Discover pickleball and learn why everyone is talking about pickleball! This beginner friendly class introduces you to the essentials: basic rules, how to keep score, where to play, and how to find playing partners. You’ll develop core skills—including serving, sustaining a rally, and placing the ball with purpose—through a mix of brief instruction, fun drills, and open play. No athletic background is required-just a willingness to move, learn, and laugh. Please note: Good balance and the ability to bend your knees are important for safe participation. If you have concerns about your mobility or health, consult your healthcare provider before enrolling. Assisted by Sam Haag and Sue Fassett

This class will pick up the story of the travails of the US, primarily from the political angle, beginning in the 1970s and bring it up to the present. The twilight of New Deal liberalism, the breakup of the Roosevelt coalition, the fracturing of American culture, the rise of the "New Right," the search for identities of all kinds, the Age of Terror and a Global War against it that at first promised conservative dominance and eventually wrecked the party that promoted it, a worldwide Great Recession and then a pandemic that provoked an explosion of populist grievances we're still reckoning with, and more, will be discussed. Readings will be about 20+ pages a week, and will be distributed. $5 copy fee due at first class.

This welcoming, beginner-level course helps learners build confidence using provided computers, smartphones, and essential online tools. Over 10 weeks, students will learn how to use devices, set up accounts and manage passwords, send and receive email, navigate the internet safely, use social media, complete online forms, shop and bank online securely, and access helpful digital resources. Smartphone basics such as texting, calling, and using apps are also included. A skills checklist will guide learning and assess progress. Students who successfully complete the course may check out a computer from the FLI Lending Library for home use. This course is free due to a generous grant from the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County.

The Psalms have an interesting history: regarded as sacred scripture by Jews, Christians, and Muslims -- sung in ancient times and still sung today. In this class we will study the psalms themselves and their history, including their importance in the development of music and musical notation. We will learn how the singing of psalms changed from ancient times through the middle ages and into modern times. We will also learn how to sing psalms in English -- both the simplified chant of plainsong and the psalms transformed into hymns in modern hymnals. (You won't have to sing if you don't want to.)

This course is a continuation of Spanish Level 4. The objective is to practice vocabulary and grammatical topics through conversation. While Spanish 4 emphasized speaking in the past tenses, Spanish V will go on to include conversational practice in conditional and future time frames.

Would you like to earn income without having to work a job? Would you like to buy insurance that protects against losses you may experience in your stock market investments? Do you have an interest in trading stocks but fear that you will either lose too much money or have insufficient funds to make the effort worthwhile? If so, options trading may be a good alternative since they can be used to address each of these issues. This class will begin with the basics of options trading and work step-by-step through what you must understand to incorporate them into your financial strategy. Recommended text: The Options Playbook by Brian Overby (Expanded 2nd edition 2024).

Once each month, meet a naturalist at a County Park for an introduction to what’s going on with plants, animals and insects as nature reawakens from winter. Then head out for a naturalist-led hike to look and listen for nature in action. Dates and locations: March 6 at St. Patrick's County Park; April 3 at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve; May 1 at Bendix Woods County Park. All dates meet 9-11 am.

Contra dance, popular in the British Isles and in America since colonial times, might remind you of the dancing you see in movies based on Jane Austen novels -- or of the hoedowns in westerns. Couples progress through the dance in long parallel lines doing figures such as allemande, dosido, circle, star, promenade, and swing. We will also learn some circle dances using these figures. We will learn dances from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada and America, dating from the 1700s through the 1900s. Roy Somerville assisting.