Yes, the elevator is finally fixed. Let’s get that out of the way because I’m sure it was the first question on the minds of many of you. We’ve met in five different locations over the course of the past year, and it is obviously a huge relief to look forward to meeting in this great space for the upcoming year and, we hope, for at least a few more years until we outgrow it.

If you haven’t seen the new meeting room in the Humanist Hub on the fourth floor of 30 JFK Street in Harvard Square, you no longer have any excuses. Please join us beginning September 21 for an outstanding series of speakers. We are certainly looking forward to putting the move from Belmont and our recent nomadic lifestyle behind us, and to moving forward to take advantage of all that the Humanist Hub has to offer us.

First and foremost are the people. Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard, and his young dedicated staff work hard to make people aware of the Hub and all the great events held there. They have developed their own impressive list of speakers for Sunday afternoons this fall, and they are continuing their monthly “Learning Lab” children’s program and meal-packing events.

The growing community of people from all over the Boston area, not just Harvard and Cambridge, who have been drawn into the new space shows the viability and need for a home for a broader humanist movement. While our meetings maintain their own separate identities, getting to know people in different contexts helps strengthen our connection to the larger humanist family.

One aspect that I hope we take advantage of is having access to the space throughout the week. Margo Woods led a course on Myths America Lives By on Wednesday evenings last spring, and the group was half from the Ethical Society and half from the Humanist Hub. We decided we wanted to continue meeting, and it became a weekly book discussion group where we take our time to read and discuss in detail books of our choosing. We discussed Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman early in the summer and will be discussing The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt for three or four weeks starting with the first four chapters on Wednesday September 3 from 7 to 9 p.m. E-mail me at [email protected] if you are interested in attending.

I for one had been hesitant to deal with Harvard Square parking outside of my Sunday morning comfort zone. But once you learn the ropes, on-street parking after 6 p.m. weekday evenings is not as bad I feared. We’ve been having summer board meetings at the Hub and I hope we can find other ways to use the space throughout the year.

This will be an important year for us as we look for ways to grow with the expanding humanist community at the Hub. It is a huge opportunity for us and we need to make sure we find ways to take full advantage of it.