What's Happening

Question of the Month

April 2008

What is your favorite hymn or song from COR?

It’s hard to pick just one favorite hymn from COR so I’ll mention 3. Of course, We Gather at the River is an obvious choice and every time I hear it I think of the Church of the River. Then, there is The Lark Ascending with the words, “so long as you crave nothing save the song." It is no longer in the current UU hymnal, but I still love it because it reminds me of Rev. James Madison (Jim) Barr who was the minister of COR when we became Unitarians in the 60’s….Then there isLight a Candle which makes me think of Andre Goia, a true lady of the COR and still sadly missed, I’m sure… Thanks for stirring us to think of the music so dear to UU’s…

I remember the first Sunday that I walked into the sanctuary at The Church of the River. I saw those beautiful windows and the wonderful scenery. Then, the first song that the choir sang was Morning Has Broken. I knew immediately that this was the church that I had been searching for.

Gwen Rose

I was fortunate enough to visit our sister church in Sepsi-St. George, Romania. It was extremely cold that November Sunday morning... more cold because the church at that time had no heat. The Hungarian speaking choir, bundled up in their winter coats, opened up their voices and their hearts and sang, in English, This Is My Song. It became my favorite and I am still emotionally stirred when we of the COR sing this noble, elegant song.

Moon Mullins

My favorite hymn is #64, Oh Give us Pleasure in the Flowers Today. The beautiful words by Robert Frost and the lovely melody seem a perfect complement to the celebration of our flower communion, Mother's day and spring. I find myself humming it for the rest of the week afterward and I even made a copy of the words to keep for myself.

Alice Fleming

PS I was disappointed when we didn't sing it last year!

Gotta be This is My Song with music by Jean Sibelius(called Finlandia - it may be the Finnish national anthem), and marvelous words by Lloyd Stone. It's one of the songs that the choir in Sepsi St. George greeted us with on our trip to Transylvania in 2003. I'd heard/sung it in church plenty of times, but it was all new to me that late evening. The piece has also opened my ears to Sibelius's other works.

Jim Spake

Marcch 2008

What do you like best about your hometown?

I grew up in the quiet, hilly, small college town of Oxford during tumultuous times. It was “the other Oxford", the one in Ohio, home of Miami University (the “other Miami"). However, what I want to write about are the experiences (Sue and) I had at Talawanda High School in Oxford. Talawanda is a consolidated school for the entire township. The most enduring aspects of my experiences at Talawanda are our fellow students and the character of our student body. Being a consolidated school, students came from a broad and representative spectrum of backgrounds. They were townspeople, folks from the poorer and minority north end of town, kids of university faculty and staff, farmers, and folks from small surrounding villages.

What I appreciate most about our Talawanda student body is that we were mostly a loving and accepting group. We had not been corrupted by political correctness, gender politics, partisan triangularizaton or religious intolerance. The students just accepted one another for who they were and what they thought. Of course, being a representative group we had our share of super jocks, cheats, (one or two) geniuses, popularity winners, deadbeats, a few dullards, and just average kids.

We lived our early lives without the benefit of the polio vaccine, and we had classmates who had survived this dread disease, but who would live with paralysis. One outstanding student and popular class President was paralyzed in both legs. He walked with leg braces and two crutches.

Another had an atrophied and nearly useless left arm. He was an excellent baseball player whose position was second base! When executing a double play he would catch the ball with the glove on his right hand, then toss both the glove and the ball into the air and snag the ball to relay it to first base. The acceptance and appreciation of these guys, and their ability to experience high school relatively normally, is a tribute to the depth of their character and the open-mindedness of their fellow students.

In other words, what I love about our Talawanda student body experience is how we actually acted. My un-scientific guess is that we were 80% white, 20% black, 97% Christian, 3% Jewish or other (straight vs. gay was never discussed then.) Despite these demographics, minority students deserved and earned key leadership and popularity positions. We had a black Homecoming King who danced with a white Queen. We had a black class President (several times, deservedly.) We had a black representative at Boy’s State who was elected to statewide office. One top kid in his class was a farm boy who earned a PhD and became a noted college professor. Another was a Jewish boy genius who did well on the popular TV show, “The 64-Thousand Dollar Question."

