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Climate Change: The Science Is In, Now What? - R - In-Person
Schedule: Tuesdays, 1/14/2025 - 2/18/2025, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Climate science has now definitively established the causes and impacts of global warming. There are endless technical, political, policy and personal ideas of what to do to respond to this crisis. This course will briefly summarize current climate science, but the instructors will spend most of the course discussing what society should do. What are the highest priorities for us personally and as a city, state, nation, biosphere? Is the Paris Accord target of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees C possible? What are the impediments to progress? How can they be overcome? Is it already too late???
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Eighteenth Century Entrepreneurship in Music and Composers - R - In-Person
Instructor: Joel Schnackel Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Tuesdays, 1/21/2025 - 2/25/2025, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
**UPDATED SCHEDULE: Tuesdays, January 21 - February 25, 11:00 - 12:30 pm.
Textbook: C. Wolf, Mozart at the Gateway to His Fortune
This course looks at the situations that shifted music and composers out of the private aristocratic patronage system into the public sphere. Composers such as W. A. Mozart, Johan Sperger, and Joseph Haydn employed business savvy to adapt to the ever-changing social and political climate. This course will look at primary sources such as Sperger’s manuscript catalog, Über verschückte Musicalien, which reveals that many of his works were dispersed to various members of the aristocracy for financial gain or enticement. We will look at the Mozart letters and the Haydn documents to see how these composers adapted and read Wolf’s book and selections from Dr. Schnackel's research on Johann Sperger.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Images of Place and Space in the Fiction of Three Women Writers - R - In-Person
Schedule: Thursdays, 1/16/2025 - 2/20/2025, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Join me in exploring the work of Mary Wilkins Freeman, Maria Cristina Mena, and Zora Neale Hurston. Through presentations and class discussions, we will focus on their use of place to depict women’s lives. Each writer employs imagery rooted in a particular region in ways that both perpetuate and resist damaging assumptions about gender roles. Wilkins Freeman sets her stories, often about older women of limited economic means, in rural New England; Maria Cristina Mena explores the intersecting European and Indigenous roots of women in her home country of Mexico; and Zora Neale Hurston creates stories about Black women in both New York City and Florida. We will also consider the shifting critical reception each of these writers has received over the past century.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Memory Loss and Dementia: Addressing the Public Health Crisis - R - In-Person
Schedule: Wednesdays, 1/15/2025 - 2/19/2025, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Is memory loss affecting you or someone you love? Is your family dealing with how to care for a family member with cognitive impairment/dementia? Dementia Friendly Missoula is a volunteer coalition affiliated with Missoula Aging Services and is the local chapter of the National Dementia Friendly America movement. We are community members, healthcare professionals, and organizations that promote an informed, supportive, and inclusive community for people living with dementia and those who care for them. We will review types of dementia, how to recognize the signs of dementia, explore experiences of those with dementia, and provide tips for interacting with individuals with memory loss. Resources for individuals with dementia and their care partners will be shared along with health tips for aging brains.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Queen of Mystery Part 2: Class, Guilt, and Innocence in Agatha Christie - R - In-Person
Instructor: Beverly Williams Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Tuesdays, 1/14/2025 - 2/18/2025, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Agatha Christie still reigns as the queen of mystery. She set the pattern for the cozy mystery genre in the golden age of mystery. A close look at her works, however, reveals the darker, more complicated problems of class in portraying guilt and innocence in her characters. This course will delve into four of her works: Five Little Pigs, Murder at the Vicarage, “Three Blind Mice,” and “Witness for the Prosecution.” Examining these texts offers the reader an insight into the way class affects issues of guilt and innocence in Christie’s British society.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Reading the Short Story - R - In-Person
Instructor: David Allan Cates Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Fridays, 1/10/2025 - 2/14/2025, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
We will read stories by masters and discuss the shape and structure of this relatively new literary form. How does it work? What is its subject, its territory, and its history? How does it relate to other forms of storytelling? What does it tell us about what it means to be a human being? What does it tell us about our culture? How does it give us something we need? A deeper understanding of how these little masterpieces work should help students appreciate their beauty and be moved by their elegance.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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The Aging Eye - R - In-Person
Instructor: Brian Sippy Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Fridays, 1/17/2025 - 2/21/2025, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
The human eye is a delicate but resilient organ. As we age, some changes to our bodies are more conspicuous than others. The eye hides its age-related changes very well, but gradual deterioration can ultimately impact visual function, sometimes permanently. Three common age-related conditions of the eye are cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration. Cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension and diabetes, can also threaten normal blood flow to the eye. Dry eye and excess tearing can also affect aging individuals. In this course offering, each of these maladies will be presented and discussed in detail. Although taught by a surgeon, this MOLLI course does not constitute medical advice nor does it create a doctor-patient relationship with any participants.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Two Great Tragedies by Shakespeare's Contemporaries - R - In-Person
Instructor: Linda Woodbridge Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Wednesdays, 1/15/2025 - 2/19/2025, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
