Past Adult Classes

Detective Fiction and Religion

Carol Daeley

Wednesday, January 31

Board Room, 2-4


The novel to be discussed will be The Togakushi Legend Murders and its focus on Shinto. New class participants are welcome. If you would like to be on the course email list, send your address to cdaeley@austincollege.edu


Four Fall Sessions, Four Spring Sessions

Remaining Fall Sessions Wednesday, October 25, and December 6

Board Room, 2-3:30


Because detective fiction emerged as a defined genre in the 19th century, its affinities with scientific realism, close observation, and rational thinking are often stressed. But there is also a close association between detective fiction and what is, or appears to be, supernatural. Many detective novels build their plots around specific religions. We will discuss three novels in the fall and four in the spring of 2024. Religions central to the selected novels include various forms of Christianity, Islam, Navajo, Hopi, Crow, and Cheyenne religions, and Shinto.


If you would like to be on the course mailing list, email Carol at cdaeley@austincollege.edu. She will be sharing course material ahead of class sessions. The first novel to be discussed on October 4 will be Ausma Zehanat Khan’s "A Deadly Divide." The complete reading list will be available at the AE table on Sundays and by email.


Carol Daeley is a Congregation member and a retired professor of literature, though professors of literature never actually retire. She developed several kinds of courses in detective fiction because she wanted, once in a while, to talk in the classroom about literature that students read when nobody made them do it. Presenting this material is even more fun through Adult Education because there are no tests or papers to grade.


The Other Georgia: Visiting the Silk Road in the Southern Caucasus

Bruce Hope and Paula Hammett

Sunday, February 4

Founders Room, 12 noon

Bruce and Paula will share photos and experiences from their visit to the fascinating country of Georgia, where Eastern Europe meets Central Asia. Cuisine, winemaking, post-Soviet history, and much more.


An Exceptional Partner: What Makes India Important—and Different

Arzon Tarapore

Friday February 9

4-5 PM, Glaser Center Sanctuary, Reception in Social Hall 5-6 PM


This talk is sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Sonoma County. All are invited ($10 donation encouraged). For more information, email Linda Lambert.


We’re Talkin’ Trash! 

Emily Harris  

Sunday, February 18  

12 Noon, Founders Room 


Recology Waste Zero supervisor Emily Harris will demystify what to do with your trash and what happens to it after it's hauled away.  

Evolutionary Spirituality: Spirit’s Call to a New Vision for Christianity

Rev. Bev Spears

Saturday, February 11, 10:30-12:30; Saturday, February 18, 10:30-12:30; Saturday, February 25, 10:30-12:30

Board Room, UUCSR

Come discover an approach to Christianity that is expansive, adaptive, inclusive, and sees spiritual growth and development as an integrative part of Unitarian Universalism. Christianity, far from a rigid, static belief system, is a dynamic, ever-evolving spiritual. You do not have to have attended the first meeting to attend the second.

Not Worth Killing

John Mutz, Eric Ivey

Tuesday, March 21, 7-8:30 

Sanctuary, UUCSR

After showing Not Worth Killing, a short and powerful documentary about an unlikely friendship between a nun and a convicted murderer serving life without parole in Alabama, there will be a panel discussion led by the director, Eric Ivey, and the producer, John Mutz.

History of UU with Rev Dave Clements

Tuesday, April 11, 6-8 PM, Board Room

Healing the Colonizer Mind with Louise Dunlap

Saturday September 23rd, 10:00—2:30

Founders Room


Louise Dunlap, author of the important book Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind, will be giving our Sunday sermon on September 17th. She will then lead a workshop on the following Saturday, September 23rd.

Now the News: A History of Broadcast News with Alan Bell

Six Sessions, October 10, 17, 24 and November 14, 21, 28

Board Room, 1-3


Broadcast news—i.e., news sent out electronically over the airwaves—may have started with a boat race in Ireland in 1898. Now, broadcast news unites and divides billions around the world. So, how did we get from there to here?


This lecture series will take you from Morse and Bell (no relation—that we know of) through the parallel developments of the newsreel and radio, converging in mid-20th century with TV news and further evolving into 24-hour cable news.


It’s a story as interesting as the news itself, filled with adventure, treachery, sacrifice, ego, commitment, and of course, money ... lots and lots of money. And featuring some fabulous characters: D.W. Griffith, Walter Winchell, Lowell Thomas, H.V. Kaltenborn, Edward R. Murrow (and his “boys”), Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters, Connie Chung, Ted Turner, and dozens more. The class will include numerous excerpts and examples from newsreels and radio & TV news over the past 100+ years.


Alan Bell is a long-time Congregation member with 20 years of experience in television, mostly as a public TV producer, and 15 years as a professor of communications.