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Hello and welcome to Focus on OLLI. What is OLLI? OLLI is a program at UNLV dedicated to active retired or semi-retired individuals who understand the importance of keeping themselves engaged. OLLI is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Every month this program will dig into favorite classes, interesting teachers and members as well as special events offered through OLLI.
Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5
Wesley Knight 0:09
jazz and more the University of Nevada,
Wesley Knight 0:11
Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Keith McMillen 0:16
Hello and welcome to focus on Olli. Olli is a program at UNLV, dedicated to retired or semi retired individuals who remain engaged and active in civic activities and lifelong learning. Olli is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Olli is made possible by support from the Bernard Osher Foundation, established by philanthropists Bernard and Barbara Osher with a mission to support lifelong learning, higher education and the arts. This series is designed to give you an in depth look at the Olli program and encourage you to join in the fun and welcome. Today, we're going to talk with a couple of folks that have been teaching at Olli for quite a long time. They've got some interesting stories, and may give you some insights into how some of these classes are actually created. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves, and we'll start with Sue Merritt.
Susan Merritt 1:15
Yeah, my name is Sue Merritt, and I'm originally from New York State, and then I came out to San Diego for grad school, and since it was so nice, I never left for 26 years. And then I moved to to Las Vegas, and I after I stopped working and retired in 2015 I discovered ollie, and found out that it was a great outlet for me, for my desire to teach, which I love, and I've been doing it for Yes, nine years now, fantastic.
Keith McMillen 1:44
And sitting next to you is Nels.
Niels Clyde 1:47
Yes, I say Nels. My name is Neil's Clyde properly, but I say Nels. So lifelong identity crisis, I guess it is. I think I was just gonna go look. I think I started teaching at Ollie in 2012 that was probably the first, first year I taught. I used I did some. I started here when a woman named Marge Gately, a retired nun, used to teach a folk music class. And after we got into that class, and my knowledge of folk music, people said you should teach a class. So the next year, I signed up for it, and have been doing it ever since. I've been doing some music classes I've done and I've done some what I call spiritual classes that I call ageless wisdom, talking about Buddhism, meditation, A Course in Miracles, all kinds of interesting things. What a what a wonderful gift. Ali is absolutely,
Keith McMillen 2:50
that's that's very good to hear. Sue, yes, you, you don't seem to have a particular topic that you'd like to teach. You jump around a little
Susan Merritt 3:01
bit, I really do. I was I had to go back and find out what, what are all the classes that I've taught in the last nine years, and I've taught 12 different classes, and they're very different. It's like the very first one I taught was about self defense and safety and cyber security and helping prevent scams. And so that part of my background was martial arts and women's self defense and stuff. And so that was something that I started with, because it was something I was very familiar with and and that's where I started. But then, of course, I did a class. The next class I did was on antique maps, because I love old maps and so real eclectic I just whatever interests me or that I have some skills in, and I'll research it and laborious create a whole bunch of PowerPoint slides and then deliver it. So, yeah, all kinds of different classes.
Keith McMillen 3:57
Creating a class from scratch is not a simple thing takes a long time. It does. Now, have you ever considered repeating
Susan Merritt 4:04
any of these? I do repeat them almost all my classes I've taught, I try to do them at least twice, just to justify all the time that it takes. I mean, it's, you know, high hundreds of hours to to research and then get decent PowerPoint slides. And, you know, look for videos and things, so teaching them at least twice makes it at least worth my while.
Keith McMillen 4:27
Is there a topic that you have researched that surprised you in any way? As I saw one, I think, did you do one on unusual buildings?
Susan Merritt 4:37
It was actually on not buildings, but cities built from scratch. I found out about that topic when I was creating a topic class about utopias and whether attempts to create utopian societies and communities in their past, and how successful were they, and what were they like. And it started and. Lots of times, a utopian group will not only establish the rules that they want to live by, but actually build their little town too, in a way that would make sense to them. And so I was like, Wow. I wonder if other cities have or towns have been built from scratch, all designed, boom, you know, build it all at once. And turns out there's a lot, especially capitals, including Washington, DC, where it's all designed from scratch, and it's built, you know, from that blueprint, and then people may or may not want to live in them. And so I did a whole class on on, I think I called it cities by design. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay, all right.
