Happy Humanist New Year, All You Thinking Parents! Now Get to Work

How will you mark this upcoming season of renewed dedication, to living your own best life? How about never mind the customary concentration on “no” this time of year — ask not what you can stop, or quit, or give up; ask what you can give and give more of, what you can do and do more of.

So here’s a gift for all good people looking to give and do and affirm, to celebrate values we do believe in, to be the change we mean to make in the world.

Today, January 1, 2010, marks the grand opening of a highly evolved human network that in life-changing concept means as much to me now, as the National Home Education Network did in its nascence, way back last century.

It is the Foundation Beyond Belief:

Our Mission: To demonstrate humanism at its best by supporting efforts to improve this world and this life; to challenge humanists to embody the highest principles of humanism, including mutual care and responsibility; and to help and encourage humanist parents to raise confident children with open minds and compassionate hearts.

On the educational side, the Foundation will help create and fund local groups for the education and social support of humanist/atheist parents.

I was cornered in the kitchen of a Christmas party by a well-lubricated older someone, who I’d not expected ever to pressure me about declaring Christian beliefs.

Despite his conservative political beliefs and fealty to FOX News, he’s only a church-goer in that culturally conformist, mostly secular way, if you know what I mean. I may have been a bit lubricated myself, too free of tongue in sharing my own real convictions about what is real and important right here on earth, and what gets in the way between people of good will.

So before I knew what was happening, he was staring into my eyes and declaring that I wasn’t the person he knew and admired, if I didn’t believe in his god and follow that particular god’s politics. Or else perhaps I was muddled and foolish and didn’t know my own mind; perhaps I was a good saved person who just didn’t understand how the almighty was indulging my silly disbelief, and I could come to my senses if he took a firm stand for my soul.

Well, what the hell do you say to THAT?! Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

You’ve got damned-deer-in-the-headlights stories too, I know you do, from the holidays each year and sports teams and parent involvement, public service, community projects and neighborly encounters, from the best and worst of times. Favorite Daughter the religion major does much better than I do at managing the belief-fraught social undertow that nearly drowns me on occasion (maybe because she’s still too young to drink at parties??) but she’s looking forward to this new community for good people free of religious tension, too.

We all have a lot to learn and contribute. Think of it as hmmm, a free water safety course?

The original inspiration of Dale McGowan:

There were also surely atheists and humanists among the emergency responders and doctors and nurses and counselors who fought valiantly to stitch together shattered bodies, minds and hearts . . .

The atheists weren’t absent. They were invisible.

Their bodies and skills were easy enough to see, of course. But their convictions — that this is our one and only life, that its loss is something to fight hard against, that we have no one but each other to rely on when bad things happen — those convictions went unnoticed. Prayers and songs and religious rituals announce themselves. Quiet conviction goes unseen.

I began to think about the problem of atheist and humanist invisibility

Sunday School Science Teacher Costing Schools Credibility and Cool Half-Million

Remember this guy?

Creationist John Freshwater, branding kids for Christ while on the public payroll as mild-mannered public school science teacher. . .

(Evidence of the monstrous harm done when kids are taught alchemy, that leaden lies can be transformed into golden truth, if only you believe hard enough and get a bunch of other people to believe it too?)

But wait, there’s more! This true story keeps getting less believable and more costly as the hearings drag on and his attorney plays games.

Freshwater is expected to be the last direct witness in the hearing that has been held, on and off, over about 14 months and has cost the school district more than $500,000 in legal fees. Rebuttal witnesses might be called in coming weeks.

The latest plot twist being reported this festive Christmas week is that Freshwater taught his creationist ideology as science not just with cool magnetic lab equipment, but by rigging “experiments” to exploit the awesome intelligence built into playful, wholesome, trustworthy kid-magnet Legos — sacrilege!

Freshwater described using Lego blocks to show that cars, buildings and other structures cannot build themselves.

I beg to differ.

Did you know the word “lego” is a creative fusion of the Danish words leg and godt, which my playful mind notes with glee, literally means “play well” and not the seemingly obvious “shin and calf of deity” that an illiterate literalist might insist on imagining is factual?

. . .[Celebrating Legos] gave me a gift too, a story with power to play with in the real world, imagining how all the elements of man’s myth and reality can connect to build the most wondrous cities . . .Legos are limitless fishes and loaves in every room of OUR house, how about yours?

Freshwater’s religion belongs in his church and if he wants to get paid for teaching holy truth to kids who want to learn it, that’s fine too. Let his church put him on the payroll, not the school district. As for what my own children are learning, the true meaning of intelligent design taught through Lego power of story was found under our secular Christmas tree by unschooled and unchurched Young Son.
On a t-shirt of course.

Please know the message war is not just about “science” class any more (never really was, you knew that, right?)

So forget curriculum; today’s lesson is education by t-shirt. And if you and yours are on holiday from dogma and curriculum, at least this week if not permanently, then please enjoy this intelligently designed gift together free from church or state politics, the gift that truly keeps on giving:

Cobbling Together the Best Real Learning We Can

The Real Santa I Believe In

Cool science with which I am making merry:

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus — and Here’s What He Looks Like
By David Gibson

More detail and color art at the Saint Nicolas Center:

The image and the process to create it were featured on a one-hour television documentary, The Real Face of Santa, produced by Atlantic Productions for BBC 2 and also shown on the Discovery Channel.

