A proven approach to self-care, the Alexander Technique teaches how to unlearn habitual patterns that cause unnecessary tension in everything we do. It’s used by people of all ages and abilities to enhance the performance of every activity, improve posture, and relieve the pain and stress caused by everyday misuse of the body. This class will be a gentle hands-on introduction to the basic principles of the Alexander Technique and will focus on everyday activities such as sitting and standing, walking, breathing, and performing basic tasks. You might consider taking this class if:

•  you are working on balance or recovering from an injury

•   you’d like to get through the day without extra muscle strain

•   you’ve got a lot on your mind and you’d like to be less frantic

•   you’d like to improve a specific activity, like playing a sport or a musical instrument

Instructor: Angeline LeLeux, M.AmSAT
(Class size limited to 10 students)

Angeline LeLeux began studying the Alexander Technique in 1997 and qualified as a certified teacher through the American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) in 2001. Along with her Alexander teaching practice, she taught and performed on piano for almost 25 years and credits the Technique with allowing her to continue performing after a bad case of overuse and tendinitis in her right wrist. Angeline is passionate and enthusiastic about helping others improve their quality of life and looks forward to sharing her expertise!

Are you a result of what your grandparents ate in the 1930-40’s? Are your grandchildren marked by the same history or another one marked by your 1960s nutritional options? Despite dietary intake occupying a significant role in past studies of human evolution, advances in scientific knowledge now provide updated studies discrediting commonly held dietary beliefs based upon previous biases in the 1960s through the 1980s. For instance, the 1950-60 diet- heart hypothesis, which resulted in restricting eggs, cholesterol and fats while recommending greater intake of margarines, is now correlated with increased cancer prevalence and metabolic disorders such as obesity – and problems with heart disease. Oops.

Ecology is defined as the scientific study of relationships that living organisms have with each other and with their natural environment. In the case of humans, it also includes adaptation to the ever-changing world with which we are constantly messing. To survive, we must continually adapt to problems and changes. To adapt and evolve, we must have variation in cultural, functional physiology, and genetics. Our story of adaptation and survival is written in the language of our genes and dependent upon epigenetic mechanisms to create much of the diversity among cells. Many of our phenotypic traits are derived from combined effects of genes and environment. Epigenetic mechanisms archive information from environmental factors to play a profound role influencing human reproduction, variation in growth and development, adaptive capacity, and survival. Nutrition remains the most significant environmental determinant affecting biological processes, epigenetic signaling and gene expression.

I hope to whet your appetite to explore lessons in research, science, nutrition, and heredity through a biocultural study of population variation. We will begin with the basics and discuss science in “English.” No prerequisites for this class.

Instructor: MJ Mosher, BSN, MA, PhD

MJ blends experience from diverse professional careers. She served as a clinical nurse in Denver, as a researcher through a Postdoctoral Fellowship at National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, University of North Carolina, and as a professor in anthropological genetics and nutrition at Western Washington University. She served as principal investigator in population studies with the Buryat of Siberia and Mennonite of Central Kansas, and additionally participating in studies with the Russian Old Believers in Oregon and indigenous populations of the Amazonian region of northern Peru.  All studies examined the relationships among diet, genetics/epigenetics and biomarkers of energy balance, obesity, and cholesterol.

MJ believes that teaching is a two-way experience, with teacher and students (or study participants) learning from each other.

The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2022 was the worst epidemic since the 1918 “Spanish” flu.  Now 5 years on from the pandemic’s beginning – it sometimes seems like a bad dream, doesn’t it? - what did we learn, on personal, community, and societal levels?  What would need to change to be prepared for the next one?

In this 3-part course, we will review the history and effects of the pandemic, how the US health care system, local communities, and states responded, and lessons we could learn if – if – we’re willing and able.

Instructor: Aaron Katz

Aaron Katz is Principal Lecturer Emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health where he taught graduate level courses in health policy and conducted health policy projects and research on a wide variety of issues. During his 32 years at UW, Aaron held numerous academic leadership positions and has received many awards, including the American Public Health Association’s Award for Excellence in 2006 and the Outstanding Teaching Award from the UW School of Public Health in 2004.

Aaron and his artist wife, Kate Dougherty, moved to Anacortes in April 2019 after living in Seattle for more than 40 years. They enjoy hiking, biking, pickleball, eating in the area’s great restaurants, listening to music, dancing, and traveling.

Writing about your life can seem like a daunting task. Where to begin? This class will prime the pump, with weekly writing assignments (about 750 words) presented in themes, plus writing tips. Sharing your stories confidentially with others in class will inspire you even more. You'll come to see your life through a different lens and leave a legacy for your family.

Instructor: Teru Lundsten (Class size limited to 10 students)

Teru has been teaching memoir writing in Skagit County since 2010. She worked as a personal historian, helping people preserve their life stories into books for their families. As a journalist she wrote over 200 profiles of people of all ages and from around the world. She has completed a memoir of her early years.

The loves, illusions, dependencies, and impossible expectations that all of us have to give up in order to grow.