Keith McMillen 5:39
Very good. Fantastic. Now, Nils, you basically have stuck with the music. Yes, stringed instruments, primarily the ukulele,
Niels Clyde 5:48
primarily the ukulele, actually a friend, like I said, I was introduced to ollie when I joined the ukulele club in Las Vegas. I I was making I've been playing guitar since my 20s. I started late, but I was making guitars out of cigar boxes, and my granddaughter, who was six years old at the time, wanted one for her birthday. So instead of making her a guitar, which was huge, I made her a ukulele, and when I started to make it and play it, I said, Boy, that's too much fun. And I made myself another one, which I showed you on zoom the other day, out of cigar box. And then from there, I started. I found out about the ukulele club in Las Vegas. I joined the ukulele club in Las Vegas, where we had little jams once every other week. I think it was every two weeks we did. Then I met this woman, Carol wagers said, Said, and, and she told she introduced me to ollie. I went to that folk music class given by Mark Gately and, and Carol said, Chief, you think we could teach ukulele at Ollie? And I was like, Well, sure, we'll give it a try. So we taught our first ukulele class, and I've been doing it pretty much ukulele. She moved back to Iowa, but I've continued since she left. She was the primary teacher. I just kind of used to assist her, but I found somebody to take the assistant's place, to take my place, and I've been still doing that ever since, and
Keith McMillen 7:27
it is, as we pointed out early on, that is one of our most widely requested classes, and is usually close To being full sometimes and but you explained why?
Niels Clyde 7:43
Well, the main thing is to have fun. You know, they say the ukulele is the happiest instrument in the world. You can't play the ukulele and be sad so and and learning a string, especially for an elderly person. You know, when we get up in age, playing a stringed instrument or playing a ukulele, anything like that, is so good for the brain, it's exercise for the brain, and so dementia and that kind of thing are kind of put on the sideline. When one learns how to play an instrument like that. The ukulele can be very simple, especially if anybody has any stringed instrument background, or any kind of music background. It can be challenging for a lot of folks. I've had people come and not not follow up, you know, and never come back again, and then sometimes four or five down the road, they'll see, hey, I took your class one time. You know, I get that kind of stuff so. But I call the one class that I'm doing this semester a workshop. And in the fall, we do a beginner class where we take three people through beginner chords, and you got to bring your own instrument and supply a little music stand and whatnot, but we teach people beginner chords and some beginner songs and whatnot, and if they want to continue on, then we go to the workshop. And at the workshop, I beat them to death, figuratively, I hope, of course, they all, they all think that I beat them up well.
Keith McMillen 9:20
But you see, you must have a core group of people that keep coming back for that all the time.
Niels Clyde 9:25
Some of the people, there was one that hasn't, that didn't come this year, that's been with us since 2012 most of the Greg was there today. He's been with us for a long, long time. Yeah. Some they just keep coming back and keeping coming back. So I must be doing something, right?
Keith McMillen 9:44
Well, you're playing different tunes all the time.
Niels Clyde 9:47
I'm just lovable. That's well,
Keith McMillen 9:49
there could be that too, folks, I'm not going to comment. I'm not allowed to editorial. That's right, but good. So now you also have performed. For some events around campus. I think, yes,
Niels Clyde 10:03
we do the Art Walk. We've been asked to do the Art Walk. We did the brain health and music thing at in Ham Hall last year. And we've when Carol was around. Carol was better at getting into nursing homes. We've taken as a group and going into nursing homes and whatnot and perform for the for the residents there and whatnot. And we're always welcome to do that. We always enjoy that kind of opportunity. So if you're listening out there looking for somebody to come and perform, this is not a this is not a promotion. We don't charge so,
Keith McMillen 10:43
yeah, there'll be a phone number at the end of this program. Call the ollie office if you're at all interested.
Niels Clyde 10:49
So we love to do it. That's the whole point. We have fun.
Keith McMillen 10:53
So Sue you keep changing things up. Are there certain topics that you prefer to handle or things that you find more interesting?
