Rationalists of East Tennessee Newsletter

February 2025


Annual RET Business Meeting


  • When   02/02/2025
  • 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
  • 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

Any amendment to the RET Bylaws must be voted on at the annual meeting in February. Members may access the bylaws at this link: https://www.rationalists.org/resources/Documents/Legal Documents/RET Bylaws 10-01-2017.pdf

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: 

https://southlandbooksandcafe.com/files/documents/67c026ee-7a0f-43a0-ad07-c2de2926950e.pdf

This will be a monthly event, normally on the First Wednesday.


RET Skeptic Book Club

February 9, 2025  Sunday       4:00 – 6:00 pm EST

Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88582947599?pwd=YbhcvpXSxkEZfQAoo9mvAN4zMsKlR5.1

Meeting ID: 885 8294 7599

Passcode: 606962


The Wonder Paradox

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)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82647688655?pwd=K27ay8GgiVebs5UwRym5GS0PaPWbVb.1

Meeting ID: 826 4768 8655

Passcode: 278676

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:

How children learned for 99% of human history | ScienceDaily

Join us, if you are not emotionally damaged, to share stories, good and bad, about your relationship with knowledge.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85471288368?pwd=RezYukOREyoUjq9dkTmQgwmSqcEQPX.1

Meeting ID: 854 7128 8368

Passcode: 078114

NEW EVENT!!!

Knox County Fourth Wednesday Social

Wednesday,  February 26, 6:00 - 7:30 pm 

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)

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Contact email: info@rationalists.org
Edited by Sharron King: newsletter@rationalists.org.
Opinions expressed are those of authors and/or editors and are not necessarily the opinions of RET


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