Lyceum offers special events

Never stop! Never stop learning, that is. Lyceum provides just what you need to get your new knowledge fix. Events beginning on April 30, the day before the Kentucky Derby, with a special session focused-learning about the Derby and including a how-to on making mint juleps. And the final event, on July 10, will be a garden tour featuring 10 gardens, partnering with Central United Methodist Church. And there are 30 events in between.

Like so many businesses and other organizations, Lyceum has been hit hard financially by the pandemic. Our 2020 spring sessions were cut short and the fall, winter and spring sessions have been entirely via Zoom, a platform that requires both Internet access and a fair amount of tech savvy in which to participate. Consequently, membership has dropped, only inching back thanks partly to our new partnership with Binghamton University Alumni Association. Now Lyceum members hail from all over the country. These special classes and events are designed to recoup some of our financial losses.

The first two weeks of May will be filled with two-hour Zoom classes, with topics covering the real Knights Templar, Living on Mars, the Cinema of India, and a tribute to John LeCarre, Shakespeare, citizen’s science, wildflowers, super foods, the eldercare crisis, and more. For new members, there will be a discounted registration fee of $5.00. These special events are already available to those who have become members during earlier sessions. Individual sessions and events will range from $12.50 to $20.00, depending on the duration of time.

Taking advantage of using Zoom to the extreme, two sessions will beam from Adelaide, South Australia. Phillip Rasch and I will provide a vicarious tour of southeast Australia and the South Island of New Zealand while his son, Andrew, will help us understand how the Australian system of government works. These two classes will begin at 6 p.m., but Phillip and Andrew will be getting up early to offer them at 7:30 a.m., the next day. They are 13 and a half hours ahead of us. Other long-distance classes will be coming in from Florida, Maryland, Watervliet, and Ithaca.

Non-Zoom events are also scheduled. An all-day clay works class will be offered at Roberson on May 7, and on June 16 Dr. Martin Bidney is doing a poetry reading of his poems at Cutler Gardens, poems that he is billing as “Interfaith Masterworks: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Poems.” Participants are urged to buy lunch at Taste NY afterwards. The garden tour features three gardens in the Endwell area, four in Owego, and three in the Newark Valley / Berkshire area and will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Masks will be required at all onsite events.

Go to lyceum.binghamton.edu or Google “Binghamton Lyceum” and register today. This is a singular opportunity for new members to try out Lyceum by paying a minimal registration fee, and to never stop learning.

(George Lohmann is Lyceum Vice President and Program Committee Chair and a Resident of Berkshire, N.Y.)

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