23F Week 1. Exciting Discoveries about the Universe Enabled by New Tools

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.

23S Week 2: Aging with Wisdom: Opportunities and Challenges

Click here for Introduction, including a Brief History of TOP/WomenExplore,

and the Poetry Reading with all three contributors.

Ival Stratford Kovner

Ival and Ron sitting at Trail Train Stop NY State with Cole

 

This was written by an A. I. on request by my husband, Ron - we were curious how Artificial Intelligence would write about a trail it never could or would hike!  (Click on the image to read it.)

AppalachiANNA was originally written on the 75th birthday of the Appalachian Trail

 Appalachianna 
- Ival Stratford Kovner MS, MFA

Old girl, you have been there through three - now four - decades of our memories. 

My family hiked along your route at Cornwall Bridge to meet my future husband in the Nutmeg State. 

He and I camped along  your sections near “Height of the Land”. 

We encountered  breath-taking vistas overlooking the Lakes of Rangeley.

We’ve made tracks in your mud.

We’ve made long parallel ski lines in your snow. 

You shielded us - extending limbs of multi-colored leaves.

You’ve exposed your contours through grey, barren branches.

Your Balance Rock in Maine is a joy! 

We were dwarfed perched upon your giant, granite shelf.

Presidentials are your buddies. 

We’ve felt you curl yourself around their winding ridges as we climbed.

Our old springer spent seventeen good years along your byways, always running.

She once encountered a  baby moose in your Granite State.

You have not disappointed us in nearby “Big Apple”  New York State:

Cats Rock, wooden marsh walkways, even a train station solely for your hikers. 

I’ve gathered  rocks along your well worn paths, deposited into my husband’s backpack! 

One more, beloved springer puppy dashed along your marshes on your 75th birthday! 

Today, I hold each smooth stone, a  reminder of your beauty, my dear Appalachianna, 

Happy eighty-sixth birthday in 2023!

Our newest puppy springer waits to sniff your trail !

The trail will be 86 on 8/12/23. 
Youngest female recently finished -age 15.
A 76 year old  female had 300 miles to go!

Karen Sheahan was a flight attendant for 35 years

and brings a global view.

Lindsa Vallee's poetry told the story of a self-sown sunflower seed that grew to 

the height of her second floor porch and remained strong even after its leaves 

had dried up and its drooping head was bursting with seeds that fed the birds.

Two corellas share a sunflower head

Click here for lecture by Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle

Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle, a writer and teacher, was formerly the Associate Director of the Mind/Body Clinic and a Teaching Fellow of the Mind/Body Medical Institute, where she pioneered how to bring meditation, yoga, and cognitive behavioral therapy into the medical domain to treat stress-related and chronic illness. She and her team developed one of the first training programs in Mind/Body medicine in the country and trained health professionals under the auspices of Harvard Medical School.

Formerly a therapist in private practice and a Co-Director of Greenhouse, an alternative mental health collective, Olivia worked with individuals, couples, and groups. She also spent years serving as a Hospice volunteer.

Olivia's teaching and writing are inspired by over forty years of practice in psychology, Buddhist meditation, and other wisdom traditions. In addition to her roots in Christianity, she has practiced primarily Vipassana (Insight Meditation) and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in a devotional tradition from India. 

Having taught contemplative practices in a wide variety of settings such as government agencies, hospitals, churches, businesses, school systems, and meditation centers, she is currently focusing on conscious aging, elder issues, and living the contemplative life.

Her award winning book, Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple's Journey Through Alzheimer's, is a narrative memoir of how she and her husband handled his illness, drawing inspiration from their background in Buddhist practice. Her book was translated into Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and Japanese, and recorded for the National Library Service for the Blind. Now an elder with two grown children and four grandsons, she lives in Massachusetts and loves to spend time in Vermont where she grows vegetables, welcomes family and friends, and steeps herself in the glories of nature.

References:

Prayer for the Grace to Age Well  By Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu

When the signs of age begin to mark my body, and still more when they touch my mind, 

When the illness that is to diminish me or carry me off strikes from without or is born within me;

When the painful moment comes to which I suddenly awaken to the fact that I am growing ill or growing old; and

Above all at the last moment when I feel I am losing hold of myself and am absolutely passive within the hands of the great unknown forces that have formed me,

In all these dark moments, 0 God,

Grant that I may understand that it is you—provided only my faith is strong enough—

who is painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.

Henri Nouwen, Dutch priest and author 

Winter Grace: Spirituality and Aging by Kathleen R Fischer

Jon Kabat-Zinn's website

The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi

WomenExplore Lecture and Discussion Forum reflects on significance of media

The following is a reposting of Johnathan Kindall's review of a day at WomenExplore's lectures on 16th March 2017.  It was published on 21st March 2017 in the Daily Free Press, the independent student newspaper at Boston University.

