Fall Is A Time For Growth At SHoWLE

SHoWLE kicked off our pro­gram­ing year with a speak­er who gave us ideas on how to be a trans ally. We vis­it­ed the Adams Street Cafe’ and in October we will be dis­cussing Humanism and Politics.

We start­ed our reg­u­lar meet­ings in September in the Fellowship Hall of the First Unitarian Church of Toledo.

“For a group like ours it was impor­tant to have our reg­u­lar meet­ings at the same loca­tion each month,” President Douglas Berger said. “The pri­ma­ry need is to have meet­ings at the same time and date each month and a con­stant loca­tion is icing on the cake. I’m glad that the Unitarians allowed us to rent the space.”

The September meet­ing had Chrissy Hart, a facil­i­ta­tor for the Toledo Area Transgender Support group, speak to us about how to be a trans ally. The result­ing dis­cus­sion helped us bet­ter under­stand an often mar­gin­al­ized group.

We also held a mem­bers meet­ing to adopt a revised Bylaws and elect our first Board of Directors. Congratulations to: Doug Berger, Shawn Meagley, Margarette Anne Emery Webster, Larry Brach, and Tim Barger. They will be added to our Governance page soon.

Our next gen­er­al meet­ing will be on October 13th and will be a group dis­cus­sion about Humanism and Politics. Although as a group, SHoWLE can’t endorse can­di­dates for polit­i­cal office that does­n’t mean our mem­bers aren’t polit­i­cal or don’t have polit­i­cal ideas. We will explore how the con­clu­sions we reach can have polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions and how we as Humanists can be involved in pol­i­tics and still hold to our prin­ci­ples.

In November we will be vis­it­ed by Monette Richards, is a mem­ber of CFI NE Ohio. Her group has host­ed the Secular Summit and Lobby Day in Columbus for sev­er­al years and Monette has been active with Secular Woman. The top­ic of her talk will be announced soon.

On September 19th we had a Humanist Nooner at the Adams Street Cafe’ in Downtown Toledo. The food was great and rea­son­ably priced. The next Nooner will be tak­ing place at Al Smith’s Place off Secor Rd north of Central Ave. on October 17th.

We will hav­ing our first Humanist Sunday Salon on October 7th. A salon is a gath­er­ing of peo­ple under the roof of an inspir­ing host. It is an impor­tant place for the exchange of ideas that hope­ful­ly increas­es the knowl­edge of the par­tic­i­pants through con­ver­sa­tion.

Humanists believe that all ideas are open to ques­tion­ing includ­ing our own.

“We have had peo­ple ask us to have an event on a Sunday,” President Douglas Berger said. “I like the idea of meet­ing with peo­ple, in per­son, and talk­ing about the news of the day and try to tie it back to our Humanist prin­ci­ples.”

SHoWLE is also inter­est­ed in host­ing oth­er events and activ­i­ties. If you have an idea and want to host it send us a note through our con­tact form and let us know. The only require­ments are you need to be a mem­ber of the group and the activ­i­ty or event has some kind of rela­tion­ship with Humanism. If you aren’t sure just ask the lead­er­ship.

Even though SHoWLE is still new and grow­ing we have some good pro­grams com­ing up to fin­ish out 2018.


Please help us pro­vide a sup­port­ive local com­mu­ni­ty for human­ists and oth­er non­the­ists, while pro­mot­ing eth­i­cal and rea­son­able sec­u­lar world views through edu­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, out­reach, activism, and social events.

You can join our group or donate mon­ey to our group. All con­tri­bu­tions are tax deductible.