ACAP Meeting John Rafferty Guest Speaker Part 2 10-03-11

JOHN RAFFERTY -- C.V.
I have been a philosophical humanist all my life, and became an active one when I joined the Secular Humanist Society of New York in 1997. Over the next several years I became a regular contributor to the SHSNY newsletter, PIQUE, and joined the SHSNY Board of Directors in 2003. I became the Editor of PIQUE in 2004, and in 2007 was elected President of the Society, positions I still hold.
In 2012 I will assume the Chairmanship of Reasonable New York, a consortium of eleven New York-area freethought organizations (including New York Society for Ethical Culture, Center For Inquiry-NYC, and New York City Skeptics, as well as SHSNY) that work together to advance the cause of reason and science both here and nationally.
I am a professional writer, and have been all my life. The hours are generally good, most people can't do what I do, and the work involves no heavy lifting. After college, the army and jobs as a social worker, bartender, junior-high-school teacher and free-lance "true-adventure" writer for pulp men's magazines, I became a copywriter in the advertising department of Esquire Magazine. I left to be associate creative director of a small advertising agency, then director, and in 1972 started my own firm, an agency specializing in magazine advertising and public relations.Since dissolving that business in 1988 (the desktop revolution, which I celebrate personally, was doing me in professionally), I have made my living as a copywriter and free-lance creative director, while editing newsletters on scientific equipment, archaeology, and (pro bono, of course) secular humanism. I am a graduate of Queens College, SUNY (B.A., Philosophy, 1959), and was a New York State Regents Graduate Fellow at The New School for Social Research (1959-61) studying under distinguished humanist Horace Kallen (Secularism is the Will of God), but left (marriage, a child, only one income) before earning my M.A. Currently I am in a three-year graduate-level program in Humanist Leadership conducted by the Humanist Institute. I am an active member of The Players, America's oldest theatrical club.
I am four times a father (best job I ever had), eight a grandfather, and live happily in midtown Manhattan with my wife, the nonpareil painter and environ-artist Donna Marxer..
JOHN RAFFERTY in his own words:
"I'm the President of the Secular Humanist Society of New York and the Editor of its newsletter, PIQUE. I've been a humanist all my life, but only woke up to that fact in the mid-1990s. Meeting other humanists - like the people here - is a joy."

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