The OLLI @Berkeley Blog showcases the voices and perspectives of our community (members, faculty and staff) as well as news from and about OLLI. It's a place to share and reflect, contribute and engage. We welcome submissions from current members, new and returning faculty, and staff. Personal observations of life in this moment, of growing older, of self-discoveries large and small are just a handful of possible areas to explore. Please send your questions or article (ideally 800 words or less) to berkeley_olli@berkeley.edu and we'll get back to you. You must log into your OLLI account to comment on a post.
At the end of my second appointment with the head of hematology at the University of California, San Francisco, the doctor asked me how I was handling my diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. I said I really didn’t think about it very much.He laughed and said, “In your case, denial is...
It was but four years ago during the 2016 election that our then esteemed OLLI @Berkeley professor of Philosophy, the late Richard Lichtman, gave a class on Marxist theory. During that class he predicted an existential threat to our society should Donald Trump win that upcoming November election....
I was reading about a particular public figure the other day, as I have been doing for some four years now, whom I will refer to as “my crazy uncle”, for want of a better term. This guy is so bizarre that he almost defies belief. So, with my background as a psychiatrist, I put on my thinking cap...
“The truth is helpless when up against perception.” -- Zack W. VanDuring these threatening and uncertain times, many of us are anxious and fearful. Hungry for a sense of certainty, we often grasp for instant answers – frequently leading to erroneous, often polarizing conclusions.A stunning example...
I feel compelled to write this very brief review in order to share this book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder with my OLLI classmates because of its prescience, relevance, and constructive nature. It is prescient because it was written in 2017, yet has...
In 1969, I was serving as a field representative for CARE in Algeria. In April of that year, I traveled to Madrid to visit friends. Late one afternoon, on the 30th, I was walking down the Gran Via in the center of the city when a large black sedan screeched to a halt ahead of me, pulling on to...
In a recent Monday writing group, a friend and fellow member wrote about his years at a boutique accounting firm in San Francisco at the time of early computer assisted auditing. That small firm became a giant international one through mergers.Many of us have lived through mergers — in banking,...
In March 2020, the world changed overnight for everyone save “essential workers” and emergency trips. Standing room only BART and Caltrain cars, city buses, and public and private shuttles emptied. Only those with no other choice, were riding transit. Across all transit agencies, ridership...
It's safe to say that past several months have been — how to put it? — eventful ones.Now that we've tucked two all-remote-learning terms and a busy Summer Bridge program under our proverbial belt, we can confess that many of us on our side of the screen — OLLI faculty and staff — felt...
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