PRESIDENT'S CORNER
The first half of 2007 provided some good news and good   times for members of the Emeritus Assembly, but there were shadows, too. You   have heard or read by now of the sudden passing, on May 18, of our good   friend John Kolega, the treasurer of the Emeritus Assembly these ten years   past. He was a steadfast pre­sence in our lives, someone we knew we could   rely on absolutely. With other members of the Assembly, I was able to attend   his funeral mass on May 22 and listen to the fine homily presented by the presiding   priest at St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel in Mansfield. It sketched a portrait of a   man devoid of affectation, scrupulous in his service to the people, causes   and institutions he loved and respected. John's work was, moreover,   thoughtfully responsive to the needs of a situation, the work of an   intelligent, caring person who always gave of his best. This discourse gave   us an enhanced sense of our good fortune in having enjoyed the friendship and   support of a person of utmost magnanimity and least pretension. All John's   children, his entire family, came together to commemorate him at the side of   our friend Alice.
If one should wish to consult the Hartford   Courant obituary   notice about John, published May 20, there is a link to it via the Assembly's   web page at www.eactinfo/kolega.html. I have discovered an   additional item of information in Resource, the newsletter of the   American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, where it is noted   that John was a 65-year member of the Society. I also found, in the iconn.   org website   of the State Library, a listing of some of the publications that John wrote   or to which he contributed.
Earlier in May, AAUP organizations in Connecticut had   learned of the abrupt departure of another steadfast officer, George Lang,   Professor of Mathematics at Fairfield University. Many will recall that   George hosted and attended our program meeting last September, giving a   speech of welcome to the campus and a description of conditions there for   faculty and the AAUP chapter, of which he was a stalwart. George was also   active in AAUP at the State Conference and national levels, where he served   many terms on the Council of the Association.
From loss and sorrow, let me turn to a different sort of   withdrawal, the retirement of our long-serving secretary, Cecilia Welna. Ceil   has contributed with spirit and energy to our programs and our newsletters   over the years, and she remains a living repository of our history as an   organization. Mary Rogers's tribute to Ceil appears elsewhere in this issue.
                                                     Here is   our dilemma:
We must put out a newsletter of a quality commensurate   with what Mary Rogers has been organizing and editing for so long now that we   have been taking it for granted. Unfortunately, Mary's contribution is the   most complex and her role the hardest for someone else to assume. The person   who replaces her must be capable of editing electronically submitted   materials and putting them into page-ready format, not a simple process for   most of us of the only partly computer-literate generation, though the next   generation of our members - if the Assembly lives so long - will manage   easily enough. And it may be, and probably is, the case that some of our   members are now capable of doing what is necessary but hesitate to step   forward and offer their services. I cannot overemphasize the importance of   their offering the Assembly this service, as other members have already done   and are doing in different capacities.
The fact that   nobody has yet come forward to assume Mary?s tasks impelled me to the   following temporary expedient. To enable us to issue a newsletter in   time to announce our Fall 2007 programs, I ap­proached a person who is expert   in word processing, editing, and desktop publishing and is fully conversant   with the standards of scholarly communication. She has worked in the past for   AAUP groups and published statewide newsletters and is willing and able to   accept electronically submitted copy and organize it into a format compatible   with recent examples of our newsletter output. I believe that the $300   remuneration she agreed to is an extremely reasonable fee for such services,   but I would not predict that the Assembly can long sustain expenditures on   this scale. We are merely granted a respite, in the course of which we must   assess our requirements and our ability to meet them. I repeat: we cannot do   this unless we can expand the cadre of willing, capable members; and we can't   do that without making it clear that a member who accepts a volunteer job can   withdraw from it on due notice
                                                                                                                                                  Nick Welchman
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