North Texas Region
Sons, Promises, Coasters, and Sense and Sensibility
February 20, 2011
The winter meeting of the North Texas Region was held Sunday, February 20, 2011, from 2:00 PM until 4:00 PM at Las Colinas Country Club. Rosalie Sternberg, Regional Coordinator, began the event with a short business meeting and an update on the 2011 AGM committees. We welcomed our new regional emporium—Meryton Marketplace—which was a hub of activity.
Dr. Joyce Tarpley signing her book for Chris Peirson.
A standing room only crowd listened as Dr. Joyce Kerr Tarpley, Professor at Mountain View College, discussed “Sons and Promises in Sense and Sensibility.” Dr. Tarpley’s presentation, an excerpt from her more extensive article “Sonship, Liberty, and Promise Keeping in Sense and Sensibility” which was published in the Renascence journal this winter, was well received and evoked a tremendous amount of discussion ending with comments about Plato’s Republic. Dr. Tarpley signed her recently published book, Constancy and the Ethics of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. The book explores the factors that ground our ethical choices in a modern world of competing versions of virtue and conflicting ideas of law. Dr. Tarpley shows how constancy, Jane Austen’s cardinal virtue, provides a foundation for making such choices. Constancy and the Ethics of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park offers a rigorous philosophical examination of the novel, the first book-length, close reading to do so.
After Dr. Tarpley’s compelling lecture everyone grabbed some tea and scones and began making our 2011 tote bag gifts. We had many guests from Dr. Tarpley’s church and her university, many of whom turned out to be quite handy at crafts.
—Cheryl Kinney
Beth Caldwell and Katie Winstead making AGM totebag gifts.