NOB HILL--To relieve the winter blues I visit REI every couple of weeks and fantasize about cook pots, trails, and starry nights. In spring the seed catalogs come and I mentalize rows of heirloom tomato plants and dark melons with moons and stars on them.

It is now late summer and those other dreams have come and mostly gone. I have done the trails. I have hoed the rows of summer and eaten a good part of the harvest. Now what? Well, it is almost fall--time for the new UNM Continuing Ed. Catalog!

Big Numbers
This fall's catalog is a massive 168 pages. The Business & Technology section alone has 85 pages. At around 6 courses listed per page that works out to somewhere around 500 courses offered in just this section. This includes everything from a Phlebotomy Certificate Program to a Certified Wedding Planner class...from Documentary Photography to an Independent Study in GIS. I bet there are close to a thousand classes total.

Johnny_Mango, P.I.
Well, as good as the B&T section sounds, personally I am more interested in the rest of the catalog: the Personal Enrichment classes and the Travel, History, & Culture programs. Here are five from the Personal Enrichment section I would take at the drop of a hat:
1. Art Collecting 101
2. Exploring the Cuisine of India
3. Urban Permaculture
4. Introduction to Private Investigation
5. Winter Birds of Bosque del Apache

And there are others!
• Adobe Design. This class is about building your own house, not pdf files. It covers everything from foundations to walls to wood beam techniques. I mention this class because 40 years ago my ex-wife took it. She showed me a stack of mimeographed papers--the first draft of P.G. McHenry's classic book Adobe: Build It Yourself. We starting building our house soon after we got married on a couple acres in the north valley. You can do it too. I'm going to write more about the owner-built adobe home at another time. Building your own home is SO New Mexico! By the way, of the four people shouldering that viga pictured on the right, three of us were building our own houses. The year was 1973. Pictured are Sal Reyes, Ron Taylor, Dan Armijo, and Yours_Truly. Prior to this, none of us had ever built anything bigger than a doghouse. So don't sell yourself short. You can do it!
• Spanish I, II, III, & IV. "When students complete the four semesters, they should feel comfortable in conversations away from the classroom." New Mexico's Spanish/English bilingualism is acknowledged and even guaranteed in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. Unlike much of the USA, we are proud to be a bilingual state. Feel it. Speak it. Take a Spanish class.
• Yoga. There are 25 different yoga courses offered in the Continuing Ed catalog! For instance: Kundalini Yoga ("Feel the Magic of tapping into your own eternal flow of Power!"), Yoga for Folks Over 50, Yoga for Athletes, and Yoga for Back Care. Think about what yoga might mean for you.

The Story of New Mexico
If you are interested in New Mexico history or topography, this section is for you. There are a couple of lecture series as well as 21 different field trips within the state of New Mexico. But you also might be interested in an offering called the Tuesday Night Movies: American History Through Film. This consists of eight films: The Buffalo Soldiers, Shane, Swing Time, The Glenn Miller Story, The Salt of the Earth, The Right Stuff, Real Women Have Curves, and Rendition. A presentation is included about the film, period, and director. "In various ways they frame the question, 'What does it mean to be an American?'" Now that sounds like an amazing course.

Money
These classes aren't free. They aren't even cheap. But knowledge is worth something. And the very real prospect of making new friends with the same interests as you is also worth something. There are some discounts, but nothing substantial unless you work for UNM or are retired from there. Still, this huge catalog is truly remarkable. It stimulates the imagination and leads us into new fields of interest.

These classes can help make dreams come true. In fact, I believe there is a class on that. Check out the whole catalog. I bet something catches your eye.