Central Vermont OLLI

David Goodman – Journalist

The award-winning journalist will discuss his lifetime in journalism, from covering Nelson Mandela and apartheid in South Africa, to exploring skiing in an era of climate change for the New York Times, to being “the godfather of Eastern backcountry skiing” as the Boston Globe calls him. He will also discuss the challenges facing journalism today. 

Michael Wood-Lewis – Front Porch Forum CEO

Since 2006, Front Porch Forum has helped neighbors connect and build community in Vermont towns. Of the state’s 270,000 households, 235,000 members put FPF to great use in many ways. FPF’s co-founder will share insights from his experience leading a staff of 30 Vermonters who serve every town in the state. 

Michelle Hogle Acciavatti – Natural Deathcare Worker and Vermont Forest Cemetery Founder

Active in the natural burial movement in Vermont since 2016. Acciavatti opened Vermont Forest Cemetery, the first cemetery dedicated to natural burial, in 2023. This presentation will include a video presentation of the first burial there and look in depth at the environmental and emotional benefits of natural burial for individuals and communities.  

Anthony “Jack” Gierzynski – Author and Researcher 

The UVM professor and author will lead a discussion of the upcoming presidential election including what the this year’s election says about the current state of democracy in the US, and what it could mean for the future. 

Jane Shore – Poet

Shore will read poems about Vermont, about memory and motherhood, daughterhood, life and loss. Julia Alvarez notes Shore “is a poet of little ambushes…moments that hold us hostage … of quandries and questions… with no simple answers, but with the soothing, cooling balm of companionable poems like hers.” 

Tim Newcomb – Cartoonist

Newcomb will present a collection of his editorial cartoons that ran in various newspapers between 1984 to 2024. In addition to examining the cartoons themselves, he will share a behind-the-scenes look at the context for these illustrated stories. 

Dr. Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux – State Climatologist 

This presentation will explore the latest climate change science coming out of the 2023 National Climate Assessment, as well as the implementation of Vermont’s first ever Climate Action Plan, which was adopted in December 2021. 

Josh Jackson – Carpenter 

After a fire severely damaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, the volunteer group Carpenters Without Borders helped convince the French government to rebuild the structure. Vermont timber-framer Josh Jackson will describe his experience working on the cathedral’s roof structure with expert carpenters Remy and Loïc Desmonts. 

This film centers on a 13-year-old substitute teacher ordered not to lose any students. With a cast of non-professional actors, the film addresses education reform in China after the Cultural Revolution, economic gaps between urban and rural populations, and the prevalence of bureaucracy in everyday life. 

Shot immediately after Not One Less, this film is a love story spanning two generations which demonstrates the power of tradition and ritual in the face of difficult, seemingly impossible obstacles. 

This historical drama set during the harsh years of the Cultural Revolution focuses on a professor whose banishment to a labor camp destroys each member of his family. The film presents the professor’s incredible persistence in the face of impossible odds to reunite and rekindle familial connections.