Upcoming Events

SPRING 2023

Please contact Gail Larose at glarose0@gmail.com for Zoom link details.

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

7:00 pm EDT via Zoom
(please contact Gail Larose at glarose0@gmail.com for the Zoom link)


Josh Beer
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light” – senile thoughts and memories from a lucky life- Part I (stay tuned for Part II coming in November 2023).

A famous Greek maxim said: “Count no man happy until he has passed the boundary of life free from pain.” In this talk Josh Beer will tempt fate by claiming that his life has been lucky. Born in WW II to working class parents who had no more conception of the inside of a university than the far side of Jupiter, Josh seemed destined to leave school at 15 and inherit a Victorian bakery which provided a kind of education unavailable to most people.  Still scarcely literate at the age of 14, what preserved him for a different fate were two things: Latin and his fantasies about 19th century Russian literature.  All his life he has been conscious of being a divided self: a traitor to his origins and his inadequacies as a scholar. Only in retirement has he been able to find voice to reconcile these contradictions. It is also a story of love and madness.

Josh Beer is an adjunct professor at Carleton University, after having taught there for 50 years. On his retirement he founded and is currently a co-chair of OSFAS. His book Sophocles and the Tragedy of Athenian Democracy was published in 2004 and his article “Tradition and Ambiguity: Deceit and Heroic Action in Sophocles’ Electra” in 2020.  His latest article on the influence of the Athenian plague on Euripides’ Hippolytus was published in October 2022 in the magazine of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Argo.  For over twelve years, he directed students of the College of Humanities in dramatic readings of Greek tragedy which were highly praised, not least by His Excellency Eleftherios Anghelopoulos, the former Greek Ambassador to Canada.

FALL 2023

Please contact Gail Larose at glarose0@gmail.com for Zoom link details.

Thursday, October 12, 2023 

7pm EDT 

in person at the Carleton Dominion Chalmers Centre, 355 Cooper Street, Ottawa ON K2P 0G8 and via Zoom (please contact Gail Larose at glarose0@gmail.com for the Zoom link)

Stuart G. Croll

Professor Emeritus, Department of Coatings and Polymeric Materials, North Dakota State University

Watching paint dry: the fascinating world of polymer physics

Polymer physics studies the molecular motion of polymers and end-use properties as well as the degradation of those properties during their service lifetime. Organic polymers can be made from petrochemicals and renewable resources and are widely used because they are cost efficient. They are tailored to be useful in a wide variety of modern technological applications as plastics, paint, adhesives etc. and, from renewable resources, have been used by artisans and artists for many centuries, even before their structure and chemistry was understood. 

Art ages; sometimes badly. Even ‘modern’ art can be old enough to have deteriorated visibly. Galleries and museums, art conservators and art historians have questions about materials that were originally used by the artists, how they might have changed over the years and how to preserve the art. Understanding the materials and their deterioration now includes 21st century scientific techniques, sometimes particle accelerators, to provide information and thus answer those questions.

Once upon a time, Stuart Croll gained a degree in physics from the University of London (UK), then completed a doctorate in polymer physics at the University of Leeds (UK). He first worked in England, then moved to Canada before moving to the USA. He spent periods in the construction chemicals, telecommunications and pigment industries but mostly in coatings at Sherwin-Williams where he worked on a wide range of R&D and troubleshooting  projects.

After spending over 20 years in industry, usually halfway up the hierarchy, Dr. Croll joined the faculty at North Dakota State University in 2000, and was Chair of the department from 2006 to 2012. He retired in 2019 and moved to British Columbia, but maintains old contacts and an interest in some projects.

Dr. Croll is a member of the American Physical Society, the Pacific Northwest Society for Coatings Technology, the American Coatings Association and the Institute of Physics (UK). He is a member of the editorial review board of ‘Progress in Organic Coatings’ and the ‘Journal of Coatings Technology, Research’ and is on the organizing committee of the Coatings Science International Conference, https://coatings-science.com/.  Dr. Croll has published articles about coatings, polymers, mechanics and corrosion and has been an instructor in a variety of short courses.

Thursday, November 9, 2023 

7pm EDT 

in person (at a location to be determined)

and via Zoom (please contact Gail Larose at glarose0@gmail.com for the Zoom link)

Josh Beer

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light” – senile thoughts and memories from a lucky life- Part II 

More from Josh Beer on life, love and luck.

Josh Beer is an adjunct professor at Carleton University, after having taught there for 50 years. On his retirement he founded and is currently a co-chair of OSFAS. His book Sophocles and the Tragedy of Athenian Democracy was published in 2004 and his article “Tradition and Ambiguity: Deceit and Heroic Action in Sophocles’ Electra” in 2020.  His latest article on the influence of the Athenian plague on Euripides’ Hippolytus was published in October 2022 in the magazine of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Argo.  For over twelve years, he directed students of the College of Humanities in dramatic readings of Greek tragedy which were highly praised, not least by His Excellency Eleftherios Anghelopoulos, the former Greek Ambassador to Canada.