We’ll read and discuss Thomas Middleton’s The Changeling and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, among the greatest of Renaissance tragedies. The Changeling presents a complex psychological portrait of a woman who hires a hitman to rid her of an unwanted fiancé; when the assassin arrives to exact payment, the intricacies of her psyche begin to unfold. The Duchess of Malfi is widely considered (along with Shakespeare’s Cleopatra)one of the two greatest female tragic heroes of English Renaissance drama. This play too presents complex psychological portraits–of the duchess and of her murderous twin brother. Shakespeare’s greatness has thrown his rivals into eclipse: Middleton and Webster are sadly neglected. But if you think no other playwright could write blank verse as Shakespeare did–think again.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Waltzing with Bears: The Fate of Grizzly Bears in the Rocky Mountain West - R - In-Person
Instructor: Robert Chaney Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Thursdays, 1/16/2025 - 2/20/2025, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
From the logo of this university to the creation stories of American Indian tribes, the grizzly bear looms large in Montana culture. Its recovery as a threatened species has had a huge impact on the way Montanans work, play, and think about our state. We will probe how we relate to grizzlies, in both physical and thoughtful ways, as creatures that threaten and thrill us on the landscape as well as in the imagination. Topics include grizzly recovery under the Endangered Species Act, recreation and work in grizzly country, and the ways other cultures and communities deal with grizzlies in their midst. The final class will synthesize topics of greatest interest among the participants as we consider the future of grizzlies in the Rocky Mountain West.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Wildlife Research from Glacier to Yellowstone: Saving Threatened Species - R - In-Person
Instructor: Kerry R Foresman Course Tuition: $70.00
Schedule: Tuesdays, 1/14/2025 - 2/18/2025, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Montana is bounded on the northwest by Glacier National Park and on the southwest by Yellowstone National Park, between which can be found a wide diversity of ecosystems defining the state. This course is primarily geared toward individuals either new to the state or planning a vacation to this region and its national parks. I will discuss many species that define these ecosystems and the current wildlife issues that Montana and these national parks face, involving wolves, grizzly bears, and bison. Efforts to protect such species across the larger landscape will be discussed.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Finding Your Story: An Introduction to Writing Fiction - In-Person
Schedule: Wednesdays, 1/15/2025 - 2/19/2025, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
This six-week class is designed for students new to writing fiction or experienced students seeking a refresh. Each class is designed to inspire discussion about stories and writing techniques--such as creating characters, setting, point of view, and structure. Class periods will open with a short prompt based on the senses which students will be welcome to read aloud. By week four, students will turn in a story draft, and we will divide into groups to workshop stories, focusing on what the writer has accomplished and where the work sparks curiosity or confusion. Students will turn in revised stories in week six.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Introduction to Winter Bird Watching - In-Person
Instructor: Elena Ulev Course Tuition: $80.00
Schedule: Wednesdays, 1/15/2025 - 2/19/2025, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Maximum Students: 20
Many birds migrate south for the winter, but many interesting ones remain in Montana, making it an enjoyable time of year to birdwatch. Plus, there are no leaves on the trees and shrubs, so the birds are easier to spot. Some species that we may see include flocks of red crossbills, Clark’s nutcrackers, rough-legged hawks, and owls. We will also discuss how to attract birds to your yard year-round. This course will be a combination of interactive classroom presentations to learn the basics of birding by sight and by sound followed by time in the field. You will leave this course with a greater understanding of how to watch and listen to birds and how to entice them to your yard.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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Retirement: Your Dynamic Second Act - In-Person
Instructor: Kathy Mangan Course Tuition: $85.00
Schedule: Fridays, 1/17/2025 - 2/21/2025, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Do you know how some of us can be done with what we have been doing and not done with having an impact? Some people of a certain age refer to this as “failing at retirement” but it can also happen at a much earlier age. The life transition of retirement can be a huge opportunity to discover and act on bringing to life what we may have been putting off, sometimes for decades. This 6-week journey will help uncover and articulate the second act so many of us are ready for. Expect homework to help move the process along as well as great discussions with fellow travelers.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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The Bitter Roots: A Reading Experience - In-Person
Instructor: Course Tuition: $35.00
Schedule: Thursday & Friday 2/27/2025 - 2/28/2025, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Fee: $35 (Includes Book)
First published in 1941 and never before reissued, The Bitter Roots set in Missoula is a largely autobiographical novel full of evocative details of a time and place, the work of a writer coming to terms with his past. It is an unvarnished portrait of America from its entry into World War One to the start of Prohibition. Norman Macleod shows us a country struggling with racism, class prejudice, conflicts between labor and capital, and sexual stereotypes. Author Norman Macleod lived in Missoula from 1913 to sometime in the 1920s. He became an English professor in North Carolina and is known mostly for his poetry.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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MOLLI Choral Society -NR - In-Person
Instructor: Dean Peterson Course Tuition: $100.00
Schedule: Thursdays, 1/16/2025 - 3/6/2025, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
The MOLLI Choral Society will be an interactive offering that will involve participants in vocal development and choral singing. Each class will be divided into numerous activities including vocal/physical warm-ups, vocal development, choral singing, and listening. The development of part singing and good choral tone will be the main focus of this course. Class members will sing weekly as a group in a choral rehearsal setting. The Choral Society will perform an informal concert as a final project.
Registration begins Monday, November 25. You will not be able to add any courses, offerings or events to your cart until that date.
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