Newsletter Volume 9 Issue 16 - April 19, 2023 | |
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Zoom Update
The most recent, as of this writing, is 5.13.11
If you have any problems getting the update, please contact Dianne at dianne.becht@emory.edu for more information.
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Newsletter -- Summer Schedule
The first Summer issue of our newsletter will be on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 to coincide with our Summer Lunch Colloquium schedule.
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EUEC Faculty Award of Distinction and Distinguished Service Award
Monday, April 24, 2023
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EUEC Faculty Award of Distinction and Distinguished Service Award
Monday, April 24, 2023
2:00-4:00pm
This will be a hybrid program
Please join us (In-person or via Zoom), for our annual celebration of EUEC members who will be honored with a Faculty Award of Distinction and Distinguished Service Awards for contributions they have made through scholarly work and service in the years since their retirement.
Also presented at this event will be this year’s recipients of the Heilbrun Fellowships, offered to support emeriti who are continuing research and scholarship in retirement; the grants, administered by the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, are funded by a generous contribution from the family of Professor of Psychology Alfred B. Heilbrun, Jr.
We will also recognize members who have joined the EUEC this year and members whose donations have helped make it possible for our retirement organization to thrive--as it so wonderfully continues to do.
Light refreshments will be served to those who attend in-person.
To register for In-Person, please click here.
To register for Zoom, please click here
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Lunch Colloquium -- Monday, May 15, 2023 | |
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"Quantum Entanglement and Other Strange Stories"
Rosemary Magee
Director Emerita of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
In Rosemary Magee’s short story collection, Family Impromptu, she explores the tangle of emotions that accompany close relationships as they shape-shift over time and place. She often draws upon terms from science and other disciplines. However, rather than describing objective phenomena, these metaphors provide an avenue into the nature of relationships and the condition of intimacy, the raw material of fiction.
She has been writing short fiction for about 20 years. The collection came together during the Covid pandemic.
About Rosemary Magee:
Rosemary has served in a variety of leadership roles during her career at Emory University. Among those, she worked to strengthen the role and visibility of the arts on campus. She has convened a wide range of "creativity conversations" with artists and scientists and scholars from across the disciplines.
As Director Emerita of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, she serves on several nonprofit boards and has turned her attention more fully to writing fiction, personal essays, and other forms of creative expression. An artist-in-residence at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, Air Serenbe, and the Tyrone Guthrie Center, Rosemary has published essays, reviews, and short stories in a variety of journals and literary magazines. She has recently completed a collection of short stories, Family Impromptu (Conrad Press, 2022), and is now exploring a multi-media literary project.
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Sheth Lecture - Follow-up | |
After three years of virtual Sheth Lectures, it was delightful to gather again in Alumni (formerly Governors’) Hall for lunch on Monday, April 10th. Thanks to Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhuri Sheth, attendees were treated to a box lunch and a spectacular presentation by Hank Klibanoff, Professor of Practice in Emory’s Creative Writing Program. During his presentation entitled “I Don’t Want to Die Curious,” he illustrated how curiosity has been a constant theme throughout his life and has led to his current position as Director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases project. Since beginning the project in 2011, Hank Klibanoff and 190 Emory students have examined FBI documents, microfilm of archival newspapers, medical records, NAACP reports, and primary evidence held in private collections to piece together the stories of six racially- motivated killings Georgia. Some of these findings have been included in the award-winning podcast, Buried Truths. During the question-and-answer period following his presentation, Hank Klibanof, invited those interested to attend a live recording of the Buried Truths podcast on Tuesday, May 2 at the First Baptist Church of Decatur (308 Clairmont Ave, Decatur, GA). See below for more information. | |
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An Emeritus Member's Observation and Experience (that fit in nicely with part of the Q&A discussion at the Sheth Lecture on ChatGPT):
ChatGPT is an AI Chatbot developed by Open AI. The chatbot has a language-based model that the developer fine-tunes for human interaction in a conversational manner. Effectively it’s a simulated chatbot primarily designed for customer service; people use it for various other purposes too though. These range from writing essays to drafting business plans, to generating code.
Holly York found the conversation quite timely -- she recently had an experience with Chat GPT. Thinking others might also be curious and/or entertained, she shared with us a short piece she wrote:
I Don’t Think Chat GPT
Can Write a Pome As Good As Me*
*though I admit even the bot wouldn’t write lines this atrocious.
