Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) is a non-university, non-credit, non-degree continuing education program intended for local citizens aged 50 and older. It is a program that partners with educational institutions in an agreement with the Bernard Osher Foundation funded through grants and membership fees.

I was hosted in a book reading on this date at the Baker Downtown Center for our recently published novel, Two Faces, which I co-authored with my friend Nina Wolpe.

The audience at the Baker Center was an intimate group of twenty members, joined by a group of twenty members linked in by way of a Zoom session.

I briefly described my friendship relationship with co-author Nina over the years, and the ten-year collaboration writing of the novel, me on the West Coast in Oregon, Nina on the East Coast in Michigan.

I read the first three chapters that in their content laid out the story arc of our friendship and the troubling experiences we shared around my family’s evacuation and internment in a concentration camp in Colorado during World War II. Following the reading I held forth with questions and answers discussing the politics and legal aspects of the internment, racial elements throughout the story, what I experienced and learned from being in camp, and how our friendship and families survived and aided in keeping us feeling safe.