Susan Merritt 11:02
Well, I like, mainly, I've been focusing on history because I surveyed one of my classes once, and I had a whole bunch of ideas for new new courses to develop. Actually, I think I had a list of 25 different ideas for courses. And I think I just printed out my list, and now it's like 35 so I had all kinds of ideas. And, you know, the the ideas come to me if I'm just watching a YouTube video, and I think, Oh, that's interesting. That could expand out into a whole course, and I just write it down, and, and, but anyway, I I had a list of classes I was thinking of putting all the time in to develop them and about it. So I surveyed my class, and there were topics. There was some topics on probability and math, which is my background, and even computers, which is actually my background. And then there was a history class and a couple other ones. And overwhelmingly, people did not want to learn about quantum computing or any or any of these probabilities. And it was always it was history. That's mostly what people wanted, and so I've mostly been gearing it towards history classes. But it's not just, it's not dry history at all. I try to find things that interest me that I never learned about. So for example, this semester, I'm teaching a class on the 1930s and you know, we were going to talk about, you know, the Hindenburg crash, which occurred in the 30s. And but everybody's seen shows about the Hindenburg, so I didn't want to just, you know, replay everything that they knew. And so I found a YouTube video that had, you know, interesting facts about the Hindenburg that you might not have known. And so I get a lot of good feedback from people who take my classes, because it's like, Yeah, I've heard about that before, but I never knew that aspect or that little tidbit. So if I usually find if it's interesting for me, it's interesting for everybody else. So just mostly history based classes, but like I said, with a little bit of a twist, for example, my next class that I'm going to teach is called What's for breakfast. And so it's history, but it's the history of 10 different food products that you might eat at a breakfast. So I, you know, hash browns and salt and pepper, and so you basically go into the whole world history of salt and pepper and potatoes and cheese and, you know, sugar, and there's a lot of history for all those items. So you get the history, but it's also kind of in a packaged in an interesting way.
Keith McMillen 13:32
Okay, very Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, breakfast, especially, is a meal that is frequently relegated to cereal and milk or maybe fried eggs. And there are, I'm sure, many other options
Susan Merritt 13:48
available, and I talk about that, when did when cereal became the thing that was promoted as breakfast?
Keith McMillen 13:56
Oh, the history of the packaged cereal business is probably at least half an ollie class
Niels Clyde 14:03
didn't Kellogg make some weird machines for
Keith McMillen 14:08
to make, yeah, corn
Niels Clyde 14:10
flakes, no, something to do with a psychological correction. It was like during the days of frontal lobotomies, Kellogg was some sort of an inventor, oh, yeah, and it was something I forgot, excuse me, I diverse. Well, cereal. Oh, the humanity.
Susan Merritt 14:28
Humanity, exactly. Well, cereal was first promoted as health food, yeah, but they, of course, didn't have the amounts of sugar on it that it eventually came to have, and so you couldn't call, you know, sugar, sugar pops or something healthy,
Keith McMillen 14:43
but yeah, plain corn flakes are relatively healthy.
Susan Merritt 14:45
Not bad, yes,
Keith McMillen 14:47
also very boring. So yeah, you wind up putting
Susan Merritt 14:52
sugar on it. Anyhow. I remember growing up, my parents had a limit on how much sugar we could put on our cereal, and it was too. Heaping teaspoons. I mean, heaping we would get them so that you could barely move it. And we just thought that was just the most draconian rule ever. And I can't believe they're limiting our sugar, but it was so much sugar, it's crazy. But we yeah, we thought we were just abused, you know, by having to be limited.
Keith McMillen 15:18
Sometimes wisdom comes with age. Not that any of us are old. Anybody at the LA program doesn't qualify. Lively in mind, so that's something to look forward to, have the students surprised you on any of these topics.
Susan Merritt 15:38
Well, yeah, I mean, I'm always amazed at how much knowledge the Olli members have. Always when I'm presenting something, there's going to be somebody there who, oh, yeah, you know, I actually, you know, knew, or my father knew Joseph Kennedy SR and here's what he did during Prohibition. And, you know, and they come up with these. Sort of they just know so much stuff that it's it's always surprising. But one thing that was surprising about my 19 1920s class that I did just before this 1930s one is there was a woman in the class, and she said, she raised her hand, she said, I was born in the 20s, and I'm thinking, what? And she said, I was born in 1929 and like, okay, you know, she's 95 years old, and she was with it and going to ollie classes. And so that was amazing and surprising.
