Stories of Mom: Lessons for a Lifetime

We learn a great deal from those who raised us, sometimes about how to be and sometimes about how not to be. We all have these stories and I’ll be sharing mine with you, along with the lessons I’ve accumulated over much of a lifetime. 

Rev. Kim Palmer is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister serving as an affiliated community minister with the Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North congregation. She is a board-certified chaplain and has served Emory University in the dual role of chaplain and spiritual health researcher until retiring last year, along with her wife Marty. She continues to train chaplains and support research projects at Emory and elsewhere as a contractor. When not working, she and her wife chip away at numerous house and yard projects, while they dream of the time they can begin traveling.

• Facilitator – Jan Lister
• Musician – William Chelton

It’s about time! (and space, and energy…)

D. Patton White (he/him) has worked as a dancer and choreographer since 1982, for the stage, site-specific work, and dance for the camera.  As Artistic/Administrative Director of Beacon Dance since 1990, he has sought innovative ways to bring art to the public, including site works throughout DeKalb County parks and nature centers, the High Museum of Art, in the former Sears building in Atlanta, in Freedom Park, at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, the B Complex in southwest Atlanta, the Emory University Campus, and on the Atlanta Beltline.  He currently teaches part time at Emory University.  He has been an artist in residence at UNLV, Rice University, and Emory University, and has conducted numerous community residencies and his work has been funded by the NEA, South Arts, GCA, Florida Council on Arts & Culture, among others.  He has been a member of Alternate ROOTS since 1997.

• Facilitator – Cindy Lou Who
• Musician – Craig Rafuse

“Thinking About Family, Thinking About War: A Picture Worth a Thousand Tears.”

Jon Herman is a recently retired associate professor of religious studies at Georgia State University, where he taught classes in Asian religion, comparative mysticism, and critical theory in the study of religion. He is the author of Taoism for Dummies, and several articles on topics such as interfaith dialogue, contemporary conceptions of “spirituality,” religious studies and public education, environmentalism, Neo-Confucian mysticism, and the late science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. He is currently researching for a book on the Jewish existentialist author Martin Buber’s unpublished lectures on the Taoist classic, the Tao Te Ching.

During his retirement, Jon has been authoring “Herman’s Toteboard,” a (liberal) blog offering election analysis and political commentary. You can find the blog at www.thetoteboard.org.

Jon’s wife Ellen has recently retired as the coordinator of Threshold Ministry, an organization providing assistance to the homeless and those suffering other effects of poverty. She had previously worked in religious education, and university, prison, and hospital chaplaincy, and is still working tirelessly to combat homelessness. Jon and Ellen are the parents of two young adult daughters, both adopted from China. Molly is the director of communications and children’s ministry at St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church in Brookhaven, and Carly is a student at UGA, studying public health.

• Facilitator – Marsha Mitchiner
• Musician – Kathy McGuire

“Is it hot or is it just me? Some thoughts on perspective”

Our Fellowship Minister, Rev. Marsha Mitchiner, has served the Congregation for
over two decades, since ordination by us, following her study with Lanier Clance.
She counsels, connects, and contacts members and friends, and for those who need it,
performs the laying-on of hands in her role as a massage therapist. Many of us can
vouch for the quality of her work, and appreciate the wisdom, restraint, and compassion
she brings to the job of caring for our Congregation. Marsha speaks once each quarter, and helps smooth the functioning of the Congregation innumerable times in between.

Facilitator: Patton White
Musician: Charli Vogt

‘A Trojan Horse in the News: Neoliberal Academics as “Credible” Sources’

My talk is about how academic scholars — supported by billionaire-funded libertarian and
neoliberal foundations and centers – have become go-to experts for mainstream news
organizations (including the New York Times and Washington Post), and in that capacity
have been able to promote neoliberal ideas and beliefs.

Marian Meyers is a professor emerita in the Department of Communication and a former
affiliate of the Institute of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State
University. Her most recent scholarly work has focused on neoliberal ideology in
mainstream media and how the media are complicit in promoting and naturalizing neoliberal beliefs and values. Her research interests also include the media’s portrayal of women and other socially marginalized groups from an intersectional perspective that views race, class, gender and other markers of social identity as inextricably connected. She has published articles and books on topics ranging from the status of women in higher education, the portrayal of women in the media, how African American women journalists cover the news, and neoliberalism and the media.

• Facilitator: Libby Ware
• Musician: William Chelton

“The strange origins of religious tolerance in North America”

Dr. H. Robert Baker is Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University and is
the author of Prigg v. Pennsylvania: Slavery, the Supreme Court, and the Ambivalent
Constitution (2012) and The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the
Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War (2006). His scholarly articles have
appeared in the Law and History Review, Common-Place, and the Journal of Supreme
Court History. He holds a Ph.D. in History from UCLA, where he studied with Joyce
Appleby. He has been a Fulbright Fellowship and has been a fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Studies. He also writes about wine, law, and contemporary culture for the blog Tropics of Meta.

• Facilitator: Jan Lister
• Musician: Mick Kinney

“What’s on your Bucket List?”

Don Perryman is a graduate of Georgia State U. and a retired teacher of English and gifted ed at high schools around Fulton County. His interests include meals out with relatives and friends, low-stress hiking and camping, philosophizing, swimming laps at our city pool – and poetry. Last year he self-published Hearts Bigger than Brazil, a mostly autobiographical collection of poems written over a lifetime. He currently lives in Roswell with his husband, Gilson Satel.

Facilitator: Lorraine Fontana
Musician: Bill Chelton

“… and Another Black Woman Dies”

I recently wrote an essay about being exhausted. Exhausted by hearing how Black women will save the election, how Black women are so strong, and I am tired of being thanked as a Black woman for marching in causes that will save everyone. Too many Black women are dying too young from what is expected of us by our families, by our communities and by those who fantasize about our presumed strength. I am exhausted — but for the sake of saving my own life, those I love as family and holding up community, I pull myself up each day and do my best to help make an unbiased world a reality. The ebb and flow of building a just society is not new. It is not just in the last 50 years or the last 100 years. I reflect on the heightened levels of discrimination and legal wrangling from the 1850s that still resonate with the same elements of discrimination. Diversity then becomes imaginable, but the same stench of ugly hate is repeated. We are once again at a moment in time to ask ourselves what we can do to build what is possible for everyone — and not depend on another Black woman to do it.

Althea Sumpter is a researcher and scholar who focuses on ethnographic documentation and cultural preservation of the Southern story in the United States. With her native Gullah Geechee culture and her historical connection to the story of Reconstruction Era in Beaufort County, SC, she uses her expertise to teach how to research and document stories of a family and a community. She presents talks and workshops on how to find cultural heritage and to make the link to historical context in community. Her research and work can be viewed at: altheasumpter.com.

• Facilitator: Charlene Ball
• Musician: Mick Kinney