At Town Hall, we often invite folks to feed their curiosities, and for Homecoming Festival, we’re asking: what is your curiosity craving? In this series, Town Hall staffers will turn their own curiosity cravings into custom festival itineraries. Interested in sharing your own craving and the Homecoming lineup that satisfies it? Write us at communications@townhallseattle.org for the chance to be featured here. If selected, we’ll give you free tickets to your custom itinerary!
Donna Bellew, a Town Hall board member, shares her itinerary:
My curiosity craving is to explore Aristotle’s four cardinal virtues as a way of understanding what is important to being a just society and a just individual. I know it sounds big and heavy but also super interesting and it turns out Town Hall has A LOT of programming that covers Aristotle’s four virtues: prudence, temperance, courage and justice.
Prudence
Prudence is not a word thrown used much lately. Maybe it’s too formal or just old fashioned but it’s hard to not argue for the need for some common sense, wisdom and good judgment. On Tuesday, September 17, Marie Forleo takes Town Hall’s stage to delve into her book Everything is Figureoutable, exploring the idea that if you’re having trouble solving a problem or making a dream happen, the problem isn’t you. According to Marie, it’s not that you’re not hardworking, intelligent, or deserving, but that you haven’t yet installed the one key belief that will change everything—everything is figureoutable.
Temperance
Temperance is a word used even less frequently. In our extreme culture moderation does not get a lot of playing time. That’s why I’m looking forward to hearing, on September 13, Marilynne Robinson train her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. With perspectives from her new essay collection What Are We Doing Here? she investigates how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness, and discusses the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life.
Justice
Luckily justice is a word we hear a lot, mostly in the context of all the extreme injustices that are present in our lives and in the world. Seattle is very lucky that many of Town Hall’s civic programs take a close look at issues involving justice. One of the many that I’m excited to see in September is Ibram X. Kendi’s talk on the concept of antiracism and how to reenergize and reshape the conversation about racial justice in America. It takes place on September 14.
Courage
Courage is a big, intoxicating word and one that I’m always curious to learn more about which is why I can’t wait to hear author Isabella Tree speak at Town Hall on September 26. I’m looking forward to hearing the story of how when Tree and her husband (environmentalist Charlie Burrell) found themselves struggling to make a profit from the heavy clay soils of their West Sussex farm, they decided to try something new. They let it go wild. To enlighten us on the trials and outcomes of this bold plan, Tree joins us on Town Hall’s stage with excerpts from her new book Wilding – The Return of Nature to an English Farm. Tree recounts the questions she faced in the process of letting nature reclaim her 3,500 acre, centuries-tilled farmland. What form did the land have before human beings claimed it? What kinds of animals had been crucial to its ecology, and how could they be reintroduced? What would the neighbors think? Join Tree for a discussion of the challenges and successes of this bold mission to revive land and wildlife by letting nature take its course, reversing the cataclysmic declines in biodiversity that challenge Britain and the world.
Want to find more? Check out our full Homecoming Festival lineup!
