Class Notes, July/August 2022

Class Notes, July/August 2022

While the world is in turmoil, nature marches on around our house. There is an apparently happy and functional osprey couple in the nest off our property, which suggests there may be a next generation of osprey in the works. Interestingly, the nest down the creek, which suffered major storm damage two years ago, is occupied by a single osprey, presumably a male, who doesn’t seem to understand that he’ll never attract a mate unless he does some serious home improvement. Meanwhile recent issues like the potential for nuclear escalation in Ukraine and the leak of the draft opinion on Roe v. Wade have upped the level of discourse on the class discussion group.

Speaking of higher-level discourse, the ’65 Zoom program racked up three more great sessions in March, April, and May. On March 16, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, spoke on the topic “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: What it Means for the Future of Democracy.” Our classmate Carl Gershman moderated the discussion. Carl retired in 2021 after 37 years as the founding president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) where he oversaw the NED’s grants programs in Ukraine and over 100 other countries around the world, including Russia and China.

On April 20, we heard from Dr. Laurie Santos, Yale psychology professor, head of Silliman College, and podcast producer of the Happiness Lab. Professor Santos spoke about happiness and shared the top seven tips that science (and her Yale students) tells us about how to live a happier life—especially for people in their senior years. Dan Hogan and Diane Covington-Carter, wife of Landon (Bunky) Carter, moderated the session. Dan survived sudden cardiac arrest in 2016 and has become intensely interested in spending his remaining years devoted to something especially meaningful. Dan’s background and own varied career have led him to a long-term project that he hopes will culminate in a book tentatively entitled Overcoming Success: Charting Your Path to Meaning, Purpose and Your True Self. Diane is a UCLA honors graduate with awards for writing, photography, and NPR commentaries, and has been a life coach for over 30 years.

Then on May 18, in his second Y65 Zoom appearance, John Shattuck brought us back to the harsh realism of the current state of our democracy with a presentation entitled “Rights in America: Are They Under Threat?” John is now professor of practice in diplomacy at the Fletcher School, and senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, having had a long and distinguished career in diplomacy and human rights. John’s remarks were drawn from his newest book: Holding Together: The Hijacking of Rights in America and How to Reclaim Them for Everyone. Jim Danly and Charlie Derber moderated and added thoughtful insights from their respective political views.

As noted in the past, we intend to continue the Zoom program into the foreseeable future, and all programs are recorded and available on the class website: yale65.org. Our June speaker will be our own astrophysicist Phil Crane, who will talk about exoplanets (planets outside our solar system, for non-astronomers in the class). 

Brief notes: Thanks to the efforts of Chris Kinney and Bob Leich, our annual class dinner is currently scheduled for October 28, 2022, at the Yale Club of New York, with NASA administrator and classmate Bill Nelson our dinner speaker. Stay tuned for more details. In further hopes that we can begin to get together face to face, Earl Potter and I are in discussions about a possible mini-reunion in Santa Fe in 2023. David Hawkins sent a link to an appropriately laudatory article about him in the AAAS newsletter. The article credits David with patience and perseverance, which we have all witnessed in his periodic updates on the state of our climate.

Kent Nelson reported: “I’m still in Ouray, Colorado. My North American bird list is 767 and my Ecuador list is 810. I now have 155 short stories in magazines. All my children still speak to me kindly. The last couple of winters I’ve spent two months on Lopez Island, Washington, hiking, writing, biking, and birding.” Steve Clark reported that he and Betsy traveled extensively before the Omicron variant took hold and noted: “We’re lucky to have all three daughters and all six grandkids living within a 15-to-20-mile radius of our house in Larkspur.” And finally, Donna and I had the pleasure of visiting with Hilly and Sallie Hillenmeyer in Nashville in April to watch our “shared” granddaughter Tessa Hillenmeyer in her final dance performance before heading off to college next fall. She was terrific.

Please continue to stay safe and, as you venture out, send news to share with classmates. Also, please mark your calendars for October 28 in New York.