Cheryl Clark, retired professor of philosophy at CSULB, will be riding her motorcycle this winter to Leisure World where she will be teaching The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, both Freud and Einstein considered it the best novel ever written.
Cheryl grew up in Southern California and attended UCLA where she majored in both math and philosophy. For her graduate work, Cheryl chose philosophy.
While still in graduate school, she began teaching part-time at Santa Monica College, Mount Saint Mary’s and USC. In 1968 she accepted a position in the philosophy department at CSULB where she taught for 32 years and loved every moment of it. She taught many courses including symbolic logic, Plato, and philosophy in literature.
Cheryl’s reading ignited her passion for Dostoyevsky’s works, especially The Brothers Karamazov. She will teach the novel in two sections, the first this winter session and the second in the spring.
Dostoyevsky’s novels are based on ideas so the goal of the course will be to understand and interpret what Dostoyevsky is saying about faith, doubt, love, evil, humanity, and other universals.
An intrepid adventurer with an incisive intellect, Cheryl has driven her motorcycle thousands of miles through the years. When she won a National Science Foundation scholarship at Yale University, she drove round-trip to attend the seminar.
On one trip, a large moose ran out in front of her cycle. Cheryl fell off, a motorist noticed the accident and called an ambulance. Our professor was taken to the hospital and released the next day. The moose received a citation.
She has lived on a kibbutz in Israel, spent thirteen months in Jamshedpur, India, explored Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland. She is always contemplating her next adventure.
Cheryl engages with colleagues in philosophy discussion groups and attends lectures and meetings. She is a talented water-color artist, builds furniture and repairs broken things.
She herself has been a student at OLLI and is delighted to be teaching here. She believes that once you get acquainted with Dostoyevsky, you will want to continue reading his writings.
We are honored to have this passionate scholar and learner teaching THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV at OLLI.
Coming to Olli DownTown is an exciting new class featuring documentary films. Logan Crow, the Executive Director, Screening and Events Programming for Long Beach Cinematheque, will lead the class.
Logan moved from Hollywood to Long Beach and brought with him a grand passion for the documentary and all things cinematic.
Here’s how he explained the difference 
between a straight narrative film and a documentary. The organic nature of the documentary brings us real life, mostly unscripted, a film where anything can happen. Straight narrative films might also represent real life, but Logan emphasized that documentaries were often extremely compelling, eye-opening and even infuriating at times. All this is inherent when we experience real-life stories.
Reality TV shows have mass appeal. But TV shows often titillate and sensationalize real life situations and are usually scripted. Documentaries constructed with passion and integrity, though well-reviewed, don't always equate with big financial returns. A few exceptions have been “March of the Penguins” and the films of Michael Moore.
Logan says that the goals of the class will be to not only examine and enjoy the films, but to learn to identify and understand the ways filmmakers approach the subjects of their film.
Definitely on tap will be “Waltz with Bashir,” “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” “Fast, Cheap & Out of Control,” and two foreign shorts, the British Oscar winner, “The War Game” and Alain Renais' French short, “Night and Fog.”
The unofficial ambassador for cinema in Long Beach, Logan Crow has high hopes for resurrecting the Long Beach Film Festival. He formed the Long Beach Cinematheque in order to connect with people who would support a vibrant film scene in Long Beach.
With this background in the art of cinema, it's pretty exciting to have Logan Crow leading the new course, DOCUMENTARY FILMS...8 FILMS...8 STYLES...8 INCREDIBLE STORIES. Reserve your seat now for its DownTown debut.