The other morning I pulled a jar of honey from the cupboard only to find its contents peppered with tiny ants. Disgusted that my tea would be taken unhoneyed, I dropped the jar into the trash. Then, delighted to have a subject for the day’s poem, I sat down and drafted one that turned out pretty well.
I’ve been curious about Chat GPT since its prowess at poeming has been extolled in the media, so I decided to see what it would do with the same subject and compare its result to mine. Off I went to https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt where, having first been verified as human, I entered “Write a poem about ants drowning in honey” into the box. Faster than you could say “doggerel,” the following popped out:
[Untitled, by Chat GPT]
Ants in honey, oh what a sight,
A tragic end to their daily fight.
Their tiny bodies, trapped and stuck,
In a syrupy grave, drowned and mucked.
Their struggle futile, their fate is sealed,
As sweetness once savored, now a deadly field.
No escape from the sticky trap,
Their journey ends in a honeyed nap.
But what of us, who witness their plight,
Do we see their demise as just a blight?
Or do we take a moment to reflect,
On the fragility of life and its effects.
For in this world, we too may drown,
In a sea of pleasures we call our own.
May we learn from the ants' demise,
And cherish each moment before our own demise.
Not bad. Four quatrains of rhyme. Looks like the bot ran out of steam at the final couplet—just leaving it off would be an improvement. A real weakness is the moralizing at the end, so in the chat box, I typed “Too preachy.” In response came an apology and another poem, not quite as good as the first and still with the finger-wagging finale.
Having heard that the bot was pretty good at writing “in the style of” Walt Whitman, for example, I tried another tack and asked for a poem “in the style of” former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. Again I was treated to four quatrains of rhymed couplets, a form that, if Ryan ever followed at all, she must have abandoned in a previous millennium. (One of the things I’ve learned in this exercise is that when there’s no human attached, it’s fun to be snarky about a poem—something we carefully avoid in workshops.)
As the limits of AI continue to be tested, it will improve quickly. Before long, a book of bot-written poems will be published, either as such, or as plagiarized by humans. My own poem about ants drowning in honey? Thanks for asking—it’s better than the bot’s, take my word for it. Or maybe wait for it to come out in the New Yorker someday.
--Holly York, Senior Lecturer Emerita of French
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The Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE) is offering a Webinar some of you may be interested in:
Establishing New Relationships and
How Retirement Organizations can Help
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
1:00 - 2:15 pm EST
Via Zoom
We are finding our way after the pandemic, including making new friends and losing connections from previous groups and circles. According to a study from Harvard University, the number one challenge people face in retirement was not being able to replace the social connections they had through work. Retirement organizations can help retirees navigate these changing relationships. Join AROHE members to discuss and learn new ideas from each other. If you have an idea that you or your retirement organization have tried related to this, you are encouraged to share.
The webinar is scheduled for 10-11:15 a.m. Pacific Time,11-12:15 a.m. Mountain, 12-1:15 p.m. Central, 1-2:15 p.m. Eastern. Everyone is welcome and there is no charge to attend.
Please Click Here to Register
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Gene Bianchi Memorial Celebration | |
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Please save the date(s) and join us in celebrating the life of Gene Bianchi.
If you can’t attend, sweet wishes are always welcome.
We will be gathering to celebrate Gene’s life twice, one for anyone in the Atlanta/Emory community and another, the next day, in Athens.
For Atlanta, we will gather May 5, at the Luce Center at Emory from 11:00am until 1:30pm. Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe will conduct the celebration. Reflections and stories are welcome. A light lunch is planned.
For Athens, we will gather May 6, at the National Restaurant on Hawthorne from 11:00am until 1:30pm. Rev. Dr. Porter Taylor will conduct the celebration. Reflections and stories are welcome. A light lunch is planned. Gene’s full obituary follows.
Dr. Eugene Carl Bianchi (Gene), beloved husband, friend to many, and theologian, died peacefully at home in Athens, Georgia on Sunday, December 18, 2022, at the age of 92. Gene was a gentle, passionate scholar and prolific author who cared equally about our environment as he did about multiple dimensions of spirituality. He touched the hearts and minds of people around the world. He is survived by his wife Margaret Herrman, his nieces Gioia Williams and Susan Fowler, as well as other nieces and grand nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his brother, George Roy Bianchi.
