The Bedford Lyceum

April 7:  “Many Kinds of Prisons: Charles Dickens on American Incarceration and Slavery” with Diana Archibald.  After Charles Dickens’s 1842 visit to the US, he wrote about American penal institutions and slavery in his travel book, American Notes. His keen observations, incisive critique, satiric wit, and heartfelt appeal still speak to us today in our age of mass incarceration and institutionalized racism.

April  14: Local author Jim Petipaw talks about how he began his career as a children’s book author.  Jim has always been creating art. About ten years ago Jim’s daughters encouraged him to illustrate and publish a children’s picture book based on a song he co-wrote in high school. This led to the fruition of, “The Cows Go Moo!” Jim also went into the studio and recorded the song that accompanies the book. Jim is an adolescent & family counselor, and is working towards writing, illustrating and publishing more books and songs in The Cow Go Moo series. He is also working on a graphic novel about his dad’s life story called, “Jimmy Bojangles: The Prodigal Dad.”

April 21:  Easter Sunday – NO LYCEUM.

April 28: UNO Spring Conference report with Jerry Ross and students.

May 5: “Report from the Border” with Sylvia Cowan and Raquel Bauman. Eyewitness reports and personal conversations with asylum seekers at the US/Mexican Border are the topics of the 5 de mayo Lyceum.  Raquel and Sylvia will share stories and perspectives from their two-week journey in February through southern Texas and along the Mexican border.  They were Spanish-speaking volunteers working at a detention center and a bus station with non-profit RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Inc.) under the UU-College of Social Justice program.  They also spoke with migrants at Piedras Negras in Mexico making the long journey.  Supported by a Social Responsibility Committee grant and parishioners’ good wishes and prayers, this was a life-changing journey.