Needham Community Education

While the subject of UFOs still draws stigma and skepticism, it has been moving more towards mainstream acceptance, particularly in light of the release earlier this year of Dan Farah's documentary "Age of Disclosure" and of Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day," which he himself has characterized as not entirely fictional. In this two-session course, the instructor will begin by laying out the current state of play re governmental disclosure, and then go on to show how the "nuts and bolts" aspects of ufology inevitably lead to other areas of "high strangeness" and ultimately to questions about the nature of consciousness itself. Finally, to encourage further independent exploration of the topic, the instructor will introduce and summarize the work of some of the Wise Men and Women of Ufology, including Dr. Jacques Vallee, Dr. Garry Nolan, Peter Levenda, and Professors Diana Pasulka, Jeff Kripal and James Madden. Limited to 20.

In the turbulent decades following Russia's Great Reforms, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky poured the tensions of an era — social upheaval, personal anguish, Slavic nationalism — into four extraordinary symphonic works. This 2 hour session traces the arc from the brooding fatalism of the Fourth Symphony through the Manfred and Fifth to the devastating Sixth (Pathétique), weaving together the composer's biography, the political tremors of Tsarist Russia, and the musical language that made Tchaikovsky the most emotionally direct voice of the Romantic age. Limited to 50.