PHOTO BY JOHNATHAN KINDALL/ DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

Stephanie Leydon speaks Thursday afternoon at the Democracy Center

about how media acts as an informer and manipulator in today’s society. 

March 21, 2017  by Johnathan D. Kindall

WGBH television and radio reporter Stephanie Leydon met with a group of Boston residents and students at the Democracy Center in Cambridge Thursday afternoon to discuss power, problems and importance of modern media and communication.

WomenExplore, a longstanding lecture and discussion forum, hosted the talk. The self-characterized charity with an educational focus was officially founded as the Theological Opportunities Program at Harvard Divinity School in 1973, but the origins of the group stretch as far back as the 19th century.

Every spring and fall, WomenExplore holds a 10-week lecture series. A different guest speaker is brought in every week, and the listeners discuss a topic for nearly two hours. The theme for the Spring 2017 sessions is “From Monologue to Dialogue: Building Community.”

Lindsa Vallee, of Brookline, has attended WomenExplore meetings for more than a decade. Vallee, who moderated Leydon’s lecture and discussion, said she finds every meeting uniquely stimulating.

“The topics, speakers and discussion keep my brain alive,” Vallee said. “They keep me thinking and aware of new issues.”

Each guest lecture is preceded by a “focus talk,” a short presentation from a member of WomenExplore that opens up the floor and prepares the minds of the group for the topic at hand.

Barbara Villandry, from Nashua, New Hampshire, provided the focus for Leydon’s lecture.

Villandry reflected on the days of Walter Cronkite and Edward Murrow, and reminded many of the attendees about a time where it seemed as if the news could be wholly trusted.

She voiced her concerns with the current state of the media, going as far as to draw comparisons between now and the times of Joseph McCarthy and his Communist witch hunt.

“The pendulum swings both ways,” Villandry said before giving the floor to Leydon. “And I hope that we will soon be back to a place where truth reigns supreme.”

The event then transitioned into Leydon’s lecture, which was centered around her recent attention to partisan divisions and the media following the 2016 presidential election. The title was “The Media: Informer or Manipulator? The Public: Discerning or Naïve?”

“In the months since the election it’s been my professional obsession,” Leydon said to the audience. “I can’t get enough of the divide story.”

Leydon’s feature on WGBH, “Greater Bostonians,” often focuses on individuals and their personal stories. The show’s mission is to highlight those passionate about social change.

“People let me into their homes and there’s a human connection,” Leydon said.

However, that connection isn’t always easy to make, she said.

“We’ve moved beyond identity politics, to politics being our identity,” Leydon said.

She continued to explain how, when she is working on segments for “Greater Bostonians,” many of those walls thrown up in defense of political identity start crumbling.

She drew on these grounded, everyday stories in her lecture.

One such story was that of a New Hampshire couple named Ben and Laura. The two, who had never been particularly active politically, were faithful Trump supporters in the election.

Leydon talked and checked in with the couple at multiple points throughout the election process, and her coverage of real, hardworking and honest Trump supporters resonated with a lot of her Boston listeners, some of whom had never met an ardent Trump fan in person.

Leydon said she wishes the mainstream media would have paid more attention to smaller stories like this during and after the election. She characterizes stories like Ben and Laura’s as a “window to our collective identity.”

She also said she believes that such a focus would begin to bridge the gap between the two sides of the political spectrum. She emphasized the importance of a media-literate public that can recognize blatantly false news and has the skills necessary to seek out truth.

The basis for media literacy is critical thinking, she said, but specific and catered media literacy classes in schools could be a vital step in the process.

“I don’t know how we have a discerning public without a media literate public,” Leydon said.

Vallee agreed with the necessity of starting a dialogue, which is exactly what WomenExplore is attempting to do with their lectures and discussions.

“The election results tell us that there hasn’t been enough dialogue in our country,” Vallee said.

Vallee said she believes that anything that opens up a discussion can create a more united country.

Leydon does not plan to stop telling the stories of real, everyday people on either side of the political divide anytime soon, commenting that even the discussion following her lecture gave her ideas for new stories.

“I’m a journalist,” Leydon said. “When I go out, I have a microphone and a camera. Sometimes I remember to bring a pen and paper. But most of all, I have my ears to listen.”

Tags: Barbara Villandry, Democracy Center, From Monologue to Dialogue: Building Community, Greater Bostonians, Johnathan D. Kindall, Lindsa Vallee, Stephanie Leydon, The Media: Informer or Manipulator? The Public: Discerning or Naïve?,Theological Opportunities Program, WomenExplore

Sing and Weep

On Thursday 23^rd September 2010 in Lindsa Vallee's talk focussing the issue of “HOW CAN A CULTURE HAVE RESILIENCE? HOW CAN WE DEVELOP IT?” she quoted Martin Prechtel:

In Mayan the word for song and weep is the same. “.. everything must weep/sing ….. grief and praise sleep in the same bed …. to praise is loving what is alive and to grieve is for what has been lost ..”