Events

    Lunchtime Book Group

    Each month, Present Tense features a book and then hosts a lunchtime discussion group on the second Wednesday of the month. This month the meeting will be December 10 at noon in our Yates Gallery. Book selections are discounted at 10% off each month. Bring your lunch and enjoy an hour of lively discussion!

    Hundred Dollar Holiday

    Hundred Dollar Holiday
    Written by Bill McKibben



    This brief, eloquently presented book offers a simple and inviting strategy for handling the most complicated holiday of our times--Christmas. Tracing the history of American observance of the holiday season, McKibben discusses both the needs such festivities have filled and the excesses and problems they have created. McKibben avoids the trap of nostalgia for a nonexistent time when Christmas was free of commercialism or drunken reveling, but he recognizes the current holiday frenzy, dread and depression as symptomatic of "the underlying discontent in our lives." He offers thoughtful "new forms of celebration" to fill the cravings for "silence and solitude," "connection with each other and the natural world" and "some relationship with the divine" that plague these times. McKibben also blasts "those relentless commercial forces" that lead Americans to annual overspending. Instead, he suggests making the holidays as much fun as possible, filled with song and food, creativity and connection. One hundred dollars, McKibben says, is not a magic number or even the point, but rather a simple reminder "to give things that matter."