in Madison, Wisconsin for the FFRF convention

[RussBLib]

8. Day 1 - Friday

They started the convention with an Open House at Freethought Hall Friday morning. You probably all know that FFRF is HQ'd in Madison. They spent a good chunk of money on the reno, and it's still a small space, but nicely done. We walked over from our hotel on a really nice morning here in Madison. Good turnout. It does appear that the average age of FFRF members must be 60+. But on the bright side, most of the staff had to be under 40. Could be that people who still work for a living (we're now retired) simply could not take off a weekend to attend the convention. When we were working, we didn't attend a single FFRF convention. I do hope that we can attract some "young blood". We'll need it.

I cannot find a recent chart on the FFRF website, but Dan Barker showed an updated membership chart which showed a huge spike in membership from 2016 to 2017. From about 23,000 in 2016 to over 29,000 in 2017. Biggest single year-over-year increase in their history. Gee, I wonder what might have caused such an uptick in membership? Maybe something like this?

There was a good turnout for the Open House. Lots of people in a small space got pretty warm pretty quick. We stepped back outside into the Rose Zerwick Memorial Garden to cool off, and saw this



Still plenty of space open if you'd like to buy a paver for the "floor" outside.


They have a life-sized statue of Charles Darwin in the building, which looks amazingly real.


We didn't attend every speaker lined up. Missed Kelly Helton, a student activist. Have to say the students are pretty amazing though. Their courage to persist in the face of negative peer pressure is very impressive. You can read a lot of their writings in the monthly Freethought Today newsletter.

We did catch Cara Santa Maria, who was given a Freethought Heroine Award. Cara runs a podcast called "Talk Nerdy." She's also been on several TV shows. She's very entertaining. In fact, she is a regular on "Bill Nye Saves the World." She reminded everyone that anyone can start a blog, a vlog, or a podcast. But KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.



Next up was Katha Pollitt, a regular columnist for The Nation magazine. She has another book out called "Pro" about abortion rights. She got a lot of digs in on Donald Trump, which the crowd certainly appreciated.



They planned a "Tailgate" dinner outside on top of the Monona Convention Center with a street activist band. Unfortunately the food wasn't very palatable, so the wife and I went next door and had dinner at the Lake Vista Cafe. While it seemed fine going down, the dinner really upset my wife's stomach, and she went downhill rapidly, so we missed the evening speakers: Maryam Namazie and Paula Poundstone, the headliner. I'd rather look after my wife back in the hotel than make her sit in a chair feeling lousy. Besides, my dinner didn't set that well either.