Gardens - History, Aesthetics, Value

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Marcus Tullius Cicero

This SDG is more art and anthropology than botany. Ranging across historical periods and styles, we will learn about the key ingredients  of world famous (and lesser known but inspiring) landscapes to reveal, in broad terms, the evolution of  garden design over time. Beginning with the classics, we will look at Italian Renaissance and  French royal gardens. Moving from traditional and formal, we will explore Cottage, Mediterranean, Modernist, and cutting-edge gardens. In addition to French Formal and English Cottage gardens, we will investigate a a diverse variety of cultural styles: Japanese Zen, Persian, and Dutch gardens. What would be the world of landscape without learning about some of the masterminds behind these amazing creations? We will visit the contributions of select designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Gertrude Jekyll, Piet Oudolf, and Los Angeles landscapers Terremoto and Judy Kaemon of Elysian Landscapes. Finally, we will examine some contemporary issues as they relate to gardens -xeriscaping /Water  and genetic engineering.

    “The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives. ”Gertrude Jekyll 

Saints and Sinners - A History of the Popes

The papacy is the oldest continuing organization in the world.  It survived the Goths, the Byzantines, the Protestants, two world wars and many challenges from within.  The popes themselves sometimes have been saintly, but frequently corrupt and immoral.  They have been elected to the papacy, purchased the papacy, and been prisoners and victims of the papacy.  

This S/DG will examine 2000 years of Western Civilizations through the lens of the most significant popes who led Catholicism.  We will discuss the eras, and popes from Peter and Paul to Francis, who, like his predecessors, commands world attention and has the ability to rewrite the dictates of the Church.  Although this is a religious subject, the focus will be secular and historical.  There are two core books, with selected readings from each.  Both books have a 4.5 rating on Amazon.  

Additionally, we will discuss current religious issues as a warm-up to our topic each week.  

John Marshall Harlan, The Great Dissenter

Those who know Harlan only because of his most famous Plessy v Ferguson dissent will be surprised by the debate surrounding the justice’s evolving and complicated legacy. During his lifetime, liberals praised Harlan’s views on economic regulation, and African Americans revered his support of civil rights. These encomiums stood in stark contrast to Harlan’s reputation among many of his contemporaries and later generations of legal chroniclers. Unable to appreciate his prophetic rulings, they dismissed him as an eccentric. His stature rose only after Thurgood Marshall christened his dissent in Plessy as the “bible” of the NAACP’s legal crusade combating segregation. Still predominant, this viewpoint, has been clouded by an unsettling question in recent years: Did Harlan, a champion of African American equality, condone discrimination targeting other minorities? Would he have endorsed affirmative action, as liberals claim? Or would he have opposed such efforts because they treat racial groups differently, as conservatives, including Justice Clarence Thomas, now assert? If you join this SDG, think about ongoing debates and insights into the principles shaping the justice’s thinking, comprehend his unsettled legacy and cast a light on why it has morphed over time.

Shakespeare in History: 1599 and Beyond

In a single year (1599) William Shakespeare presented four of his most famous plays: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It and Hamlet. Careful historical research by James Shapiro examines the contemporary events and personalities reflected in Shakespeare’s popular plays: In Henry V, Shakespeare portrays patriotic military campaigns on foreign soil while, at the time the play is being written, the Earl of Essex is conscripting Englishmen to fight in bloody battles overseas. To understand this political history, we will also consider Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. While Julius Caesar is being staged at the Globe Theater, assassination conspiracies against the English monarch are the talk of Shakespeare’s audiences as well as the Tudor court. As You Like It affords escape from Elizabethans’ difficult daily lives featuring the best stage comics of the day. Hamlet deals with the ever-present fear that Queen Elizabeth might be assassinated. We will then consider Anthony and Cleopatra and The Tempest, in order to explore further Shakespeare’s treatment of love and revenge. In addition to these eight plays, we will read and discuss excerpts from James Shapiro’s 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, HarperCollins (2006

Empire of Ants: Are we really superior to Ants?

