Mondays
The Civil War in Missouri — 1863
Time
10 to 11:30 a.m.
Dates
June 3, 10, 17, 24
Description
The Mid-Missouri Civil War Roundtable is pleased to be back at Osher @ Mizzou for a third semester presenting a sample of the monthly programs conducted by its members at Roundtable meetings since 1983. Similar to other roundtables across the state and the nation, the Mid-Missouri group is comprised of historians — professional and amateur, authors and just plain folks who maintain an interest in the Civil War. Anyone interested in the Civil War is invited to attend meetings of the Mid-Missouri Roundtable at 7 p.m., on the third Tuesday of the month at the Boone County Historical Society. Our 31st year begins this September.
This summer as part of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the course will focus on events of 1863 as they impact the state of Missouri. The topics addressed and their dates of presentation over the four week course are conveyed below:
Osher @ Mizzou is genuinely grateful to Ralph Kreigh, member of the Mid-Missouri Civil War Roundtable, for the diligence with which he creates this series of summer courses as sesquicentennial homage. His knowledge and enthusiasm are evidenced in the quality of the sessions he has designed.
June 3
Marmaduke’s Raid — April 1863
Following the battles at Wilson’s Creek and Lexington in August and September of 1861, there were no invasions of Missouri until the Fall of 1864 by General Sterling “Pap” Price’s twelve thousand men. In the two years in between, there were a series of short lived raids that originated out of Arkansas. Price’s 1864 incursion might even be called a raid as it did not establish a stronghold. (But that is a program for next year.) This program will look at the April, 1863 raid into southeast Missouri of General John Sappington Marmaduke, a scion of two prominent Missouri families.
Instructor
Harold Miederhoff, a retired secondary education mathematics teacher, is a charter member of the Mid-Missouri Civil War Roundtable. He has long been interested in the American Civil War.
June 10
George Caleb Bingham’s “Order No. 11”
George Caleb Bingham, Missouri’s immortal painter, patriot, soldier and statesman, painted “Order No. 11” as an expression of his outrage at conditions in western Missouri during the Civil War. Needing to make his art into a business, Bingham sold prints of “Order No. 11” made from an engraving by John Sartain. To pay back Columbia’s James Rollins for his investment in the project, Bingham painted a second “Order No. 11” on a tablecloth — which now hangs in the State Historical Society of Missouri.
Instructor
Joan Stack, PhD, curator of the art collections at the State Historical Society of Missouri, will tell the story of Bingham and “Order No. 11” and consider how the history of the painting’s interpretation reflects changes with time.
June 17
Order No. 11 in the “Burnt District”
On August 15, 1863, Union Brigadier General Ewing issued General Orders No. 11. It was designed to remove all southern sympathizers from the western Missouri border counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates and the northern edge of Vernon County. We will discuss some prior events, including a look at Orders No. 9 and 10. Our attention will be primarily on how the Order affected individuals and their families, both immediately and after the war. We will briefly follow the family of early Jackson County settler Samuel Harris from before the Civil War to 1977.
Instructor
Vanette Hamilton is a retired university geology teacher. She became interested in Civil War history through pursuing genealogy for the past 20 years. She is a member of the Mid-Missouri Civil War Roundtable.
June 24
Discovering Civil War Campsites in Missouri
How can we glean the history of the Civil War from its campsites? Who camped there? When did they camp there? Why did they camp there? We begin by careful research and the use of modern technology. Using air photo interpretation you look for a Civil War era “ridge runner” road near water. Using GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) can turn a metal detector from a bullet finder to a Civil War Archeologist. In this “show and tell” program Dave will show you what he has found and tell you how his find answer the above questions.
Instructor
Dave Poche, a member of the Mid-Missouri Civil War Roundtable, Poche does metal detecting, but don’t call him a “digger.” He has written books, DVDs and websites on Civil War firearms and bullets and the camp sites where they were found.
For more information
Tuesdays
William Blake’s Shorter Prophecies: The Book of Thel; Visions of the Daughters of Albion; The First Book of Urizen; The Song of Los.
Time
1:30 to 3 p.m.
Dates
June 4, 11, 18, 25
Description
First encounters (or even repeated experiences) with William Blake’s illuminated prophetic poems may be daunting or frustrating. In this course, we will explore four of the shorter prophecies, each easily read in one sitting, though not necessarily easily absorbed. We will read them aloud during the class periods, with the fully illuminated pages in plain view, examine and interpret the texts and the imagery of the engraved pages, and find our way into the rich experiences offered by Blake’s powerful imagination.
