Welcome to the 51st year of WomenExplore!
This series is entitled WomenExplore Reimagined Fall 2023
What does this mean?
When covid caused the Spring 2020 lectures to be postponed, we spent our meetings learning how to use Zoom instead. Thankfully every one of our wonderful speakers was able to transition to the fall and we had a very successful online lecture series.
We had been expecting that everything would return to normal and we would soon be back in our old home at the Democracy Center. However that was not to be, and through the succeeding series we discovered the advantages and disadvantages of operating online.
The risk of disease transmission disappeared, as did our travel time and parking problems. Distance now presents no obstacle and we can welcome people from across the country or even across continents. It was certainly safe and convenient for the participants.
There was no more need to pay rent and even the need for a postcard disappeared as everyone had an email address. So WE has been able to operate without asking for a registration fee. Another big advantage is the vast reservoir of online material in the form of video or audio, images or text, material that can be incorporated into our meetings. Mary Rose Muti demonstrated this when she organized a lecture with excerpts from two videos on the topic of “Our Home: Taking Care of the Earth”. Robin Wall Kimmerer would never have been able to speak to us in person, even on Zoom, while for us on the other side of the screen it was almost like having her there.
Of course, every silver lining has a cloud! We quickly found that free-flowing discussions didn’t translate very well to Zoom. It was necessary to have a facilitator to call on people. Even going around in order doesn’t work because everyone’s order is different. This made our traditional planning sessions difficult to implement. To add to the difficulty, sitting in one place in front of a screen for 2 or 3 hours is very uncomfortable. To then transition to another hour of planning becomes impossible.
By far the biggest drawback is the loss of the one-to-one personal contact that we all shared: the hugs and the laughter.
Once it became clear that the future of WomenExplore was going to be online, we needed to examine how to exploit the advantages while minimizing the negatives.
The result of this examination is “WomenExplore Reimagined”.
Notice that I have not called this series of meetings a lecture series, nor does the series have an over-arching theme. The Fall 2023 series of meetings will continue our focus on identifying and exploring the important issues of our day, along with investigating topics of interest to the women who attend.
This Fall we are having alternating formal and informal weeks. We have called the formal weeks “Exploring and Discussion”, and the informal ones “Painting and Conversation”.
What? “Painting”? An exciting bonus this fall is watercolor lessons entitled "Virtual Painting Across Continents!" by well-known artist Ival Stratford Kovner, MS, MFA. These workshops will take place on informal weeks from 11 am to noon, when these meetings are Zoom. The second hour (noon to 1 pm) will be a sharing and caring meeting with the option to ask for feedback or support. Finally, from 1 to 2 pm participants share their reflections on the most recent Exploring and Discussion meeting.
The more formal weeks begin with an hour in which everyone has a couple of minutes to describe what is happening in their lives or their reflections on current events. One, two, or even three (we haven’t tried that yet) individuals take on the task organizing the final two hours on a topic that is of interest to them. This presentation has no set format. It can even be an in-person gathering.
One thing that remains constant is that the online forums each week will go from 11 am to 2 pm, whatever takes place. In-person gatherings may vary from this timing.
Today we are having a lecture preceded by three short talks to ground the topic “Exciting Discoveries about the Universe Enabled by New Tools.” in the experiences of our participants. As some of you know, I myself work part-time at the Center for Astrophysics. Although I was not trained as an astrophysicist I have always called myself a physicist and one of the biggest influences in making that career choice was spending my formative years in the dry and isolated outback of Australia. Lying on the ground, facing the sky the stars surround you and they feel so close that you can reach out and hold them. Furthermore in the Southern Hemisphere we are privileged to get a good view of the center of the Milky Way and our two small companion galaxies the Magellanic Clouds. These are hidden below the horizon when you are in the north. The picture on this series’ postcard is of the Andromeda Nebula our sister galaxy.
The person who instigated this topic was Barbara Sweet.
Barbara was born and brought up in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She attended nearby Mount Holyoke College, majoring in psychology. After graduation, she moved to Boston and joined Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company. She worked there for 27 years, mainly as an editor in their social studies textbook department. Afterwards she became a freelance editor, did volunteering -- and discovered TOP, which became WE!
Lindsa Vallee
lindsa has been enjoying stars and constellations since her mother painted orion on lindsa's bedroom ceiling with glow in the dark paint.............lindsa has been singing to the moon for most of her life as a woman, mother and crone............as well as calling to the mysteries of the galaxies for inspiration and magic……..
Mary Rose Muti
MaryRose Muti is a retired nurse, a wife, a mother and grandmother of seven. she is very curious and loves learning new things. One of her grandsons is very excited about learning about the cosmos. He already knows a lot more than she does so he has piqued her curiosity about the Night Sky. She will share more in her brief talk. Thank you.
Click here to hear some of the introduction and the three focus talks.
Today, 14th September, the first meeting of this series is a formal lecture by astrophysicist Dr Saeqa Vrtilek of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, author of New Windows on the Universe. She will discuss new means of exploring the universe.
Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saeqa Vrtilek has a BS in Physics from MIT, an MS in Physics from Brandeis University, and an MS and PhD in Astronomy from Columbia University.
She first got interested in Astronomy her freshman year in college when she took a freshman seminars on astrophysics, biophysics, and nuclear physics. The astrophysics was taught by Phillip Morrison (who used to write book reviews for Scientific American).
She is currently a Research Associate at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian where she has worked as an Astrophysicist for over 30 years. She has been a visiting Professor at U. of Maryland and Harvard University and an NAS/NRC Fellow at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center . She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship by the American Association of University Women and a Science Fellowship by the Radcliffe Bunting Institute. Her areas of interest include the physics of accretion disks and jets, multi wavelength studies of X-ray binaries and planetary nebulae, science education, and public outreach.
Click here to hear Saku's lecture.
