Restoration, Agorra, and Playaways

This morning I arrived at Church of the Restoration about ten minutes before the service was due to start. Mary asked me if I would like to play a little on the piano prior to the service. I sat at the piano and played some chord sequences and improvised a melody line. A few minutes later the church pianist arrived. I told her I had warmed up the piano for her and moved over to the church seating area.

Gerald’s sermon this morning was on the environment (Earth Day was last Wednesday), more specifically, environmental racism. As an example, he told of hearing the garbage trucks when he was a little boy going to the landfill. He pointed out that the landfills always seem to be located near economically depressed areas.

Once the service was over, I had to scoot. I needed to be at the Tulsa Atheists Meetup by 1:00 pm. I got on Greenwood Ave. and drove to where I could get on the IDL. The IDL took me to highway 75. From 75 I got on I-44, and then on to the Agorra Coffee House in the Fontana Center. Before reaching the Agorra, I went thru a drive-thru at Wendy’s and got a crispy chicken sandwich and a Dr. Pepper.

At the Agorra, there were about 15 people there for the meeting. (That’s better than the 10 people who came to the Restoration service at 11:00 am.) The two main topics of discussion today were the effort to get a license plate with the words “In Reason We Trust” available for those who would like to have such a plate, and the announcement of a gathering at Whiteside Park to celebrate the “National Day of Reason,” coming up on May 7. (Due to a prior commitment, I will have to miss this gathering.)

My weekend activities have kept me from reading the two books I have going at this time – the book by David Jeremiah and the book on music theory. I also, last Friday, checked out from the library a new gizmo called a playaway. It is about the size of a credit card, but four to six times as thick. A book is recorded on the battery-powered device. You plug in your own earphones and listen to the book. The playaway I checked out contains the book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. The container says it runs for 5 hours.

It's time to get reading.