It should not be necessary to purchase books for this course. Editions of Blake’s complete works would include the texts of the poems to be read, and certainly it is convenient to have those texts available, so those who already own them will want to use them. All of Blake’s works are available on line, however, including the fully illustrated works, and I will make available the links and information needed for anyone who wants to consult the best available on line versions. (Some websites are not well-designed or accurate.)
Instructor
Thomas F. Dillingham, PhD, former member of Stephens College English/creative writing faculty and professor emeritus of English, Central Methodist University.
Wednesdays
UFO Reality, Cover-up, and Disclosure: Film Portrayals
Time
9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
Dates
June 5, 12, 19, 26
Description
Testimony of numerous witnesses, including astronauts, generals, admirals, law enforcement officials, military and civilian pilots, and many respected scientists confirms the following:
- Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) that appear to be under intelligent control, and which are capable of speeds, maneuverability and luminosity far beyond that known to human technological skill, have been sighted by millions of people, worldwide.
- UFO episodes, including very close contacts, are posing international aviation hazards, and raise very serious concerns regarding global security issues, especially safeguarding nuclear weapons and missile silos.
- The U.S. government, unlike, France, Britain, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and others has suppressed reports of UFO sightings and aviation problems. Moreover, it has implemented a CIA plan of implied threat, ridicule and disinformation aimed at targeting credible witnesses who called for UFO disclosure, as well as open government research addressing the problem.
- The hypothesis that UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin is accepted at the 90 percent level of statistical confidence as reported by the French COMETA UFO investigative panel. Indeed, Edgar Mitchell, the sixth U.S. astronaut to step on the Moon, places the confidence estimate at greater than 90 percent.
- If the extraterrestrial hypothesis is valid, humankind faces the greatest discovery in history — the existence of non-human, intelligent, off-planet Earth life forms with interstellar propulsion capabilities. Thus, this meeting of cosmic cultures will inevitably affect every segment of Civilization, including religion, politics, science, technology, health, agriculture — in short, the complete spectrum of human life will be challenged by the confirmation of a greater reality.
- Contemplation of the effects of the new reality on various Earth cultures and their responses is a critical research/education assignment for the best minds willing to undertake the challenge.
A four part film series will address these issues.
- Film 1
I Know What I Saw: Governments and Military Officials Reveal the Truth About UFOs
This film presents testimony of Air Force generals, astronauts, military and commercial pilots, government and aviation officials from seven countries. Their accounts reveal the reasons those involved at the highest levels have chosen government secrecy over public disclosure. The film is narrated, in part, by former Republican Governor of Arizona, J. Fife Symington III.
- Film 2
UFOs: 50 Years of Denial: The Government Cover-up of UFOs and Recovered Alien Technology
Colonel Philip J. Corso, a staffer for President Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Security Council, speaks of overseeing the corporate harvesting of technology from recovered UFO crash debris of extraterrestrial origin. Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell reveals that the Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash of 1947 was a real incident and discusses the 50 years of cover-up that followed. Command Sergeant Major (ret.) Robert O. Dean, former intelligence analyst, discusses a top secret study concluded by NATO in the 1960s classified at "Cosmic Top Secret".
- Film 3
UFOs for the New Century
UFO historian Richard Dolan calls for a present-day understanding of the UFO phenomenon appropriate for today's scientists, philosophers, educators, journalists, futurists, and other thinkers. Such thinking must concern itself with an updated concept of extraterrestrials (ETs) and careful scientific research, including that related to 21st Century information technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and those to come. Dolan's bottom line is that UFOs will be of unquestionable importance to our lives and to posterity. Thus, professionals of every stripe, and citizens worldwide, must wield the conceptual tools with which to understand the subject.
- Film 4
Truth Embargo
This film will present critical aspects of an event to be held at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. from April 29 to May 3, 2013. The event, titled "Citizen Hearing on Disclosure" will feature some 40 witnesses who will testify for thirty hours over five days before former members of Congress, including Senator Mike Gravel (D-Lib, AK); Representative Lynn Woolsey (D, CA); Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick (D, MI); Representative Darlene Hooley (D, OR); Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R, MD); and Representative Merrill Cook (R, UT).
Hearing witnesses will include: Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Minister of Defense, Canada; Noted Physicist Stanton Friedman; Watergate Attorney Daniel P. Sheehan; Historian Richard Dolan, and US. Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell.
