The Banquet Dinner was set up in the ballroom where the speakers had been. Only, we now had tables. My wife and I found a place to sit and had dinner. To our left was couple from Louisiana and to my right was a couple from Arizona.  The gentleman was a retired doctor and very strong advocate of woman’s rights. We had a great dinner consisting of awesome conversation with fellow freethinkers.

The drawing for “clean” money was fun – no I didn’t win.  Clean money is money produced before 1954 when the United States mint printed “E. Pluribus Unum” instead of the offensive “In God We Trust” which most uneducated right-wing theocrats think was used all along. The foundation had several young people draw the winners – the youngest being only two years old.

After the drawing, Dan Barker and Pulitzer Prize cartoonist Steve Benson provided the evening’s entertainment with “Tunes and Toons.”  Basically it was Steve Benson’s amazing artwork with Dan Barker’s phenomenal piano playing. It also included humorous banter between the two of them.  I can honestly say it as probably the highlight of the evening. Dan’s piano playing always leaves me awestruck. Combine that with an award-winning illustrator and you have Tunes and Toons. The final cartoon was a picture of John Lennon making a peace sign with one of his hands.  The Twin Towers were behind him burning with the smoke rising forming the word “Imagine” in the clouds while Dan played his rendition of John Lennon’s classic Imagine. That image, along with the song, pretty much summed up the weekend.

Welcome back freethought fans. Day one of the Freedom From Religion National Convention was a really moving and exciting day. But all of that was just a warm up for day two.

Today’s festivities started out with the traditional NonPrayer Breakfast. Sadly we decided to sleep and instead opt for the free breakfast at the Governor’s Club Lounge that our “deluxe” room entitled us to. I did make it for the presentation of the Thomas Jefferson Student Activist Award. This year award was presented to Indiana student Eric Workman.

When the presentation started and Eric walked up to receive his award I thought it was going be boring and I started to get up to leave;  however, when he did speak, I was blown away. This brave young man stood up to his entire high school, the school board, all of his peers and even the community, as a whole. There was going to be a Christian prayer at his graduation and he objected to it. He called the ACLU and was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the school district. It was hell for him and his family. In the end, he won. However, that wasn’t the end of the matter. At his graduation where spoke as valedictorian, he took on the issue and gave a direct affirmation of state and church separation – despite protests from the audience. Talk about bravery.

Later in the morning I attended a presentation by FFRF staff attorneys Rebecca Markert and Patrick Elliot. The amount cases they take on each year is truly astounding. The heart of FFRF is, of course, writing letters and filing lawsuits against those who would try to bring religion into where it does not belong. Their success rate in protecting the constitutional separation of state and church was both enlightening and inspiring.

My wife and I went outside to the framer’s market around the state capitol. It was beautiful fall day. I felt very lucky to be at the steps of the state capitol attending a conference on freedom while purchasing food from local growers and bakers. Afterwards we had a spot of lunch at the hotel and then went back to the conference for the afternoon activities, which would prove to be the best yet.

Julia Sweeney stole the day with her intelligence, charm and wit. We were treated to a reading from her up-and-coming book which she is writing. Some of it was so funny that we literally were crying from laughing so hard. After having seen Letting go of God, her amazing tale of atheist discovery, I can honestly say that Sweeney is one of the best spokespersons for rational thought. Here is someone who was a believer and did everything she could to believe. But the more she tried, the farther removed she became. But, what separates her from others is that she has the unique ability to take a very serious subject and reduce it to a laughable, yet poignant soliloquy. He approach and delivery are both deceptively effective. They work where sometimes harder logic fails. Julia Sweeney solidifies herself as one of our best storytellers.

Next we had Madison cartoonist Mike Konopacki. His presentation was slower and dryer that we would have liked. However, he did acknowledge that after Julia Sweeney, he was going to be a bit of a “downer.” Konopacki basically took Christianity to task with images showing all of the bloodshed that it was responsible for. He created a pamphlet with his artwork juxtaposed against passages in the bible that Christians had used to justify their insidious defamation of humanity

The second Emperor Has No Clothes Award was given to Cenk Uygur. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali the night before, Cenk is a maverick who has made a stand to expose religion for what it is. He delivered a riveting, humorous, tirade against the inconsistencies and offensive nonsense of all major religions. He also went on to point out that all of the horrors currently committed by the faithful demands a response and challenged everyone present to fight the religious with logic, reason, and truth whenever the opportunity presents itself. For example, the bible clearly states that you should never eat shellfish. So, whenever you get the chance, you should ask a Christian or a Jew if they really don’t eat shrimp and what issue their god has with eating shrimp.

Cenk is the host of The Young Turks, the largest on-line news show in the world. Even though is audience is huge, he was able communicate at a level that everyone could relate to. A very powerful and intellectually motivated speaker, he really empowered the audience.

That’s it for now.

Greetings freethought fans.  I’m here at the Freedom From Religion’s 33rd Annual Convention. About 700 of us are gathered at the Concourse Hotel in downtown Madison Wisconsin.

Last night the opening ceremony included a wonderful video message from Wisconsin Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton. Lawton gave a very positive and powerful welcome thanking FFRF for all of it’s work. Lawton is a big proponent of state and church separation. She, no doubt, has received a lot of flack from acknowledging a “heathen” group. Kudos to her!

Journalist Linda Greenhouse gave a very interesting speach about the Supreme Court and rulings regarding separation issues. Greenhouse, a brilliant author and journalist has been covering the Supreme Court of 30 years. Her talk was enlightening.

The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the Emperor Has No Clothes Award. This year presented to author /activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Hirsi Ali gave an absolutely wonderful and highly moving acceptance speech. She gave a moving and telling account of her trials and the trials of women, in general, in Muslim countries. As she recounted the actual fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes. She is the little child at the end, of course, that tells the truth and exposes the emperor as actually having no clothes. What’s fascinating is that as a young child growing up with a reform Jewish education, I too was exposed the fable. However, the Jewish religion had hijacked the fable for it’s own self-serving purposes. You see I was taught that the little boy was actually a Jew exposing the Christian believers and their god as false. The Jewish god is the only god and Hans Christian Andersen wrote the fable to illustrate that. For many years I grew up actually believing that lie. Now, as an adult atheist, it gives me great satisfaction to hear this wonderful fable understood as it was meant to be understood. Courageous pioneers like Hirsi Ali are indeed the deserving recipients of awards like the Emperor Has No Clothes Award. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a beautiful, articulate, engaging individual who is a credit to all women and freethinkers everywhere. Her speech brought many present to tears with her lucid antidotes.

At the book signing which followed her speech, my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Hirsi Ali. It was an honor.

The first day was really entertaining and educational.  More later.