Time travel through ORICL classes in Oak Ridge

Carolyn Krause

Travel through great photographs as well as imaginary time travel into the past are the themes of many courses offered to members of the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning (ORICL) during the winter-spring term, which runs from Feb. 5 through April 26, 2024.

Travelogues presented through PowerPoint slide show photographs and history, literature, music, religion and science classes that will help you feel you are traveling backward in time are some of ORICL’s mind-stimulating offerings for next year at the Oak Ridge branch campus of Roane State Community College (RSCC), 701 Briarcliff Ave.

Becky Rushton tries spear throwing at the John Knox Center (JKC). An Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning class learned about the Yuchi tribe that lived in Oak Ridge and built mounts preserved by the JKC.
Becky Rushton tries spear throwing at the John Knox Center (JKC). An Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning class learned about the Yuchi tribe that lived in Oak Ridge and built mounts preserved by the JKC.

One travelogue with photos by a local award-winning and published photographer will make you feel like you are taking a journey through the Alps and cities of Switzerland, as well as Venice, Italy, and Paris, France.

A local nature photographer will show you wildflowers, wildlife and landscapes while transporting you through the Southern Appalachian Mountains, the Colorado Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, seacoasts and famous national parks. You’ll learn how to make great photos.

To help you imagine you’ve been transported to the past, there will be ORICL courses on 500-million-old Paleozoic rocks and fossils in Oak Ridge, presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama who have championed science (taught by Alan Lowe, executive director of two Oak Ridge science museums) and histories of people who lived in Oak Ridge before their land was taken by eminent domain for the Manhattan Project.

You can journey into the past by taking classes on ancient civilizations of North America, the Old Testament as literature, William Shakespeare, the Vikings, America’s Natives, Benjamin Franklin, the Old American West, Abraham Lincoln’s dilemma, the Civil War, the Holocaust, old American radio programs, the Korean War and American sectarian religions.

The richness of the past will be brought alive by classes on the life and music of 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms and on old songs from England, Ireland and Scotland sung by the local Elza Gate duo. The same is true for ORICL’s religion classes on the Hebrew Bible and the controversial Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament and The Holy Bible.

Online registration for your selection of the 67 courses offered during the term opened on Tuesday, Dec. 5. If you are not a member and wish to register for the upcoming two terms, the membership fee is $100, payable online or by check to ORICL. The cost of ORICL classes is a bargain compared with the fees for many other lifelong learning programs in the United States, according to several ORICL board members. Visit www.roanestate.edu/oricl to see the online catalog and register for courses on a variety of subjects. For more information and a paper catalog, email the ORICL office at oricl@roanestate.edu or visit the ORICL office in Room F-111 in RSCC’s Coffey-McNally Building. The office is open from 9 a.m. to noon, Monday through Thursday.

Most of the courses are taught at RSCC in Oak Ridge, but several art classes are taught at the Oak Ridge Art Center. Each course consists of one class or a series of weekly classes, each 70 minutes long. Most classes are in person, but a few are Zoom only.

Other courses will address the cognitive abilities and social behavior of birds (by the Oak Ridge Bird Man), risks of and treatments for obesity, mental illness issues and aging in place.

Languages that will be taught include Latin, Russian and Ukrainian.

At ORICL you can join a book group and read and discuss classic literature, mystery novels, other fiction, nonfiction, speculative fiction or technical books.

Other classes will help you improve your physical fitness (Body Menders at the Children’s Museum, for a fee), mental agility (Cryptic Varietal Crossword Puzzles), conversation skills (Crochet and Conversation) and feelings of goodwill (Lovingkindness and Unbounded Friendliness). For a fee at the Art Center, you can take courses on the history of loom weaving and on making a variety of earrings and gnomes, based on the character introduced in the 16th century.

The ORICL trips available for a fee will be attendance of “The Giver” play at the Clarence Brown Theater in Knoxville and, in April, visits to the blossoming State Botanical Garden of Tennessee (University of Tennessee Gardens in Knoxville) and to the Museum of Appalachia.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Time travel through ORICL classes in Oak Ridge

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