A ‘Magical Night’ with Gloria Steinem

The evening of December 21, 2024 was a mag­i­cal night and I don’t even believe in mag­ic. My group the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie held our first Winter Solstice event at the Yeager Center at Swan Creek Metropark. When plan­ning the event I did want to have some­thing spe­cial like a spe­cial speak­er but our group is still pret­ty small. Our co-founder Shawn sug­gest­ed invit­ing Gloria Steinem to speak over Zoom. Gloria is a fem­i­nist icon, 2012 Humanist of the Year, and grew-up in Toledo. I did­n’t believe it would hap­pen. This is Gloria Steinem, one of the most famous activists in the world and we are a low­ly Humanist group in the Black Swamp of Northwest Ohio. But we tracked down her speak­ing con­tact and I sent an email.

The day I got the response was emo­tion­al — her peo­ple said she was con­sid­er­ing our request. Holy S*it!!!! It might hap­pen. I was so excit­ed and then got more excit­ed when we agreed on a speak­ing fee and signed the con­tract — It was going to hap­pen.

25 peo­ple joined us on December 21. Several of them had donat­ed to Gloria’s speak­ing fee and many more joined us to hear from Gloria. The food spread was so gen­er­ous that we had to break out anoth­er table to hold it all. There were some adult bev­er­ages drank and cof­fee made and we were all hav­ing a good time.

As it came time for Gloria’s vis­it my 10 year old lap top decid­ed to be dif­fi­cult and it was­n’t going to boot up and be ready to go in time. Oh did I tell you the Yeager Center does­n’t have WI-FI?? I was prepar­ing for a huge melt down because of tech issues. Shawn saved the day because in try­ing to play a music playlist from their phone to the TV we dis­cov­ered they could screen­cast to the TV. When I could­n’t get my lap­top ful­ly boot­ed up I used my phone to start the Zoom ses­sion and Shawn joined the meet­ing and host­ed as orig­i­nal­ly planned. Then once we fig­ured out to make it full screen the tech issue was gone and we enjoyed our short time talk­ing to Gloria *Freaking* Steinem as she sat at her desk in her brown­stone in New York City.

We had some ques­tions pre­pared and took a few from the audi­ence. One per­son asked if there were any younger polit­i­cal women she admired and she men­tioned Amy Richards but what she did next blew my mind. She asked us who the up and com­ing polit­i­cal women in Toledo were and we called out some like Dr. Michelle Grim, Erika White, and Katie Moline and Gloria WROTE their names down. I hope she reach­es out to them in some fash­ion. I wish we had some more names ready. Gloria still cares about her home­town even though she left before she grad­u­at­ed from high school.

As we closed she wished us well and hoped to stay in touch and Shawn told her if she was ever in the Toledo area to let us know and we would set­up and event or some­thing for her.

Shortly after the call, the potluck for­mal­ly end­ed as we held the draw­ing for a large gift bas­ket donat­ed for the occa­sion. It was won by our mem­ber Colette C.

And I was able to make in home in time to catch the Ohio State foot­ball game against Tennessee which turned out great as the Buckeyes won.

Like I said it was a mag­i­cal night and we are already talk­ing about hav­ing a Summer Solstice event in the com­ing year.

Thanks to all our mem­bers and friends who attend­ed and donat­ed toward this potluck and made it a great suc­cess and I want­ed to thank again the mem­bers of the Potluck com­mit­tee for this six month odyssey — Shawn and Anne E. and our set­up and clean up helpers Bev and her friend Anne B.

If you attend­ed please feel free to send us feed back by email or use our con­tact form — let us know what you liked or did­n’t like the event.

This post was writ­ten by SHoWLE President Douglas Berger

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Here is a mon­tage of the night:

Although due to the con­tract we signed, we were not able to record or livestream the vis­it, Zoom did pro­vide a sum­ma­ry cre­at­ed by AI. After some light edit­ing here is the sum­ma­ry: