Special Events

Special Events: A Free Member Benefit

Both in-person and Zoom events are available for Spring 2024. Register for as many of the free events as you plan to attend.

The five free LLI lectures at Warm Hearth are open to Warm Hearth residents. LLI members are asked to register; Warm Hearth residents do not need to register.

The presidential nomination process is complicated, characterized by a mix of primaries and caucuses happening between February and June. The lengthy process also looks quite different across parties. This is especially true in 2024, with numerous Republicans competing to emerge as a realistic challenger to former President Donald Trump. On the Democratic side, the party overhauled the calendar, but President Biden is facing only token opposition for the nomination. This talk will discuss how the presidential nomination system works, focusing on some of the more controversial, complicated aspects, and will also cover the state of the 2024 nomination.

PRESENTER
Caitlin Jewitt is an associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech. Her book, The Primary Rules: Parties, Voters, and Presidential Nominations, explores the extent to which voters have a meaningful say in the outcome of the presidential nominations and the role that the political parties play in the process.

This lecture will discuss current research on the efficacy of reactive balance training as an exercise for fall prevention. Reactive balance training aims to improve how individuals react to trips or slips while walking – stumbles known to be major contributors to falls. The lecture will also be a chance for LLI members to learn about future balance studies and to express interest in participation. This research is conducted by the Madigan Biomechanics Group at Virginia Tech. Lab email: madbiogroup@gmail.com.

PRESENTER(S)
Michael Madigan is a professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. He has been studying human balance and fall prevention for over 20 years.
Youngjae Lee is a PhD student in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. His dissertation research aims to develop an effective training program to reduce the risk of trip-induced falls among older adults.
Michelle Morris is currently a master's student in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her thesis focuses on measuring reactive balance after slips.

How do vultures help stop the spread of rabies? What does your morning cup of coffee have to do with bird conservation? What bird eats wasps and fire ants? We will answer these questions and more as we explore the importance of birds, especially raptors, in healthy ecosystems. Join Katie Fallon for a fun, interactive presentation featuring several non-releasable birds of prey that live under the care of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, based near Morgantown, West Virginia.

PRESENTER
Katie Fallon is a writer, educator, and naturalist. She is executive director of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia, a nonprofit dedicated to conserving the region’s wild birds, and the author of two nonfiction books as well as two books for children. She writes a regular column for Bird Watcher’s Digest. Katie’s first word was “bird.”

Who were the Acadians and where did they live? Are the “Cajuns” the same as “Acadians”? How did the battle for empire between the French and English affect early settlements in Nova Scotia? How did the Acadians get caught in the middle and suffer mass deportations? Simone Poirier-Bures is a ninth-generation Acadian from Nova Scotia who has published three books of fiction and nonfiction on Acadian themes. Her most recent book, Threads in the Acadian Fabric, has been described as “part history, part biography and part memoir . . . a fascinating, moving, and informative read.”

PRESENTER
Simone Poirier-Bures, is a retired member of Virginia Tech’s English Department. She is the author of four books. Her memoir of Crete, That Shining Place, won the 1996 Evelyn Richardson Award. Her essays and stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the United States, England, and Australia.

End-of-life care can be filled with urgent critical medical decisions and no good answers. A well-thought-out and communicated advance medical directive conveys your wishes to both medical professionals and to family members. During this session you will learn about the types of advance medical directives. Tools will be provided for learners to take home with them.

PRESENTER
Beth Scott is the director of case management at LewisGale Montgomery and LewisGale Pulaski. She started her career as a social worker in hospital case management. She has been in case management for 29 years and now directs a team of RN case managers, social workers, and a palliative care nurse.

Co-presented by the Moss Arts Center

From musical leitmotifs to an entirely new kind of theatre, composer Richard Wagner’s deep impact on Western culture persists today. Modern art, politics, literature – no one seems to be able to escape the influence of this controversial figure. Directly preceding the Bamberg Symphony’s performance, join New Yorker music critic Alex Ross for an invigorating discussion of the history and cultural context of Wagner’s works featured in the program.

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of the books The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Listen to This, and Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. In 2008 he received a MacArthur Fellowship.