[BES Friends] Fall season begins tomorrow Sunday 9/9

[Stephen Meskin]

Just a reminder tomorrow Sept. 9,

    * Moveable Treats
    * Poetry Group 9:30 am (also on Sept. 23)
    * "The Good Life" by Fritz Williams 10:30 am
    * Board Meeting 12:30 pm (Members may attend)

PUTTING YOUR ETHICS INTO ACTION:The American Ethical Union produces a 
regular Ethical Action Report providing information about issues that 
members and friends may want to take action on. To obtain the Sept., 
2007 Ethical Action Report please go the following link 
http://aeu.org/library/eactions/EAR200709.pdf

This month the AEU has taken positions on the following:
1. Opposition to additional congressional funding for war spending in 
Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. Opposition to the Bush Administration's plan to "fast-track" death 
row inmates to their execution with minimal time for appeals.
3. Support for the UN General Assembly to Save Darfur.
4. Opposition to increased funding for Abstinence-Only-Until Marriage 
Education.
The September EAR Report gives additional background and endorses 
actions on each of these issues. Please consider taking action on one or 
more targeted issues.

Other activities this month:

    * Joyful Sounds Sun Sept. 16, 12:30
    * Baltimore Eating Society Sept. 23, 12:30 pm
    * Newcomers’ Meeting Sept. 30, 12:30 pm

Details on this month's Platforms:

_Sept. 9_: “The Good Life” Fritz Williams, Leader, Baltimore Ethical Society
For most of human history, a life we might consider a good life was 
reserved for a privileged few. But at long last, in the developed 
regions of the world at least, a good life, a life that is meaningful 
and happy, has become possible for the masses, and we experience that 
possibility as both opportunity and obligation. But even in the midst of 
unprecedented prosperity and unbounded life-style options, the good life 
remains elusive. Our quest for the good life often feels like working at 
a job where the wages fluctuate unpredictably. Like searching endlessly 
in the hope that the search will reveal just what it is we are looking for.

Fritz Williams is Leader Emeritus of BES and serves as a regular speaker 
and teacher at the Society. Fritz also performs weddings and commitment 
ceremonies. He has worked as a parish priest in the Episcopal church, 
and as a writer and producer at public TV stations in Harrisburg, PA, 
and Detroit, MI.

_Sept. 16_: “The Good Life: Continued” An interactive program 
facilitated by Karen Elliott & Steve Meskin
What does “the good life” mean to you? When Leader Emeritus Fritz 
Williams decided he wanted to reprise his very popular “Good Life” 
series with an eye towards creating a book from it, members of the 
Program Committee were thrilled. We are also going to reprise the 
follow-up programs we did the last time, wherein we delve deeper into 
the various aspects of a good life than we have time for during the 
regular program “talk back”.

Steve Meskin and Karen Elliott are Ethical Humanist Officiants and are 
on the BES Board. Steve is a graduate of the Humanist Institute. Karen 
has presented poetry workshops in local schools since 1995 and has also 
taught computer courses in schools and elsewhere. They welcome 
additional regular facilitators (some may have been added by the time 
this program is presented).

_Sept. 23:_ “Fostering Ethics in the Face of Globalization" John Daken, 
Leader in Training
The world seems to be getting smaller all the time. Interlinked 
economies, ecologies, and cultures make the term “global village” more 
accurate every year. These developments raise important moral questions, 
but when religious leaders have their turn in the village square their 
mutually exclusive dogmas stymie their efforts.
Painfully aware of the religious elements of modern terrorism, liberal 
theologians have grappled with the viability of creed in a post-9/11 
world but have been reticent to move into the uncharted waters of the 
non-creedal. But our pluralistic world calls for a pluralistic ethics, 
rooted in a faith in the unique ethical capacities of every person and 
played out through an inclusive, elevating discourse.

John Daken is currently a Leader in Training, under the guidance of BES 
Leader Emeritus Fritz Williams. He is a member of the Washington Ethical 
Society and a Master of Divinity student at Meadville-Lombard 
Theological School. He is trained as a psychiatrist.

_Sept. 30:_ “Poetic Activism” Kim Roberts, poet & playwright.
Kim Roberts is founder and editor of the seven-year-old Beltway Poetry 
Quarterly, an online cyberjournal, which in Spring 2006 published an 
anthology of 46 poems written in response to the war in Iraq. As said in 
that anthology's introduction: "Thankfully, the poets refuse to 
acquiesce. When the politicians are compliant and the press is 
distracted by the next sparkly thing, the poets continue to believe, to 
speak out and to say no to fear. They are naïve and hopeful and true." 
Roberts discusses how poetry contributes to "provocation and witness."

Kim Roberts has published widely in literary journals throughout the US, 
as well as elsewhere, and authored two books of poetry, The Kimnama 
(Vrzhu Press) and The Wishbone Galaxy (WWPH). Her poems have been set to 
both rock and classical music and several have been choreographed by the 
Jane Franklin Dance Company.
Additionally, she has penned six plays, one of which received a staged 
reading at the Kennedy Center. Roberts has been the recipient of grants 
from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission for 
the Arts, and others.