Seattle Atheists is participating in this year’s Relay for Life event, and we’re looking for volunteers like you! There are all sorts of ways you can help out. You can make a donation to support participants or the Seattle Atheists team, or join us during the walk. You can also help us with various fundraising activities during the time leading up to the event.

When and Where?

Date: May 12 – 13, 2012
Start Time: 2:00 pm
Location: Dempsey Stadium, University of Washington

What to Expect

1. Relayers are welcomed in the Opening Ceremony.

2. Relay starts with the Survivor Lap, when survivors walk to celebrate their victory over cancer.

3. The Caregiver Lap recognizes those who have given care to cancer patients.

4. All of the Relay teams are invited to walk together during the Opening Lap.

5. Luminaria bags and candles are lit during the Luminaria Ceremony to honor loved ones who have passed or are fighting the disease.

6. Individual Walking is observed throughout the night with Family Games, Activities, and Entertainment.

7. The Fight Back Ceremony helps close the event. Relayers take a final lap and pledge to take action and spread awareness of cancer research, treatments, and prevention.

Get Involved

Click here to visit Seattle Atheists’ team page.

From there you can make a donation or become a team member. The cost to join is $15, but since Seattle Atheists has already registered the team, you can send a message to seattleatheists@seattleatheists.org to request instructions on how to join for free. Remember that we need a lot of volunteer power to set up and man the booth, walk laps, and clean up.

Have you survived a battle with cancer, or know someone who has? We’re looking for cancer survivors to honor and take part in the Survivor Lap.

We need fundraising ideas! Let’s work together to meet and exceed our fundraising goals. Please don’t hesitate to share your ideas.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

Where: 6120 Grove St, Marysville, WA 98270

The Humanists of North Puget Sound and the Witty Humanist Youth will be hosting a seminar by Dale McGowan, author of Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethnkers in Marysville WA on December 11th at 1 p.m. Seating is limited so go tohttp://www.meetup.com/Parenting-Beyond-Belief-seminar-Puget-Sound/ to secure your spot.

Admission is free but we will be accepting donations for local food banks.  We will also be accepting donations to  support our goal bringing great guest to the Puget Sound.

Over nine million parents in the U.S. are raising children without theistic religion. The PARENTING BEYOND BELIEF SEMINAR, a unique half-day workshop with author and educator Dale McGowan, offers encouragement and practical solutions for secular parenting in a religious world.

Based on the freethinking philosophy of the book Newsweek called “a compelling read,” the PARENTING BEYOND BELIEF SEMINAR is empowering secular parents across the country to raise ethical, caring, confident kids without religion.

Participants will learn effective ways to:

• Encourage religious literacy without indoctrination;
• Help kids interact productively with a religious world;
• Help kids develop active moral reasoning;
• Weigh church-state issues in the public sphere;
• Address sensitive issues with religious relatives using the principles of nonviolent communication;
• Help children develop a healthy understanding of death and a joyful love of life;
• Build a family atmosphere of fearless questioning and boundless wonder;

…and much more.

Where: 10357 Stone Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98133

For those who can’t make it to the Bellevue location to donate blood, you are welcome to join us for lunch in North Seattle and at IHOP Restaurant, 10002 Aurora Ave N #2-24 SEATTLE, WA 98133-9347 in the Oak Tree Village Shopping Center, and then donate blood right afterwards. Because whole blood donations are limited to once every 56 days, this event will repeat every other month usually on a Saturday. When you RSVP for this Meetup, please also make a donation appointment for 2:30 p.m. or later at the North Seattle Donor Center by calling Leah or Christy at 425-462-4022.

The North Seattle Donor Center is located about 3 blocks away at 10357 Stone Avenue North, Seattle, WA 98133. For more information about the Puget Sound Blood Center, please visit http://www.psbc.org/programs/cntr_seattle_north.htm.

We’ll have all of the traditional favorites: turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie and more. Check back in a couple weeks to see the finalized menu and location details.

If you’d like to help and volunteer your time or if you have any questions, email ericka.johnson@seattleatheists.org.

RSVP on MeetUp so that we can order enough turkeys! Merry Christmas!

Where: private residence (contact one of board members for address)

On Monday we’ll be having another marketing meeting to continue our work on the bus ad campaign and discuss other marketing action items. Our website, business cards, and tri-fold brochures are in need of an update, and we’d also like to talk about designs/content for additional promotional materials like bumper stickers, t-shirts, cards, buttons, etc. Volunteers are always welcome!

Where: Redmond Library (15990 Northeast 85th Street, Redmond, WA 98052)

Want to see the administrative process in action? Have ideas or volunteer power to offer the board? Come join us at the Redmond Library to see all the exciting decisions the board gets to make. The agenda is below:

Minutes Approval

Treasurer’s Report

Old/Ongoing Business
-       T-shirts – new design – KH
-       Bumper stickers for welcome packet

• price list from FASTSIGNS
• Sticker Robot: www.stickerobot.com

-       Name tags for ambassadors – KH
-       Tri-fold brochures – JB
-       Gift wrapping at B&N – shifts on 12/10, 12/11, 12/17, 12/18, 1100 – 1900
-       Fundraising letter for bus ads – SB/JS
-       Winter Solstice Potluck – HOW is hosting, Dec. 4, 1700 – 2100, 2100 Building
-       Bus ads – report on current campaign – EJ & JB

