Fourth Wednesday Book Club: Crying in H-Mart

Online Event

Please join us to discuss Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. With humor and heart, Michelle tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Meaningful Movies: DamNation

Online Event

Three years ago, Felt Soul Media filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel along with a Stoecker Ecological fish biologist and underwater photographer, Matt Stoecker, embarked on a journey to document the environmental impacts of dams across America. In their feature length documentary, they weave together stories of pristine rivers, age old salmon, cement walls and the people whose lives are bound together by the flowing water. Visually stunning and powerfully eye opening, DamNation documents the attempt to reverse a century's worth of land and water management mistakes. A powerful documentary from Bullfrog Films, DamNation is 87 minutes long, so grab a snack and drink. The film will be followed by a discussion session with attendees sharing their points of view about the film.

Fourth Wednesday Book Club: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Online Event

Please join us to discuss One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. In this classic novel Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax.

Meaningful Movies: Can You Hear Us Now?

Online Event

Small-town activism. Nail-biting elections. A last-minute power grab. In Wisconsin, where extreme partisanship has become the norm, voters are finding their lives increasingly irrelevant to state lawmakers. Through the stories of four tireless women fighting to have their voices heard, Can You Hear Us Now? unravels the ways that years of one-party control reshaped democracy in a state at the center of American politics.
A riveting film from Bullfrog Films, Can You Hear Us Now? is 87 minutes long, so grab a snack and drink. The film will be followed by a lively discussion session with attendees sharing their points of view about the film.

Fourth Wednesday Book Club: The Prophet

Online Event

Join us as we read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. Each essay reveals deep insights into the impulses of the human heart and mind.

Fourth Wednesday Book Club: Cat’s Cradle

Online Event

Join us as we read Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of black humor.

Meaningful Movies: Agritopia

Online Event

Join Meaningful Movies Bellevue as it screens Agritopia: Rundown Apartments Reborn as Food Forest Cohousing Village. Agritopia shows what imagining a new way of living can do as we learn how Ole and Maitri Ersson turned a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, into a permaculture co-living space and urban food forest. The Ersson’s and other community members transformed a parking lot and overgrown yard into Kailash EcoVillage, a model for sustainable living that includes cohousing and organic gardening. Come and learn about the inspiring steps Kailash EcoVillage has taken to develop a lifestyle that can heal our environment and provide people with an alternative way of living. This screening will be the last of our shows before we take a summer break, so don’t miss out. Be sure to attend this family-friendly event!

Fourth Wednesday Book Club: Fahrenheit 451

Online Event

Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.