Summer is rapidly approaching, and Humanists of Utah will be heading into our recess for June and July. We will not be having a general meeting or a Discussion Group during these two months. While we call it a recess, many of us have a hard time giving up our activities, so we have in the past had a "Movie Night." This year we plan to have two movie nights on the same night that our regular meeting would be on. Suggestions are welcome, and so far we have a few movies in mind, Monty Python's The Life of Brian and Waking Ned Devine. The movie choices and time and place will be announced in the June Utah Humanist. I'll be bringing my decadent popcorn (plenty of salt and butter) and we'll have some other treats--you can't have movies without goodies. Please join us for a relaxing get together.

Although activities are cut back, the Darwin Day committee members will be getting busy with planning and working on the 2009 bicentennial Darwin Day event. Again I ask that you consider helping us with the many tasks that are part of making this event a success. Please contact any board member if you can assist. Also, it is my pleasure to announce that the AHA Chapter assembly approved our grant application and sent us a check for $2000.00 to use for our "Darwin Day with Humanists of Utah." This will be very helpful to our efforts, but hosting an event of this kind requires considerable financial resources, so we also ask that you consider a donation to help with our efforts.

I don't often get much feedback from you folks out there, so I was happy when I did get a couple of emails and a call or two in favor of the suggestion that we have a "Thomas Paine Day" as our other special yearly event. Setting the record straight about the founding fathers and their activities in our history is important. This event will be smaller in scope than Darwin Day and is still preliminary in planning.

Several people have asked about a dramatization of Thomas Paine they saw on KUED a few years ago. I found and purchased a copy of the KUED production "Thomas Paine" which was done by Hans Petersen. Perhaps a showing of this can be part of a Forum about the Constitution. In January 1995 Hans presented a version of this one-man-play to Humanists of Utah. A report is available on our website. Go to the Site Map, choose 1995 index and you will find it under January.

I'm looking forward to the summer and the events we are planning and hope to see you soon.

--Robert Lane
President, HoU