PAST 2022 Fall Membership and Course Selection

  • PLEASE sign-up for your LINEC Membership as part of your registration for Fall courses. First add Annual LINEC Membership along with any courses that you want to attend.
  • Please remember, we no longer have household registrations. Each person registers for their Annual LINEC Membership and courses individually.
  • Click the green register button to select a course in the listing. Once on the course page you will click a blue button to add your selection to your shopping cart.
  • When making selection for payment please wait till system accepts it. Then scroll down to the bottom to finish the process.



African-American Poetry

Mondays, 10 AM – Noon | Oct 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, & Nov 7

Leader: Don Melander

Participants who join for LINEC’s fall term may continue or leave at any time after that, as poetry discussions are ongoing throughout the year. We are currently reading and discussing poems collected by Kevin Young in the Library of America Anthology African-American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, which we are reading from back to front cover. New or used copies may be purchased online or ordered from your local independent bookseller. Additional poems by each poet will be provided by the instructor.


Travelogues With Eric

Tuesdays, 10 AM – Noon | Oct 4, 11, 18, 25, Nov 1, & 8

Instructor: Eric Simon

In each presentation we discuss travel itineraries and view slideshows from several international trips. Each week we will discuss travel itineraries accompanied by photographs of such places as Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Hawaii, southeast Asia, Italy, and the Caribbean. (This course does not overlap the 2021 course and includes all new places.) 


*The Stage Shapes the Play and the Play Shapes the Stage: How Shakespeare’s Plays Reveal Themselves Through Production

Tuesdays, 1 – 3 PM | Oct 4, 11, 18, 25, Nov 1, & 8

Instructor: Glenn Stuart

*This is an in-person class. Location will be announced after registration.

Director Michael Bogdanov observed the following about producing Shakespeare’s plays: “The job of the artist in the theatre is illumination and reconstruction, and the endless task of assimilating the objects of the past into the interests of the present, on the understanding that the physical artifact which is the occasion for such an enterprise will be retained in some place in its original form, so that it is available for anyone else who wishes to make a competitive reconstruction of his own. It’s an expanding universe, there is no end to it, it is a continuous creation, rather as the cosmologists have shown us the universe is.”


Modern Art and Why Contemporary Art Isn’t

Wednesdays, 10 AM –  Noon | Oct 5, 12, 19, 26

Instructor: Gail Smuda

Since Modern Art has a very specific time frame, we will discuss why this is nice and tidy for art historians on the one hand and impractical on the other. Also, our class will discuss (1) how to visit a museum/gallery, (2) ways to look at Modern and Contemporary Art, (3) artists who were ahead of and behind the curve, and (4) two of the following films: Frida, Pollock, Velvet Buzzsaw (viewers beware), Kusama and Infinity, Faces Places (Agnes Varda and French artist JR), Paper and Glue (French artist JR), Mr. Turner, Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy), Midnight in Paris (artistic scene of the 1920s). 


*American Novel Reading Group

1st Wednesdays, 1 – 3 PM | Oct 5 & Nov 2

Leader: John McCausland

*This is an in-person class, meeting at the Tucker Free Library in Henniker.

New members are welcome to join this on-going group any time. The group meets throughout the year, on the first Wednesday afternoon of each month to discuss a novel chosen by the group from several “100 Best American Novels” lists. Choices have included Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Native Son and most recently John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Henry James’s The Ambassadors. Discussions are lively and informal, with the facilitator and members contributing background and historical and literary insights. Those joining the group in October should come having read Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.


America’s Founding Fathers

Thursdays, 10 AM – Noon | Oct 6, 13, 20, 27, Nov 3, & 10

Leaders: Dick Hesse, Mary Lee Sargent

The final term of this Great Courses course centers on the problems the founders faced in implementing the new government. George Washington declined a third term and left the political scene. John Adams struggled with major problems at home and abroad. Thomas Jefferson brought a different political philosophy but did little better. What to do about state claims of power, religious fervor, and national defense? The “Founders” are stepping aside and dying off. You do not have to have taken previous classes to join this one.


Film Seminar: Alfred Hitchcock, 2nd Series

Fridays, 10 AM – Noon | Oct 7, 14, 21, 28, Nov 4, & 11

Leaders: Don Melander, Mary Lee Sargent

This seminar meets round the year every Friday morning from 10 to noon, but folks may join or leave at any time. We completed the first Hitchcock series of 7 films in the Summer Term, and are now screening/discussing the second series in the Fall Term: Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1941), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). We began the first series with the 1934 version of this film. Participants screen the week’s film on TV or computer during the week prior to Friday’s discussions.