« April 2023

This is the newsletter for AREA for April 2023.

Welcome to the Androscoggin Area Retired Educators' Association Newsletter for April 2023

This is our last newsletter for this season.  We will send a newsletter in August, 2023 - as we get ready for a new school year and meetings in September.

At the April 12 meeting -

Nomination Committee: Donna Whelan reported the roster for officers next year to be: David Wing, President; Donna Whelan, Vice President; Deanna Marken, Secretary; and Gina Fuller, Treasurer. All were voted in!! Congrats to all.

Door Prizes: $8.00 gift cards to Dairy Joy were won by Donna Whelan, Sue Tymoczko, Beth Bradley, Aaron Burke, and Ruth Lahey.

The next 3 meetings of AREA are September 13, October 11 (auction), and November 8. Locations to be determined.

Hello AREA members,
Please send a "thinking of you" card or drop a note to the following members who are dealing with medical issues.  It’s always nice to be remembered . 
Kim Ryder is at her daughters for awhile, Erlene  Salldin is at home with Hospice Care. 

Kim Ryder, % Stephanie Kelley
2 Sajo Drive 
Attleboro, MA. 02703

Erlene Salldin 
11 Ann St.
Lewiston, Me. 04240

Treasurer's Report

from Gina Fuller

Click this link to read the treasurer's report for March 2023.

Treasurer's Report

I am reporting that our membership is now at 122 members.  Let's all reach out and invite a friend to our next meeting in September.    If you send me an email for a friend or a recent retiree I will send them a brief note and personally invite them to join us.

Thank you all for your donations...  I do not report who is making donations but if you need a membership card or a note for tax purposes...let me know.

Our April luncheon actually had 65 people paying for meals and we were charged only for 60  (I am not sure how that happened) but the room and tax cost our treasury only $191.   

If you have any questions please email directly at - gfuller1130@gmail.com  - or call me at 818-438-8663 (cell) and 207-783-9091 (home)

Volunteer Hours!

Please remember to submit your volunteer hours!!

Joyce has added this simple to use form. Download it here.  Let's go team!!

Volunteer Hours Submission

From the State House

by Crystal Ward

Hello AREA , 

The four bills (LD111, LD112, LD70, LD1096) I have been telling you about have all passed unanimously,  the Labor and Housing Committee and these bills are now at the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee.  So we need to contact that committee and get their support, you can send the same testimony you wrote before !!!

Begin Message with------ Honorable Senator Rotundo and Representative Sachs and members of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs committee …

You can send to just individual committee members ,best if they are your Sen. Or Rep.--- or send it to the Committee Clerk Justin Purvis and it will be distributed to all of them.   Your own stories of how the 2011 changes to MainePERS  have impacted you work the best.  There are several steps in the “How a bill becomes a law process”.  This is the Money step it is possible to get a bill passed in both the House and Senate and it dies because of lack of money !   Please keep contacting Legislators !!!!

Justin Purvis - Committee Clerk

Office of Fiscal and Program Review
5 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333
 Email: AFA@legislature.maine.gov

To Your Health - Allergies!

As we age, we become more susceptible - to allergies.  Here is an article from AARP about the five different kinds of allergies that affect an aging population

Allergies As We Age - Five

These include

1. Hay Fever
2. Insect Allergies
3. Skin Allergies
4. Food Allergies
5. Drug Allergies

From Mona Ervin

From the AARP Scam Alert Newsletter for April 2023

The numbers are in and 2022 was a doozy. While total reported scams to the Federal Trade Commission dropped by 1 million, the total reported amount lost grew by $2 billion for a total of $8.8 billion lost to scams and fraud. And this is just what’s reported – we know fraud is severely under-reported. Fueling the growth were dramatic increases in investment schemes and scams asking for cryptocurrency as a form of payment.

Investment scams were the single biggest type of scam last year with victims losing $3.8 billion. That in part explains the growth in cryptocurrency related losses which doubled from 2021 levels. However, many scams have evolved to seek crypto as a form of payment – due largely to the ease of accessing crypto ATMs in retail locations.
Be wary of any “can’t miss” investment opportunities especially if they come from the internet or new contacts that you’ve never met in person.

Be a fraud fighter! If you can spot a scam, you can stop a scam.

Visit the AARP Fraud Watch Network at www.aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork or call the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline at 1-877-908-3360.