Whenever Sue and I visit Oxford, we always try to have breakfast Sunday mornings at Bob Evan’s Restaurant. There is a group of long-time friends who traditionally meet then. It is a group of black guys. One was our perennial class president, who also sang in the Talawanda choir with Sue. The others are former choristers and the head coach of Miami’s men’s basketball team. It is always heartwarming to catch up with family news, joke and share hugs with these great classmates.

Sue and I were in high school in the 1960's and still cherish our shared experiences with our classmates, based on their character and values. Neither we nor they are perfect and we all do discriminate when we encounter people whose beliefs or actions are harmful or offensive. Still, I believe our discrimination is not based on such arbitrary traits as race, religion, disability or political affiliation.

Bob Myers

I grew up in downtown Philadelphia, PA. Early on, I learned my history, but only when I grew older did.

I come to absorb how close I was to the very birthplace of our nation. I was a 15-minute bus ride from Independence Hall. I could see the Liberty Bell whenever I chose. I could view the rooms where our founding fathers brought forth the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. In my youth the streets around the area were still cobblestoned as they had been in the late 1700s. I could walk along Market Street where Benjamin Franklin had his printing shop. I could walk to Betsy Ross' House where it is said she made the first American flag. I realized that the streets in my neighborhood - Morris, McKean, Dickinson - were named after prominent figures in the Revolutionary era, signers of the Declaration of Independence. If I traveled a short way out of the city to New Hope, I would be at the site where General Washington made his famous Delaware River crossing or to King of Prussia where he kept his troops in winter quarters.

If I went to the river at Penn's Landing I would be standing on the site where William Penn came ashore and founded Philadelphia so many years ago. If I looked across the river, I could see Camden, N.J. where the great American poet, Walt Whitman spent many years. Philadelphia is truly a city where the ghosts of the past still wield their influence on the present that's what I like best about it.

Regards,

Art Wilson<

I moved to Memphis in 1972 after having lived in many places. I always thought that Memphis would be a temporary stop; family and friends lived all over the country and I thought I had to be near them. But living in one place for 36 years makes it feel like home. And now when I travel and think of returning home, it's to Memphis.

However, for some reason I still think of the city of my childhood, the place where I was born as my hometown. Doesn't make much sense, I know, but Chicago is the place where my first memories spring from, where all the important school years took place, where my summer camps were and where I had my first pet. A canary named Buttons.

My first memories of Christmas and birthdays and baseball games and trips to Lake Michigan all revolve around living in Chicago. Yet, I have many wonderful memories of things that have happened in Memphis. I doubt I'll ever leave Memphis because I've made it my home. I enjoy all it has to offer. It is where my friends live, where my Church is and there is a large body of water, the magnificent Mississippi River close by. And I live with two pets; a dog named Dakota and a cat named Sadie.

Memphis is their hometown for sure. But mine is still Chicagol.

Dee Billmeier

My hometown: Greenville, SC. My favoriate place was my back yard. It was, it seemed, a full acre and had a wild strawberry patch at the furthest edge.We had a vegetable garden, a tree house--that I, the youngest of four, was not allowed in because of a rickety ladder leading up to it--and a large, homemade barbecue pit in the middle. We also had a playset with a sand box on the left of the yard adjacent to the neighbor's fence and a clothes line on the right just outside the back door. My sister and I would play in the hanging laundry. We would pick strawberries until our fingers were pink and tell stories about ghosts that wondered just beyond the patch along a graveled path. We would watch the peach trees each summer wandering if this was the year they'd bear fruit. This is a place and these are the memories hat make my hometown special.
Thanks for the question.
Kim

February 2008

I think Abraham Lincoln is my most admired historical figure as he was self-taught and steadfast in his values.

