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AS YOU WILL DEFINITELY LIKE IT:

This summer, we are scheduling our group visit to the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern for Sunday evening, June 10, so we may together enjoy the final performance of the Company production of As You Like it that began its run last weekend.  (And note that if you cannot join us on the 10th, you may want to make arrangements to attend one of the many performances planned between now and then.) Go to www.shakespearetavern.com for more information. 

As most of you will know, this is one of Shakespeare's most delightful plays. And this particular production of the play is recommended both by Atlanta's own Suzi Bass Awards judges and by Emory's own Don and Helen O'Shea, who have been raving about the production ever since they saw it on opening night.  Company CEO and Artistic Director Jeff Watkins himself has said this is the finest production of the play he has ever mounted--and I, Gretchen Schulz, Emeritus College Shakespearean-in-Chief, can say that's really saying something since I have seen ALL of the productions of this play that Jeff has done (since the mid-eighties) and they've ALL been splendid.  If this really IS the splendidest . . . well, we may find we have to review it with one of the many famous quotes from the play itself, Celia's review of the hugely complicated and hugely comical situation she and Rosalind find themselves in once they enter the forest of Arden:

wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping. 

I, Gretchen, have negotiated terms for our group visit with the people at the Tavern, applying discounts available for seniors and educators and groups and applying the value of some passes I receive for each production so as to set the cost of tickets for anyone who calls in to ask for "Emory Emeriti Tickets" as low as possible for the excellent seats they will hold for us on the main floor and in the boxes along the sides and just back of the main floor.  We've got 10 seats on the main floor (at $33 each) and 15 seats in the boxes (at $29 each). Those of you who would like to join us should call the Tavern at 404-874-5299 and push 0 (when directed) for the Box Office.  That should connect you with Becky, who's in charge of the Box Office and who knows about our group reservation, so all you will need to do is identify yourself as one of the Emory Emeriti group, specify how many of which kind of tickets you would like, and pay for them. She will keep a master list of those who've called in and the number of our reserved tickets already claimed and those remaining. unclaimed.  If and when all our tickets are claimed, she will let me know. If it's possible to up the number in our group at that point, I will do so and let you know. You may be able to decide to add yourself to the group even late in this process. But we will need to release any unclaimed tickets by the Friday before the Sunday evening we're attending, that is, the 8^th before the 10^th.

If you have not attended a production at the Tavern before, do visit the website (through the link above) for information on location, parking, and the possibility of dining (or at least drinking) while you watch the show. (The food may not be "out of all hooping," but it is good and it is reasonably priced.)

DO REMEMBER THAT THE SUNDAY SHOWS BEGIN AT 6:30 (and run to about 9:30). Plan to arrive in plenty of time to park and get into the Tavern (to pick up your tickets at the ticket counter) by 5:45 or so, especially if you do plan to eat and/or drink. I myself would recommend parking in either the parking deck of Midtown Hospital, the entrance to which is directly across from the entrance to the Tavern (at 499 Peachtree Street) or the automated open lot at the corner of Peachtree and Renaissance Street (just half a block north of the Tavern).  In the former case, you'll pay on your way out of the deck. In the latter case, you'll pay in a machine at the front of the lot just after you arrive.  I would advise against parking anywhere else.

I hope you'll be able to gather for "one more gaudy night."  Whoops. That's a quote from another Shakespeare play . . . not this one . . . and if you're the first to tell me which other play, I'll treat you a drink of your choice, "as you like it," at the Tavern on the 10th. 

Lunch Colloquium--May 21

• Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS): This is a special way for minors currently in the United States to adjust their status to that of Lawful Permanent Resident despite unauthorized entry to or unlawful presence in the country. The key criterion for SIJS is abuse, neglect, or abandonment by one or both parents.

• T visa: This allows certain victims of human trafficking and immediate family members to remain and work temporarily in the United States, typically if they agree to assist law enforcement in testifying against the perpetrators who have victimized them. Only 30% of trafficking is related to sex; 70% is labor related.  Read about the Cortes-Meza case prosecuted in Atlanta.

• U visa: This is a nonimmigrant visa for victims of crimes (and their immediate family members) who have suffered substantial mental or physical abuse and are willing to assist law enforcement and government officials in the investigation or prosecution of the relevant criminal activity.

I write to offer my enthusiastic nomination of Dr. Marilynne McKay, a colleague, friend, and collaborator, for the 2018 Distinguished Emerita Award. 

She richly deserves it - for her achievements in her career as an Emory physician both before and after retirement; for her second career as a woman of the theater (actor, director, critic); and for her liberal service to the ongoing mission of this Emeritus College, not least through the quality of her intellectual contributions to the collective life of the mind it exists to promote.

A graduate of the University of New Mexico with an MS from Oklahoma State University, Marilynne worked as a medical research technologist before deciding to enroll in medical school at the University of New Mexico.  Fittingly, as a dermatologist, she followed the sun with an internship in San Diego and a residency in Miami, coming to Emory as an assistant professor in 1980.  Here she rose to Chief of Dermatology at Grady Memorial Hospital and was later appointed Executive Director of Continuing Medical Education.  Her publications include articles and book chapters on vulvar disorders for generalists, as well as for specialists in dermatology, gynecology, and psychiatry.  She co-edited a classic textbook, Obstetric and Gynecologic Dermatology, and was elected President of the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease.  Acclaimed as an informative and entertaining lecturer, she won the Teaching Exhibit Gold Award at the American Academy of Dermatology Annual Meeting in 1987, and she organized (and for six years directed) the forum on teaching techniques at the American Academy of Dermatology.  In 1999, Marilynne "semi"-retired, moving back to her hometown of Albuquerque, where she soon found herself chairing the dermatology department at Lovelace Health System.

Maybe her second career as a theater person officially began when she enrolled in a Master's Program in Directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UNM; it was an avocation she'd been preparing for most of her adult life, in the painstaking and even theatrical preparedness behind her award-winning teaching style in medicine.   

In 2005 she returned to Atlanta with her husband, Dr. Ronald Hosek, planning to combine her interests in medical teaching with her passion for the performing arts.  That same year she was invited to deliver Emory's seventh annual Mary Lynn Morgan Lecture on Women in the Health Professions, in which she reflected on her own experiences in teaching and doing clinical medicine; with typical drollery she titled her address, "The Vulva Monologue."   I had the good fortune to be able to share a stage with Marilynne in a performance of Wit, Margaret Edson's play about a woman dying of ovarian cancer, which is set in a patient's room of a large university hospital.  Marilynne directed the production and played the leading role; everything in the production went so well because she so seamlessly melded her own performance with her long experience in medical practice. Her talents as a director have been acknowledged by her appointment as a judge for the annual Suzi Bass Awards, which celebrate outstanding work from twenty Atlanta professional theaters in twenty-six performance categories.  Meanwhile, she continues to put in at least a full day of work each week in the Department of Dermatology at Grady Hospital, where - no surprise here - in 2010 she received the Emory Dermatology Teaching Award for the quality of her instruction of residents.  Finally, there is a certain dramatic flourish, I suppose, in the fact that Marilynne is that rare being, a Baker Street Irregular, a member of a society that, in the words of the novelist Lyndsay Faye, "present[s] a mysterious face to outsiders, wreathed in gaslit fog and draped in the obscuring mists of the moors, . . . an invitation-only concern."  In 2015 her essay on "Dressers to Professors: A Spectrum of Canonical Doctors" appeared in a collection directed at Holmes-and-Watson fans entitled Nerve and Knowledge: Doctors, Medicine and the Sherlockian Canon, illustrating yet another facet of her post-retirement versatility.

Finally, I want to take note of Marilynne's exemplary service to the Emeritus College in several ways.  The first is the public-relations work she's done and continues to do on behalf of the national meeting of AROHE, the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education, to be held at Emory in October and sponsored by the Emeritus College.  Here she has demonstrated another set of skills entirely - artistic creativity in drafting, layout, and web-page design, along with a formidable aptitude in management.  In addition, several of her resourceful suggestions have been the inspiration for the Interdisciplinary Seminars held in the Emeritus College each year, while her participation in them has been a source of delight.  And finally, she has contributed that most essential quantum of all to the work of the Emeritus College (it is the thing that distinguishes her above all else) - a boundless and energetic enthusiasm for the life of the mind.

For all these reasons I feel Marilynne McKay richly deserves one more accolade to add to her list, the Emory University Emeritus College Distinguished Emerita Award.