Ritter Grant

The project that the local Ritter Committee submitted to the State Ritter Committee was approved.  What we will be doing is recognizing our members who are 85 or older.  We wish to commend them for their service to the students that they taught and their support of AREA – Androscoggin Retired Educators Association.  Some of the individuals are now inactive, however that does not diminish what they did in the past.   We will recognize them during their birthday month by delivering a box of chocolates and a thank you card for their past efforts on behalf of students and AREA.  In addition we will honor those receiving special awards and those who are ill.

Many individuals who are registered with AREA did not indicate their date of birth on the registration form.  If you are 85 or older and at the end of your birthday month you have not received a box of chocolates please notify Mona Ervin at mjervin1@outlook.com or call her at 784-2086. 

DID YOU KNOW  from Mona Ervin

Can you identify these songs?

1. This song is the national anthemof the United States. The lyrics come from the "Defence of Fort M'Henry",^[2]a poem written on September 14, 1814, by 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Outer Baltimore Harbor in the Patapsco River during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. Key was inspired by the large U.S. flag, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, , flying triumphantly above the fort during the U.S. victory . The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "To Anacreon in Heaven" (or "The Anacreontic Song" .  The song was first recognized for official use by the U.S. Navy in 1889. In 1931, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution  making the song the official national anthem of the United States, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law.
2. This was based on a poem written by the professor, poet, and writer, Katharine Lee Bates, during an 1893 trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Two years following a sightseeing trip to Pike's Peak, Colorado, in 1893, she still remembered how awe-struck she was with that area of our country. She then wrote a poem that has been embraced by the people of America. Her poem explores the lingering impact of the victories and joys experienced by all Americans. She includes a stirring exhortation that all Americans should recognize the "grace" of God extended to our people in the dramatic developments that shaped our country.

3. This song is an American patriotic march. The song, a spirited marchwritten by George M. Cohan, is a tribute to the U.S. flag. Cohan wrote it in 1906 for his stage musicalGeorge Washington, Jr.  The song was first publicly performed on February 6, the play's opening night, at Herald Square Theater in New York City . It quickly became the first song from a musical to sell over a million copies of sheet music. The original lyric for this perennial George M. Cohan favorite came, as Cohan later explained, from an encounter he had with a Civil War veteran who fought at Gettysburg. The two men found themselves next to each other and Cohan noticed the vet held a carefully folded but ragged old flag. The man reportedly then turned to Cohan and said, "She's a grand old rag."

4. In the fall of 1938, as fascism and war threatened Europe, Irving Berlin decided to write a peace song. He recalled an unpublished version of a song that he had set aside in a trunk, took it out and shaped it into what many consider a second national anthem. The song was popularized by Kate Smith who first sang it on the radio on November 11, 1938. It is sung in the seventh inning of American baseball games. After the 9/11 attacks, it was introduced as a way to show patriotism and unity. It has simply stuck.

5. This is an American patriotic song written and recorded by American country musicartist Lee Greenwood, and is considered to be his signature song.   It was originally released in the spring of 1984, and was played at the 1984 Republican National Conventionwith President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan in attendance, but the song gained greater prominence during the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991 as a way of boosting morale.  In the song, the singer sings about how, if he were to lose everything he had and had to start again from scratch, he would do it in the United States because he believes his freedom is guaranteed in America.

6.  This is a traditional song and nursery rhyme, the early versions of which predate the Seven Years' Warand American Revolution.^]It is often sung patriotically in the United States today. It is the state anthem of Connecticut. The song was a pre-Revolutionary War song originally sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial "Yankees" with whom they served in the French and Indian War.  It was written at Fort Crailo around 1755 by British Army surgeon Richard Shuckburgh while campaigning in Rensselaer, New York. It was also popular among the Americans as a song of defiance, and they added verses to it that mocked the British troops and hailed George Washington as the Commander of the Continental army.

7. This is one of the United States' most famous folk songs. Its lyrics were written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie in 1940 in critical response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", with melody based on a Carter Family tune called "When the World's on Fire". When Guthrie was tired of hearing Kate Smith sing "God Bless America" on the radio in the late 1930s, he sarcastically called his song "God Blessed America for Me" before renaming .

Answers

1. The Star Spangled Banner
2. America the Beautiful
3. She’s a Grand Old Flag
4. God Bless America
5. God Bless the U.S.A.
6. Yankee Doodle Dandy
7. This Land is Your Land

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