How do painters manipulate our perceptions and communicate their visions through composition, line, brushwork, texture and color? Why do paintings of the same subject move us, repel us, excite us in vastly different ways? Learn to look critically at paintings and develop informed opinions in this exploration of basic art principles, painting styles, techniques and artists in Western art.

We'll focus on the most common drugs used by older adults (e.g., statins, blood thinners, blood pressure, bone building).  What are common side effects of these drugs and how do they interact with other otc drugs, herbals, supplements, food, etc?  We'll also discuss how to safely manage and store home medications.

It’s pretty well-known that “in 1492, Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue.” But what was he really after? Why did nearly every major western European nation reject his offer to work for them? And was he really venturing into the unknown--- or did he have Insider Information (in the form of stolen map data)? This course looks at the forces that shaped the early modern European world: The chase after spices; the development of great oceanic sailing ships; the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople; the competition for new sea routes to Asia; and how the competing nations tried every trick in the book to gain an advantage over their competitors!!

"Men, get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry,” ordered John Brown one October night in 1859. The ferry was Harpers Ferry, home to the largest arsenal of rifles in the United States. Brown hoped to capture Harpers Ferry and arm a nationwide slave revolt. But it all went wrong almost immediately and Brown was hanged having failed to free a single slave. Why, then, University of Maryland historian Richard Bell asks, was John Brown’s raid so significant?

We are starting our semester by discussing another banned book.  When John Steinbeck (1902-1968) won the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Academy stated “With your most distinctive works you have become a teacher of good will and charity, a defender of human values, which can well be said to correspond to the proper idea of the Nobel Prize” and called his novella Of Mice and Men a “little masterpiece”.  Steinbeck drew upon his experience as a bindlestiff when describing the lives of itinerant workers.  The work garnered both popular and literary praise: it was chosen by the Book of the Month club, adapted for stage, film, and radio, and appearing in high school curricula for decades.  Yet this novella, along with his epic novel Grapes of Wrath, now appear regularly on lists of the most banned books in English. Please read the book so you can participate in our structured, facilitated, Zoom discussion. (Note: Please join the meeting at 3 pm if you would like some assistance using the features of Zoom. Otherwise, join us at 3:15 pm for the start of our discussion.)

The Washington Aqueduct, carrying drinking water to DC but running mostly through Montgomery County from Great Falls, was a technological marvel when completed 160 years ago in 1864. Through current and historical photos, we’ll explore the fascinating history of this project, now a National Landmark, and examine its equally fascinating chief engineer, Montgomery Meigs, Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army during the Civil War. In charge of all troop logistics, Meigs has been described as “second only to General Ulysses Grant” in winning the war for the Union.

Unfortunately, our boxes of negatives, photos, color slides, VHS and 8 MM movies are not easy to view in the digital age of iPads, iPhones and YouTube. We’ll examine some easy and inexpensive ways to convert our older technologies to digital format and a conversion tool to take color slides and negatives and save them as digital files. We’ll look at a tool that lets us convert our VHS and 8 MM movies to a digital format and how to transfer our physical CDs to a personal online music collection. This is a demonstration/lecture, not a hands-on class.