Click to see the animation of the three-dimensional reconstructed image

Putting a Face to the Past, BBC interview with Dr Caroline Wilkinson

Thinking of Damien Middleton Tonight, With Love

Brandon on FaceBook reminded us just as we were leaving for the Dance Studio, that this was the day three years ago, that the kids Learned the Hard Way what it was like to lose our dear, dear Damien . . .

Our children are neither schooled nor churched, but they both were drawn to and “belong” within an extended family of artists and performers centered around their dance studio.

This week the learning is especially hard and especially personal.

We’re Off to Another Musical Audition

Young Son and Favorite Daughter are both auditioning tonight for the first local production of this musical, but for Young Son it’s mostly for the experience; the men’s parts all pretty much require beard follicles as well as a man’s voice, I think.

He is singing “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” from Guys and Dolls. She is singing In His Eyes” from Jekyll & Hyde.

We have to go out in a freezing dark drizzle; wish them leg-breaking but don’t mean it! I’l report in over the weekend about how they did and later, about the casting . . .

The Liar, The Witch, and the KKK’s Wardrobe

Sarah Palin’s presidential-ambition-blessing pastor was a real, literal witch-hunter and witch-persecutor.

No joke.

Now comes another no-joke witch story, one I saw earlier today in the Chronicle of Higher Education weekly round-up by Don Troop, under the irresistible and accurately newsworthy headline, “The Liar, the Witch and the KKK’s Ridiculous Wardrobe.”

(Just ask if you want to know more about the Liar and the Wardrobe*.)

A woman who sued the University of Nebraska saying the school fired her after learning she is a witch has agreed to settle the case for $40,000.

The university made the offer “solely to compromise the claim … without admitting the validity of plaintiff’s contention or any allegations of wrongdoing by the defendants. . .”

Jane Doe said she took a job with the university in 2007 directing a youth program. But an associate dean terminated her, despite her satisfactory performance at work, after learning she was a witch and her religion was

Shocking News: Our Dear Friend Betty Malone

MEG! What happened??

Nance and I have just learned of Betty’s passing — stunned and saddened. Dear in life, dear in memory.

Betty posted a comment here Sunday, about the religious left emerging. She had been writing on FaceBook about having the flu, and then the morning of Nov. 13 said she was feeling better, ready to get cracking on her directorial work with The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Now they are posting eulogy messages to her FB wall.

Are you brainwashing your child with your truth or allowing the freedom of learning to flourish in your home? — Betty Malone

Betty Malone

More About Young Son’s Shakespeare Saturday

Here’s the power of story for Young Son’s Shakespeare scenes coming up this Saturday:

FALL WEAVERS FESTIVAL

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14

10AM – 4PM

MILLSTONE PLANTATION / MILLSTONE INSTITUTE

6500 OLD MILLSTONE PLANTATION ROAD, TALLAHASSEE, FL
(off Thomasville Rd)
$5.00 Admission for Adults
Children under 12 Free

EVENTS for the DAY INCLUDE:

Seven Hills Handweavers Guild Demonstrations
Spinning, Carding, Dyeing and Weaving
Yarn and Weaving Suppliers from N. Florida and S. Georgia

Live Outdoor Theater
Selections from  A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Richard III

Live Music – bluegrass and bagpipes!

Hands-On Activities for Children of All Ages
Weaving
Maskmaking

AND A FALL PARADE!!

Parking is Limited, Please Carpool!
Bring a picnic and blanket and enjoy the day!

Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State,  Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

It is to be a place for the study and teaching of traditional arts and crafts, methods of farming and gardening and stewardship of the land, going all the way back to the prehistoric occupants of the land, some 12,000 years ago.

Among the areas of activity specifically listed in the Institute’s Articles of Incorporation are raising fiber producing animals — shearing, spinning, weaving — and the encouragement of fiber arts; traditional and experimental organic horticulture and agriculture, based in the philosophy of a self-contained, sustainable farm; growing and use of culinary and medicinal herbs; manufacture and repair of traditional implements, tools and furniture.

These are not meant to be exclusive, but to

Sunday Afternoon Doing Shakespeare in the Park with Llamas

The first annual weavers’ and art fall festival at Millstone Plantation happens here Saturday the 14th, and Young Son’s Summer of Shakespeare group will be reprising their Richard III all day. Today for on-site rehearsal, they had the bright, beautiful, breezy lake setting all to themselves — except for the resident llamas, who seem to just love the Bard and wanted to be right in the thick of the action.

It was glorious.

Pure Dead Brilliant — Jon Stewart Channels Glenn Beck

more about "Pure Dead Brilliant — Jon Stewart Ch…", posted with vodpod

Maine Repeals Gays as Human; Public School Parent Protests Gays as Animals

Dan Delong of Carlinville, Ill., at teacher at Southwestern High School in the nearby town of Piasa, will face a school board hearing November 2, after being suspended from teaching. A parent of one unidentified student thought the optional reading assignment was inappropriate for her child . . .

When this and this coincide in the same week, what are kids actually learning do you think, about the values woven into America’s power of story?

The teacher’s disciplinary hearing was Monday night, and perhaps there’s a better lesson in how it ended than in how it started, a fitting lesson of today’s American president as true to yesterday’s American precedent:

See Google This Morning and Smile!

Then call any handy family members over to share the smile.
I just did.

UPDATE: See CSM’s favorite video clips from the 40-year run. And here’s one of mine, as a sax lover: