Please join us via Zoom for the happy hours that would normally take place at Mexico Lindo within the Fitger’s Complex. BYOB (Bring Your Own Beverage) and join us from 4:00 to 6:00 pm this Thursday to chat and gossip and laugh and maybe even sing a little on the World Wide Web. A link will be sent out by e-mail shortly before 4:00 pm.
Author: Jim Lyttle
Heather's dad: keeping busy with non-profit administration.
Sunday, June 7th via Zoom!
Zoom socializing begins at 9:30 am.
“Why we need universal health care
— especially in a pandemic”
Buddy Robinson has been a consumer advocate and organizer for 45 years. For the past 40, he was Staff Director of the MN Citizens Federation NE, in Duluth. He has extensive policy experience in health care and energy/utilities, and has worked for universal health care for the past 20 years.
Zoom to the 3rd Wednesday Social
This Wednesday, May 20, @ 5:30pm
This month, we’ll have our first On-Line Social Dinner. How can you participate? Simple. Just click on the link below at 5:30 pm and have your dinner along with the rest of us. We’ll chat and laugh and share stories of isolation and quarantine. If you want to support our selected venue for the month, you can order take-out or delivery from The Green Mill at 340 Lake Avenue in Canal Park. The telephone number there is (218) 727-7000 or you can order online HERE.
Wherever you get your food and drink, please plan to join your freethinking pals this Wednesday!
Here is the link for the on-line social dinner on Wednesday evening:
ZOOM LINK
National Day of Reason May 7th
The 2020 National Day of Reason is ONLINE and FREE, but you’ll need to register here to get the link. It takes place this Thursday morning at 11:00 am. I (Jim Lyttle) went last year and had a terrific time. Register Now using this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-day-of-reason-in-minnesota-tickets-103029694590 .
Zoom into the First Sunday Meeting !
| This Sunday, May 3rd, we will try our first online First Sunday Meeting. Charles Gessert will make a presentation on Mortality in the Age of COVID-19. We are planning to follow the same “order of service” that we have always used. At 9:00 am, the Zoom site will be open. You will be able to sign in to the meeting, try out the system, adjust your volume and so forth, and then interact with others socially—just as we normally do on a First Sunday morning. You might even want to prepare some breakfast to eat at about 9:30 while you continue talking with friends online. At 10:00 am, our host David Cole will open the meeting and make the usual announcements. This will be followed by a five-minute reflection “What I Like About Conservatives” from Jim Lyttle. Then we will hear Dr. Gessert’s presentation and be able to ask questions afterward—just as we normally do on a First Sunday morning. HOW TO GET ONLINE AND WATCH THE PRESENTATION You do not need to load anything on to your computer to take part in this presentation. You will receive an e-mail message just before 9:00 am that day and you need only click on the address there to be taken to the meeting. You can see the presenter, hear the talk, and watch the PowerPoint slides—just as we normally do on a First Sunday morning. But you can download the “Zoom App” by simply going to http://zoom.com and clicking on Download. You can then install the application on your own computer to get even more control over muting your built-in microphone and using a button to “raise your hand” and ask a question. It is better to download and use the App if you can, or if you can get someone to do it for you but, as mentioned above, you do not need to load anything on to your computer to take part in the presentation. While watching the presentation, you can move your cursor to the bottom of your screen and a small menu of items will appear. One of those items is called “Participants” and if you click that, another menu will appear on the right side of your screen. At the bottom left corner is a button for “raising your hand” to ask a question. This is optional of course. You are welcome to simply sit back and watch the presentation without doing anything, if you prefer. We should be finished before noon so you can get on with your day. Hope to see you all there!! |
Like most organizations and for the same reason (COVID-19), Lake Superior Freethinkers has cancelled all face-to-face meetings until further notice. Please be safe and use other methods to keep in touch with one another. In fact, why not contact an elderly member or friend today to make sure they’re holding up well?
First Sunday
Sunday, March 1st
Depravity, Sin, and the Religious History of the American Founding.
This month’s talk focuses on the career and thought of John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. It questions common ideas about the “Enlightenment” origins of American constitutional theory, including in the interventions of Founders such as James Madison.
Our speaker Gideon Mailer came to the University of Minnesota system from the University of Cambridge, UK. From 2008-2012 he was an elected Title A Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, where he lectured and supervised in American and Atlantic history and in the history of intellectual thought. Before his Junior Research Fellowship at St. John’s, Cambridge, he took his PhD (2008), MA, and BA (hons) from Cambridge. His research focuses on the social, intellectual, constitutional, ecological, and religious history of North America and the wider Atlantic World from 1600-1865.
He has written books and articles about the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment and Protestant Evangelicalism on the American Founding and later American history. His published a book in 2017, paperback second edition in 2019, on the history of religion and the American Revolution, focusing on the only clergyman to sign the American Declaration of Independence and his influence on constitutional founders such as James Madison: John Witherspoon’s American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2017).
9:00 Coffee and Conversation
9:30 Breakfast Buffet Available
10:00 Formal Program Begins
Duluth Radisson Harborview
505 West Superior Street
Duluth, MN 55802
(218) 727-8981