• Reimburse Kyle, Josh Frost and Mike Wilson
• Media contacts – Bob Seidensticker, Ericka, Kyle
• Website video

-       Atheist Christmas, Dec. 24 – EJ
New Business
-       Newsletter – HA
-       Relay for Life – Rada Bittner-Rozenberg
-       Larger storage unit
-       Ask an Atheists ads – need new ones
-       Stranger ad results – JK
-       DarwinDay – 2100 Building, February 12th

• Schedule planning meetings

-       2012 NW Freethought Conference, Mar. 30 – Apr. 1
-       Facebook – Group or Page?
-       Action items from meetings – JB
-       Ad hoc presentations at meetings
-       Selling merchandise at meetings – what is most effective?
-       SA and 1in4WA websites

• bugs, content, layout changes, etc.
• Need specific action items and deadlines

-       Budget meeting – 08 January 2012, 1130
-       Gift for Tom Flynn, Rich & Deanna

Next Board Meeting
-       08 January 2012, 1300 – 1700, Issaquah Library

Oh the weather outside may be frightful,

But a holiday party is most delightful!

When: December 4, 2011 at 6:00 p.m.

Where: 2100 Building

RSVP: at the Meetup site

You are invited to join us for our 2011 Winter Solstice Potluck Dinner.  Come and celebrate with your local freethought friends.

This event is always a big hit and we plan to make it even better this year.  Please bring your favorite dish to share.  Bring your own wine or beer. Table service, coffee, and other beverages will be provided.  There will be fun and entertainment!  Join us for the festivities!

This Northwest Freethought Coalition event will be hosted by the Humanists of Washington.

For more information, please contact the Humanists of Washington at humanists@comcast.net

Group Blood Donations

Giving blood can actually seem a little intimidating, especially if you’ve never done it before. What better way to get involved than to go with a group of friends for support? You’ll be providing a valuable, much-needed resource to the community, and also showing that atheists do, in fact, care about helping those in need. We currently have two groups who get together to donate, one in Bellevue and one in North Seattle, which alternate every month. The group always gathers for food, so there’s also an opportunity to socialize and nourish yourself before or after donating. Our next group donation will be on Thursday, November 3, at the Puget Sound Blood Center in Bellevue. See our Meetup for dates and details.

SeasonLESS Food Drive

Food banks everywhere are experiencing a sharp decrease in the amount of food available to hungry families. It’s time to make sure that giving continues, even AFTER the traditional holiday giving season. This is a year-round effort, so if you have some food to spare, please bring it to any of our events. We’ll donate the food we collect to Family Works and Volunteers of America food banks in the name of Seattle Atheists.

Holiday Gift Wrapping for Children’s Hospital

This one is just plain fun. For the past several years, Seattle Atheists volunteers have wrapped gifts at local bookstores and donated all of the money to Children’s Hospital. It’s a wonderful opportunity to talk to the public about the group, and the charity is unarguably a fantastic cause. We’ll be gift-wrapping at the Bellevue Barnes and Noble this December, so if you’d like to help out, take a look at our shift schedule and contact jami.blackann@seattleatheists.org.

Day of Caring

This year Seattle Atheists participated in the Day of Caring, which is a day of group volunteering at community projects all over King County. Our project was to help prepare supplies for the Mayors’ Day Food Drive. There were nine of us, and it was a blast. We plan to do more events like this in the future, and we need volunteers like you!

Play the Seattle Atheists Left Behind commercial (music from DoKashiteru)

It’s October 22, and Harold Camping is trying for a birdie: the world will be ended! Again! What better way to celebrate the terror than by watching a terrible movie? Join us as we exploit our recently purchased public viewing rights to the fullest with a screening of Left Behind, a Christian movie about the apocalypse. We won’t spoil the ending for you, but we’ll tell you this much: that’s a lot of hair gel.

Talking over the movie is highly encouraged. Let’s do this Mystery Science Theater style. In fact, if you’ve seen it before, feel free to prepare yourself with in-depth, incisive commentary on the marked changes in Kirk Cameron’s hair since Growing Pains. We’ll have popcorn and soda and all manner of terrible things to match this terrible movie.  Bring your own bananas.

This will be the official end to our Rapture Relief campaign, which helped spark a Camp Quest in the Puget Sound (thanks to everyone!). A $5 donation would be appreciated.

We have limited space. Please RSVP at the Meetup if you plan to go.If you can’t go, but would like to donate to Camp Quest NorthWest, you can click here:

Bio: Rich Lyons spent 20 years as a minister of the United Pentecostal Church, before a series of events caused him to take a rational look at his faith.

In the following years, he gradually debunked and rejected, one-by-one, the many doctrines of the church where he preached. Eventually, he left that church and finally left faith altogether. That process was quite painful, and resulted in Rich being abandoned by his family and friends, and losing not only his home and job, but also losing a career and a way of life.

Today, Rich and his wife, Deanna Joy, live in Seattle and are active in the atheist and skeptic communities here. They host a podcast called, “Living After Faith,” which addresses the process of coming out of religion, and how to live again after leaving the life of faith.

RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/seattle-atheists/events/36502392/

We also encourage you to bring canned food items for our year-round Seattle Atheists SeasonLESS Food Drive. We’ll donate the food we collect to Family Works and Volunteers of America food banks in the name of Seattle Atheists.

Food banks everywhere are experiencing a sharp decrease in the amount of food available to hungry families. It’s time to make sure that giving continues, even AFTER the traditional holiday giving season.