Downtown Mobile gets a standing Tuesday appointment starting next week. Government Street Presbyterian Church begins its fall Tuesday Lunch and Learn series Sept. 8, bringing a different community speaker downtown each week through Nov. 17.
Lunch is served at noon, presentations begin at 12:30 p.m., and the cost is $10, including drinks and dessert.
Opening With the Newspaper People
Lagniappe Daily co-editors Rob Holbert and Ashley Trice open the series Sept. 8.
Starting a civic speaker series with the people who cover the city is a reasonable piece of programming. Editors of a local publication spend their working lives assembling the connective tissue between city government, business, culture and neighborhoods — which is more or less the map the rest of the fall lineup fills in.
The Fall Schedule
The full slate of speakers:
- Sept. 8 — Rob Holbert and Ashley Trice, co-editors, Lagniappe Daily
- Sept. 15 — William Strickland, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper
- Sept. 22 — Col. Steve Carey, president of the Mobile Bay Area Veterans Commission
- Sept. 29 — Katia Garza, artistic director of Mobile Ballet
- Oct. 6 — Tom McGehee, historian
- Oct. 13 — Kevin Lee, Lagniappe arts reporter and author of “Sinners Above All Others”
- Oct. 20 — Keith Blackwood, Mobile County district attorney
- Oct. 27 — Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis
- Nov. 3 — Sandy Stimpson, chairman of the Mobile Airport Authority
- Nov. 17 — Nancy Graham, organist, hymnologist and author of “The Unfractured Faith of Erik Routley”
A Deliberately Wide Net
The lineup is notable for how little it repeats itself. Across ten weeks it covers journalism, environmental advocacy, veterans affairs, dance, local history, arts criticism, criminal prosecution, municipal government, aviation infrastructure and sacred music.
A few of the sessions carry particular civic weight.
Mobile Baykeeper is among the region’s most active environmental organizations, working on water quality, coastal development and industrial permitting in a watershed that supports both a major working port and one of the most biologically diverse estuary systems in North America. Strickland’s session lands in the middle of ongoing regional conversations about growth and water.
District Attorney Keith Blackwood’s Oct. 20 appearance offers direct access to the official who decides which cases are charged in Mobile County — a role residents read about constantly and rarely get to question in person.
Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis follows a week later, on Oct. 27, in a format considerably less formal than a council meeting.
Sandy Stimpson, the former Mobile mayor now serving as chairman of the Mobile Airport Authority, arrives Nov. 3 at a moment when air service and airport development have been active local topics.
Tom McGehee brings local history to a city with more than three centuries of it, and Katia Garza represents an arts institution that operates year-round with a lower public profile than its work merits.
The Format Is the Point
Lunch-and-learn series persist because the format solves a real scheduling problem. Evening civic programming competes with family obligations, commutes and fatigue. A noon session in a downtown location fits inside a lunch hour for anyone working nearby, requires no evening commitment, and costs about what lunch would cost anyway.
Ten dollars including drinks and dessert is priced to cover food rather than to raise money, which makes the speaker access effectively free.
The weekly cadence also builds a room. A one-off lecture draws people interested in that topic; a ten-week series with a consistent time and place produces a group of regulars who show up whether or not they came for the subject — which is how people end up hearing from a hymnologist and a district attorney in the same season.
The Venue
Government Street Presbyterian Church sits at 300 Government St. in downtown Mobile. The congregation’s Greek Revival sanctuary is among the most significant antebellum church buildings in the region and a recognized landmark in the downtown historic fabric.
Free parking is available in the church lot at Government and Jackson streets during the Tuesday lunch hour — a practical detail that matters downtown, where parking is often the deciding factor in whether someone attends a midday event.
If You Go
What: Tuesday Lunch and Learn, fall series
When: Tuesdays beginning Sept. 8 through Nov. 17; lunch at noon, presentation at 12:30 p.m.
Where: Government Street Presbyterian Church, 300 Government St., Mobile
Cost: $10, includes drinks and dessert
Parking: Free in the church lot at Government and Jackson streets during the Tuesday lunch hour
Ten Tuesdays, ten speakers, ten dollars each. For downtown workers and anyone with a free midday hour, it is one of the more efficient ways to hear directly from the people running the institutions that shape the city.