Arlington Community Education Fall 2020 Class Descriptions Adult Classes Steve Almond is the author of ten books, including the New York We Need to Talk Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Boston Globe, The Dispensary Next Door: and others. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Cannabis Is Coming to Arlington… Harvard and Wesleyan University. For many years, he hosted the popular podcast Dear Sugars with his pal Cheryl Strayed. His newest Will the Grass Be Greener? book, Bad Stories, is a reckoning with our national moment. He Moderator: Steve Almond lives in the lower east side of Arlington with his wife Erin and three Panelists: Erin Zwirko, Dianna Dixon, Cindy Sheridan Curran children. Thursday, Oct. 15 | 7:30–9:30 pm | $10 With a cannabis dispensary coming to Arlington, the time has come to Erin Zwirko is currently the Assistant Director for Planning and have a frank discussion about what it will mean for our town to have Community Development for the Town of Arlington where she has medical and recreational cannabis available to the general public. led the zoning regulations related to adult-use marijuana. She has What are the benefits and risks to having a “pot shop” alongside our worked with the town’s Marijuana Study Group, and has helped coffee houses and liquor stores? How, if at all, will this change the review applications submitted for a Host Community Agreement from discussions we have with our kids about drug use? And, what the the town. In addition to this, she contributes to a variety of efforts heck actually happens inside a dispensary?! To help us unpack all related to implementation of the Master Plan and Housing Production this, our moderator, Steve Almond, will talk with experts. Plan. Steve Almond, moderator Dianna Dixon trained as a homeopath in London, returning to Panelists: Arlington 20 years ago to raise her daughter. Now Dianna advises • Erin Zwirko, Assistant Director for Planning and Community patients and clients about cannabis at what is currently the largest Development for the Town of Arlington and busiest dispensary in the country, in Brookline. With direct • Dianna Dixon, advises clients at what is currently the largest and experience working on the floor of this bustling store, Dianna speaks busiest dispensary in the country to hundreds of people every day about this effective natural medicine. • Cindy Sheridan Curran, Court/Home Liaison and Readiness/ Emergency Management Coordinator for Arlington Public Cindy Sheridan Curran is the Court/Home Liaison and the Schools Readiness/Emergency Management Coordinator for Arlington Public Schools with a wide variety of experience working with at-risk youth. She presently supports students and families through her position and roles as the attendance officer, homeless liaison, and foster care point of contact. In addition, Cindy has served as the Arlington youth court diversion coordinator for the last 14 years and the facilitator for Guiding Good Choices, an evidenced-based curriculum to help parents guide children toward healthy decision making. Arlington Community Education Fall 2020 N New class D Daytime W/E Weekend Register Now at ArlingtonCommunityEd.org | [email protected] 1 Highlights N The Grateful Dead’s Influence on Bob Dylan Boston’s Bicycling Renaissance (Lecture) Harold Lepidus Lorenz J. Finison, Ph.D., Co-sponsored by East Arlington Livable Streets & Tuesday, Oct. 13 | 6:30–8:30 pm | $35 Arlington Bicycle Advisory Committee Join other music fans and come wrap your head around Dylan’s Thursday, Nov. 19 | 7:00–8:15 pm | $15 dalliance with the Dead. This class will examine how people’s Trace Boston’s history of cycling with author Lorenz J. Finison, Ph.D. prejudices and perceptions—even of such rebels as Dylan and as he discusses his newest book. Today, cycling is an increasingly the Dead–influence their opinions, and how to overcome those popular sport and mode of transportation for those looking to stay limitations. Very little is as divisive to Bob Dylan’s fans as his 1987 fit, be energy efficient, or to simply avoid Boston traffic, but the trend tour with the Grateful Dead. Two decades into his career, and at an took a deep dive for most of the 20th century, when automobiles artistic crossroads, Dylan collaborated with the Dead’s Jerry Garcia, became more common. Boston had been a hub for cyclists up who helped him reconnect with his own songs by rekindling his love until the early 1900s, and it took until the 1970s for its popularity of performing as a sympathetic and supportive kindred spirit. The to rise again. Join Finison as he explores the cycling renaissance Dead’s lack of convention likely appealed to Dylan’s iconoclastic of the 1970s through newspaper archives, records of local bike leanings, and at one point, he even asked to become a band organizations, and interviews with Boston-area cyclists. Discover