Mary Todd(no relation)

On June 4, 1940, with his British Army of over 200,000 being taken away from Dunkirk in yachts, fishing boats and other small craft, having been defeated by the lightning warfare of the German Army, it would have been easy for the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to immediately sue for peace. It was not in his character. Instead, he spoke these words to his fellow Britons in the face of one of the worst defeats in the vaunted history of the British army:

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

And with those stirring words, Winston Churchill began rallying his people to fight the German menace. The path taken by Churchill to become England's Prime Minister in its darkest hour has been the subject of many books and articles. In fact, his career before 1940 was a failure, full of missteps, miscalculations, and other misfortunes, most of which were of his own making. Churchill himself stated at one time, I should have made nothing if I had not made mistakes.

Yet, the study of Churchill is a study in greatness, as one author has stated. It may well be that Churchill's greatness may rest with the fact that failure did not deter him from continuing his efforts on those things he thought were right.

he became a champion of Home Rule for Ireland, supported female suffrage and argued for a confederation of the English-speaking peoples long before anyone thought of the United Nations. With such vision, you would think he might consider freedom for Britain's colonial possessions.

Not so. Despite the above visions, Churchill was still an imperialist, stating in a speech this fateful phrase, I have not become Prime Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

All we can reasonably say is that his vision of the Anglo-American relationship was much clearer than any vision he may have had about the future of the Empire.

Churchill was a prolific writer, too. And a historian, too. It is said that he was a writer because he was always attracted to history. I think that's probably true. He won the Nobel Prize for history in 1953. His interests, and thus his writings, are on interesting people and events of both British and his personal history. Four volumes on one of his famous ancestors: Marlborough: His Life and Times, is voluminous; a biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, his father; the four volumes of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, plus his multi-volumed histories of both the First and Second World Wars, all of them filled with splendid phrases and passages. A young person thinking of a career in history and writing would do well to study Churchill's many works.

Churchill always seemed to have a ready quip for almost any questioner. I close with another of his retorts on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday: I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. A fascinating and interesting character from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Ron Iden

January 2008

Who is your favorite character in the Bible?

Esther is my very favorite person in the bible! The king of Persia in the 5th century B.C.E. wanted to choose his new wife by holding a beauty contest. The old wife didn't obey him, so he got rid of her. Esther won the contest and married King Ahasuerus. The story is the Jewish story of Purim. In short, Esther is able to keep the Jews of Persia from genocide by revealing to the King that she is Jewish.

Carol Straughn

December 2007

Do you remember your first bicycle? What was it like?

I got my first bike at age 8 or 9 with NO training wheels. After a week of falls, skinned knees and many bruises I finally learned to balance on my bike, and soon bike riding was my favorite outdoor activity.

Merry Christmas,

Mary Todd

I'd learned to ride on my sister's old outgrown bike, and had personalized it with the cook high handlebars and leopard print banana seat from Western Auto and was perfectly satisfied with it. That Christmas, when I was eight, my dad had been in the hospital over a year sort of slowly dying of very invasive cancer. All the makings of another sad Christmas season I was TOTALLY SHOCKED AND UNPREPARED to see a brand new blue Schwinn Sting Ray bike in the living room that Christmas morning, 1965. I hadn't even DREAMED of asking for a new bike!!!

That bike and the whole who-knows-what's happening-next scenario, got me through a LOT of times that were hard for an eight year old to understand, the death of my father the next month, our move to a new part of town the next year, learning my way around a new neighborhood, meeting new friends, etc. A bicycle is so important to a kid because it's a first symbol of individual freedom. You're doing the pedaling and taking off! On your OWN! Of all the stuff I DID keep from my early years, I'd probably rather still have that Schwinn than all the rest. I hope its next owner enjoyed it nearly as much as I did.

Jim Spake

Having been born the first grandchild of my maternal grandparents with five single aunts and one uncle I received a great deal of love and attention. I was about 10 years old when I got my first bicycle and I will never forget it. Christmas morning after opening presents at home with my parents, we piled in the car to go see my mother's family in midtown Memphis. When I opened the door there it was! It was a beautiful lime green Schwinn with a soft black seat, a pushbutton horn on the wide bar going from the front wheel to the back, a wire basket on the front, wide fenders and very heavy. They had gotten me the deluxe model!!! There was just one problem; it was about 4ft. tall and so was I. It was a sunny Christmas morning so we took it outside and I tried and tried to ride it. I fell -- a lot. It really took me a couple of years but I finally got the hang of it. When I turned 12 I used to go on bike hikes with my friends and we'd ride around Whitehaven picking up others along the way. My bike was so big that when I road down hills it would go so fast it would take my breath away. I loved that bike. It caused me a lot of pain but, once I conquered it, I had a whole lot of fun.

Judy

November 2007

In answer to the November QWM, if your house were on fire, what one thing would you try to save?

Several years ago, before she passed away, my mother gave me a a small blue journal. The baby blue leather book is about 5x4 1/2, with a broken clasp, and thin pages covered front and back in my mother's beautiful scrawl, entitled Baby's First Five Years. Mother faithfully recorded several sentences on every day of the first 5 years I was in her life, even being so faithful to write in it as she was in early labor with my brother that my aunt had just come to pick me up. She wrote about the clothes she dressed me in (I was much more fashionable then than I am now, it appears, although I think I got treated like a doll with several changes of clothes each day in the early years), who came to call, or we called on, sentences with a different meaning to me as an adult as she talks about things she and my dad did, grandparents babysitting, and great grandmothers and great aunts, and aunts and uncles.

All these people are gone now, with the exception of me and my dad. This journal is such a sweet poignant reminder of my mother, and the expectations and happiness she held at that point in her life. Oddly enough, my two great aunts, my aunt and uncle never married, so I have no cousins or family to share this with. I would grab this precious little book as a reminder of a family that once was, and of a child that once was.

Laretha Harris Randolph

I would take my collection of scarves. I have always loved scarves; I still have a Peter Max scarf that I convinced my mother to buy me from Mamselle when I was 15. (Your parents can help you deduce how long ago that was!) Now I buy scarves as souvenirs from the different cities and countries I visit. I have so many memories tied up in these scraps of fabric that they would be one of the most important things I'd grab.

Margaret Metz

After all the people were out of the house safely, I would save the pictures of my great-great-grandparents. They are truly irreplaceable.

Anonymous

Dee Billmeier sent in a photograph of her porcelain doggie named Poochie. Poochie watches over Dee, from her bedside table, when she sleeps.

October 2007

In answer to the October QOM, What was your most memorable trip?

I think the most memorable trip I was taken on as a child was to Pensacola, Florida via New Orleans on the train that ran from Chicago to New Orleans and was, in fact, called - The City of New Orleans . This 926 mile trip was memorialized in a song by the same name and recorded by Arlo Guthrie. Whenever I hear it, I think of that trip when I was nine years old. Listening to the clickity-clack of the wheels all day and all night, waking up and seeing sleepy little towns in Mississippi and Louisiana and finally arriving in New Orleans where my parents rented a car and we drove along the Gulf coast to Florida.

There was a cluster of cabins near Pensacola, right on the beach owned by a family named Bacon and appropriately they named their motel, Bacons by the Sea. Aside from being able to walk out the cabin door, over a grassy knoll to the beach, what I remember most is the hen house behind the Bacon's dining room. Every morning Mrs. Bacon gave me a small basket and after being shown how to reach in each cage, under the hen and remove her egg it was my job to fetch the breakfast eggs. Usually twelve - that's how many hens lived there. And one rooster. I had to be very, very careful with that basket.

There is an idiom, or figure of speech, don't put all your eggs in one basket. It is used to explain the risk of putting all your treasures in one place, all your cookies on one plate, all your photographs in one album. Sometimes it's wise to divide these things up so if something should happen to one, you still have the other. Perhaps Mrs. Bacon should have given me two baskets. But she didn't. And I was careful. And we all had eggs - and bacon - for breakfast the entire week we stayed there. It was my most memorable trip as a child.

Dee Billmeier

March 2007

In answer to the March QOM, What is your favorite book of all time?

Thus far, favorite books reported: The Poisonwood Bible, The Wizard of Oz, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, William&'s Doll, Tirborn, Skybreaker, Keys to the Kingdom, Hatchet, Planet of the Apes, Inheiritance, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Collected Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and all his other stories, Winters Talesby Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and all her other stories, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Contact by Carl Saga, Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card.

February 2007

No Quetion of the Month

January 2007

In answer to the Question of the Month for December, 2006: What was the most memorable moment for you in 2006?

I'll tell you what was memorable about 2006. Waiting in a doctor's office, I saw an article about the casts of the TV shows Grey's Anatomy and Without a Trace. Somewhat interested, I READ ON and discovered that the real-life co-actor relationships were suffering on Grey's Anatomy but not Without a Trace. Dan in Without a Trace summed up what works for their group, We're on a hit TV series, why would I fight with Eric? This applies to life. Recognize when something is working and don't spoil it, and also for our youth, if somewhat interested in something, READ ON! In 2007, I'm looking forward to having my school children at St. George's process while singing the Shepherd's Song from Amahl and the Night Visitors at the next Christmas pageant. This is what makes me happy. I plan way out. Thank you for your questions!

Holly

December 2006

In answer to the Question of the Month for December, 2006: What was the best gift you ever gave someone? What made it special?

One day when I was in junior high my father was fired-but I did not know that then for my parents did not want me to worry. When my father unexpectedly arrived home early that day, he and my mother went into their bedroom to talk. I did not have a clue about what was happening, but I made chocolate pudding and took it to my parents. They were so happy and overcome by the pudding that I did not know what to think! Several years later I found out what I in reality had given was not pudding but love and hope.

Nancy Elaine Elliott McKinnie

An Outward Bound Course because it made the recipient appreciate and welcome adversity.

Anonymous

The gift of time and a warm meal to a church member who was sick.

Dee Billmeier

I gave my husband a set of plastic ears so he could nibble on them and leave mine alone.

Shirley Rich

I gave a sweater and shirt which matched to my husband, who loved it. It was the first gift I had given that he liked.

Anne Nelson

The first baby doll for my older daughter made me feel like Santa Claus for the first time.

Mary Todd

An original pencil drawing by Dana Siler of giraffe; given to my husband who was a docent at the zoo. At the time of my husband's death in 2006, the drawing was given to his 6 year old grandson.

Marge Routon

November 2006

A survey of the Thanksgiving trees from our Stone Soup Feast shows that family tops the list as the most cited answer. Some others:

All God&'s children all over the world, children home for the holidays, sisters home for Thanksgiving and a brother away at college, health, shelter, nature, orange leaves, cats, dogs, and a pony; stuffed animals, Girl Scouts, coats, snow, not-mean people, birthdays, field trips, pie, Mom, Star Wars, the Mississippi River, Canada, art, sculpture, good books, a sense of humor, no homework and homework, math, foam leaves and pens to write on them with, a copy machine, tennis, the sun, freedom, music and choirs, hope for regaining a national morality, Democrats as election winners, uninterrupted prosperity, meaningful work, Burton Carley, the UU Alliance, Stone Soup, our Unitarian community, The Church of the River that makes me feel home.

October 2006

Did you celebrate Halloween when you were a kid? What was your favorite costume or other Halloween memory?

Answers published with permission:

Halloween was lots of fun when I was a child. I don't remember seeing Halloween costumes in the store. We always made our own costumes up out of what we could find. You could use a sheet and be a ghost or wear all your mama's necklaces and be a gypsy. Something like that was what we did. One thing that was different is that the best places to go for treats were houses where they handed out home made treats -- cookies, cupcakes, candy but made fresh that day. One house on my block was made into a haunted house by the people who lived there. They had everyone come in and walk through the haunted house and then you got your treat at the end. Thinking back, I believe the people who lived in that house really, really liked kids. What do you think? Margaret Park

I always celebrated Halloween as a child by trick or treating all over our neighborhood. I remember when taking a UNICEF box to collect pennies was first introduced and the boxes were distributed at school. We all asked each other if money was really going to be given out along with candy. It was a new idea and seemed very strange. My parents went to the bank and got 2 rolls of shiny pennies and gave a penny to each child who came to our door. At the end of the evening both rolls were gone and they were scrounging in their wallets to have enough pennies for the last of the trick or treaters. That same year I was very disappointed because the costume my mom had made me was hardly seen by anyone. Late Halloween afternoon it began to snow and we all had to wear coats over our costumes because it was so cold that evening. Since you are growing up in Memphis, you will probably never have this same experience among your Halloween memories. I grew up in East Lansing, MI and it was not unheard of to have snow on Halloween or on Easter. I like Memphis weather. How about you? From Sue Myers

This is a great idea, I hope you get a lot of responses! Here's mine: Yes! We celebrated Halloween when I was a child in Michigan. It was very cold and sometimes snowy in October so we had to think of costumes that would fit over our winter jackets and boots. But more than Halloween, we kids enjoyed the night before Halloween. In Michigan this is called Devil';s Night. On Devil's Night children have permission to be mischievious. We could play pranks (put fake snakes in the teacher's desk drawer, ring a door bell and run away, toilet paper roll a house, soap a car) and not get in trouble! Before we left school the day of Devil's Night, our principal would always remind us to be mischievious, not malicious! From Lisa Nezwazky, Age 45

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. When I was a kid, I loved dressing up as a ghost. I cut eyeholes in all my grandma’s good white sheets. I was very small as a child, so I always tripped over the sheet. My grandpa took me trick-or-treating all over town and I would come home with a pillowcase full of candy. We sorted it into groups according to what eachof us liked. My favorite was chocolate and I remember that grandpa liked the peanut butter logs. I enjoyed being our in the nippy air, hearing the crunch of leaves under my feet, and spending time with grandpa. All would be right with the world until Grandma made me sleep under the “ghost sheet” and my toes got stuck in the eye holes. From Cindy James, age 42

On Halloween I often dressed as a gypsy because I could wear my mother’s skirt, jewelry, and lipstick. It seems that almost every time we went trick or treating the weather was either cold or wet so I often had to wear a coat over my costume. We carried paper sacks as plastic bags had not been “invented” and if it rained, the bag would break as we were often given apples or oranges which were very heavy. My favorite thing to do on Halloween was to bob for apples; ask your teacher to describe this game. Happy Halloween! From Mary Todd, age 67

I grew up in Memphis and loved Halloween from the time I can remember. I can’t remember many of my costumes, but I o remember that one year I was a hobo and loved having a dirty face and dirty hair, and one year I was a witch and loved my hat. I used to go through our neighborhood with all my neighborhood friends trick or treating. WE would start around 5:30 or as soon as it was dark. There were never any adults along. When I was very young, I went with older children and then went with children my own age even when I was only 8 or so. There was a big fuss one year because Halloween was on Sunday and it was decided by the City Council that it was irreverent to trick or treat on Sunday so we all went our on Saturday. It was fine with me because that meant it wasn’t a school night. Normally though, we’d dash to get home by 8:30 to watch “Goblin Giveaway” This was a special television program that happened only on Halloween night that gave free bicycles to children, but you had to call them within 5 minutes of hearing your name announced on the air or you wouldn’t get the bicycle. From Ellen Klyce

I was living in a big city (Chicago) where all the kids walked to school and on Halloween we wore our costumes to school after lunch (we all went home for lunch) and instead of classes, we walked around the school yard looking at each other’s costumes. No prizes were given; we just had a party with cookies when we got back to our classrooms. My favorite costume was one my mother made for me, with a HUGE hat made to look like a basket of fruit, a very colorful off-the-shoulder outfit with lots of necklaces AND the BEST part: I got to wear make-up to school. Eye shadow, rouge, and lipstick. I was Carmen Miranda, a very popular singer/actress in the 1940s who was raised in Brazil and became famous singing South American salsa-type music. Because we didn’t have television at the time I had seen her in a movie and thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. It must have been that HAT! From Dee Billmeirer

We didn’t buy costumes so we got grown up old clothes and dressed like rag-a-muffins. Anonymous