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Renaissance Society Kicks Off Rendezvous at Sac State
By Spectrum Staff
At
a spirited signup session last week in the CSU-Sacramento Student
Union, more than 70 men and women enrolled as new members of the
Renaissance Society, a learning-in-retirement program now starting
its 24th year at the university.
The signups brought the society’s membership to around 870, with additional
newcomers expected to join over the coming year. The 2008-09 fall semester will
begin on campus after Labor Day.
The Renaissance Society was started in 1986 by a small group of Sacramento area
residents who felt that older persons, particularly retirees, could benefit themselves
and the community as a whole through a program of participation in a variety
of educational courses.
Among those at the Renaissance “Rendezvous,” as the pre-semester
seminar registration is called, was 89-year-old Dick Tarble, a South Land Park
resident who was one of the first-year members of the Renaissance Society when
it was first established.
Long retired as chief hydrologist for a federal river forecasting agency in Sacramento,
Tarble has been a perennial leader in organizing and leading the weekly seminars,
many of them dealing with water problems faced in California and elsewhere in
the world.
“The Renaissance Society has been important to me for several reasons,” he
said. “It has kept my mind alive, and I have made many dear friends in
the program over the years.”
Tarble was joining a bustling scene at the Hinde Auditorium in the SCUS Student
Union, where several hundred new and long-time Renaissance members were checking
out the various seminars being offered this coming semester.
The catalog consisted of programs in diversified areas of human knowledge such
as subjects dealing with American intervention into the affairs of other nations,
grand opera, great explorers, little known stories of Old Sacramento, 20th century
poetry and some great court trials in history.
At the court trials table, the seminar’s coordinator, Mike Sands, and his
assistant, Bob Taylor, were answering questions and enrolling members interested
in taking the course. Sands is a retired criminal defense attorney who also served
on the Sacramento City Council for eight years in the 1970s and as a law professor
at McGeorge Law School. With him at the table was Bob Taylor, retired Capitol
bureau reporter for the old Sacramento Union.
Among the trials being lined up for discussion during the semester are those
for O.J. Simpson and Sacco-Vanzetti. Also on the seminar agenda are two San Francisco
trials — for Dan White — the San Francisco supervisor convicted of
murdering Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, and Harry Bridges,
the San Francisco labor leader who withstood several efforts by the government
to deport him as an accused Communist to his native Australia.
The presentations during this and most of the other seminars will be made by
the students themselves as they take turns presenting their reports and discussing
them with others in the class.
Most of the seminars are held on Fridays, when Sac State’s regular student
population is much lower than other days of the week and classroom space is available
for Renaissance members.
Travel presentations and other programs are being held in the morning in large
campus meeting rooms. During the lunch hour, members gather for a “Cracker
Barrel” discussion of current events. At 3 p.m. on Fridays, after the seminar
programs are over, there’s a weekly one-hour forum featuring speakers from
the press, the legislature, academia and other fields of major public interest.
Renaissance president Harriette Work, a long-time member of the society, expressed
her appreciation for the university’s support of the organization and its
programs over the years. She said the partnership with CSUS brings benefits to
the university, the members and the community as a whole.
Membership in the Renaissance Society is $60 per year, and it comes with other
side benefits including free-parking privileges in specified campus lots and
access to the library. Further information about the Renaissance Society and
its programs can be obtained by phoning the organization’s office at (916)
278-7834 or accessing the website at www.csus.edu/org/.
This page and its contents ©2008
Metropolitan News Company, Inc.
