Tuesday, June 13, 2006

HAT News

Last Saturday, Bea, Randy, and I met at Randy’s house for the monthly Secular Singers get-together. Randy baked cinnamon rolls, and the three of us selected twelve songs for a “standard” presentation. The songs chosen will be worked up and serve as a core repertoire. Randy will send a list of these songs to all members of Secular Singers by e-mail. Meanwhile, I will make a list of all songs the group has performed in the past. This also will be distributed by e-mail to those on the Secular Singers e-mail list. If you are not already on the Secular Singers e-mail list and would like to be added, please let me know.

Then last Sunday, six HAT members took part in the monthly Humanist Study Group which met at Border’s Bookstore on Yale. Attending were Richard, Randy, Larry Hi, Marilyn, Mary, and myself. The focus of the discussion was chapter four of American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. We were a small, but intimate, group. The camaraderie was palpable. Perhaps that explains why we stayed so long – a full two and a half hours. The group wishes to continue with this book at the next HSG in July. We will talk about chapters five, six, and seven. The group also called upon me to again lead the discussion.

I will try once again to prepare a list of discussion questions. I will send out the questions by e-mail. (Due to a lack of time, last Sunday’s questions were distributed on paper at the time of the discussion.) Two of us at the meeting had recently read Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg. We recommend this book for a future HSG.

In other news, the HAT Board decided to purchase “The Nonviolent Communication Training Course” by Marshall Rosenberg. The course comes on nine one-hour audio CDs. We hope to offer this course to all interested persons at the new Tulsa Peace House in partnership with Tulsa Peace Fellowship.

We also talked about some movies we would like to view at our monthly Movie Night. Three that were recommended were An Inconvenient Truth, A Prairie Home Companion, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

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