Gene was born in Oakland, CA on May 05, 1930, the son of Natale and Catherine Bianchi. He completed his B.A. and M.A. (cum laude) from Gonzaga University, then his Licentiate in Sacred Theology (cum laude) from Catholic University of Louvain and was ordained a Jesuit. He earned a PhD from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in 1966. Gene served as a Jesuit of the California Province until 1969 when he resigned to write about institutional reform for most of the rest of his life. He published, lectured and lead hundreds of workshops on Christian theology, on the spirituality of aging, as well as trans-traditional and ecological spirituality.
Gene’s teaching career began in 1955 at St. Ignatius High School, San Francisco, CA, continued at the University of Santa Clara, Santa Clara, CA, as an assistant professor of theology and director of Center for the Study of Contemporary Values. He joined the faculty of Emory University’s Department of Religion in 1966 and he taught hundreds of students and treasured colleagues in the Department as well as the University. He retired as an Emeritus Professor in 2008. When not fulfilling his obligations at Emory, he taught at the University of San Francisco, Stanford University, California State University Sacramento, and John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. A legacy, available to all, exists in the 19 published books he authored, co-authored, or served as one of several authors. These writings document many facets of his multi-part journey.
He authored John XXIII and American Protestants (1968); American Catholic Exodus (1968); Why Priests Leave (1969); Reconciliation: The Function of the Church (1969); A Democratic Catholic Church (1992); The Religious Experience of Revolutionaries (1972); From Machismo to Mutuality (1976); and Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits (2002). These books explore the structural dynamics and explicit as well as implicit values of the Church and Christianity with an eye to expanding awareness as well as potential reforms.
He wrote or contributed to four books about aging: Aging as a Spiritual Journey (1982), On Growing Older: A Personal Guide to Life after Thirty-Five (1985), and Elder Wisdom: Crafting Your Own Elderhood (1994), and Selving: Linking Work to Spirituality (2000). In these books, Gene invited readers to embrace aging unrestrained by negative cultural stereotypes. Gene’s memoir: Taking a Long Road Home (2010), traces a journey from his humble Italian roots to a professional life where he was described as a scholar, teacher, writer, poet, and all-round great guy by his colleagues. This was underscored by Gene's conversations with luminaries at Emory, including President Jimmy Carter, HH the 14th Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In later retirement, Gene broke the mold by publishing two novels: The Bishop of San Francisco (2005) and The Children’s Crusade (2009). His most personal voice resonates in his four books of poetry: Ear to the Ground (2013), Chewing Down My Barn (2014), The Hum of It All (2019), and Interbeing (2021).
Part of Gene’s spirituality was to serve others. He supported America magazine in New York, NY (1963-66) as an assistant editor. He also contributed about forty articles and many reviews to periodicals, including America, Catholic World, Church History, Commonweal, Ecumenist, National Catholic Reporter, and Incunable (Madrid). He was the founding director of the Emeritus College at Emory University and was awarded the Distinguished Emeritus Award (2005). He helped found the Federation of Christian Ministries, which awarded him their Anthony Soto award (2018) because of his activist role championing civil rights as well as the rights of women. He presided over the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (2003-2006) and was a member of American Society of Church History, American Academy of Religion, Religious Education Association, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
In his own words, Gene wrote: "A primary task for older people is to divest themselves of reminiscing rather than creating new memories.
Growth through diminishment, based on a willingness to encounter the inner demons of old age with faith, can lead to authentic joy even amid hardships. Oftentimes this means that we must learn to adjust as obstacles and diminishment become evident. It's good to think of God as our dancing partner as we improvise the new steps of growing older."
For anyone wishing to honor Gene, and in lieu of flowers, Gene would cherish donations to one of these three funds:
The Athens Area Community Foundation to support small nonprofits that help address local poverty. Atten: Sarah McKinney, President, PO Box 1543, Athens, Georgia 30603-1543
Emory University’s Emeritus College Bianchi-Bugge Award to support projects that promote the public good. Atten: Ann Rogers, Director, 825 Houston Mill Road, NE, Ste. 232, Atlanta, Georgia 30329
Emory's Department of Religion Eugene Bianchi Prize for an undergraduate religion major who demonstrates outstanding service to the community. To give, please follow the link. https://together.emory.edu/bianchi
--Peggy Herrman
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New members are the lifeblood of any organization.
