experiences has been discovered in unexpected places. “One session’s accommodations included a ping pong table, and one of my new-found friends and I played more games than I can remember. I awakened a sleeping beast, I think. She said she was going to play until she beat me, but she never beat me,” Sharon says with sly humor, then continues, “On the other hand, we also met up with a Romanian national athletic team staying in the same building for a tournament, and I played a few rounds of ping pong with them. They left me in the dust.”

Sessions at Senior Summer School are interesting for Sharon, and she values their eclectic nature, whether it’s meeting foreign national athletes sharing space or attending the many classes that are planned into the schedule. “I go to them all. Sometimes the ones you think you have no interest in turn out to be the ones you love.” She mentions an aura class, a religion class and some exercise classes in particular, then laughs. “And learning how to select a dairy cow in Madison was a novel experience. Not sure what I’m ever going to do with that, but it was certainly fascinating.”

Sharon is a traveler at heart, an enthusiasm she realized in her college days and has nurtured since. “I grew up in the Chicago area, and wound up in Florida when I convinced my father it would be cheaper to go there and live on campus than continue to live at home and attend a nearby private college.” A retired librarian from the San Diego area – primarily with the Navy, but also in other private and public institutions – Sharon has been an intrepid globetrotter, having visited many places in Europe, as well as Morocco, Bali, Australia, New Zealand and China.

She hopes to visit even more places, both domestically and internationally. It’s another reason she enjoys Senior Summer School. “It’s nice being back in the classroom, but as a tourist, too. Meeting people from all over the country is fun, and the sessions are generally set in areas I’ve never been to before. It’s a good opportunity to visit and stay in one place relatively inexpensively, with classes mixed in, and time to explore the city and surrounding area, both as part of the session and independently.”

We look forward to seeing Sharon this summer, and for many years to come.

This praise is particularly potent when you learn that, before she was married, Moira managed a small travel agency in Great Neck, NY, then moved to a custom international tour office in Manhattan. This allowed Moira to travel around the world. “I started at the agency when I was only seventeen, and before I was twenty-five, I was managing the office. My father actually encouraged me to – and offered to help me – buy the agency, but I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. It would have tied me to it in a much bigger way.”

At the time, working for a travel agency garnered two passes a year through the international carriers, and generally offered connections to hotels in cities around the globe. So travel was inexpensive. “I liked it best when a girlfriend could travel with me, but it wasn’t always easy to find one. Often, if my friends had the money to go, they didn’t have time, or vice versa. I had an apartment in the city and two roommates – they called us ‘career girls’ back in the day. We had good jobs and we weren’t married. It was a fun time.” Moira didn’t have any serious relationships before her husband, but she did have male friends she’d go out with, and through them she experienced some of the highlights of living in Manhattan – Broadways shows, elegant restaurants and gourmet food.

Then she met Ed, who at the time was a research associate at Yale. “I first met him at a dance at the Waldorf-Astoria Starlight Ballroom. Doesn’t that sound romantic? Actually, though, we were with different people, but his sister, a friend of mine, was there, too and she introduced us. To be honest, our first impressions of each other were a little underwhelming, but he was definitely handsome and intelligent and I noticed. A week or so later, his sister called me and asked if I’d be his date for a family outing to a school fundraiser. I agreed.”

The date was a success. In fact, the two were married within a year and set off on the new adventure of wedded life. First off was finding a new position for Ed as a physics professor. “His research position was coming to a close, so he sent off about a hundred resumes, and received a huge number of responses. One of them even offered him chairmanship of the department, if you can believe it,” Moira remembers, affection for her husband and the time evident in her voice. “He was a scientist, of course, and at the time, everyone was expanding their science departments. We traveled to a few interviews around the country – Ed told me it was my life, too, so I had to be part of the process – and decided on Florida State in Tallahassee. It was a good choice for us. We’ve never left.”

They raised five children in Tallahassee, and are pleased that they all turned out well. In fact, Moira uses the word “astounded” in a cheerful way, with the tongue-in-cheek aside that she expected at least two of them would have wound up in jail. Among them, they have given Ed and Moira twelve grandchildren, with one more on the way.

Other than spending time with the three children (and their children) who live in town, Ed and Moira keep busy in various ways. Moira in particular takes advantage of the OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) center in Tallahassee, while Ed volunteers at the local Habitat for Humanity as often as three times a week. It’s a particular gift since a few years ago Ed faced a serious infection that left him fighting for his life. He survived, though his body took a hit. He’s not as easily mobile as he was before, but he can still do most of what he’d like to, and he and his family are all very grateful that all of his mental faculties remain sharply intact.

Which also makes it possible for them to continue to enjoy Senior Summer School. “It’s a special place,” shares Moira. “It attracts interesting people who want a little something more from their vacations. People who may want to flee the heat – like we do, from Tallahassee – but also want to learn, to meet interesting, engaging people, and learn something along the way. We love it.”