The SDG is based on a new, highly readable book, the Empire of Ants. It is accessible and describes the incredible research of the author and of many of her fellow Myrmecologists (Ant researcher). These researchers point out that ant societies are highly organized, successful and highly evolved forms of social organization. Some look to find solutions to human problems by studying ant societies and their organization and functioning. This book raises a variety of questions about how ant societies adapt to differing conditions. We will explore how ant societies develop tailored solutions to real world problems and compare their solutions to those of humans. It should be an intriguing and enjoyable exploration that inevitably raises a number of questions about a much older animal and one that may last much longer than humans.

The Code Breaker

Using Walter Isaacson's new book, The Code Breaker, as the core book, this SDG will explore the world of the gene, DNA, RNA, mutations, and the gene-editing technology, CRISPR. Jennifer Doudna, the co-creator of CRISPR technology, for which she and her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, are the only sixth and seventh women to be so honored. These remarkable scientists asked "how do bacteria protect themselves from viruses (bacteriophage)" and discovered the molecular mechanism for identifying how viruses attach to the bacterial outer cell wall, and how bacteria destroy these viruses - - - a remarkable example of an immune-like system in microbes and the birth of CRISPR technology from microbes to Plato members!

Travels with Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham was a British secret agent, a London physician, and the highest paid author in the world in the thirties, writing countless stories and creating plays so successful that he opened four different shows on the London stage at the same time. Ian Fleming’s spy novels were inspired by Maugham’s sophisticated secret agent stories (Maugham’s spy stories, based upon his own experiences working for British intelligence while posing as an author/playwright visiting foreign locales, also inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1937 film “Secret Agent”). Maugham was the modern author who most influenced George Orwell, and he was universally praised by other authors from Graham Greene to John le Carre (“Maugham…is a genius.” Theodore Dreiser).

Among Maugham’s novels, short stories and stage comedies, his travel stories have become the most enduring, as they manage to capture remote locations and times that Maugham personally experienced, and depicted characters and cultures now vanished. 

Like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Maugham volunteered with an army ambulance corps during the Great War; he thereafter was recruited by British intelligence to serve as a secret agent.

During his British Intelligence years, and in constant search for interesting literary material, Maugham travelled to revolutionary Russia (ordered by the head of the British secret service—known only as “R”—to “stop the Bolshevik revolution;”  Maugham reported that he had arrived too late to do so, but observed that, if he’d had gotten there a few months earlier he believed he might have been able to do so!)

Following the War, Maugham traveled extensively through British India, Malaysia, and sailed throughout the South Seas. Maugham owned a villa in the South of France where he composed his stories. His villa was seized by the Nazis during the Second World War and Maugham thereupon escaped Europe for Los Angeles, where he enjoyed yet another profitable career as a Hollywood screenwriter.

This SDG will take a tour of Maugham’s travel writing and examine the life and times of Maugham’s autobiographical characters, from pre-1914 Europe and the embryonic USSR to British India, Pago Pago, France, Spain and diverse foreign locales, featuring Maugham’s assortment of memorable characters, including the author’s suave prototype for James Bond.

How the Word is Passed, a Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

"In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history", our core book, "How the Word Is Passed" "illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view - ... in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods — like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted".  We will follow our author, Clint Smith, a poet with a PhD from Harvard, through his lyrical accounts of his visits to Monticello, Whitney Plantation, Angola Prison, Blandford Cemetery, Gorée Island (Senegal) and more.  Clint Smith is a fellow New Orleanian; his descriptions of the city of my childhood echo deeply in my memory. 

Additionally, we will review the history of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era, the rise of White Supremacy, new ways to "Pass the Word", and Reparations. 

Grant

Ulysses Grant is one of the most misunderstood figures in U.S. history.  He was much more than the inept businessman and flawed President of history or the brutal but successful general of the Civil War.  Ron Chernow in his masterful biography gives us a true understanding of a complex and complicated man.  Much like he did with his stunning biography of Hamilton, we get to see a full picture of a flawed yet complicated man.

Despite a problem with drink, a poor businessman, yet an excellent soldier, he would ultimately prove himself during the Civil War rising to become head of the Union forces and Lincoln's closest military advisor.  This of course would ultimately lead to a two term presidency which would ultimately be marred by corruption in his cabinet and staff.  Yet during his presidency he would earn the admiration by black Americans for attempting to crush the Ku Klux Klan.