Fall Picnic

Dow Pavilion, Look Park Northampton, MA, United States

Our fall semester is about to get underway, and what better way to meet our moderators, fellow classmates, and renew old acquaintances than joining us at our our fall pot-luck. This year’s event will take place on Thursday, October 5th at the Dow Pavilion in Look Park, from noon to 2:00 p.m. Some things to […]

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A Mother’s Mystery Years – Elizabeth, alcohol and the 1930s

Jane Holloway After growing up in a strict German immigrant family in a small town, what would it have been like for Elizabeth, a single woman in her twenties, to live and work in the big city of Minneapolis during the 1930s? How might the economic crisis of the Great Depression, the repeal of Prohibition, […]

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Sears and Department Stores

Ilene Rosenfeld Department Stores opened as early as 1825. In New York City they started downtown, then moved up to the "Ladies' Mile" and above 34th Street and onto Fifth Avenue. Sears Roebuck began as a catalog mailed across the country, especially to rural areas. Between 1908 and 1940 Sears catalogs included Kit Houses in […]

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Witness in Atlanta

Bonnie Strickland From 1962 till 1973, I was a faculty member at Emory University in Atlanta. I became involved in the Civil Rights movement, which was the preeminent social movement at that time. This presentation is some coverage of my experiences in civil rights activities in Atlanta during the sixties.    

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Alternatives to GDP

Naomi Yanis In our society economic measurements, especially GDP, dominate the debate. What IS GDP, and why do economists increasingly believe it is important to do more to measure the economic well-being of the families who make up the economy than what GDP measures. What might we replace GDP with?  

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Machu Picchu and other sites in Peru

Nancy Eddy Using lidar, radiocarbon dating, accelerator mass spectrometry, DNA testing, computer-aided reconstruction along with traditional excavation on several different sites in Peru has provided new information on the Nazca lines, Machu Picchu, Moche sites and others.  

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Wooden Houses in Japan

Richard Nicoll The wooden houses in Japan are the unique style of original Japanese housing. The wooden construction involves a high skill of joinery.

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Climate Change and Migration

Rutherford Platt Human-related climate change is now the foremost threat to humanity and biological systems since the invention of nuclear weapons. As droughts, extreme heat, floods, wildfires, disease, and habitat loss proliferate, the human and non-human populations of ravaged areas seek to survive by migrating to supposedly more habitable locales. Like shipwreck survivors desperately clinging […]

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Talking about Death

Tryna Hope My “Writing to Remember” piece discusses my feelings about death following the death of a close friend, 92 years old, who stopped nutrition and hydration in order to die. It includes how my friend and her partner (86) got from the decision through the death, and the importance of community.