“The Polar Intuit of northwest Greenland, the northernmost people, call February ‘seqinniaq’, “the month when the sun appears.”
Fred Bruemmer

“Surely as cometh the Winter, I know
There are Spring violets under the snow.” — from a poem by Robert Henry Newell

If January quotes were dreary, they did not hold a candle to what I found for February. Valentine’s Day lightened a few but for the most part the theme was hunker down and luckily it’s a short month. Both these quotes concern rebirth both coming and hidden which I thought were nice positive quotes.

From the Board meeting

This was an interesting meeting full of a variety of nuggets; a few of which are presented below.

• Treasurer’s Report – Jeff Bush, our Treasurer, reported that our scholarship endowment has grown to over $130,000. The endowment spending account, i.e., the annual payout from the endowment, is now very close to $4,000/year which reduces ASURA‘s contribution from Operations to $6,000.
• Scholarship – Jan Shore, Scholarship co-chair, reported that they will have two hundred plus scholarship requests to review this year, up from one hundred forty-seven last year. The ASU scholarship office offered to send a list of the top fifty as selected by an AI application. Jan initially said no, she wanted to use the rubric the committee has used in past years. Upon reflection she thought it would be interesting to see the comparison between the AI selected and ASURA selected top candidates. Stay tuned.
• Video History Project – Don Doerres, chair of the Video History Project, reported that interviews will restart in March. They have several candidates lined up.
• Spring Luncheon – Kay Faris, chair of the Luncheon and Special Events Committee, and her committee have planned a fine spring luncheon at Friendship Village (see details). The program includes a brief presentation by this year’s scholarship recipient, and I think I heard that Carl Cross might serenade us. You will not want to miss this event.
• Finance Committee – As chair of the Finance Committee, I presented a report from the committee on the financial health going forward. After a review of fourteen years of data on income, expenses, and membership the committee felt that while we operate on a small margin between income and expenses, ASURA is not in financial difficulties and hence there is no need to increase the annual membership donation of $30.
• Government ASRS – Pat Schneider reported that ASRS has three bills before the legislature:
  • HB2092 will remove the restriction on long term disability which required claims to occur within a five-year period.
  • HB2090 will allow those 65+ who are retired and re-enter the workforce at a place that has the ASRS retirement system, to opt out of having to rejoin ASRS.
  • HB2502 will allow those 65+, retired and getting ASRS benefits, to get the extra ASRS benefits available if they become an elected official. Elected officials are covered by ASRS.
• Government ADOA Health Insurance – Jan Thompson, a past President who works in our office, reported a member called the office to see if she could get some help with her insurance. She had tried calling ADOA with little success. Jan sent her information to Larry Carlson, chair of the ADOA Health Insurance committee, who responded that her problem was one he could help with and was the sort of information he would like to have to take to his ADOA contact with the goal of improving ADOA/ASURA communications. Larry said that members who have ADOA health insurance questions and are struggling with ADOA should contact him at [email protected]

• AROHE webinars – Pat Schneider, AROHE Liaison, pointed out that AROHE (Association of Retirement Organizations in Highter Education) has a five-webinar series on “Charting the Journey to a Fulfilling Retirement“ planned for the next three months (see below). There are a wide range of topics addressed, and I encourage you to take a look. You can link to a list of the webinars from our home page.

   

• Donation methods - Paul Skiera, chair of the Membership Committee, led a wide-ranging discussion of donation payment methods, e.g., automatic annually, two years, annual request (current method). There seemed to be two views, that of the young whippersnappers and that of the old guard (“that’s not the way grandmother did it”). The whippersnappers were thinking about ways to increase member renewals while the old guard brought up the “complexity” of some of the ideas. The result was that there will be no change in the renewal process this year.
• Where do the donations go? – During the discussion of donation methods Karen Dwyer, Board member and co-editor of Prime Times, suggested that renewals might be increased if members knew more about where their donations go. With no Annual Meeting we have no formal presentation of the annual budget. While budget information is presented to the Board at each meeting and is attached to the Board minutes stored on our website, this is pretty minimal. To give you a partial sense of what your donations are doing, the current budget for our operations (excluding endowed scholarship funds, Adopt-a-Family, and Video History Project) shows:
  • Total operating expenses of $16, 506.
  • Scholarship $5,300
  • Prime Times printing and mailing $2,750 (note we get $7,000 annually from Human Resources, some of which covers an additional $2,200 of printing and mailing)
  • ASU Parking for volunteers $1,040 (we no longer have our free parking)
  • Technology licenses $2,000+ (HR pays an additional $1,000+ for our website hosting)
  • Meet and Greet Luncheon $1,240

Age-Friendly Universities -- an interesting tidbit

A couple of weeks ago Maria Hesse, our Immediate Past President, alerted me and a few others to a Time magazine article – The New Old Age . The article proposes that the old three stages of life model is no longer appropriate with the increase in life expectancy and there needs to be an increase in the educational opportunities for seniors. The reason Maria sent me the link was that ASU was prominently mentioned, along with Mirabella, as exemplars of how universities can be part of a senior’s education.

Then just this past week Maria forwarded me another tidbit and I learned that ASU is the home of the Global Secretariat of the Age-Friendly University Global Network (AFUGN). Who knew? I certainly didn’t. AFUGN is housed within ASU’s Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging, part of the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation.

February Social Security column

Jack Burns, Public Affairs specialist for Arizona, Social Security Administration, forwarded the following links to the February Social Security Column.

• English version
• Spanish version

Social Security offers free workshops. Readers can find the workshop schedule at www.phoenixpubliclibrary.org under the “Calendar” tab. Using search term “Medicare” will list all workshops for 2026.

Up coming events

We have a variety of activities:

• Theater Bringing Scholarship into the Rehearsal Room (Emeritus College Colloquium February 18)
• Culture The Magic of Mata Ortiz: A Journey into Mexico’s Art and Culture (March 1)
• Nature Introduction to Bonsai (March 4)
• Health The Power of Mindfulness (March 12)
• Local History Explore Wrigley Mansion (March 12)
• Social Spring Luncheon at Friendship Village (March 18)
• Culture Northern Spain and Portugal (March 31)

There are also number of webinars and newsletters from AROHE (Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education). Listed below are the first two webinars in a five-part series on Charting the Journey to a Fulfilling Retirement and the latest Newsletter. Use the links above to access all the webinars and newsletters.

• Moving from Strength to Strength in Work, Life, and Happiness
  (February 25th)
• Building a Financial Foundation for Your Ideal Retirement (March 11th)
• January 2026

Have a fun Valentine’s Day and maybe take in the ASU Baseball game.

Barry McNeill
E-News Editor