At CWF, one of our core aims is promoting education, be it via our courses, our public understanding of science lectures or the online resources and educational material we provide. Today, we are adding a new initiative to this list.
We are creating the Humanist Library of Leeds, a project to build a world standard collection of humanist and naturalist publications in Leeds, United Kingdom. A shining light of reason in the North of England.
You can learn more about the project on its website.
As part of the project, we are looking for donations of items for the library on topics of humanism, naturalism and secularism, and the surrounding subjects – philosophy, theology, natural sciences and other such topics. If you can help the project, please get in touch! You may also want to consider supporting our work by becoming a patron of the library.
You can read more of Chris’s thoughts on the first post of the project’s blog. You can also watch the video below.
On Friday, myself and Norm headed over to Manchester to see Tim Minchin at the MEN.
Tim certainly didn’t disappoint! He is currently touring with a 55 piece symphony orchestra which he uses to great affect and left us all coming away with some brand new favourite Tim Minchin songs, number one for most of us being Sam’s Mum’s Cataracts (btw, the official name of the song is Thank You God if you were wondering).
The best part of the evening though was finding out that even though Aimee had booked her tickets five months ago, and I had booked mine on Tuesday – we were closer to Tim than she was 😀 .
On Tuesday we headed down to Red Hot World Buffet for the Atheist Society’s annual Winter Solstice meal.
Or at least, that is where we thought we were heading. We had decided that we didn’t need to book because only six people had confirmed as coming on Facebook and it was a Tuesday and it was a buffet and it was huge.
However, on the night, 12 people turned up and when Norm, who had gone on ahead of us, asked how long the wait would be on an appropriated sized table – he was told, two weeks! I mean seriously, who holds their Christmas party on a Tuesday and goes to a buffet? Standards these days.
Luckily Spice Quarter were kind enough to fit us in so we enjoyed a high quality buffer after all.
On Monday, the Humanist Action Group of Leeds completed it’s holiday food drive. Having spent the previous two weeks collecting food and donations to put together food parcels for local homeless shelters, the group spend the night bringing together all the food and packaging it up.
In total the group managed 24 boxes, most of which had to be duct taped shut due to them overflowing. The lesson for next time – we need bigger boxes!
Of all the gigs I imagine I would have shortlisted to go to this year, I can’t say Meat Loaf would have been one of them. But when I got a text off Norm saying he had two tickets to the o2 corporate box, I thought to myself, “I could go for a bit of that.”
So we headed over to the MEN in Manchester for a bit of corporate hospitality. Which is a codeword for free bar. Good times :D. The box itself was quite nice, it also included some tasty food (that they come in and steal in the middle of the main gig though) and it’s quite a nice level to watch the show from – could definitely get used to this kind of thing!
With this week being the last week of term, we headed down to OK Karaoke for the social this week. Despite it being a somewhat Christmas themed event though – they didn’t even have Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name”, which was of course last year’s Christmas number one.
On Tuesday, Leeds Atheist Society hosted a talk by James Murray on “Christmas Beliefs around the World” which looked at the true origins of the holiday season and the various, often comical, holiday traditions around the world.
As we announced last month, the Humanist Community of Leeds is now meeting in the evening. The first of which time slots took place last Sunday where we discussed the differences and similarities between humans and animals as well as the concept of human rights.
Having just sent this message out to everyone in the Humanist Action Group, I thought it was probably worthwhile posting here too…
As you may have seen from the invites that Katie sent out, we’re doing a food drive to put together food parcels for people living in shelters this holiday season – you can find more details on the Facebook event.
There are a number of ways you can get involved…
Donating food. We need non-perishable stuff like tinned food, chocolate bars, etc. It costs very little to throw an extra few tins of baked beans or cans of fish in your trolley and Katie has even volunteered to come collect it from you!
Donating time. We need people to come down on Monday to help make up the parcels and deliver them. One evening for weeks, if not months of feeling good about yourself ;).
Donating cash. If you don’t have time to do any of the above, then consider making a one time donation – we’ll be doing a Marko run to buy as much food as we can for the parcels, so the more money we have, the more we can buy! You can find our bank details and donation links on the charity’s website.
Last weekend, we hit Edinburgh as part of Weekend Away 2010. It’s been several years since I’ve been to the city so it was great to see it once again and despite the snowy weather, our train was only delayed half an hour each way, which while arguably appalling in many places is a relative victory in Britain.
On the Friday evening we joined the Edinburgh University Humanist Society to watch the Blair Hitchens debate live. It was most entertaining, despite Tony Blair not bringing any arguments to the table though it was shocking to see how withered Christopher Hitchens now looks.
Saturday saw us take a look round Edinburgh Castle which was free entry (win), followed by some shopping and then heading our for a few drinks in the evening. We started the evening with dinner at Biblos which delivered probably the best steak I’ve had from a non-steak dedicated restaurant and then headed to Frankenstein but Angry Tom was all angry about the music so we ended up at a rock bar which while failing to live up to it’s early promise of Taking Back Sunday, delivered relatively good music.
Sunday saw us take in the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Museum of Scotland, both of which were great but as the museum was closing early because of the weather conditions (apparently they’re not prepared for snow in Scotland) we only got an hour in there. Finally we went round the Christmas Market before heading home.
At CWF, one of our core aims is promoting education, be it via our courses, our public understanding of science lectures or the online resources and educational material we provide. Today, we are adding a new initiative to this list.
