This workshop offers an opportunity to explore different techniques and forms of art, such as brush painting, pen and ink, watercolor, and drawing. All levels of experience and expertise are welcome. Participants will bring their own supplies and materials and will work independently. While class facilitators and participants can offer encouragement, ideas and suggestions to each other, this will NOT be an instructional class.
Coordinators: Basilio King, Christopher Melby and Alfredo Rodriguez
Compete with your ICLRU friends in class. I will present some familiar games like Left, Right and Center, Ticket to Ride and Rummikub. There will be something for you. Join us for our Fun and Games’ class. Please bring any games that might be fun in class.
Every group of humans ever discovered has had some kind of religious belief. Yet these beliefs and practices vary widely from one culture to another and even within the same religion. To understand people of other cultures and ethnicities, we need to understand their religions. In this study group, we will explore the earliest evidence of religious practices. As we then strive to gain a basic understanding of the Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Dharmic (Hindu and Buddhist), and Taoic (Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto) religions, we will also examine the similarities and differences among them.
This is a continuation of a study group that is planned to continue through successive Spring and Fall sessions. We will be looking in depth at the Civil War and Reconstruction from a military, political, societal, and economic perspective. These continuing sessions will include many stand-alone topics covering people; political and moral viewpoints; foreign affairs; life on the home front; military life; tactics and many more aspects of this period in American history. The military events of the conflict will be covered in considerable detail. We will be using lecture, discussion and audio/visual throughout this study group. Participants are encouraged to suggest topics for discussion and make short presentations if so inclined.
Just who were the first migrants to the lands we now call the Americas? When did they come? Where did they originate? How did they get here? Current scholarship, sometimes controversial, sometimes conflicting, sometimes competitive, is pointing in directions other than what we may have believed or what we may have been taught. Did you know a current claim for the oldest human settlement in the Americas lies in South Carolina, dating back 15,000 years?
This study group will explore some of the new findings and paradigm shifts coming from the fields of archaeology, anthropology and genetics. We will also explore some of their descendants. The data is not “settled science” but it is thought provoking and provides interesting and disparate hypotheses about the ancient immigrants to the land.
The Renaissance is commonly known for beautiful and impressive works of art. Less known, however, are the political and social foundations that made much of this Renaissance possible. This session will review the Italian city states during the Renaissance, the political giants of Florence, Milan, Venice, Naples and Rome, their politics, and the formation of the personal dynasties on the Italian peninsula. From the beginning of the Renaissance to the Peace of Lodi, we will review the thinkers and doers of the Renaissance who balanced the world and destiny for decades.
This study group is for people who already know how to play bridge. Join us if you would like to meet other ICL members who play and want to have more opportunities to play the game. We welcome those who have recently learned the game as well as intermediate and advanced players. We will be playing for FUN, not cutthroat! Hopefully we can all learn from one another.
NOTE: This is an ongoing study group, but new participants are always welcome.
The Thin Man was a series of six movies which were produced between 1934 and 1947. The movies starred William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. The plot for these films centered around Nick and Nora's relationship as high society detectives. The films are full of laughs and mystery as Nick and Nora toast each other with champagne cocktails as they solve the latest "who done it"! The seventh class we will show two documentaries, one each on the lives of William Powell and Myrna Loy.
The problem with Tom is that he said things like, “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most ... unremitting despotism” while continuing to hold and profit from slaves. We cannot justify Jefferson by saying, "well, he was just a man of his times," for he spoke out against slavery more than any other Founder, and yet relied on slavery for his livelihood and comforts, all of his life. What gives? Historian Joyce Haworth will explore the ways in which Jefferson justified his slave-holding. His choices illustrate the conflicts embedded in early American society.
