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Cary Lecture Series Committee Report to Town Meeting March 25, 2015 Madame Moderator, As every year, it is a pleasure to report to Town Meeting on the Cary Lecture Series. As you may recall, the series is wholly supported by the Isaac Harris Cary Fund, set up by the Cary sisters in 1921. Each year we are able to offer four free lectures to the citizens of Lexington. The Committee thanks the fund trustees for their continued support of our efforts. Because of the renovations to Cary Hall, including Battin Auditorium, we met at Clarke Middle School this year. Miraculously, we didn't have to cancel or postpone any of our events, because none were scheduled for January or February —a bit of inadvertent wisdom on our part! All four of our speakers were engaging and lively. The 2014 -2015 season began on October 25th with Dr. Michael Rich of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, whose talk was co- sponsored by the Lexington League of Women Voters and was entitled "Raising Your Digital Native: Parenting in a World of Screens ". A number of concerned parents came to hear him and were glad they did, I think. We continued with the eminent cellist Yehuda Hanani on November 8. He spoke on the interrelationship of music and painting, and also treated us to a Bach partita. On December 6, the Lexington Global Warming Action Coalition co- sponsored a lecture by Susan Solomon, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She called her talk "A Tale for our Times: The Reasons for Climate Gridlock ". Despite the seriousness of her subject, she remained optimistic about the prospects for meeting the challenges ahead. Our final speaker, on March 7, 2015, was Gregory Maguire, whose title was "No Rest for the Wicked: The Author of Wicked on Reading, Writing and Broadway ". The lecture was co- sponsored by Cary Library, which did a fantastic job helping us with publicity and volunteers. Many children and families attended this session. The talk was a raving success and included four magnificent decorated cakes that were served to the audience after the talk, courtesy of the creative and generous staff at Wilson Farm. I think that there may be more cake in our future, now that we know what we were missing! At this point we have two speakers firmly scheduled for 2015 -2016: Harvard professor Steven Pinker, and the Globe art critic Sebastian Smee. Others are in process. As you may have noticed from my description, we are trying to increase our partnerships with other entities in town, because we have an embarrassment of riches in Lexington and want to cooperate, rather than compete, with other groups that sponsor lectures. We continue to reflect on our Saturday night slot. Indeed, Steven Pinker will be coming on a weeknight because of his own schedule, and we'll observe closely. We are also thinking about the structure of the Committee. We will lose one of our four members, Susan Emanuel, who is resigning during this coming year, and we are trying out a new idea: including one or two associate members who can help with the