Thursday, September 11 will be Humanists of Utah's first Thomas Paine Day. I have mentioned before that this will be another special event to compliment Darwin Day.. We will start modestly this year, and work to make it a larger happening in future years. This year we will have a viewing of a one-man show video of Thomas Paine produced by KUED and featuring Hans Peterson. I remember seeing this video several years ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. I have heard from a few of our members that they remember seeing it and felt it would be a good idea to view it on our Thomas Paine day.

I will also be bringing a few handouts for those in attendance on Thursday. One is a biography of Paine that I feel is one of the best. Which is no surprise because Robert G. Ingersoll authored it. One thing that did surprise me was finding another biography by Thomas Edison, and learning that Edison was the first Vice President of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association and that Edison broke ground in 1925 for the Thomas Paine Museum in New Rochelle, New York.

Having a Thomas Paine day on his birthday is somewhat problematic for us because his birthday is on January 29, which is only a couple of weeks before our "Darwin Day with Humanists of Utah." So perhaps our September meeting is as good a time as any to have this event.

I offer the first paragraph of Paine's The Crisis No.3

IN THE progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I may so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that produce it, and journey on in search of new matter and new refinements: but as it is pleasant and sometimes useful to look back, even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and windings through which we have passed, so we may likewise derive many advantages by halting a while in our political career, and taking a review of the wondrous complicated labyrinth of little more than yesterday.

--Robert Lane
President, HoU