Events
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will discuss chapters 4 – 8 of the book, Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery by Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake had no defenders in our first session on this book, but we still had a good discussion. Imagine what might happen if someone agrees with him.
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Board Meeting
Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Pkwy, St Paul, MN 55116MISF Members Welcome!
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will conclude our book Midnight's Furies: the Deadly Legacy of India's Partition (2015) by Nisid Hajari. We assure you that there will be no partitioning done at this meeting ...unless, of course, it's really necessary.
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Annual MISF Picnic in the Park
Cherokee Park Picnic Shelter Chippewa and Winona Streets, St. Paul, MNWe meet at Cherokee Park along the Mississippi River at the small shelter. Bring a dish to share. Help us celebrate summer by socializing and getting to know fellow MISF members in a more informal setting and in adventures in eating!
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will conclude our discussion of Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery by Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake is known for his theory of morphic resonance, which some consider a pseudo-science in spite of Sheldrake's first-rate scientific credentials. Here's the good news. Morphic will be there. See if you can resonate with him (her? It?).
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Board Meeting
Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Pkwy, St Paul, MN 55116MISF Members Welcome!
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisThe book we will start discussing next is 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West (2006) by Roger Crowley. This book can be had in paperback for less than $14 (Amazon is listing it for only $7) and as an ebook for $10. It is also available for free on erenow.com.…
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F. Scott Fitzgerald in Minnesota
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul on 24 September 1896. Although his family left for Buffalo, New York, before his second birthday, he returned to St. Paul in 1908 and lived there during his teen years, a very formative period for the young writer. Come hear how the wealth of the Midwest, the…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will be starting a new book for this meeting: Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things that Matter (2016) by Peter Singer. This book can be purchased in paperback for around $15 and as an ebook for around $10. Singer is a bit controversial because of some of his positions, particularly concerning animal…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are reading the book Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things that Matter by Peter Singer. This is the sort of book you can jump around in, so that's what we're going to do. For the tenth we'll read the following sections: Beyond the Ethic of the Sanctity of Life, Bioethics and Public…
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are going to finish reading 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley. While we don't expect a war that could be called holy, we do expect a discussion that will be wholly engaging and that will encompass much of significance that was happening at the time.…
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Board Meeting
Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Pkwy, St Paul, MN 55116MISF members welcome!
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The Theatrical Experience
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419Distinguished Guthrie Theater actor Nathanial Fuller will lead an interactive dialogue about his experience as a performing artist as it relates to the experience of the audience. Theater is the shared energy between the production and the audience. The audience becomes part of the art. Nat will talk about what actors as artists are aiming for, and how the audience can participate…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will continue reading Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things that Matter by Peter Singer. This time we will cover the sections on Animals, Politics, and Global Governance. The discussion will be conducted under guidelines laid down by the United Nations Committee on Reasonably Adequate Verbal Exchanges (RAVE) as interpreted by the…
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(***Program Changed***) Beauty Spots: The deeper story behind Midwestern small town parks
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419This talk will explore how, after the Civil War, many Minnesota towns created picturesque parks that gave a town distinctive character — a central square, a riverbank recreation area or a picturesque streamside retreat complete with rustic wooden bridges. Far away from larger cities, Minnesota’s small towns staked a claim to settlement with remarkable works of…
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisOur next book is Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (2017) by David Grann. It was a finalist for the National Book Awards and was named book of the year by several organizations. The New York Times called it “disturbing and riveting.” It is available in paperback for…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will finish our book, Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things that Matter, by Peter Singer. The sections we haven't read yet are Sex and Gender; Doing Good; Science and Technology; and Living, Playing, Working. If any of these interest you, be sure to join us.
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Board Meeting
Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Pkwy, St Paul, MN 55116MISF members welcome!
