The Humanist Association of Connecticut

Human beings are often guided and informed by their emotions. They may be simple, or deep and complex. Hate, joy, narcissism, and self‑centeredness—the list is virtually endless. Arguably, the emotion of love is the most varied and misunderstood of all.
Our presentation this month is about the complexity and evanescence of love in its many involved and contradictory forms. Brilliantly set in Marseille, France, in the 1920s by the writer and auteur Marcel Pagnol, this is the story of Marius, Fanny, and César in The Marseille Trilogy. Adapted in 1961 for the screen and directed by Joshua Logan, with a stellar cast including Leslie Caron, Horst Buchholz, Charles Boyer, and Maurice Chevalier, love is portrayed in its many interrelated incarnations of joy and sorrow.

Our book for March (Women's History Month) is The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America by Stephanie Gorton.

From Amazon:
[A]s the birth control movement was born, two leaders emerged: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett. While Sanger would go on to found Planned Parenthood, Dennett’s name has largely faded from public knowledge. Each held a radically different vision for what reproductive autonomy and birth control access should look like in America…The Icon & the Idealist reveals how and why these two women came to activism, the origins of the clash between them, and the ways in which their missteps and breakthroughs have reverberated across American society for generations.

“The Icon & the Idealist is an essential, and accessible, look at the U.S.'s fraught history of reproductive freedoms through the lives of two leaders as complex and nuanced as the topic itself.” – Rachel Somerstein, author of Invisible Labor