Beyond Labels is a Blue Hill Peninsula-based group organized as a forum for round table discussion of foreign, national and state/local issues. Beyond Labels is sponsored by, and weekly meetings are held at, the Blue Hill Public Library.
Goals
The group was founded with a few guiding objectives in mind:
- Provide a forum for sharing and expanding our knowledge of the issues at hand.
- Encourage a robust discussion of different “sides” or perspectives on the topic.
- Identify areas of “common ground” among the participants, but also understand areas of fundamental disagreement.
Topics
At the end of each week’s meeting, the group generally selects the topic for the following week and, assuming the administrator is “on the ball,” the topic will be posted on this site.
The site also contains information about past topics and some likely future topics. If you’d like to see another topic on the list, please suggest it by selecting Suggested Topics from the menu above..
Meeting Format
The Beyond Labels group is still relatively nascent, and we’re still refining the format (discussed below) as we work to identify what works best to balance interest in current events, the identified “topic of the week” and interesting discussion tributaries we find as the discussion progresses.
Each weeks’ meeting has an identified topic for discussion, but we generally spend a bit of time at the start of the meeting reviewing any developments with respect to recent topics before diving into the topic of the week. So far, the discussion has been relatively free-flowing and covers a lot of ground (and some other related (or unrelated) topics as the discussion progresses.
One of the important elements to making the discussion group fun and productive is an environment in which differences of opinion and perspective are celebrated and respected. After all, it is our differences of opinion that make the discussion most interesting!
Meeting Location
The Beyond Labels group meets on Mondays from 10:00am to noon at the Blue Hill Public Library. We generally meet in the Howard Room, but the specific room location varies with the library’s other activities. See In Person Meetings for more details.