Please make a special effort to welcome them to the EUEC!
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Philip Davis, DNP, MBA, ANP-BC -- Assistant Clinical Professor, School of Nursing, Co-Director, Adult Gerontology Primary Care
Lisa Tedesco, PhD -- Vice Provost Emerita, Academic Affairs; Dean Emerita, James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies; Special Advisor to the Provost 2022-23; Professor, Rollins School of Public Health
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Upcoming Events of Interest at Emory | |
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The Chamber Music Society partners with Concerts @ First for our next Bach’s Lunch concert next Friday April 21 @ Noon at First Presbyterian Church (next to the High Museum). Harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson is joined by clarinetist Laura Ardan, flutist Christina Smith, organist Jens Korndörfer and the Vega Quartet in magical music of Mozart, Bax, and Ravel’s great “Introduction and Allegro”.
No tickets or registration required. Also, livestreamed: you can enjoy the concert from the comfort of your home, office, or garden- simply click here: https://vimeo.com/event/3227394 The Church is located at 1328 Peachtree Street, N.E., and there is free parking across the street at the 1337 Peachtree St. Lanier deck.
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Oxford College Alumni Awards Celebration
Friday, April 28, 2023, 6–8pm EDT
Oxford College Student Center
Event Open to all Emory Alumni, Oxford College Students
Cost: Free
Registration / R.S.V.P. oxford.emory.edu…
Contact Name: Tammy Camfield tcamfie@emory.edu
Please join us to honor and celebrate exceptional members of the Oxford community for their service and leadership.
Award Recipients:
The William Norton Outstanding Alumna Award:
Rev. Dr. Avis Williams 78Ox 98C 08T 18T
Honorary Alumnus Award:
Mr. Dirk Brown 90MBA
Outstanding Teaching Award:
Dr. Maria Archetto, Professor Emerita of Music
Outstanding Staff Award:
Mrs. Janice Ly, Business Operations Specialist
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Michael C. Carlos Museum Sunday FUNday: Take Flight
Sunday, May 14, 2023, 1–4pm EDT
Museum Location: Tate Room
https://carlos.emory.edu/childrens-and-family-programs
Birds are found on every continent on Earth and have also inspired artists throughout time and around the globe. Join us for a celebration of the abundance of birds in the Carlos Museum’s galleries with a SmARTy Pack family guide to birds of the Americas, bird-related art activities, and opportunities to learn how we can protect these creatures that tell us much about the health of our ecosystems today.
Sunday FUNday is a free drop-in program for all families and includes admission to galleries. No registration is required.
This Sunday FUNday is offered in conjunction with Georgia Bird Fest 2023 and the Georgia Audubon Society.
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Details and other information, as well as additional campus events, can be found on the Emory Events Calendar.
If you'd like to share an event/program of interest before the next newsletter
(May 10, 2023), please contact Dianne Becht Dianne.becht@emory.edu
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Walking the Campus with Dianne | |
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The beautiful Georgian marble building from our last walk is part of the School of Medicine, James B. Williams Medical Education Building at 100 Woodruff Circle. The Anatomy wing located on the left side of the green, beautifully manicured lawn of the school is our walk photo. The Physiology wing, a twin of Anatomy, at least on the outside is located on the right side of the lawn.
From the School of Medicine website (https://med.emory.edu/about/location/our-building/index.html):
The School of Medicine's James B. Williams Medical Education Building is a 162,000 square-foot, environmentally green structure added to campus in 2007. While it incorporates historic architectural features of the original Anatomy and Physiology buildings from 1917, it now serves as a model for twenty-first century medical education.
The building includes a 200 seat auditorium, large classrooms, administrative areas, an atrium, a morgue, and gross anatomy laboratories for teaching. Sustainable features include under floor air distribution, energy efficient lighting and controls, and creative use of air to reduce outside air heating and cooling loads.
The modern facility helps us integrate patient care training with basic science and research using state-of-the-art instructional technology and lab spaces that support our curriculum's focus on active learning.
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For our next walk, let's revisit some(thing) we looked at a few years ago. This (thing) is the only one of its kind on campus and can really stand out or possibly be easily missed if you don't know where to look.
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Where will you find this on the Emory campus? | |
Emory University Emeritus College
The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206
Atlanta, GA 30329
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