Gilda Bettencourt of the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) will provide this program. She has been involved for the past 8 years, with people from around the globe who are working to protect vulnerable communities through nonviolent peacekeeping. Nonviolent Peaceforce teams are currently working in the Philippines , South Sudan, the South Caucasus region, Sri Lanka and Guatemala.
Gilda will share a 9-minute video report from PBS and give another 10 minutes of presentation and leave whatever remains for Q & A.
Deborah Meckler is President of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. The Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people find meaningful, dignified and affordable death care for themselves and their loved ones. Besides leading the Alliance, Deborah is also actively working to make ‘green burial’ an option on the San Francisco peninsula. She has a B.S. degree in natural resources management and has worked as a land steward and as an environmental consultant.
Green burial is a topic that some members will be acquainted with and others may know nothing about. To quote from the Funeral Consumers Alliance website, ‘Green burial is a way to return human remains directly to the earth so that they will biodegrade naturally and become soil. It is a way to deal with human remains with as little resource use, energy use, and land disturbance as possible’.
Please come and learn more about this important, environmentally sound option for dealing with the final disposition of human remains, with the dual benefits of keeping pollutants out of the soil and, at the same time, helping to preserve open space in a near-natural state.
More information about green burial and the Funeral Consumers Alliance is available at www.fcapeninsula.org/.
Slides of the presentation are available. You may also view the notes by clicking on the blurb in the upper left-hand corner of each slide. This presentation with the notes contains considerable, valuable research information.
Deborah also recommended two books on the subject of funerals: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh and The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford.
The concept and experience of spirituality does not have to have a religious connotation. Human beings need an explanation of their cosmic journey, and a story of human evolution that gives meaning to their lives. A science based explanation and story is in need to be told and to be enriched by the diversity of our human diversity and cultures.
In this presentation spirituality will be defined as a naturalistic, scientific, ethical, philosophical, secular process that can enlarge your sense of self, participation and meaning in life.
Given that humanity is facing an evolutionary crisis, we each need to create a sense of purpose and meaning that not only enriches our lives but also contributes toward the transformation of our evolutionary crisis.
Slides for this outstanding presentation are available here.
Manuel is the director of the Center for Evolutionary Leadership, which develops leaders for building a just, flourishing, and sustainable world. He is also a leadership coach and organizational consultant.
Center for Evolutionary Leadership: www.evolutionleader.com. “Homo sapiens-ethicus evolutivo: being ethical & choosing to bring forth relational systems that are loving, just, flourishing, & sustainable.”
The first personal computing revolution took place not in Silicon Valley in the 1980s but in Pisa in the 13th Century. The medieval counterpart to Steve Jobs was a young Italian called Leonardo, better known today by the nickname Fibonacci. Thanks to a recently discovered manuscript in a library in Florence, the story of how this little known genius came to launch the modern commercial world can now be told. Dr. Keith Devlin (Executive Director, H-STAR Institute, Stanford University) will present this talk which will be based on his latest book The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetical Revolution (Walker & Co, July 2011), and his co-published companion e-book Leonardo and Steve: The Young Genius Who Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years.
Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist: Writer-actor Roger Scott Jackson’s satiric Sam Singleton is a comedic character, not a comedian. His shows are best described as one-person theater pieces with audience participation. The 2012 premiere of Cats, Sheep and Goats: The Taxonomy of Atheists, Believers and Preachers marks his fifth work in as many years.
Those with strong views on the existence or nonexistence of God may see what Brother Sam does as activism, though he insists that his aim is simply to get some stuff off his chest. He says, “Somebody else, who had to deal with snake- handling tongues-speakers as a child, might become a homicidal maniac or a teacher at a Bible College. I talk to the world’s most astute ticket-buyers.”