This Citizen Hearing on Disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race will attempt to accomplish what Congress has failed to do for forty-five years: Seek out facts surrounding the most important issue of this, or any other time.
Note
Please be advised that the date of the final session of the Osher UFO course, June 26, is exceedingly close in time to the May 3rd conclusion of the groundbreaking Citizen’ Hearing on Disclosure, on which the film, Truth Embargo, will be based. In the best of all possible worlds, the videographers will have produced a DVD of the sessions and made it available to educators within the 8 weeks between both events. If our assumptions about the film’s availability are not confirmed, please know that you will be provided with all aspects of the Hearings available — sound bites, TV video sections, published articles. In short, all the media sources available to Wickersham that conveys details of the five-day event that will have attempted to encourage openness and scientific study, replacing a taboo sanction that has held hostage a search for truth. Paradoxically, the “age of Aquarius” proves a technological one.
Additional Information on the hearing
Instructor
Bill Wickersham, Ed.D, adjunct professor of peace studies, University of Missouri, and associate of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, Calif., will act as facilitator for this course.
Thursdays
Tablets ad Smart
Phones: A Workshop
Exclusively for
Android and
Apple iOS Devices
Time
11:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
Dates
June 6, 13, 20, and 27
Description
Osher @ Mizzou is blessed with no fewer than two gifted geeks: Our CEO of the Geek Squad, Robert M. Hibbs — exclusively a PC Guru — and the rapidly rising Apple/Macintosh Guru Jr., Till Rosenberger. Observers of human need that is technological in nature, the Self-Starters devised a four session workshop. The goal is to facilitate greater literacy in the use of Tablets and Smart Phones, devices that are growing in popularity. Except for the first 2-hour session of the course, prepared instructional content will not be delivered — in short, this is not a lecture course. Instead, enrolled students are asked to come to class with lists of questions that are prioritized in accordance with their importance. The lists are to be shared at the beginning of each class. And, thereafter, prioritized with hierarchical designations assigned to each topic in class. Each class session is allocated 120-minutes. Questions will be addressed within that time frame.
Note
The course is limited to 12 students. Equipment will not be provided. Instruction is limited to Apple iPhones and iPads and Android smartphones and tablets. This course does not cover laptops, Window phones, Window tablets, Blackberry phones, or anything other than Apple or Android.<
The very first class session — the launch of the course — is to be a 2-hour review of basic concepts. The three sessions that follow are those in which the content addressed emerges from the prioritized list of questions designated by members of the class.
The instructors designed this course to circumvent the differential levels of technological literacy that normally characterize adult education courses. Bob and Till have relinquished second-guessing about students’ baseline knowledge. You will determine what the teachers teach by collectively agreeing upon the topics for discussion that day — all drawn from the lists students submit.
Instructors
Robert M. Hibbs, MS, MU electrical engineering; retired from Hubbell Power Systems after devoting his entire career to information technology. Hibbs oversees all things technological in the Osher program. In addition to his academic credentials, years of IT experience influence the courses he designs for the Osher program.
Till Rosenberger, BS, MS, is our brilliant new staff member at Osher @ Mizzou. Till is rapidly demonstrating that there is nothing that he is not able to do.
Fridays
A Potpourri of the Arts
Time
10 to 11:30 a.m.
Dates
June 7, 14, 21, and 28
June 7
“Sisters in Song”: Women Composers of Hymns — with a Sing-Along Session of Favorites, Part II
This project began in 2008. The women of Broadway Christian Church held their annual women’s retreat on a snowy February weekend. The theme was music. I offered to look up the familiar hymns written by women and play them on the old piano at the retreat site as the women filtered in on opening day. While researching the subject, the whole thing grew beyond expectation and I decided to write about what I found. Other members of the retreat committee took some of that research and incorporated it into other retreat activities. Afterwards, as time permitted, I delved deeper.
Women’s contributions to hymnody are vast and inspiring! Saints or sinners, their stories are humbling. So many women wrote when they were in poverty, isolation or pain. Their faith shone even in times of distress. But those who were blessed with good health and circumstance expressed their faith beautifully as well. In my research, I came upon a book published in 1903, Songs from the Hearts of Women, that recited the stories of women-composed hymns. It is impressive to learn how many long forgotten hymns inspired people over a century earlier. Many are still well known, from the first hymn children learn, “Jesus Loves Me”, to the patriotic “America the Beautiful”, to the timeless hymns of Fanny Crosby. But there are many wonderful hymns written since 1903. Though I found other books dealing with women hymn writing, they were either from an academic/feminist perspective with lengthy articles on a limited number of writers, or they didn’t deal with hymnists in the past century. My book isn’t written for academia. It deals with many women both long gone and contemporary in a more abbreviated way. I don’t write so much from a feminist perspective as I do from a fondness for my favorites.
