The walnut and peach trees are in full bloom; the desert flowers are about to pop open. It must be spring but why is there ice in my bird bath?

Board meeting notes

• Kendra Burton, University Liaison, reporting from the State Capitol, told us that:
  
  • the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) is requesting $260M for continuation funding for The New Economy Initiative. ABOR would like to get permanent funding for the initiative but expects to get another one-year continuance. ASU’s portion is $119M for the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering which she told us is the largest engineering program in the country and supplies more engineers to Intel than any other program.
  • there are currently no bills threatening the Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS). There are several bills in the hopper which ASRS either supports or has no comment on.
• As chair of the Video History Project (VHP), I reported that the VHP held its first interview since the pandemic, interviewing Barbara Stark. Barbara is an anthropologist who as chair of Anthropology was instrumental in getting the Institute of Human Origins (IOH) to leave Berkeley and come to ASU.
• Mary Stevens, book donation program, reported that the Friends of Phoenix Public Library (Friends) is shutting down the book donation / selling program we have been using for many years. The overhead in running the program was too high. The good news is that Friends has initiated a new program so we can continue to collect books, sell them to Friends and use the proceeds to support our Scholarship and Video History projects. The new program may not be as lucrative as the old program. We will just have to wait and see.

View past seminars

Pat Schneider, Seminar Chair, reported during the meeting that the January and February seminars were extremely well received. The January seminar from the Area Agency on Aging was packed with important information on where to get help for a number of issues related to aging. The February seminar on getting started with genealogy was packed with demonstrations on where to look for information about an ancestor.

Since the pandemic started all the seminars have been presented via Zoom and, better yet, recorded. So if you missed a seminar or would like to view a particular past seminar they are available on our website on the Seminar reports page. Information on how to search for a particular seminar is given on this page. Note, you can always get to the Seminar reports page via the Events menu on our website.

Board Elections

The election for new Board Members is in progress. Currently 135 members have voted using the Google Form. There are some mail-in ballots but this number of voters is low for an association that has over 800 members. By voting you are showing support for the activities and events that our volunteers organize and present. It is easier than ever to vote this year with the ballot being a Google Form. Please visit our Board of directors ballot page and vote right now! Let us see if we cannot get up to at least 400 returned ballots.

Research Opportunity

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities School of Public Health has reached out to us to see if any of our members would be interested in participating in their Smartwatch Memory Aid Research Project.

The University of Minnesota is seeking volunteers with mild to moderate memory loss and their care partner to take part in a research study evaluating a new technology. The smartwatch system aims to help people with memory concerns remember names and relationships by displaying information about home visitors on a wristwatch. The research has received IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval.

This sounds like a interesting research project and if you are interested I encourage you to consider participating. The following two links give you more information about the study along with contact information.

• Promotional Flyer
• Detailed Study Information –

Spring Prime Times

The spring edition of Prime Times has been mailed and is tis usual high quality. Jeannette Robson deserves all the credit for getting this newsletter written, edited, and published. If you want to view a color version or want to read a past edition, these can be found on the Prime Times page on our website.