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are going to discuss Plato's dialogue Phaedrus for this meeting. If you don't already have a copy of this dialogue, it is readily available online. Project Gutenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1636) has it in several different ebook-type formats, but if you prefer plain text or PDF, you can go to http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html. There are also summaries and outlines available,…
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Philosophy Study Group (session 2)
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are turning to the topic of philosophy of science with an examination of a book considered a classic in this field: The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper. First published in Germany in 1934, Popper rewrote it for the English edition in 1959. He later added chapters on quantum mechanics and corroboration as…
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will conclude our book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. This will be an opportunity to forget the busyness of the holidays with all its commercialism, family scheduling, meal planning, and figuring out what to give to whom; and spend some time talking about…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will start reading one of the most influential books written by a native of Minneapolis, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974), by Robert Pirsig. This book may already be in your library or, if not, it can be had for less than $8 (the 25thanniversary paperback edition of 2006), or…
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Board Meeting
Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Pkwy, St Paul, MN 55116 -
History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisOur new book is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2006) by Charles C. Mann. This book can be had for around $15 in paperback and $14 as an ebook. For the 16th we will read the first five chapters. The author uses recent research to upset many of the assumptions that people have had about Native…
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The Romansh in Minnesota
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419Among the mid-19th century waves of immigrants from northern Europe to the U.S, and Minnesota, the Romansh people from Switzerland were a small but influential group, Often counted with Swiss immigrants as a whole, or with German, French, or Italian immigrants, their story in Minnesota, though carefully saved in family histories, has not been well…
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Philosophy Study Group, Session 1
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisThe next MISF Philosophy Study Group meeting will be in two sessions. Session 1 will be on Monday, January 28, and session 2 will be Wednesday, January 30. Both will be at 7:00 pm at Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in Minneapolis, and both will cover the same ground: Part III of Zen and the Art of…
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Philosophy Study Group, Session 2
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisThe MISF Philosophy Study Group scheduled for Wednesday, January 30, has been rescheduled for Wednesday, February 6. It will be at 7:00 pm at Curran's Restaurant in Minneapolis. We will be discussing Part III of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig. No matter how you feel about the book,…
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Philosophy Study Group, Session 1
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisThe MISF Philosophy Study Group will once again meet in two sessions. Session 1 will be on Monday, February 18, and session 2 will be Wednesday, February 20. Both will discuss Part IV, the last section of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig. Pirsig, a Minneapolis native, wrote this surprise…
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Philosophy Study Group, Session 2
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisThe MISF Philosophy Study Group will once again meet in two sessions. Session 1 will be on Monday, February 18, and session 2 will be Wednesday, February 20. Both will discuss Part IV, the last section of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig. Pirsig, a Minneapolis native, wrote this surprise…
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe will conclude the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2006) by Charles C. Mann. This has been a really great book. I can think of one-thousand-four-hundred-and-ninety-one reasons you should read it and then come and share your views. I will be glad to recount them all on the 21st.
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The Power of Landscape Art
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419Minnesota Public Radio frequently mentions the power of classical music. Bob Brusic will adapt this theme and talk about The Power of Landscape Art. He will discuss the various ways in which the genre of landscape painting has been used to communicate ideas and evoke emotions. The talk will be illustrated. Brusic has been a…
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Board Meeting
Highland Park Library, 1974 Ford Pkwy, St Paul, MN 55116MISF Members welcome!
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are going to dip our toe into Martin Heidegger's seminal work, Being and Time. First published in 1927, Being and Time is considered one of the most important philosophy books of the 20th century. This book is neither short nor easy, so we will read and discuss the introduction to see how far we want to delve into it.
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Ignatius Donnelly: Ultimate Independent Scholar
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419Ignatius Donnelly; poet, promoter, politician, orator, and author; was arguably the most interesting figure in Minnesota history. Although today he is largely dismissed as a crank, Donnelly was an indefatigable champion of the nineteenth century's underdogs. His writings were both a reflection of the times and of his moods. His 1890 Caesar's Column was the first great…
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisThere were two books which were tied for second among those nominated and voted upon by our members. Of these two we chose Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (1995) by Dava Sobel as the next one to read. The British Book of the Year in 1997,…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe have decided to try a different tack into the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and examine his idea of phenomenology. He disagreed with Edmund Husserl, the person who is most credited with establishing phenomenology as a modern discipline. We will try to take a look at exactly what Heidegger's disagreements were and what it means…
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History Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are continuing through our list of member-voted books by reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, John Adams (2001) by David McCullough, starting with Part I. This book can be had for around $18 in paperback and $15 as an ebook. However, since this is a prize-winning book by a popular author and has been around for…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisWe are going to be returning to Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. We will read the first three chapters of Division I of Part I, (through “The Worldhood of the World”). This is up to page 149 in the Macquarrie and Robinson translation, the “standard” English translation which, once again, can be found for free online…
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The Writing Life
Washburn Library, 5244 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55419As someone who has been an active writer for more than half a century, I have benefited from the prestige and authority conferred on the general culture by the invention of the printing press. Since that time books have had a short 500-year run, and a mixed success, as cultural influences. While the book’s influence seems to…
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Philosophy Study Group
Curran's Restaurant, 42nd and Nicollet in MinneapolisFor the next couple of meetings we will be reading a book you may already have in your library, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. If you don't have it, you can find it at most any bookstore or online for only a few dollars. An ebook costs about a dollar, and, best of all, you can find it…