Instructor
Leslie Clay is a recent retiree from a large insurance company where her expertise placed her behind the scenes — except for her participation, with her colleagues, in a fine, in- depth Osher course updating insurance information particularly relevant to “seasoned adults”. Interested in reconnecting with our program, she offered to conduct a Brown Bag Seminar but as we chatted her delightful new preoccupation took salience — she is writing a book! The topic is too good not to have invited her to share her enthusiasm with you. Leslie did a similar presentation in Spring but her material exceeded the time she was allotted for the class session. She returns to bring you the rest of her findings.
June 14
Tools and Creative Processes: Heather Foote, Sculptor
In the Artist’s voice, “My interest in nature and the environment began early and biological sciences and liberal arts became the focus of my education. I received a BSN from the University of Missouri and continued to work in my profession until beginning a family. It was then that my interest in art emerged and developed. Initially self-taught, I later took advanced sculpting classes at the University of Missouri. After participating in juried shows, gaining awards and gallery representation, I entered my artistic career. My sculptures are in public buildings as well as in private collections.”
June 21
The Ronald McDonald House Sculptures by Heather Foote
Creation and development of the three life-size sculptures that comprise her art for the refuge for families with hospitalized youngsters fills this class session
June 28
David Spear: Artist as Folk Hero
Walking to lunch with Spear following the first Osher class he conducted about six years ago, I was amused, then awed, by passersby swiveling their necks and bodies around to catch a second glimpse of the artist they had come to know by his paintings hung in ‘peoples’ galleries’ — local restaurants, the Wabash Station, the bowling alley in the lower level of Brady Commons on campus. Who was this ‘unmasked man?’ In the restaurant, waiters and bartenders commented on his paintings. Genial, un-phased by the attention, easily responding to each inquiry: the man was just simply a cut above most of us. Graduate school followed with those deliberate humbling processes that test one’s cool. I wondered how he would weather all of that since he is already a famous artist. Some moments were dark — like any loss of acceptance and free, easy, expression. In retrospect, those momentary bruised ego experiences deprived the artist not one bit of his great talent. Let’s celebrate Spear.
Join us. Experience, up close and personal, Spear’s wisdom, articulateness and his very fine, unusual talent. You may just find yourself coming away from class with a Spear print of your very own.
Instructor
David Spear has been voted best local artist three times, first in 2001 VOX Magazine and twice in Inside Columbia Magazine in 2008 and 2012. He received his BFA from the University of Missouri- St. Louis 1999 and his MFA from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2012. He has paintings permanently displayed above the ticket windows at the Wabash Bus Station, in the entryways of Boone Hospital, on the traffic box on 9th and Broadway, in the entryway of Jefferson Junior High School and H and R Block in Kansas City. He also has large scale paintings in the restaurants Addison’s, Sophia’s and Quinton’s in Columbia, Cicero’s in St. Louis and Nick and Jake’s in Parkville Kansas. He currently stays active working on commissions in his studio, curates shows at his downtown gallery and is an adjunct professor at the University of Missouri teaching introductory drawing and painting classes.
Explore the Wonderful World of Tea
Time
11:35 a.m. to 1:05 p.m.
Dates
June 7, 14, 21, and 28
Did you know that tea is the most popular drink in the world (after water)? Month after month we see magazine articles extolling the benefits of drinking tea. Diane and Sharon will introduce you to various types of teas and help you learn to incorporate tea in your life.
Topics include
- History of tea and its influence on the world
- Tea preparation - infusing
- Types of tea (black, green, oolong, white)
- Health benefits of tea
- Tea drinking customs around the world
- Tea for relaxation and mindfulness
- Recipes for cooking with tea
Participants will have the opportunity to taste a number of different teas and will take home a package of samples. We will celebrate the last class with a tea party. Join the fun.
Instructor
Diane Peterson and Sharon Pauley are previous owners of Sweet P's Teas, an online tea business. Both are avid tea drinkers and great proponents of tea for health and wellness. Diane is a retired school library media specialist who is currently reviewing and writing historical romance. Sharon has a background in social work and is pursuing her own writing ambitions.
Updated 5/8/13