We started with a pot-luck dinner at 7:30 PM. The annual meeting started at 8:00 PM, and was followed by our solstice party including a silent auction. This year a special feature of the evening was a short talk by P.J. Deak entitled "Observations of Hope: Charles Dickens in America, 1842." P.J. told us about the impact of the author's famous visit to this country on his frame of mind, noting that "A Christmas Carol," with its optimistic message, was written the following year.

POSTPONED DUE TO SNOW. Rescheduled for January 23rd, 2010

Humanist Conversations: "Trio"

Steve Boshi brought us an unusual movie, Trio. Introduced by W. Somerset Maugham himself, this 1950 movie is a compilation of three of his stories, “Mr. Know-All,” “The Verger” and “Sanatorium.”

M. Barton Laws, Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine, was until recently Senior Investigator in Social Science and Policy at Latin American Health Institute in Boston.

He has received research funding from the Robert Wood Johnson and Kaiser Family Foundations, the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Research Program, the Charles Farnsworth Trust, and the Tufts/Brown/Lifespan Center for AIDS Research, as well as NIH.

He's also the author of the "stayin' alive" blog. This is a public health blog, and his point of view is informed by his training, professional experience and lots of good, solid peer-reviewed information. Join us for a provocative perspective on health care reform from someone who understands the intersection of public policy and healthcare delivery.

Follow-up meeting series to our Bible Reading Group. David Schafer proposed approaching some of the same material from a slightly different slant. For starters let’s call our new series “The Bible from the Standpoint of Scientific and Historical Analysis.”Since the first people to write history, as far as anybody knows, were the Sumerians, we’ll start with them. It turns out that they wrote the first story of Noah and the flood—in Sumerian, of course. Not only that, it was imbedded in the first (and some will tell you the best) epic ever written, the heroic life story of Gilgamesh, who seems to have been one of the kings of the Sumerian city of Uruk, around 2700 BCE. We planned to begin our examination of these stories in their historical context in this session.

Humanist Conversations: "Capitalism Hits the Fan"

We watched and discussed the movie, Capitalism Hits the Fan, in which University of Massachusetts professor of economics Richard Wolff presented a historical background for the current financial crisis and proposed structural change to our economic system as a remedy.

Humanist Conversations: "Arguing the World"

At this meeting we watched and discussed a fascinating PBS documentary film about four New York intellectuals (Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol) who came from poor, working class Jewish families and attended City College of New York in the 1930s.

Ig Nobels Webcast

We hosted a live webcast of the 2009 Ig Nobels in the library at USNH.

"The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

In a gala ceremony in Harvard's Sanders Theatre, 1200 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the winners step forward to accept their Prizes. These are physically handed out by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel Laureates."

This was the same show you could travel up to Harvard to watch live, or watch on your computer at home.

Humanist Conversations: Modern Times

For this month's meeting we watched and discussed the Charlie Chaplin classic "Modern Times," which, appropriately for a Labor Day weekend event, was inspired by the Great Depression.

Humanist Conversations: Robert Reich on Lobbyists and Healthcare

For this month's meeting we watched and discuss the June 12, 2009, episode of Bill Moyers Journal, in which former Labor Secretary Robert Reich sat down with Bill Moyers to talk about the influence of lobbyists on policy, the economy, and the ongoing debate over health care.

Humanist Conversations: Medical Insurance & the Healthcare Debate

For this month's meeting we viewed and discussed the second of two recent PBS Frontline episodes focusing on healthcare: "Sick Around the World." (We watched "Sick Around America" last month.)

Annual Picnic at Bob and Joan Raffords' home in Middlebury.

Humanist Conversations: Medical Insurance

For this month's meeting we watched and discussed the first of two recent PBS Frontline episodes focusing on healthcare: "Sick Around America." We'll watch the second, "Sick Around the World," at a later meeting.

Humanist Conversations: The Big Sort

In the last thirty years, America has sorted itself into like-minded “tribes.” What are the consequences of this? For this month's meeting we watched and discussed a video that introduces the concept and process that led to the book, "The Big Sort," published in May of 2008 by Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing.

Humanist Conversations: The Bailout, again.

For this month's meeting we watched and discussed the March 27 segment of Bill Moyers on the Bailout.

Pizza & Video: What are President Obama's Views on Religion?

We watched two speeches in which Barack Obama talked about his religious views (total running time is 49 min).

Humanist Conversations: George Lakoff on "The Obama Code"

For this month's meeting we read and discussed this linguist's analysis of president Obama's national address.

Humanist Conversations: The Civil Rights Movement

We watched a video on some of the unreported activities behind the civil rights movement.

Humanist Conversations: Manufacturing Dissent

For this month's meeting we watched and discuss the 2007 documentary "Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore".