Virtual Cocktail Party for OLLI Friends is Strictly BYOB and D (Device)

Hi everyone,

My husband Ed and I recently attended a virtual cocktail party along with three other couples.  We’re all good friends living in close proximity to one another, and we really miss getting together.  Like so many things in our social lives since retiring to the Berkshires, there’s an OLLI connection.

OLLI lecturer Chris Ferrero and her husband Marty Sennett arrived dressed for the occasion, and put the rest of us to shame sartorially.  Lecturer Stewart Edelstein and his wife Lynn were hosting the party until they suddenly disappeared from our computer screens.  After phone calls back and forth and some frantic machinations, they did somehow magically reappear.  (Okay, none of us are Zoom pros YET!)  Terry Moor, another of our amazing lecturers, and his wife Susan told us of the months they spent living and traveling in India.  I also learned that Terry and I are both fans of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti mystery series.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  With a little creativity and imagination, and a willingness to experiment with technology, we found a way to check in and share more than a few laughs with some very dear friends. And I’ve learned, as perhaps you have too, that virtual get-togethers … virtual happy hours and virtual forms of just about every other kind of interaction among people are becoming commonplace.

In fact, we’re keeping our OLLI spring semester alive by offering a number of courses on line that had been scheduled for various classrooms. I hope you are registered for some of them.

I’ll close by lifting my virtual wine glass to each of you.  Let’s keep finding creative ways to stay in touch until we can “actually” share a glass together.

All my best,

Barbara Lane