Keith McMillen 16:32
I, for a while, showed, had an ollie class of my own that relied on old movies, movies from the 30s, in fact, mostly talkies. There were a few in the 20s, but they were Charlie Chan movies. Those are B movies, and a lot of people remember them from matinees as kids in the 50s and 60s. He remembers them first run in the theater. Wow, yeah. He was probably at least that age. But yeah, it is. It is amazing the depth of knowledge that folks have here, just meeting some of these folks in education. So anything special lined up for your ukulele? You doing ukulele at all in the summer?
Niels Clyde 17:19
Yeah, we do it. I'll do it all year long. So yeah, we do another workshop in the summer for the summer semester, and in the fall, I think I'm trying to my assistant, Judy Nelson, I'm trying to guide her into taking over the beginner class in the fall. And then I'm hoping to maybe do another ageless wisdom class. Oh, in the fall, yeah, driving over to campus with Maryland Parkway torn up is not a good idea.
Keith McMillen 17:53
Well, now the ageless wisdom could be done hybrid or even I
Niels Clyde 17:58
did it on Zoom, when during covid, it could be done online too. I was thinking about it. I still have some of my one of my favorite presentations was one I spent, I gave to the class, and I called the presentation the F word, oh and, and, of course, the entire and it culminates in the F word is forgiveness. That's what it's all about.
Keith McMillen 18:22
Okay, but all right, interesting.
Niels Clyde 18:24
Yeah, that was an interesting one. I take a lot of stuff from A Course in Miracles, which is and and blend what the Buddha taught, what Jesus taught, of course, in miracles and all of that stuff. They all have the same message, which is incredibly powerful to anybody that's followed a religious path. It's not about religion, it's about what we are inside and and I find that just absolutely most, one of the most wonderful things that I've learned, and I love to share that wisdom. I love to share that experience with people that was a very popular class. When the first time we did on campus, we had 70 people show up. And, yeah, that was, that was a fun number. That was a fun class. Yeah, definitely. The ukulele classes. We've had as many as 40 and a class. And this year, I think I had 25 so in this in the workshop,
Keith McMillen 19:19
and that's that makes for a nice group. That would be a good sense.
Niels Clyde 19:23
It's just about the right size, a little too big to and I have different levels of students, so there's some that are kind of ranked beginners, and some that are a lot more experienced. So sometimes when I'm throwing stuff at them, I stay away from when you say, quantum physics. No, no, no, it's music theory. If I start talking about music theory there, like zoning out, I call it. I used to teach in industrial teaching, and it was a phrase we had called Tigo. The eyes glaze over, right?
Keith McMillen 19:58
So, yeah, it's. Yes, I have seen that in the past. Yes, I host TED Talks. I try and pick TED Talks that aren't extreme in terms of technology. But every once in a while I make and I see that glazing, yes, yeah. I think we actually stopped one and said, Okay, this is way beyond what we want. Yeah. And everybody would agreed.
Susan Merritt 20:24
Well, I've seen not even just the eyes glazing over, but when covid struck and we couldn't teach on campus anymore, we started doing the Zoom classes, one of the first classes that I taught over zoom, it was just felt strange to be in my office and just staring at my talking to my computer. And so I wasn't quite used to doing the courses over zoom. And so I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna make sure that the zoom window is open, you know, on one of my monitors, so that I can least, you know, see a person and feel like I'm talking to a person. And it and it zoom just randomly picks somebody in the class to make in that little, tiny, little window. And it was a guy who was sleeping. So I'm talking the whole time. This guy's just noring away like so, which made me laugh. And, you know, just not take things seriously. But it was okay. The one guy that focused on
Keith McMillen 21:11
not the most inspirational, but yes, yeah, it was a rocky start. Yeah, we have that issue. So what are you anything special you're looking forward to, either for the summer or for the fall. I mean, we are now in week seven this spring. Session is almost over, but we have a full 10 week session this summer, no different, and that starts in May.
Susan Merritt 21:38
So are you doing any Yeah, I'll be doing the What's for breakfast in the summer, and then leading up to in the fall, I'm doing a new class on what's for lunch. So it's a good segue from, what do we
Keith McMillen 21:49
finish with dinner in the spring? Yeah? Maybe, yeah. I don't know that kind of opened that that would be an open ended question. I think, yeah.
