Our speaker from November's assembly, Dr. Paul Ortiz, has kindly agreed to share his presentation slides with us. Dr. Ortiz presented “Defending History: The Struggle to Tell Historical Truths in the United States" on Sunday, Nov. 21.

The presentation slides are available at the link below.

The Sunday Assembly Book Club selection for December is Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves by Frans de Waal. The club will meet to discuss the book Saturday, Dec. 11 at 11:00am via Zoom.

From GoodReads.com:
Mama’s Last Hug is a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals—beginning with Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. Her story and others like it show that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy, and open our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected.

Interested in joining? For details, contact the book club via email at hennie_mo@bellsouth.net.

The SAGA Book Club has made its selection for November--Issac's Storm by Erik Larson. November's discussion will be Saturday, Nov. 13 at 11:00 am via Zoom. Interested in joining? Email hennie_mo@bellsouth.net for further details. 

From the author's website:
​At the turn of the last century, Isaac Cline, chief weatherman for Texas, believed no storm could do serious harm to the city of Galveston, a fast growing metropolis on the Gulf Coast destined for great things. In September 1900 a massive hurricane proved him wrong, at great personal cost. The storm killed as many as 10,000 people in Galveston alone, stole the city’s future, and caused hurricane experts to revise their thinking about how hurricanes kill. The book won the American Meteorology Society’s prestigious Louis J. Battan Author’s Award.

The official August selection for SAGA's book club is Hamnet—a novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell. The book club will meet on Saturday, Aug. 14 at 10:30 via Zoom.

Interested in joining? Email hennie_mo@bellsouth.net for more information. 
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​From Amazon: 
​NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 

“Of all the stories that argue and speculate about Shakespeare’s life… here is a novel … so gorgeously written that it transports you." --The Boston Globe

In 1580’s England, during the Black Plague a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” (The New Yorker) and best-selling winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

After a hiatus of fifteen months, Sunday Assembly Gainesville is happy to announce the return of in-person assemblies. Our July assembly, Sunday, July 18, at 11:00 am, will be at the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida (PCCNCF), located in the Liberty Center at 3131 NW 13th Street.

In keeping with CDC guidance, those who are fully vaccinated are welcome to attend without a mask. Attendees who are not fully vaccinated are required to wear masks. 

The SAGA Book Club continues via Zoom. The next  book club meeting is  Saturday, July 10 at 11:00 am.

July's book selection is Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann.  From the author's website:

From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history





Interested in participating? Contact Hennie Monkhorst at Hennie_MO@bellsouth.net.
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Pippa Evans, co-founder of Sunday Assembly and successful stage improv comic in London, will share practical life hacks from her new book Improv Your Life as part of Sunday Assembly Gainesville's June Assembly, June 20 at 11 am via Zoom. Email sundayassembly32601@gmail.com for Zoom info.

Pippa Evans is an award winning improviser, performer and author of Improv Your Life: An Improviser’s Guide To Embracing Whatever Life Throws At You.  In 2013, Pippa and Sanderson Jones started Sunday Assembly, the church for people who don’t believe in God which became a global phenomenon. Though no longer involved in the Sunday Assembly project, Pippa finds herself drawn to the Venn Diagram of secular spirituality, improvisation and inner work. How can we be fully ourselves in relation to others? Can we do serious work without taking ourselves too seriously?

Pippa is a core member of Showstopper The Improvised Musical and regularly appears on BBC Radio 4.

Learn more about Pippa at her website, www.pippaevans.com. 

April's selection for the SAGA Book Club is Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson. The club will meet Saturday, April 10 @ 11:00 am via Zoom.

​From Amazon:
From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. 

Interested in joining the discussion? Email hennie_mo@bellsouth.net for more information.