Email from the Emeritus Association
This Email was sent to our email list on March 10, 2009.

Dear Colleagues,

This email announces our annual Spring Champagne Brunch scheduled for Noon on Sunday, April 26 at the Alumni Center. Mark your calendar.

Our last two Spring Brunches broke attendance records and we expect to break another record with this one. The Luau-style Hawaiian cuisine was a big hit last year and we are planning something similar for this event. Last year we had the Nicole Hodson Jazz Quartet that has often been described as the best in this area. The festive, bright, colorful mood of the gathering was in keeping with the sunlight pouring through the new leaves of Spring. In the words of a famous English Major: "It's Saturday night and the band is playing -- honey, could we ask for more?" Of course, this event will be on a Sunday afternoon, but you get my meaning.

The cost will be $30 apiece for members and one guest. The cost is $40 for all others. In other words, if a member and guest go to the spring and fall events, the total saving will be $40 -- more than the cost of annual dues.

If you have not paid your annual dues this year, there is a space on the registration form for dues so that you can take advantage of the substantial membership discounts. Click here to go to the registration form.

Sincerely yours,

Alan Wade, President
CSUS Emeritus Association

P. S.

MORE NEWS:

MEMBERSHIP CARDS ARE IN THE MAIL. We did not get your membership cards mailed out to you as soon as we should have. To make up for that, we have changed our membership accounting to the calendar year rather than the academic year -- a change that we have needed to make for some time since that is actually the way we tend to use the cards. The change means that your new cards will be good throughout 2009 rather than just until June. We hope you like the shiny new design. If you want to check on the benefits you get from membership, click HERE.

ENROLLMENTS GROW. Here are some interesting statistics about our membership: Our total membership is 170 -- once again, a record number. So far, there are 8 new retired faculty, and 11 new retired staff members joining us this year. 96 members paid their dues this year by mailing in a form from one of our mail outs, such as the Silver Bulletin. 51 members paid their dues by printing out an online form from our web site, the SilverLink.

EMAIL LIST EXPLODES. In the last 3 years, our "proven" email list has grown from 110 to 678. Of those, 469 are retired faculty, 164 are retired staff, and we are not sure about the remaining 45. If you get an email from us that has the letters UK in the title, that means you are in the UNKNOWN list. If you would like to be "known," you can reply to one of our emails and let us know if you are a retired faculty or staff.

A STORY ABOUT EMAIL AND PROTECTING YOUR HEALTH BENEFITS. Our site master received an email this winter from a retiree who happened to comment that he had received a letter from PERS informing him that he would be losing his health coverage because he was covered by two federal agencies. The retiree knew that he and his wife were expensive health care recipients due to health problems, so he was suspicious about the letter but was not sure how to approach it. Our site master passed this information on to the CSU-ERFA executive committee. ERFA asked us to use our greatly expanded email list (it was about 500 at that time) to ask retirees in our area if they had similar dual health coverage and if they had received a similar letter. Overnight, we received responses from a dozen retirees out of the 500 who had similar dual coverage, but none of them had received a cancellation letter for the same cause as the retiree in question.

Fortified with this specific information, one of the ERFA executive committee members, David Humphers, who is also a representative from our campus and an expert on health care, was able to accurately advise the retiree and to contact PERS and positively influence a correction to the letter the retiree had received

I am sure you have not missed the significance of this story, but just to be sure . . . this story illustrates the power our Association can exert on behalf of its members when many of you send us your email address. There is no greener, quicker, cost-effective, versatile or powerful means for communicating among us. In these days of budget cuts, it is very important that our retirement organizations remain strong and capable. That kind of strength begins with your email address. On behalf of all the retirees, thank you for sending us yours.

A VERY SPECIAL SILVER BULLETIN. The next edition of the Silver Bulletin is in the design room and will be winging its way to about 1400 CSUS retired faculty and staff in a few weeks. This edition has been a long time in process and will be something very different.