Location Pellissippi State Community College, Hardin Valley Road
(There will be no Zoom option for this meeting.)
Our annual membership business meeting allows members a chance to make their voices heard.
Sunday, February 2, will be the yearly general meeting for RET where we elect a board of directors and officers and hear reports from our committees. If you think having a healthy secular alternative to belief in the supernatural is valuable to East Tennessee, please consider serving on our board of directors or as an officer. Terms are one year. You must have previously been a member of the board to serve as an officer. In order to run for election or to vote, members must be up-to-date on their dues. If you are interested in serving, please contact nominate@rationalists.org
If you want to suggest an amendment, please send your suggestion to bod@rationalists.org ASAP so the necessary timeline can be followed.
Agenda
Call to order
Take attendance and establish quorum ((1/10 of membership).
Accept minutes of the February 4, 2024 Membership Meeting.
Treasurer’s Report
Committee Reports
Programs and Annual Speaker Committee (Aleta)
Scholarships (Lee)
Outreach and Membership Development (Carl)
Other Activities
Book Club (Bob)
Reflections (Bob)
Solstice Parties (Carl)
Pridefest (Aleta)
Meet-ups
Elections
Nominating Committee (Aleta)
Current Slate
President: Norm Barrett
Vice President: Ryvyr Mutsu
Secretary: Aleta Ledendecker
Treasurer: Eliot Specht
Directors: Lee Erickson, Jane Hardcastle, Ralph Isler, Carl Ledendecker, Terri Lenocci, Aaron Tyrrell
Take nominations from the floor.
Move to close Nominations.
Move to set number of non-officer directors (6 unless additional nomination from the floor).
Move to accept slate by acclamation.
Comments from the out-going president.
Comments from the in-coming president.
Open discussion.
Adjourn.
We will meet in the Cafeteria Annex, which is at the rear of the Goins Administration Building. Please enter from the direct access in the back, instead of going through the building.
Hot beverages will be available. Please bring a snack to share if you wish.
Blount County First Wednesday Social
Wednesday, February 5, 6:00 - 7:30 pm
Come join us at "The Bird and The Book" Cafe, 1509 E Broadway Ave, Maryville, for socializing and dinner.
If you have any extra copies of Free Inquiry, Skeptical Inquirer, Freethought Today, or other Freethought magazines, bring them to the social. We will try to have RET stickers ready to place over your addresses to make the magazines suitable for distribution for outreach.
If you enjoy looking at menus ahead of time, check out this link:
Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives
By Jennifer Michael Hecht
Where do we find magic? Peace? Connection? We have calendars to mark time, communal spaces to bring us together, bells to signal hours of contemplation, official archives to record legacies, the wisdom of sages read aloud, weekly, to map out the right way to live―in kindness, justice, morality. These rhythms and structures of society were all once set by religion. Now, for many, religion no longer runs the show. So how then to celebrate milestones? Find rules to guide us? Figure out which texts can focus our attention but still offer space for inquiry, communion, and the chance to dwell for a dazzling instant in what can’t be said? Where, really, are truth and beauty? The answer, says The Wonder Paradox, is in poetry. In twenty chapters built from years of questions and conversations with those looking for an authentic and meaningful life, Jennifer Michael Hecht offers ways to mine and adapt the useful aspects of tradition and to replace what no longer feels true. Through cultures and poetic wisdom from around the world―Sappho, Rumi, Shakespeare, Issa, Tagore, Frost, Szymborska, Angelou, and others―she blends literary criticism with spiritual guidance rooted in the everyday. Linking our needs to poems, she helps us better understand those needs, our very being, and poetry itself. Our capacity for wonder is one of the greatest joys of being human; The Wonder Paradox celebrates that instinct and that yearning. 368 pages.
February Third Sunday
Zoom Meeting
February 16 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
The topic for this meeting will be a continuation of the course "How Jesus Became God" by Bart Ehrmann.
Provide your own coffee and snacks.
Topic: RET Third Sunday Zoom Meeting
Time: Feb 16, 2025 10:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kcKRuL6MdU
February Reflections Zoom Meeting
February 23 4:30-6:00 PM
How Did you Learn as a Kid?
If you have been following the news you have seen a lot of stories about how the children are falling behind and the educational system is failing them. How did you learn when you were young? Over-parenting and helicopter parents or were you on your own a lot? Were you spoon fed, or did you have to figure out even dangerous things on your own? Check this out:
We will have a monthly Social in Knox County at Panera Bread on North Peters Road near the Dick's Sports discount store (Going, Going, Gone!) Click here to see the menu.
The first Knox County Social was well-attended. Everyone is welcome.
Come join fellow freethinkers for lively discussion around a light meal.
This will be a monthly event on the Fourth Wednesday.
February 12 is the birth anniversary of
Charles Darwin
Independently, in 1997, Professor Massimo Pigliucci initiated an annual Darwin Day event at the University of Tennessee.The event included public lectures and activities as well as a teachers' workshop meant to help elementary and secondary school teachers better understand evolution and how to communicate it to their students, as well as how to deal with the pressures often placed on them by the creationism movement. (Quoted from Wikipedia)