Here’s a sign of the times. I just received a e-mail from the University of Virginia “Travel & Learn” program, which I presume is targeted at alumni of advancing age like myself with the time and financial means to enjoy travel. The sales pitch is fascinating in itself:
Join leading U.Va. faculty and their colleagues worldwide for the School of Continuing and Professional Studies portfolio of 2008 Travel & Learn Programs for Adults. Explore fascinating topics while at historic destinations in these short domestic and international seminars. Discover, as one participant wrote, “spending quality time with an extraordinary faculty in a beautiful setting studying a stimulating topic is a transcendent experience and downright fun.
This is the future — travel and learn. Eco-travel and heritage-travel are hot. Baby Boomers aren’t content to loaf beside the pool, drink daiquiries and work on their tans. (Personally, I can dig the loafing by the pool and drinking daiquiries, but I’d rather read in the shade than expose my pale, white skin to the merciless pounding of the sun.) No, Baby Boomers want to keep their minds alive.
See, live and understand the American Civil Rights struggle like you never have before as Julian Bond, Civil Rights leader, Chairman of the NAACP and faculty member of the University of Virginia, leads a remarkable journey through the movement as it happened.