Today, we are again witnessing a generational cultural divide. Ron Brownstein, the author, shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future In Rock Me on the Water. In this SDG we will trace the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative year, 1974. The early 1970s in Los Angeles was the time and the place where conservatives definitively lost the battle to control popular culture. We will discuss how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Has Brownstein made the connection between pop culture and politics? Can we who lived through the events recounted make it stronger? Or just conclude it did not exist?
Antitrust
This SDG seeks to examine the history of the regulation of big business through antitrust legislation, the lessons that may be drawn from that history and how those lessons may be applied to address the dominance of the largest tech companies in the 21st century economy The core book is Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power From the Gilded Age to the Digital Age by Senator Amy Klobuchar. The Minnesota Senator examines the history of monopolies in America from the Colonial period to the Gilded Age. She provides the background and policy considerations in the adoption of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust Acts. She surveys the significant opposition to monopolies from the Grangers to the Progressives. Klobuchar details the historic struggles against monopolies in the state legislatures, the Congress and in State and Federal Courts. In Klobuchar's view big business ultimately prevailed in the struggles to contain them to the detriment of not only our economy but our democracy. The book is an impressive work of scholarship and delivers a highly informative and readable description of antitrust policy and provides the historical background to conduct a discussion of what to do about a handful of technology companies that have grown to gargantuan size fueling concern across the political spectrum.
Amazon
This SDG seeks to examine the creation, growth, and impact of Amazon both as a business entity and as a cultural and political force. The core book is Fulfillment Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis. The book has been widely praised and through interviews, investigative reporting and vignettes from across the country MacGillis tells the story of how Amazon works at the ground level, from the working conditions to its market strategies, to its political operations. Amazon has not only grown its retail and wholesale operations but created other significant cloud based businesses which are all having a deep impact upon communities throughout the country. This SDG will seek to answer the question of whether Amazon is good, bad, or indifferent. Further it will look at how should communities and governments respond to Amazon and its challenges.
Time and Entropy in the Cosmos
Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and the author of three previous books on cosmology, explores the physical principles that yield orderly structures, from stars and galaxies to life and consciousness. He discusses the mathematical laws governing the cosmos and the efforts of the human mind to understand the universe, and he explains how life and mind emerged from the initial chaos of the Big Bang. Though human life is short and most physical objects are impermanent, the mind seeks to find truth, meaning, and timelessness in human experience. He transitions from particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, and matter to meaning, showing how humans employ narrative, myth, religion, and art. And he traces the cosmic timeline between evolution and entropy. He poses two big questions: How do humans fit into the grand expanse of time?; and What are the physical principles that yield orderly structures within a universe destined for decay? Greene is a fine writer, and he has written this book for the general reader.
Two Masterpieces about Ordinary Germans Under Nazism
In contrast to many other German writers, Hans Fallada (1893-1947) did not leave Nazi Germany . He chose to stay because he couldn’t imagine uprooting himself from his beloved language and country. His depiction of social misfits, influenced by his personal experience (struggle with alcohol and morphine addiction) resonates with readers of the 21st century as much as it did for his contemporaries.
We will be introduced to two of Fallada’s books: The first, A Stranger in my Own Country, is his memoir, written while he was in prison and smuggled by him out of prison. This "underground" book reveals insights into ordinary life in Hitler’s Germany.
The second book, "Every Man Dies Alone is a novel based on a Gestapo file that was given to Fallada in 1945. The file was about a working class couple who started a postcard campaign against Hitler’s war. The novel was translated into English in 2009 and became an international bestseller.
The loss of a son drives the protagonists to begin a post card campaign. Fallada uses their rebellion as a launching pad for a panorama of life under the Nazis, from the Hitler Youth who bully his parents to a postal worker who flees to the countryside in despair when she learns of atrocities committed by her beloved son.
Both books challenge the reader to wonder how he/she would have acted under such dreadful circumstances.
Best of the Brontes - Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre
In this thirteen-week SDG, we will read two of the best-known English novels written by women, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. We will first explore life in their remote Yorkshire parsonage in the mid-19C, on the edge of the wind-swept moors. We will examine each novel in depth, focusing on issues of female education, religion, marriage, love, race and imperialism in the Victorian period. We will then watch two of the many films based on these novels to see how directors and screen-writers have re-interpreted the Brontes' characters, plots, and social contexts. We will end by reading the most successful "prequel" to Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, which gives voice to Charlotte Bronte's "madwoman in the attic." (Amount of reading is roughly 100 pages per week.)
The Films of Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and photographer, who wrote produced and directed some of the most iconic films of our times, including such films as: 2001 A Space Odyssey dr. Strangelove, Full Metal, Jacket Clockwork Orange, and Eyes wide shut.
His films are noted for their realism, dark humor, set designs, evocative music, and .unique cinematography.
He is frequently cited as one of the greatest filmmakers in cinematic history.
Each week we will both enjoy and discuss his films as spectators; and also use these films as a vehicle to learn more about the art of filmmaking, and explore what goes into making a great film
A film creates a world and characters and a story. Typically, we will spend the first hour of each session discussing the world the film creates and the story that happens in that world-- what happened, who were the characters, why what they did what they did, and so forth.
And, in the second hour we'll look more closely at the filmmaking process that went into creating that world and story, and examine at the choices Kubrick, as a director, made in doing so, the casting, the dialogue, the filming location and set, the camera work, the music, sequencing, and finally what was left in and left out in the final editing,
Ideally, each of us will view each film several times, to carefully examine the various elements that go into making a great film
Most of the films can be viewed free on the internet, or are available as inexpensive DVD sets, and on streaming services like Amazon and Netflix.
You don’t need any experience or knowledge about filmmaking to enjoy and participate in this SDG . We’ll all learn together.
So,--If you want to have fun -- watching, examining, and discussing some of the greatest films ever made , by one of the greatest directors of all time,--and end up with much more knowledge and appreciation of the filmmaking process-- Please sign up to join us Wednesday afternoons online on zoom.
See you at the movies!
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance
The award-winning book The Hare with Amber Eyes traces the Ephrussi family, a Jewish banking dynasty, from Odessa to Vienna to Paris, England and Tokyo through five generations. After the family had lost nearly everything in 1938-43, one English descendent unexpectedly receives all that remains of the family fortune—a collection of 264 netsuke—and commences researching its extraordinary path from Japan to the author’s Parisian ancestor, portrayed in literature by Proust, to his grandmother in Vienna, where the netsuke collection was hidden during the War, and thereafter to his great uncle, an ex-patriate in Japan, and finally to the author’s home in England. “To be handed a story as durable and exquisitely crafted as this is a rare pleasure . . . You have in your hands a masterpiece.” The Sunday Times (London).
What is Science And How Should We Interpret Its Results?
The picture we learn in school of “the scientific method” tends to greatly simplify what science is, how it works, and the logic of how we learn from it. We will also be concerned with developing a deep understanding of all of those points. This class will examine questions like the following: What distinguishes science from “pseudoscience?” How does science explain the world? Is the ultimate goal of science to uncover laws of nature? Why should we feel allowed to believe in things we cannot directly observe, like quarks and genes? Do scientific theories give us literally true accounts of how the world is, or are they just useful tools for predicting and making sense of things? What are the most basic concepts and principles at work in scientific inquiry?What principles do all of the sciences have in common? How are the scientific theories of today related to the scientific theories of yesterday and tomorrow?
