Public Trust and Public Land

Will Rogers, President and CEO, The Trust for Public Land

Monday Night Philosophy looks at America's increasing need for more and better urban parks. As urban areas become ever more densely populated, and urban populations ever more sedentary, both the health and economic benefits that vibrant park systems provide to local economies have too often been overlooked. Rogers will discuss how local conservation communities have worked together to educate their neighbors and to inspire more leaders to commit public and private resources to enhance our parks.

MLF: Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program
Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond
Also know: In association with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department

Humanities West Book Discussion: A Pepys Anthology

Join us to discuss the writings of Samuel Pepys, a Restoration-era London civil servant who worked to improve the Royal Navy and eventually became a member of Parliament. The diary he kept as a young man in the 1660s, published in 1825, has made him posthumously famous. Pepys’s diary gives vivid insight into his life and times and includes a first-hand account of the Great Fire of London. The discussion, led by Lynn Harris, will use the edition edited by Robert and Linnet Latham.

MLF: Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. program
Cost: $5 standard, MEMBERS FREE
Program Organizer: George Hammond

Consuelo

George Sand, famous for her many lovers, wrote more than 60 novels during her career. Written in 1842, Consuelo portrays the triumph of moral purity over manifold temptations. This Romantic novel of the musical life of a gypsy singer is noted for its rich depiction of Venice. The characters in Sand’s novels are enthusiastic and outspoken, with a bold manifesto of women's independence and a legitimate claim to emotional and sexual fulfillment. The title character is modeled on a well-known soprano of that age, Pauline Viardot. If you encounter the serialized volumes entitled “Consuelo,” the story we are reading is Volume I.

MLF: SF Book Discussion
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. program
Cost: $5 standard, MEMBERS FREE
Program Organizers: Barbara Massey and Howard Crane

Subversives

Seth Rosenfeld, Author, Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power

Monday Night Philosophy explores some until-now secret details about the history of Berkeley in the 1960s : How the FBI disrupted and infiltrated student groups, the faculty and the UC administration; how that influenced California state politics; and how Governor Reagan worked with the FBI to develop one leg of his national political power base.

MLF: Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing
Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond
Also know: Photo: Heidi Elise Benson.

Aphra Behn

Patricia Lundberg, Emerita Professor of English and Women's Studies, Indiana University Northwest; Executive Director, Humanities West

Aphra Behn was the earliest known British woman to have earned her living as a writer. Born in 1640, she traversed the rowdy literary and political landscape of the Restoration era in England and dedicated her life to pleasure and poetry, as well as a bit of intelligence work for the government. She wrote plays, novels and poems in the same bawdy vein as her male peers, using her spy moniker, Astrea. Nearly 300 years later, Virginia Woolf credited Behn with earning women the right to speak their minds. Lundberg will discuss the literary works and personality that made this writer at once famous and infamous.

MLF: Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program
Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond
Also know:  In association with Humanities West

The Four Almost Rational Explanations of Life

George Hammond, Author, Rational Idealism and Conversations with Socrates

Monday Night Philosophy explores the competing explanations of life, narrows them down to four prime contenders, analyzes each version’s strengths and weaknesses, and concludes by revisiting Pascal’s wager and moving his bet from black to red.

MLF:  Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program
Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond

The Myth of Persecution

Candida Moss, Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, University of Notre Dame; Author, The Myth of Persecution

Professor Moss posits that the early Church inflated and outright fabricated stories of Christian persecution as a means of growing their numbers. She also explains that the Church has, for centuries, carefully honed this perception of martyrdom to silence dissent and galvanize new generations of culture warriors. Citing recent examples (including Mitt Romney’s assertion that President Obama is waging a “war on religion” and Rick Santorum’s claim that the gay community “had gone out on a jihad” against him), Moss states that this rhetoric remains both politically popular and dangerous.

MLF: Humanities
Location:  SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing
Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond

Humanities West Book Discussion: Bernini: His Life and His Rome

Join us to discuss Bernini: His Life and His Rome, by Franco Mormando. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the last of the great universal Italian artistic geniuses: sculptor, architect, painter, playwright and scenographer. His artistic vision is still seen in the statues, fountains and buildings that transformed Rome into a Baroque paradise. Mormando leads us through Bernini’s many feuds and love affairs, scandals and sins, set against a vivid backdrop of popes and politicians, schemes and secrets. The discussion will be led by Lynn Harris.

MLF: Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 5:30 p.m. program
Cost: $5 standard, MEMBERS FREE
Program Organizer: George Hammond

The Measure of Civilization

Ian Morris, Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and Professor of History, Stanford University; Author, The Measure of Civilization

Using a groundbreaking numerical index that compares societies in different times and places, Morris breaks social development into four traits – energy capture per capita, organization, information technology and war-making capacity – and uses archaeological, historical and modern government data to quantify patterns. His conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate are influencing the ongoing scholarly debate.

MLF: Humanities
Location: SF Club Office
Time:  5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing
Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: George Hammond