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.