Speakers for March

  Our Sunday services at 11:00 a.m. feature a different guest speaker each week, either a member of our congregation or someone from the surrounding community. We address a variety of topics, from literature and history to politics, religious thought and social issues. We welcome suggestions for speakers, please contact Donna Orchard donnaforchard@gmail.com

March 3

Speakers: J. D. CROWE
Title: Dork Side of the Toon
Summary: Nationally syndicated cartoonist and author JD Crowe will entertain us with off-the-cuff remarks and his wry humor from his published cartoons–a humor that sprouted during his Kentucky childhood amid preachers and pigs and has blossomed to include political follies as well as the more mundane eccentricities of life in southern Alabama and Fairhope.
Introduction: Harvey Joanning

March 17

Speaker:  VELA OMA
Title:  ¿i?
Summary: I will be carrying a large black plastic bag. I will alter time. I will be. Vela Oma is a practitioner
of collaboration, surreal instincts and intuitive temporal distortion. He enjoys transforming & amalgamating modern and ancient energies into a new unknown universal existence. Since 1994 Vela has actively collaborated with many artists as well as established a curatorial and solo career both nationally, internationally, and in the World Wide Web. He believes in magnifying the energy of time, space, objects and actions while blending the subconscious with spirit and allowing the unknown to present itself.
Introduction: Carl Couret

March 31

Speaker: Elaine Snyder-Conn
Title: T.H. Huxley: Apostle of Science, Education for All, and Agnosticism
Summary: Known today mostly as Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Huxley made hundreds of major contributions to biology, paleontology, and evolution during the Victorian era. He also worked without compensation to revise the entire English system of education from one basically for the Anglican elite, focused on classics and religion, to the system largely in place today in both Britain and the U.S. After earning science degrees from Antioch College and the University of Arizona with a focus in aquatic studies and ecology, Dr. Snyder-Conn began her professional career as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Zoology at North Carolina State University. Since then she has accumulated quite a record of accomplishment as an environmental
contaminent specialist. A member of this Fellowship, she retired in Fairhope, where she continues to enjoy
gardening, hiking, kayaking, and bridge.
Introduction: Pat Cassady

March 10

Speaker: PRESDELANE HARRIS
Title:  Alabama Arise 101
Summary: Since 1994, Organizing Director “ Pres” Harris has worked for Alabama Arise, a statewide nonprofit, non-partisan coalition of 150 congregations & community groups and over 1,000 individuals that promotes state policies to improve the lives of Alabamians with low-incomes. She has a B.S. in justice and public safety from Auburn University at Montgomery and an M.S. in management from Troy University. Having the added benefit of living in Montgomery her entire life, Pres is well-educated in understanding and influencing state policy makers.
Introduction: Jane Finger

March 24

Speaker: LYNNE OLDSHUE
Title: Learning to Listen
Summary: Listening is the easiest gift we can give someone, including strangers. Healing comes from fully
present listening that understands who they are and shows their story and their life matters. An interview with photographer Vincent Lawson about his pictures of the homeless in Mobile, and a story about the city's bus riders, changed Lynne Oldshue’s direction and were the catalysts for her the vignette series Our Southern Souls. After almost 1,200 Souls interviews, including people who survive cancer, flee from war and persecution, take care of spouses with Alzheimer’s, wait for acceptance letters into graduate schools and serve hot dogs to the homeless, Oldshue is an expert on listening. She is also the founder of the Nappi-award-winning “The Southern Rambler” blog/website and the “Community of Mobile” Facebook group, which helps to create a compassionate community that takes care of each other. The Mobile Arts Council
named her their 2018 Cultural Innovator.
Introduction: Michael Patrick