The August HAT meeting was held at the Genealogy Center on Harvard this afternoon. Eleven people were present: Randy, Marilyn, Bill, Bob, John, Richard, Ron, Dan, Larry, and Herb. We had one guest today: Mary.
Randy called the meeting to order around 2 pm.
First, he congratulated the group on staging a presence at the Free Tulsa Music Festival. The event gave us visibility. I enjoyed the hours I put in there and am hoping we have another opportunity to share our philosophy with the community soon. Temperatures were around 100 degrees at this event. Nevertheless, we had a half dozen volunteers most of the time. May the next tabling event be in cooler weather.
Randy encouraged everybody present to support the effort to join with Church of the Restoration (1314 N. Greenwood) in mutually assisting one another. The two groups share basically the same values. Marilyn Clarke, HAT VP, will be speaking on September 12. On October 3, Herb Van Fleet will address the congregation. Thereafter, each first Sunday will be Humanist Sunday, with HAT providing the speaker for the service. Anyone with the inclination to “get on your soapbox” needs to contact me to be scheduled to deliver the message for some future Sunday.
I distributed an updated membership list. Anyone with changes to the list should notify me. I reported we had $1519.06 in the treasury. I noted that Skepticon 3 will be held in Springfield, Missouri, with a few of the speakers being James Randi, Dan Barker, D.J. Grothe, and Victor Stenger.
I mentioned that Secular Singers and the ALGAE luncheons will resume in September. Continuation of these efforts are dependent upon good attendance.
The Atheist Meetup will be held at the Agora on Sunday, August 22 at 1 pm. This month’s Food and Fellowship gathering will be at Chopsticks 6193 E. 61st St. on Saturday, Aug. 28.
Ron gave a report on energy issues for the Public Affairs Committee. He distributed some handouts which he referred to in his talk.
Bill mentioned a church-state violation about to occur in north Tulsa. He said Randy had agreed to serve as a plaintiff in possible litigation.
The scheduled trip by Rob Boston to our area has been postponed until next Spring.
Bill mentioned that an award is scheduled to be given to Rep. Ritze. Accepting the award on his behalf will be Annie Laurie Gaylor of FFRF.
Bill said he now has a Jeri Askins for governor sign in his front yard. He spoke about the history of the 60s when southerners switched political allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans following Johnson’s support of Civil Rights. He cited that as evidence of the Republicans (in general) being racists.
Bill said he would like to see us perform marriages and doing other duties now performed only by clergy.
The above report contains just a few things I recall from the meeting. I’m sure there is more. If you would like to add to the report, please click on “Comment” below and add your recollections.
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1 comment:
I enjoyed the meeting. I was glad to see that a new member decided to attend the meeting to assess the group.
I like the print out structure we are using.
We still tend to get distracted in conversation and I recall that Herb had mentioned an article about Humanists and Atheists needing to be separate (sounded interesting) but I missed the main points because the group became distracted at that point.
I was pleased that Ron was able to give his full presentation.
I like the Humanist group being more educational than activist focused, although I do agree that Humanists need to make public statements for or against ideas.
However, since most of us are also members of FFRF Tulsa, we could use those meetings for the activist discussions and attach HAT--if we all agree--to public statements that FFRF Tulsa makes.
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