Dealing with changes and necessary losses is the subject of this 6-week class based on the bestselling book “Necessary Losses”: by Judith Viorst. We will explore our individual ways of dealing with the many necessary changes in our lives. Mother nature has its own seasons of change reflected in our bodies, emotions, minds, relationships and life circumstances. Loving, losing, leaving, letting go of our attachments seems to be the lesson of life, “hold on tightly, let go lightly.”

Come and share your stories and memories awakened by the book’s content of your own journey in accepting life changes and losses. Open your heart and mind to the free flow of life as it is expressed in everyone’s case.

"Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Instructor: Henny Nouwen, RN, LMT    

Henny has been in private practice for 32 years using healing touch, intuition, insight and wisdom as an Integrative Healer.  She facilitated death café gatherings in Lake County, CA, serving the death and dying Ministry in the Adidam Community for the last 35 years.  Henny left home when she was 16, left her home country of Holland at 21 years old. In 2015 she lost everything (except her two cats, computer and car) in the Valley fire in CA.  She knows about dealing with Change, Loss, Grief and the emotions related to loss. The “broken heart” is the window into true spiritual life.

Henny also brings with her 18 years as a cardiovascular circulating nurse in open heart surgery and was an ordained minister in metaphysical teachings for nine years.  For more than 40 years, Henny has taught a multitude of classes on the mind/body connections, death, grief & loss, energy awareness, chakras and healing, (chakrachatter.com).

The National Register listed Skagit Hydroelectric Project and associated Newhalem Creek Hydroelectric Project is an interconnected system of dams and municipally owned company towns. Developed over a 50-year span beginning in 1918 the projects are inextricably linked, both historically and physically, to the development of publicly owned hydroelectric power for the city of Seattle.

Join Jesse G. Kennedy III, Ph.D. as he shares stories and images of the people and construction of the projects.

Laying the Groundwork – Week 1

• Where do you put a dam? The preparatory work necessary before dam construction could begin and the first dam: Newhalem Creek.

We’re in it Now: Gorge and Diablo – Week 2

• How many Gorge Dams were there? Gorge Dam and the unexpected problem that could have sunk the project. Beautiful Diablo Dam and the tiled fishpond in its powerhouse lobby.

Why did Ruby Dam Become Ross Dam? The Man Behind the Curtain: J. D. Ross – Week 3

• Have you ever noticed the front of Ross Dam? Stories about the man Franklin Delano Roosevelt called, “One of the greatest Americans of our Generation.”

Instructor: Jesse G. Kennedy III PhD   

Following twenty years of university teaching, Jesse worked in cultural resource management for North Cascades National Park Service Complex for more than twenty-six years. A Pacific Northwest native, he became the first Chief of Cultural Resource Management at the park in 1995 and continues to explore the history of Skagit County and the North Cascades through the images, stories, and structures of this heroic environment.

Of the most influential classical composers, Ludwig van Beethoven consistently ranks in the top three, along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This class will focus on the music and life of Beethoven. We will also discuss the philosophical changes that occurred around him during his life, focusing on the philosophy of art, and more specifically, music. Compositional forms will be discussed throughout the class in order to enhance the listening experience of his music. Anecdotal experiences from his personal life will be given, along with specific historical events that impacted his music. And yes, fragments of his music will be played liberally for all of our enjoyment. No prior knowledge of classical music or philosophy is required; the structure of the class will be for anyone with an interest in classical music.

Instructor: Bryan Haynes

Bryan was raised in a home that was steeped in classical music. After the requisite immersion into the Rock & Roll scene during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, Bryan rekindled his interest in the classics when his son began violin lessons. This led to a concentrated study of the lives and music of many of the classical composers over the last 15 years, and he now enjoys discussing his love of their music with anyone who will listen.

Guns, germs, and steel (to employ Jared Diamond’s actors) plied their trades with vigor as the Old World met the New World.  But what were the philosophical and ethnological underpinnings of the agents who wielded those forces sometimes knowingly and sometimes inadvertently?  What did Columbus, his masters, and his fellow adventurers expect, and what did they say, of the people they “discovered?”

How did aboriginal Americans fit in the European view of humanity, especially in the view of the deeply Christian explorers?  Were the slaughter and enslavement encouraged or discouraged?  Did anyone object as the damage unfolded?

This course in Week 1 will examine the social context of Columbus’s time, considering Aristotle’s thinking which impacted centuries of thought on barbarians outside the civilized community.  We will also look briefly at the Spanish Inquisition which, in full swing in Columbus’s time, permeated the explorers’ world. 

Week 2 will consider Columbus’s reports and what he delivered to the Spanish monarchs.  We will consider the scholarly arguments both supporting and objecting to the unfolding treatment of indigenous Central and South Americans.

Week 3 will shift focus to North America and the exploration and settlement vectors from Britian.  We will consider the evolving ethnological expressions of settlers and Pilgrims.  The course will conclude with a brief review of the United States’, including its Supreme Court’s, thought on the indigenous people of the New World.

Instructor:  Carl “Bud” Ullman

Bud is a retired attorney who has worked in the field of Indian law for 32 years.  He represented the Quinault Indian Nation and the Klamath Tribes focusing on treaty rights, particularly fishing and water rights, and on endangered species and hydropower issues.  He also served for five years in the Office of the Attorney General of the Federated States of Micronesia, the last two years as the Attorney General.