Susan Merritt 21:56
So we'll do, you know, fast foods, hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, candy, cheese. There's a lot of different things that we eat for lunch that have long histories and
Niels Clyde 22:09
the history of spam.
Susan Merritt 22:11
Yeah, well, I haven't covered and think about spam. It's a
Keith McMillen 22:14
breakfast food. That's true.
Niels Clyde 22:17
They said they sell this to a Hawaiian market. So there you'd be right on the right on the money. That's right. And this is called the ninth island. It is. Spam is a popular thing in Hawaii.
Keith McMillen 22:27
Yeah, very much. So, and it comes in flavors, does it? I didn't have any idea McDonald's
Niels Clyde 22:35
has spam in Hawaii.
Keith McMillen 22:39
Oh, they've Yeah, go to a McDonald's restaurant in Japan and see what's on the menu. I can imagine there are things there that folks here would not recognize, but having worked there on and off, yes, it is enlightening. Yeah, very much. So, so anything else that has surprised you about Ollie, are there other reasons that you would come even if you weren't teaching?
Susan Merritt 23:09
Well, I love learning as much as teaching. So when I first retired, I as, since I'm very analytical, I came up with a, like, a model of my retirement. You know, first I have to, you know, do things that just keep the lights on and all that. But then, and then, you know, you need to do these, you know, keep the body in shape, and all these pillars. And at the top of this little structure that I drew was the things that, if everything else is working and I have time, then these are the things that give me joy and and learning and teaching were both at the top of the list, and so I would come just because of the learning part as well.
Keith McMillen 23:47
There. There are many, many fascinating classes.
Susan Merritt 23:50
Yeah? Real variety, real variety.
Keith McMillen 23:53
Yes. And sometimes it's hard to decide, yeah, especially when three of them are all at the same time exactly.
Niels Clyde 23:59
I'm also taking a guitar class on Thursday mornings from Matthew Nishimoto and and that's been a lot of fun. Done that for a couple semesters, and I've taken other classes before there was but I generally don't take money classes anymore, like I used to when I used to come to paradise campus, when I first started with Ollie, we had just two classes in a day, and they were two hours each with a 10 minute break in the middle. And I guess about the time that Rob levran started with it, that we started to cut the back now we took another couple minutes out of the classes, right,
Keith McMillen 24:46
which I like we've shortened them a little bit. Basically, we took out the break. So we were sharing the Maryland Parkway building with other continuing and it became a scheduling issue.
Susan Merritt 24:59
I. Like the hour and a half, much better hour and 45 minutes was a long time. And I remember taking classes that long in college. You know, where you really you're concentrating and paying attention? I thought an hour and a half is much better time.
Niels Clyde 25:13
Yeah. So I do satellites. I'm on a satellite, so I take two hours. You could do whatever you want. So we do two hours at my class.
Keith McMillen 25:22
Now you also teach is, it is the only ukulele class in a Saturday on a satellite or, well,
Niels Clyde 25:28
if we do the beginner class, we'll do it at m, A, B, okay, and then, but the I also always do the workshops at the satellite if it's available, because I live on that side of town.
Keith McMillen 25:42
All right, sure that makes that's important, because you're getting over here is not easy. No, it's not. There are ways. Yeah, I mean, this morning that today, I came in on Flamingo from the east side. I live on the west side, but I was doing something on the east side. So it was easier to come down Flamingo and come in,
Niels Clyde 26:04
yeah, I've done that a lot from around 11 and come up Flamingo from the from the east side to come we'll
Susan Merritt 26:11
need a helicopter. Well,
Keith McMillen 26:12
yeah, I don't know where we would land it. We'll figure it out. Yeah, I mean, at the parking lot. And now that the church building has been sold and that's all closed off, so I don't know where else do we wherever we want, yeah, that would be it. Well, thank you. Thank you both for spending some time with us here, of course, and helping us out. Remember that Ali is a thing that is ongoing at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, and we can wrap it up and thank you. Thanks for listening to focus on Olli. There are several ways to get more information. Our web address is Ali o l, l, i.unlv.edu You may also email us at Olli, at UNLV. That's Ali O, L, L I, A, T, U, n, l v, at sign unlv.edu, you can also just give us a call at 702-895-3394, Monday through Friday, between the hours of eight and five, except, of course, on university holidays, you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai