SouthCoast Lessons Premieres Contra Dancing in Tryworks
On September 21, SouthCoast Lessons hosted the first in a series of Contra Dances with caller, Paul Wilde, supported by grants from the Mass Cultural Council and the New Bedford Cultural Council. If you missed this one, don't worry, you will have opportunities in October, November, and December!
Contra dancing is a form of folk dancing made up of long lines of couples. It has mixed origins from English country dance, Scottish country dance, and French dance styles in the 17th century. Sometimes described as New England folk dance or Appalachian folk dance, contra dances can be found around the world but are most common in the United States and Canada.
Photos provided by SouthCoast Lessons
The Climate Justice Revival is taking place this Saturday, September 28, from 11 AM to 3 PM
This four-hour workshop will help us recommit to Climate Justice and its intersections with Reproductive Justice, Racial Justice, Disability Justice, food insecurity, and more. Jessica and Karen are facilitating the activities to help us create a vision for 2050.
Please RSVP no later than Friday if you are attending because we need to make sure we have enough food for everyone. Lunch is provided.
On Sunday, September 29, we will come together for worship at 11 AM and have an hour of advocacy and action after service.
Did you miss Sunday service? Watch it here!
UUNB Members in Our Community
Trustee, Mary Rapoza, shown with Mayor Jon Mitchell as they kicks off the revitalization of Dias Field. The park will soon be home to the City's first public regulation-size soccer field and mini-pitch. Add in new tree plantings, bleachers, lights and a walking track, and Dias Field will be getting a major upgrade in the coming months. Find out more about the project here.
Rochelle Pettenati sharing her talents at the Elizabeth Taber Library for a Library sponsored paint night.
Carol Kolek volunteering with the League of Women Voters SouthCoast during a voter registration event held at the New Bedford Farmer's Market at Buttonwood Park.
Upcoming Services
GOTV - Get Out The Vote!
Getting to know your electeds and their posture:
National Environmental Scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters, 501(c)(4), is a great topline review of members in Congress, our US. National Legislature.
The National Climate Scorecard by the Climate Cabinet, 501(c)(4), may be the first tool that tracks and scores all state legislators across the U.S. by their votes on climate and environmental justice legislation.
Strengthen Local Climate Commitments (SLCC) has gathered the following links to help further understand your local elected’s green policy posture:.
Do you have a "Climate Mayor?" Check HERE to see if your Mayor is one of the 750 Climate Mayors or Climate County Executives.
Do you have a climate Governor who is contributing to a state-wide climate action plan? Check HERE.
Have your community’s leaders already declared a Climate Emergency? Check HERE to see the more than 190 communities that have.
Cast your ballot and let your voice be heard this #ElectionDay! Head over to VOTE411.org to get personalized election information and make a plan to vote.
Registration is not required, but the event page will give more details.
See everything happening at UUNB on the calendar on our website. Updates are shown immediately, so you will always know what is planned.
Join the Social Justice Committee tonight at 6:30 pm. All are welcome to attend. b
All vendor fees are due no later than October 31. All spots are $35 and are on a first-come-first-served basis and are not confirmed until payment is received.
Confirmed Vendors:
Crust Punks NBMA - Sourdough bread and cookies
Caitlyn Gifford - Hand-sewn stuffed animals and greeting cards
Wendy Gilbert - crochet blankets, scarves, coasters, scrunchies, headbands, hats
New Bedford Pottery
F.S. Designs
START YOUR PLANT CUTTINGS!
We hope to have a plant sale again during the Holiday Market, so start your plant cuttings.
September 29: Inviting People (Sharing Our Faith)
Climate Justice Revival
Way Cool Sunday School Volunteers Encouraged
You can join our team by volunteering your time to work with the children and families of the program! Simply fill out the proper documents and roll up your sleeves. All volunteers must have a upto date CORI on file.
How Can You Help Your Child Benefit From the RE program... Way Cool Sunday School?
encourage regular attendance
volunteer time
discuss lessons after class
check out our “honor system” library
Join the RE Team {meets once a month}
Sample Schedule:
11:00 First Fifteen {Sanctuary, Stories for All Ages}
11:15 Sunday School {Tryworks, Maja Capek, Garden}
12:00 Dismissal {You are responsible for your children}
Please email Yasmin to express your interest - flefleh@gmail.com
There was a day in 1981 when I learned something important about my mother.
She had sent me upstairs to her room to get something out of the second drawer down in her nightstand – the details are fuzzy about what it was. But what I found first when I opened the drawer was a copy of the SE Hinton novel The Outsiders.
I had heard about the book, maybe even seen it in the school library. But I was curious as to why mom had a copy hidden away in the second drawer of her nightstand. I retrieved the item, and when I handed it to her, I asked her if she was enjoying the book.
Mom then went on a rant.
She began with how the book was fine and not at all shocking and how we see worse on prime time tv, and then went into how shortsighted it was that some people thought the book was inappropriate for 16 year olds, because it’s talking about lived experiences and coming of age, and how the teacher and principal encouraged parents to read it, and you bet your bottom dollar I was gonna read that book cover to cover, and there is nothing harmful about reading.
At the time, I don’t remember having much immediate reaction, but that was such an important moment in my education and my relationship with my mother, that I can see it like it happened yesterday.
My mom, the free thinker, the righteous defender of intellectual freedom.
I cannot imagine how angry she would be to learn that this year, book bannings would be at an all time high.
I share my mother’s righteous anger. As a free thinker, as a person whose identity is sometimes the reason a book is banned, and as a Unitarian Universalist.
Unfortunately, book bannings and book burnings have a centuries-long history – based in fear and a need for control.
We know that in the early Christian church, various texts – some known, some likely unknown – were considered heretical. And that continued through the establishment of the Church in Rome, and both during and after the Reformation. We know about books meant to explore ideas being considered heretical and harmful – books describing folk practices became evidence of witchcraft. Books challenging long held dogma like the trinity were evidence of blasphemy. Books by some of our Unitarian and Universalist forbears were burned or outlawed for their heresies.
Major scientific breakthroughs – many of which challenged orthodox beliefs – were banned too. From books on astronomy to books on evolution, over and over again these books were challenged as being heretical.
Nearly every revolution experienced book banning and book burning as a way for those in power to exert control – perhaps most famously Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass in 1938 Germany where along with destroying synagogues, homes, schools, and businesses, books by Jews were destroyed.
And in the 20th century, with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity, and their decision to exert political control while claiming the moral high ground, books about racism, queerfolk, and immorality were challenged.
By 1980, this so called fundamentalist high ground found its champion in Ronald Reagan, and his election was the permission they needed.
In 1981, a surge in challenges to books alarmed the American Library Association, or ALA, and Banned Books Week was launched that next year to draw national attention to the harms of censorship.
This annual event has been held every year for 42 years. Forty. Two. Years.
And… the ALA says that in 2023, there was a 65% increase in challenges – “4,240 unique book titles were targeted, many of them representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices and experiences.”
My mother would be apoplectic.
I most certainly am.
And when I interviewed here to be your minister, and I learned that the Moms of Liberty had challenged 61 books in junior and senior high school libraries here in Carroll County; as of August 14, 22 of them have been banned, with another 15 restricted – meaning parents must give permission.
Their work is ongoing.
What I realized in that moment of the interview was if you hired me as your minister, my first act would be to rise up against censorship, against hate, and against fear.
And that’s why we are doing story hours this week, reading from books that have been banned and collecting some of the books that a few people in Carroll County are afraid of their kids reading.
Books like Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, a collection of poetry that mentions sexual assault and might be the book that helps them understand their own traumatic experiences.
Books like Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen, which follows an orphan who struggles to survive during the Great Depression and finds community with a rough and tumble circus.
Fantasy books like Sarah Maas’s A Court of Mist and Fury series. Books like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, and Deal With It, a manual for teens girls to help them navigate their changing bodies and reproductive health in the 21st century.
At the very point when our pre-teens and teens are experiencing huge changes and developing their personal identities, this group wants to keep these kids from learning anything about that.
Out of fear.
Let’s face it – so much of this is driven by fear – and it is a fear that’s encouraged by some religious and political leaders who themselves are fearful – or who know that fear is a great weapon in the search for power.
Back in May, when I was still just a guest in your pulpit, I talked about the idea from Darwin and others about ‘survival of the friendliest’ – how cooperation and community are the reason homo sapiens survived, and continue to survive to this day. And I asked the question, “if friendliness is such a key to our being human, why are people so awful to each other?”
What I said then is worth repeating in this context: “when we form communities and cooperate within them, we begin to feel protective, and when we feel that our group is being threatened by a different group, we are able to separate them from us, which allows us to dehumanize them. Where empathy and compassion would have been, there is nothing. Those we perceive as outsiders are no longer humans – and the rhetoric of dehumanization flourishes – not just calling others animals, but using language to elicit disgust and vilification. Which then sets a norm, drawing hard lines between us and them, removing the ability to even communicate, no less come to any kind of compromises.
This is still happening. More so now, when our political landscape has driven one party to rely solely on stoking fear.
Because if you convince people that the boogeyman is lurking around every corner, you’re going to see a boogeyman everywhere you look… and you’re going to want someone to do something about it.
Banning books is a significant way of doing this. Removing a book about lgbtq relationships, like Prince and Knight, or Heather Has Two Mommies or And Tango Makes Three stigmatizes those children who do have two mommies or two daddies, as well as those who find themselves wondering about their own attractions.
Removing books like I am Jazz, Red, a Crayon Story, and I Am Me tells children that those who are trans or non-binary do not or should not exist – because to them, they don’t appear in any books they read.
Removing books like Lailah’s Lunchbox prioritizes one religion over any other and makes kids who are no Christian the other to be feared.
Removing books like Born on the Water and To Kill a Mockingbird” and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and honestly anything by Toni Morrison or Octavia Butler or Ralph Ellison prevents children from learning about racism and our nation’s long and uncomfortable history.
And removing books like In the Night Kitchen and Strega Nona prevents children from learning how to use creativity and their imaginations to solve problems and dream big.
Banning books that children and youth may read is crippling our ability to meet the moment and work for a better future. As filmmaker Ava DuVernay, Banned Books Week Honorary chair, writes, “I believe that censorship is the enemy of freedom. By banning books, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn from the past and to envision a braver future. Books have the power to open minds and build bridges. This is why certain forces do not want the masses to engage with books. They fear progress and growth in new, bold directions.”
They fear progress and growth.
Because they’ve been told that people who don’t look like them or believe like them or love like them are the enemy. Because if you convince people that the boogeyman is lurking around every corner, you’re going to see a boogeyman everywhere you look.
They have found a bit of power – imagine if they used that power to ban assault weapons.
But this particular power they found and are wielding is why the number of book challenges continue to rise. They have the kind of power that is now influencing state legislatures and is criminalizing the freedom to read – a teacher in Oklahoma had her license revoked for sharing information about a Brooklyn library that would loan long distance. Librarians and educators are under fire in Florida, Missouri, Utah, Arkansas, Indiana, and Idaho for refusing to remove books from their shelves.
But they don’t know how to stop it, and if they’re not careful, they’ll soon be banning every book – including the one book they think holds the only truth; a book that is filled with rape, murder, incest, war, destruction, injustice, cruelty.
Remember that the key to Strega Nona’s magical pasta pot was not just the ingredients that went in, but what to do when there’s enough: singing a song and blowing three kisses.
In other words, Love.
Our faith is love – it is at the center of everything we do. Because we understand that every body is sacred, every mind is a celebration, every act of justice lifts all of us, and the beloved community is not just a dream but a goal.
When we put that kind of expansive, inclusive, radical love into practice, we fight any tool that hate throws at us to keep us from building that beloved community.
Access to books matters. Access to all of our human stories matters.
And it matters to our children, not just adults. As the anti-censorship group Unite Against Book Bans asserts,
“Books are tools for understanding complex issues. Limiting young people's access to books does not protect them from life's complex and challenging issues. Young people deserve to see themselves reflected in a library's books.“Reading is a foundational skill, critical to future learning and to exercising our democratic freedoms.“Removing and banning books from public libraries is a slippery slope to government censorship and the erosion of our country's commitment to freedom of expression. A small group of ‘concerned people’ should not be making these kinds of decisions for other people’s children.”
Our call is to love, and to show that love by celebrating people – all people – from all walks of life, through all their identities and experiences. Books – these books that accompany us and teach us and help us know we are not alone – matter in a free society. We are – or should be a free people. And free people read freely.
So now… go read a banned book!
HOMETOWN Walking Tour with John Bullard
JOIN SOUTH COAST ALMANAC for a WALKING TOUR of Acushnet Avenue
Featuring JOHN BULLARD, author of HOMETOWN
Before he transformed the waterfront district by working at the Waterfront Historic Area LeaguE, before he was Mayor of New Bedford, before he went to work in DC, John Bullard chose New Bedford's Acushnet Avenue in the North End as the inspiration for his graduate project in architecture/urban planning at MIT.
Join South Coast Almanac on Saturday, October s5th from 2-4pm to walk through the district with Bullard as we discuss his memoir Hometown with him, while checking out the exciting new public art adorning the area, the international (and delicious) flavors, and the history and vitality of the North End. The walk will be a slow ramble, less than 2 miles, around the North End of New Bedford.
The event is free but please register so that we have a head count for refreshments. Learn more and register here.
Many thanks to the New Bedford Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, who have provided funding for this event.
One-Woman Play Grapples with Mid-East Conflict
In her award-winning play, “Picking Up Stones: An American Jew Wakes To A Nightmare,” Sandra Laub dramatizes divergent voices emerging in the wake of the October attack in Israel. Laub's portrayal has been praised for presenting “a remarkable combination of passion, compassion, and respect for the facts.” An audience talk-back with the actor and playwright will occur after the show. Saturday, October 5th at 3 PM, Channing Memorial Church, 135 Pelham Street, Newport. Tickets are sold in advance and at the door. General Admission is $ 20, and students with ID are $10. To buy tickets in advance, click here.
Our Mission is to encourage diversity and mutual acceptance and work for positive change in ourselves and our community.
"We envision a congregation in which we practice the principles of our faith. We seek to enjoy peaceful reflection and inspiration in intellectually and spiritually satisfying church services. We aim to embrace the people and efforts of our church community by supporting our children and their programs, our committees and their goals, our staff and their efforts on our behalf, and each other."
Our Promises
Each person is important.
Be kind in all you do.
We help each other learn.
We search for what is true.
Each person has a say.
Work for a peaceful world.
The web of life’s the way.
Build the beloved community, free from racism and oppression.
First Unitarian Church in New Bedford
71 8th Street, New Bedford, MA 02740
(508) 994-9686
Administrator ext. 10
Minister ext. 13
Karen cell: (508) 441-9344
Thrift Shop ext. 12
Board Members & Officers
Steve Carmel, President
Charles Morgan, Vice President
Deborah Carmel, Treasurer
Cora Peirce, Clerk
Trustees
Committee Chairs
Staff
The Thrift Shop is open Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10 AM to 1 PM
(508)994-9686 ext.12
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