By George Kane

 

For several years, we have celebrated the fifth Sunday of any month with a highly successful fundraising meal for our special projects. For the last couple of years, this has been a Flying Spaghetti Monster feast featuring a wide variety of sauces donated by members. This August, however, the fifth Sunday fell during the State Fair, and we were unable to secure any of our usual locations for the event. To keep our tradition alive, our pastafarians gathered for dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Minneapolis. Since there was competition that day from the state fair and other events, the turnout was only a dozen, but the event raised $283 in donations for the Radio Fund.

The American Atheists held its first Statewide Minnesota Conference at the Southdale Library on Sunday, September 19. The four-hour event featured five presenters. Dr. George Erickson, former president of the Humanists of Minnesota, spoke about his latest book and about what must be done to cope with climate change. Lavanam, the director of the Atheist Center in India, spoke about Gora (his father), Gandhi and the struggle for civil rights of Untouchables. Cecil Bothwell, an atheist city councilman in North Carolina, extolled the virtues of atheism in a wide-ranging presentation that included rap songs he wrote. Crystal Dervetski presented a primer on critical thinking, and Dr. Bill van Druten ended the conference with a couple of atheist bedtime stories.
The highest attendance at one time was about ninety, but since people were arriving and leaving all afternoon, there is no way to determine the total number of people who attended.