Share ideas, learn from others about gardening techniques, soil, plants, design and more - broaden your knowledge and find support from other gardeners who have similar challenges with their Upstate landscape. The group also enjoys speakers on various gardening topics and occasional field trips.  Open to current OLLI Members only.

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February 1: Green Heart Awakening, a Pendleton business - learn about organic herbs, spices, teas, and other natural wellness products. Meet at Green Heart Awakening, 102 E Main St, Pendleton, SC 29670

March 1: Native Perennials with Jon Fritz, a landscape designer. Learn all about the best perennials for our area.

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For more information and future topics, contact the facilitator, Susan Creamer, at smcreamer@gmail.com.

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Hosted by Nancy Dunn

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Why are moments in time embedded in your memory, invoking an inner warmth and huge smile? I cannot answer that, but I certainly had such a moment. It was June 12th, along the ALCAN near Sikanni, BC, 2,485 miles from home. The temperature was in the mid 50’s, the morning sun cast a crisp shadow, white puffy clouds filled the blue sky, and blue-gray mountains appeared on the distant horizon. The stony, lineless, elevated tarmac road sparkled. An endless row of bright yellow dandelions stretched ahead beckoning me forward. With strains of “got sun on my face” running through my head I was on my “long way north”, on my way to my six-month goal - 25,000 miles. Join me on a road trip through the Canadian northwest to the 49th state.

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Programs are free and open to all.

 

Registration is suggested; click here to register.

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Our books are selected by group vote and selections include fiction and nonfiction, contemporary and classic. Discussion is informal and participation is encouraged. Open to current OLLI Members only.

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February 3: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

March 3: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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For more information, contact the facilitator, Maureen Williamson, at williamsonmj@att.net.

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Hosted by David Dreher

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Bolivia, roughly the size of Texas and California combined, is a nation of contrasts. Most images are from the Altiplano, the mineral rich high plains ranging from Lake Titicaca in the north to the massive salt flats of the Salar de Uyuni in the south. Across the Andes lie the massive grasslands and tropical jungles of eastern Bolivia. Our "tour" will examine the turbulent politics of Bolivia and a trip down the infamous "Death Road" linking La Paz to the coca-rich Yungas Valley. David Dreher and his family resided in Bolivia from 2001 to 2005 during his assignment as Consul at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz. Work and personal travel took him to various places within this fascinating country.

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Programs are free and open to all.

 

Registration is suggested; click here to register.

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Hosted by Kathy McElvenny

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In this travelogue, join me on my adventure as an American living in Italy - filled with colorful visits to Italian cities like Genoa, Lucca, and the Cinque Terre. Learn about unusual Italian foods you must try, tips for getting around and of course, learn some of the language along the way. Bring your funny bone as I share bloopers and funny mistakes I personally made... so you can learn (and laugh) from me about life in this beautiful country.

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Programs are free and open to all.

 

Registration is suggested; click here to register.

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OLLI Member and Clemson Professor Emeritus of English Skip Eisiminger will host two sets of 20 questions each with a different winner announced for each set.  Topics include history, literature, and science.  

 

OLLI’s “Trivia Night” is not a Jeopardy clone; it involves no buzzers, no clocks, no pressure to perform or speak in public.  Once the moderator asks a question, contestants have all the time they need to write down their answer.  There are two warm-up rounds before the “money” rounds to help everyone feel comfortable. 

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Participation costs $2 per person and all fees are added to a prize pot. The winners of the two sets receives the prize pot from the night/ All money collected from the night is split between the two winners! Don't miss out on this OLLI Member-only night of trivia and friendly competition!

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OLLI's Trivia Night will also be held on Thursday, March 16.

Bring your most decadent dish to share!

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Hurricanes and King Cake provided (plus coffee and tea)

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Seating is limited. RSVP at 864-633-5242.

Before she passed away in 1974, Felicia Bornstein Lubliner wrote about her life in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust, including her internment in ghettos and two concentration camps, Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen. Her powerful stories have been published by her son, Irv Lubliner, an emeritus professor at Southern Oregon University. He will share excerpts from “Only Hope: A Survivor’s Stories of the Holocaust,” shedding light on his mother’s experiences and indomitable spirit, as well as his experience as a child of Holocaust survivors and his process in bringing
the book to fruition.

Irving Lubliner teaches math, blues harmonica, and literature classes for the OLLI program at Southern Oregon University (SOU). An emeritus SOU professor specializing in mathematics education, he taught for 40 years (at all levels, kindergarten through graduate school), led seminars for teachers in 39 states, and gave over 350 conference presentations, including
several keynote addresses. In 2019, he created Felabra Press (onlyhopebook.com) and published his mother’s writings about her experiences during the Holocaust, the book that will serve as the theme for this presentation.

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Free but registration is required; click here to register.

South Carolina residents aged 60 and older may audit Clemson University classes free of charge, if there is room and with permission of the instructor. How do you know what’s being offered, and who’s teaching it? Once you have permission, what’s next? We’ll walk through the process, which involves some online research, friendly emails and a visit to Sikes Hall.

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Free but registration is required; click here to register.

This presentation tells a story of international trade, natural history, and science from the days of exploration & colonization. This was a time of transfer, the movement of people, animals and plants; it is the Age of the Natural Historians who looked around the world and tried to understand what they saw. Carolina has an amazing part of this story to impart – connections to the Royal Society of England with John Lawson, Mark Catesby who documented and illustrated the birds and animals of the Carolinas one hundred years before Audubon, Linnaeus in Sweden, women gardeners, and Bartram of Philadelphia. Learn why the gardenia is named after a Charleston immigrant who was especially interested in collecting fish skins. This presentation is about the times and the people that connected Charleston history to scientific inquiry and experimentation from the late 1600s into the eighteenth century.

Ruth Miller is a certified Charleston guide and cofounder of Charleston Strolls, the city’s first daily walking tour. She has worked as an independent speaker and tour guide, as well as author: Charleston Charlie, Charleston’s Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon: Witness to History (co-author), Touring the Tombstones: Guides to Charleston’s 18th Century Graveyards, The Angel Oak Story, and Slavery to Civil Rights: A Walking Tour Guide to African-American Charleston. As a public historian, educator and storyteller, she enjoys tying Lowcountry history to the American story.

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Programs are free and open to all.

 

Registration is suggested; click here to register.

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In the aftermath of a brutal Civil War, many southerners justified their sacrifice by creating a romanticized version of the War. Prominent people like South Carolina’s Wade Hampton and LaSalle Corbell Pickett, widow of the famed Confederate General, promoted a version of the War that justified the South’s secession, casting doubt on the real causes of the conflict. This presentation explores this 19th century manifestation of “fake news” and its lasting consequences on the national memory and understanding of the Civil War.

Ron Roth is former director and CEO of the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, and director of the Nebraska Museum of Art of the University of Nebraska. He has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions from the Patriotic Paintings of N.C. Wyeth to a major exhibition with international glass artist Dale Chihuly. As an independent curator and consultant, he researched and wrote the script for the permanent exhibition area of the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, and its exhibit on the Underground Railroad in central Pennsylvania. Roth’s recently published book, The Civil War in the South Carolina: How a Confederate Artillery Battery and a Black union Regiment Defined the War, received outstanding critical praise.

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Programs are free and open to all.

 

Registration is suggested; click here to register.

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