By Howie Silver
It’s June in January,
Because I’m in love,
But only because I’m in love with you.
This wonderful sentiment comes from a Bing Crosby #1 hit in 1934, “June in January,” written by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin. Whether you’re in Chicago, New York, Boston, or right here in the Pacific Northwest, January is going to be cold and/or rainy. So, it’s nice to have a love to make it feel like June.
January is also a month for fresh starts and renewal. Psychologically, there is something special about putting up a new calendar for the new year. The new year is traditionally a
time for life-changing resolutions. Typically, these resolutions are of a negative form: stop smoking, stop drinking, stop watching so much TV, stop overeating sweets, stop this, and stop that.
While it is wise to curtail bad habits, positive habits are also great to cultivate. In fact, there was a 1985 book by William Glasser, “Positive Addiction,” which encouraged people to replace negative addictions with positive addictions.
One positive resolution people make usually involves exercise. “I’m going to join a health club or YMCA and start exercising,” they say. The regulars at the health club snidely refer
to these folks as “The Resolutionaries” and predict that they’ll be gone by mid-February. But that shouldn’t discourage your attempts at physical fitness. Prove the regulars wrong and become a regular yourself.
Another strong and painless positive change is learning. Exercising your mind and keeping it fit is as important as keeping your body fit (and perhaps more so). There is a saying: You don’t stop learning when you get old; you get old when you stop learning.
Speaking personally as a senior, I didn’t feel comfortable taking courses at a local university or community college with students my grandchildren’s age. And I certainly didn’t want to cram for quizzes and tests. I just wanted to learn and be intellectually stimulated again. That was my positive change.
Then I discovered the Creative Retirement Institute (CRI), a lifelong-learning program at Edmonds College that has been around now for over 30 years. It offers short non-credit, college-level courses at a modest cost. The courses meet once a week and are between one and four weeks long.
CRI is not alone; the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is associated with the University of Washington and offers similar non-credit courses to people over 50. For those of us seniors who are comfortable with non-traditional format learning, there are programs such as The Great Courses, which provides a wide variety of over 800 courses that can be streamed.
Another online resource is BabyBoomer.org, which offers articles, podcasts, articles, and books, all aimed at seniors. All these programs have everything you loved about school: the excitement of learning, interesting professors/instructors, making friends with your classmates, and having fun. And of course, there’s the public library, which has a lot of real paper books (remember those?), plus electronic and audible books.
CRI and Osher and these other programs have none of the things you hated about school: no term papers, no quizzes or examinations, no oral reports, no grades, no $200 books to buy, and no pressure. Basically, all the laughs and none of the tears.
CRI is just the pure fun of learning and meeting other intellectually curious seniors. This upcoming term has 44 classes to choose from. Almost all the students are retired and take two or more classes. Some of the classes have already started, but there are still about 32 classes that start in late January and February and March.
The courses are taught by instructors who are very well versed in the topics that they are teaching. Many instructors (like me) are retired college professors, and all of them bring extensive personal and professional expertise as well as enthusiasm for their topic. Many CRI courses (about 60%) are taught in person in small classrooms. About 40% of the classes, however, are taught online using the Zoom platform.
For arts and music lovers, there are courses on Drawing Lifelike Portraits; Morisot and Cassatt: Impressionist Women; Bach in Leipzig: The First Cantata Cycle; Symphonic Pipe Dreams; Composers Behaving Badly.
For history and current-events buffs, there are courses on Gilded Palaces & Gelded Parliaments: The Rise (and Fall!) of Authoritarianism Around the World; The Parthenon: Context and Controversy at the British Museum; Along the Danube: Eastern Europe Today; A Survey of the Pharmaceutical Industry; From Pilgrims to Plutocrats Part I; Early Medieval Lindisfarne AD 600- 1100.
If you’re interested in technology, there are courses on Getting to Know Google Drive; Creating, Sharing, and Collaborating in Google Docs.
If literature and drama are your thing, there are courses on Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”; CRI’s Expanded Book Discussion Group; Freewriting Workshop Including Memoir Writing Prompts; Reading the Canterbury Tales Part V; and A Haunting Down South: Latina Horror Literature.
There are courses of a sociological or philosophical nature: Children of Fast Track Parents; The Psychology of Depression: Culture & Stigma; Horror as Social Commentary; and Ethics in Modern Life.
There are courses in health, science, and nature: Crazy, Wild Facts About Wild Animals; Global Warming Effects on Climate Change; Wildlife of Washington and Wildlife of The West; All About Wolves; Equinoxes and Solstices: How We View the Earth in Space Through the Seasons; The Fourth Dimension: One Billion Years of Washington Geology; and Strengthening the Human-Animal Bond: In Community.
If you are not familiar with CRI (or the other programs), here’s your chance to make a positive change in your life, have a delightful time that will stimulate you, and keep your mind young. Make this part of your New Year’s resolution. See you there.
Registration for the Winter 2025 Term at the Creative Retirement Institute (CRI) of Edmonds College has begun. The full list of classes, their times, dates, instructors, and complete descriptions can be found at www.edmonds.edu/cri . [At the website, click VIEW CLASSES; then click on WINTER 2025 — Register today.]
Howie Silver is a retired professor of mathematics and computer science from the Chicago area. He now lives in Mill Creek and teaches mini courses for seniors with the Creative Retirement Institute.