member. In 1988, Dylan began his so-called “Never Ending Tour,” eye-opening stories of local history as Finison discusses race, now in its fourth decade (but temporarily on hold) which followed the gender, and class as it relates to questions including: Who can ride Dead’s paradigm, changing setlists and touring regardless of having with whom? Who is included and who is excluded? This is Finison’s anything new to promote. Regular interpretations of Dead songs second book about the history of cycling in Boston. infiltrated Dylan’s setlists, while the Dead almost became a Dylan cover band. After Garcia’s death, Dylan’s collaborations with Grateful N Art in the Open: Appreciating Public Art (Lecture) Dead members continued. In short, with the Dead, Dylan was reborn. Paul Angiolillo (Guest: Adria Arch) Co-sponsored by Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture N The Beatles’ Solo Years Re-Examined Thursday, Nov. 12 | 6:30–8:30 pm | $25 Harold Lepidus From the comfort of your home, join us to enjoy, appreciate, learn, Tuesday, Nov. 17 | 6:30–8:30 pm | $35 and offer your thoughts about public art. We’ll look at and talk about The Beatles are one of the most documented and analyzed artists all kinds of art in public spaces: environmental or “land” art, social, of all time, yet how they are perceived evolves as more evidence political, commemorative, art for art’s sake, and more. Whether it’s surfaces. In the 50 years since the band broke up, their company Maya Lin’s celebrated Vietnam War memorial in D.C., the giant, Apple Corps (the “original” Apple) continues to release chart-topping playful sculptures at the Storm King sculpture garden in the Hudson products, while the surviving band members record and tour, and Valley, installations along the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, what they say and do continues to generate headlines. So many of or Andy Galsworthy’s “Watershed,” the new permanent installation the myths surrounding the Beatles, and how they related to each at the DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park in Lincoln, outdoor art other, are from contemporaneous stories based on assumptions is all around, if one looks. Public art can delight, move, inspire, and and unconfirmed reports, sometimes generated by members of calm–or be controversial or even inflammatory. What makes a piece the band themselves, that have been accepted unchallenged for “work”—or not? What has public art tried to express in the past, what decades. Take a fresh look at the Beatles’ history, from the final years is it about nowadays, and where might it be going? We’ll also meet of the band to their early solo work, and beyond, and get a unique and talk with one of the founders of Arlington Commission for Arts understanding of this legendary band. Through readings and audio- and Culture, Adria Arch, about public art right here in Arlington. visual evidence, author and music scholar Harold Lepidus will guide both experts and novices through John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s Murder, Martyrs & Mysticism career paths, while analyzing how the music press and other media Boston by Foot influenced how the Beatles were perceived. Thursday, Oct. 29 | 7:00–8:30 pm | $19 Throughout history, some Bostonians have behaved badly, and N Understanding 20th Century Dance bad things have happened to good people. This class focuses on Kelley Donovan murderers and their victims, execution and disaster, people killed 5 Wednesdays | Oct. 7–Nov. 4 | 6:30–8:00 pm | $75 for their faith, and one who talked to the spirits. Meet the woman Enhance your appreciation of dance as an exciting and ever- who lured Houdini to Boston, the Quaker hanged for her faith, the changing performance art. Develop an overall familiarity with dance serial killer who terrified the city and the duelist who died on Boston as a contemporary art form through readings, video and discussion. Common. We will travel through time from 1688 to 1942, along the Enlarge your critical perspective by discussing issues in dance, way meeting killers, grifters, gangsters, heroes, cops, and grave comparing points of view of major choreographers, and considering robbers. Learn about duels, dastardly doings, and the conflagration their particular contributions. We will explore many 20th century that changed America’s fire regulations. Take a shadowy virtual choreographers/significant dance figures including: Isadora Duncan, walk with Boston By Foot through the City on a Hill’s less shining Nijinsky, Ballet Russe, Balanchine, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, history. Please note: Children ages 10+ are welcome to register if Doris Humphrey, Merce Cunningham, Katherine Dunham, Liz accompanied by a registered adult. Lerman, Bill T. Jones, Mark Morris, Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, Pilobolus, Twyla Tharp and Judson Church.