Courses

Discover and explore your own inner resources for successful living. Each session in this nine-week, repeat course features insightful talks and meaningful interaction about inner resources such as peace, appreciation, inner strength, self-awareness, understanding, dignity, choice, hope, and contentment.

Escape from "busy" and give yourself a two-hour block of time to work on your art, at your own pace, in a relaxed environment. Fellow artists share ideas, encouragement, and support. Pack your materials and come paint!

How can a painting or a poem give rise to a tactile sensation? How can music summon spatial imagery? Human experience is a creative act. In this slide/ lecture/discussion course, we'll read from philosophers, neuroscientists, musicians, and poets and look at paintings from Lascaux to Expressionism as we attempt to answer these questions. There will be simple, optional homework.

This repeat course provides a new view of the Third Age (from 50 to 80), based on 25 years of Sadler's research about people who are creatively redesigning their lives and redefining retirement. Students will explore principles for personal growth that can support a successful transition into a Third Age of fulfillment. Classes encourage participant interaction.

Enjoy six weekly, narrated walks through Portland's historic neighborhoods exploring the city's history, architecture, and people since Europeans arrived. In this repeat class, you'll view historic structures, learn about Local architects and their works, and discuss immigrant populations. The longest walk is 2 miles in two hours.

This two-semester course will cover Maine from pre-historic times to the recent past. Each semester is independent but will complement the other. Presenters are a collaboration of noted scholars of Maine history. Though this is a repeat of Part 1 from fall 2016, there will be some new topics and lecturers.

Frances Perkins, FDR's secretary of labor, was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. Learn how this self-made woman, with roots in Maine, became America's leading advocate for industrial safety and workers' rights.

This ongoing, participatory dance class draws from the dances of many cultures - traditional American Country/Western using contemporary C/W and pop music, Greek circle dances, Brazilian samba, tango, rhumba, Spanish cha-cha, and the Shim Sham jazz line dance from Harlem. Not all of these are taught every semester. Prior dance experience is not necessary, but ability to comfortably walk two miles at a decent pace is strongly recommended. This class includes a mix of new dances as well as dances taught in previous sessions.

This course based on the video series produced by WGBH Television in Boston, in cooperation with the BBC, follows the history of computer development from the 1830s to 1989.

Evergreen Cemetery is a jewel in the heart of the city. Many prominent Portlanders have been interred there. Walking through with a knowledgeable docent is a walk through our history. We will meet at Evergreen in the Wilde Chapel weekly, and we will learn about a different aspect of our past, as we have a lecture and a guided tour with a different trained docent each week.

Let's explore the elements of design and composition, applying them to your photographs (and mine), discovering the different things that make a photograph "work." Plan to create images each week and bring them to class for "show and tell." Yes, there is homework, which you will enjoy and which will help boost creativity in your photography.

This ongoing workshop is a supportive peer group of 10 fiction writers working to improve their short-story writing skills. Each month, members send their work to one another in advance of the meeting. Each is responsible for constructive feedback of the work to be shared and discussed at the next session. The workshop will evolve in response to the interests of its members. New members are welcome.

This ongoing workshop is not a class but a supportive group of memoir writers who share and respond constructively to each other's work. New members are welcome, to a limit of 12.