Oct. 21, 2008 - Homeschoolers for The Chicago Humanities Festival
Folks, I received a comment on my blog here worthy of reprint in the column itself. You read below of my thrill that the Chicago Humanities Festival will feature writer David McCullough. You heard of my anticipated upcoming battle to try to convince the the folks at CHF that while I may not have an "educator ID" from an "accredited institution" that I am, in fact, an educator. While I hadn't yet made that call, I had my full self-righteous snit going in my head, complete with martyr comments about the high IL tax burden we bear--including paying thousands toward the schools--all while sacrificing a second income in order for me to stay home and educate my own kids. I am sure you guys have similar tapes that run in your heads on occasion. I don't need to elaborate.
Fortunately for, well, all of us really--because how appealing are those martyr talks from anyone afterall?--the good people at CHF hunted me down. Or at least one good gal from CHF found this blog. I pity that her job must be to wade through such obscure blogosphere bloviating in what I imagine to be a ceaseless Internet hunt for references to the Chicago Humanities Festival. At the same time, I am thrilled to have my blog readership expand--I may yet reach into the dozens of readers!
So, a shout out to the CHF not only for their super sleuth marketing gal, but for their proactive and welcoming stance toward home educators. I trust that Gabriela at CHF must already be at work changing the language on the website to indicate inclusiveness of home educators in the "educator' rank. You'll note she even took pains to explain how my $5 ticket really does qualify as free. I give her additional bonus points for effort there.
Now, if Gabriela truly wanted to impress me, she'd do her level best to make sure that when such religious talks as Evolution: From Your Inner Fish to the Outer Limits are included in CHF, they include a PhD with a creationist perspective, like Dr. Jay Wile for example. Or how 'bout Dr. John Morris of ICR? Both of these scientists with a creationist perspective spoke in IL within the past year in smaller venues than CHF, so I don't think either guy would turn the festival down. But for the CHF "scales to Socrates" seminar, they feature an expert on artificial intelligence as part of their three person panel instead of a creation science perspective to counter the evolutionary one? CHF can and should do better.
That said, I don't think CHF will do much better than Ms. Jirasek. Enjoy her note below.
Blessings, Holly
Hi Holly,
Thanks for your post about the Chicago Humanities Festival. I run the CHF website and we are glad that you can join us at the David McCullough lecture.
We are also pleased to support the home schooled community and offer you free tickets to the Festival. I don't think you should have any difficulty reserving tickets.
While we do incorporate a $5 processing fee for all orders, this is to help us cover our basic costs of running a non-profit organization. We have a hard working full-time staff of 20 and a seasonal box-office to maintain during the Festival. It also allows us to keep admission prices low to all our events and to distribute free tickets. To date we have distributed over 5,000 free tickets to educators and students for this year alone.
I hope you have a wonderful time at the Festival. I hope you can join us again next year!
Best wishes,
Gabriela Jirasek
Marketing and New Media Associate
Chicago Humanities Festival
