Eva Samo’s bright blue eyes have seen a lot of world history in her nearly 99 years. Born in the Old World, coming of age in the New, she has devoted nearly 60 years to inspiring, planning, and producing noteworthy classes and events for the South Orange-Maplewood Adult School.

Her dedication to the Adult School and the South Orange-Maplewood communities reaches back to the early l960s. Now pushing 90 years itself, the Adult School had been founded by local citizens during another dark time in American history, the Depression winter of l933. As proclaimed in the November l937 issue of Women’s Home Companion magazine, the Adult School “provided fresh interests for themselves and their neighbors…and it was an immediate success.”

It has also been a long-running success, originating many programs and events that have since been woven into the fabric of our communities. With Eva’s far-sightedness, the Adult School created the highly successful Summer Program for Children, involving local teachers and high schoolers as Yellow Shirt counselors. The Adult School also supported the ad hoc committees that would grow into the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race. And the Adult School has always nourished our appetite for the arts, bringing in such luminaries as bestselling author David McCullough and contrarian Michael Moore, and staging “Likely Stories,” popular on-stage readings by local actors.

But Eva herself is not one to look back. Indeed, she is looking forward to Oct. 28 and the latest in the annual lecture series that bears her name. As he has for more than 30 years, the renowned political scientist, Ralph Buultjens, Ph.D., a professor at New York University and Cambridge University -- and a long-time friend of Eva’s and her late husband Harvey Samo -- will be updating the Adult School audience on the current state of the world.

This year, of course, his Eva Samo Lecture will be presented virtually, via Zoom, as Dr. Buultjen’s title indicates: “World Politics in the Virus Era: America, the Elections, and the World.”

The world is in big trouble, he confirms: “The virus is something more than a health crisis; it’s also a dramatic social and economic crisis. In a few months, we have gone from a face-to-face society to a remote society.”

Does the Professor, a winner of the prestigious Toynbee Prize for outstanding contributions to the social sciences and an acclaimed interpreter of world events, have any good news for us next week, a scant six days before the November 3 election, which he calls, “the most critical election in America’s history”?

No spoilers here, but Dr. Buultjens does promise to analyze and offer possible consequences based on the outcome of the election. He also plans to explore “contending ideas and forces that can shift this country. We are at a crossroads of America’s destiny,”

No wonder Eva is looking forward to next Thursday’s event. She will be watching from her comfortable apartment at Winchester Gardens, where she’s been a resident for l8 years. You, too, can attend the Eva Samo Lecture and hear Professor Buultjen’s informed analyses firsthand at 7:30 next Thursday.

Click here to register.

The Future, Brought to You by Eva Samo and The Adult School