Lancaster Region

This course will explore the history of this city from its beginning in 1807. The village grew when families moved there to build the Erie Canal, site of the unique Flight of Five locks. Famous people hail from the city such as the first woman to run for president of the United States, movie actors, models, inventors, etc.

This extensive course will encourage you to engage in critical thinking as we consider the inventions, events, and people that have shaped and influenced American journalism from colonial times to the internet. The impact of technical, economic, political, and cultural developments will be considered as we examine what “freedom of the press” and “the truth” have meant in American society from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of President Trump.

Become the person God is calling you to be while meeting the spiritual, emotional, physical, and economic challenges of the harvest season of your life. This season puts you at a crossroad of decisions that will impact you for the rest of your life. You will be given examples of how to meet and how not to meet each of these unavoidable transitions.

Perry County Bicentennial – the nuts and bolts of celebrating one of Central Pennsylvania’s iconic county’s 200th anniversary of independence from Cumberland County, and how its history is representative of the growth, development, and challenges of our Commonwealth.

This will be an entertaining and compelling collection of stories by four established masters and two living writers: Leo Tolstoy’s “After the Ball”; Anton Chekhov’s “A Trifle From Real Life”; William Faulkner’s “Pantaloon in Black”; Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers”; Ron Rash’s “Back of Beyond”; and Lionel Shriver’s “Exchange Rates.”

This course will trace the history of immigration in the United States and its interaction with race as the growing population of the country became less Protestant and more diverse. Beginning with the Know- Nothing Party of the mid-19th century, the advent of Nativism, fostered by 19th century racial theory, the course will detail how these ideas continue to impact on current American politics.

This course will trace the humble beginnings of the internet from a technology useful only to scientists and the military to everyday users. We will trace the stunningly lucrative years and show how this once niche scientific tool has exploded into something utterly indispensable. We will explore the beginnings of web browsing to the explosion of Facebook and one particularly useful tool…the smartphone!

The instructor will share with you why he especially enjoys reading, thinking, and talking about three poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning because of the poetry that she wrote and the love story that she lived; Alfred Lord Tennyson because his poetry so beautifully reflects our search for faith; and Robert Frost because his poetry so successfully captures thoughts and attitudes of his native New England.

Now more than ever the history of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide cannot be ignored. Through her published memoir Your Name Is Renee by Oxford University Press, Ruth Hartz will present her experiences as a hidden child in Nazi-Occupied France. While she will talk about the horrors of the Holocaust and their perpetrators, the instructor will also talk about the goodness of the Righteous Gentiles, ordinary people who were transformed into rescuers.

Perry County Bicentennial – the nuts and bolts of celebrating one of Central Pennsylvania’s iconic county’s 200th anniversary of independence from Cumberland County, and how its history is representative of the growth, development, and challenges of our Commonwealth.