50 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105 Tel: (860) 233-9897 / FAX 233-1333 Email: firstunitarian@ushartford.com Reverend Barbara Jamestone, PhD

Home Page- Link Central Questions and Comments	USH-Enews August 12, 2010 Jump to: Sunday Service; Calendar; What's Happening; Feature Articles; External Events; Further Down the Road; Social Justice Journeys; Green Topics ; A Matter of Opinion Text only Printer Friendly Format
	Ahem! USH-Enews is a weekly email newsletter produced for members and friends of the Unitarian Society of Hartford. The USH web address is:  http://www.ushartford.com/ Check at the end of this USH-Enews for information on submissions, subscriptions and escape from the mailing list or to find past issues of the weekly USH-Enews click here. Office hours: Rev. Jamestone: Phone: 860 233-9897; Email: RevBJ@USHartford.com - Rev. BJ office hours by appointment.
	Worshipping Together Since 1830 One Service 10:30 AM Sunday - 15 & 22 August: Fourth Summer Dyad - Relationship with Self - How shall we respond to our messy, lovely, breathtaking and broken selves? How do we resist the temptation to shut down and seal away the parts of ourselves and our experience we'd really rather do without? How do we love ourselves as we would love our neighbors? This dyad has been put together by Jennifer Hunt, Liz Garmise, and Sue Smolski, Worship Associates. Music - Always inspiring! REflections on Children's Programming Summer Program - This Sunday, August 15th, our Green Crafting: Protect the Environment while Having Fun! program will continue with Coffee Ground Fossil Making.  Children ages three and up are invited to classroom D downstairs for this creative project!   Nursery Care is available downstairs as well. Gail M. Syring, DRE What Else is Happening Bill & Louise Willett - wish to thank our many USH friends for extending their love & sympathy to us & to Joel on the death of our dear daughter-in-law, Machiko. Your lovely cards & notes were appreciated so much. Harriet Aborn shares the happy news of the birth of her great grandson, Charles Everett Niemann. He will be welcomed by his two year old sister, Gretta.  They live in New Hampshire. Adult Programs - Fall is fast approaching! There is still time to submit your program proposal to be included in the 2010 Fall Programs for Adults and Families Notebooks. The notebooks are beginning to be assembled and we'd like to include your program. To obtain a Program Proposal Form, you may go to the website home page. Then, from the Spiritual Life pull down menu (on the left side of the home page), click on Adult Programs. In the first paragraph, click on download the form in Microsoft Word. The form is also available at the USH office. Please attach a detailed paragraph in Microsoft Word (if possible) about the program to the completed Proposal Form that can be used for promotion. Please email the completed Proposal to Janice Newton no later than Monday, August 16 so that your proposed program can be reviewed and included with the other 2010 Fall Programs for Adults and Families. Small Group Ministry: Coming Attractions - Dear Readers: Get set for a fabulous fall with seven Small Group Ministry groups! Get set for four special groups: Creativity SGM, Faith SGM, LGBT Plus Friends SGM, and Family-Friendly SGM. Get set for SGM at three popular locations: Bloomfield, Farmington, and Hartford. Get set for four groups gathering at the meeting house for maximum convenience and access. Get set for an afternoon group in Hartford at our meeting house. Get set for favorite facilitators returning and brand new facilitators starting out with enthusiasm and excitement. More information to come.  Watch your ENews! - Bev Spence $10 Pizza & Movie Night, Friday, Aug 27, Reserve by Mon, Aug. 23 More  Aug. 29, 2010 Songs of the Spirit. - Not our typical Sunday service, this will be a sacred song circle. It is an opportunity to share inspirational and empowering songs from all spiritual backgrounds. One song typically follows another organically, with limited facilitation and no introductions or spoken words between songs. It is a time for sharing music that lifts our spirits, touches our hearts, heals our souls, feels our "oneness." Don't worry about your voice! You will not be judged. The service will be convened downstairs in Fellowship Hall (a cooler space) rather than in the Sanctuary. This is an Inter-generational service and we guarantee you'll leave smiling. The service will be facilitated by Maggie Greene with help from Fred Louis. Maggie has been regularly attending the Meeting House for 13 years. She has participated in the Social Responsibility Committee, small group ministry, the Artist's Way classes, the Chancel Arts, the Caring Network and has facilitated poetry events. Maggie is a registered nurse working at a Bristol elementary school. She is also an accomplished poet, devoted mother to daughters Nora and Brigid, loving wife of Fred Louis, lover of all the arts and nature, and, of course, an enthusiastic singer. Caring Network - Keep a diary, and someday your diary will keep you. Mae West - If you know of any member experiencing some difficulty, please contact Diana Heymann, Chair of the Caring Network heydiana(at symbol) comcast.net 860.461.0908 or call the office so we can provide some assistance.- before 10:30 on Sunday. A wide range of community services is also available to those in need by calling InfoLine at 211. Please contact Diana if you are able to volunteer your services. Green Topics - Did You Know? - Green Table Summer Hours: 3rd Sunday of the Month 8/15). Stock up on your environmentally friendly cleaning and paper goods. Please don't take a vacation from doing what's right for mother earth. Further Down The Road (About 30 Days) Women's Alliance Fall Retreat October 22- 24 Reading one Book Together - The Unitarian Alliance Ministry to Women is happy to announce its R & R weekend on October 22 - 24, returning to the Victorian retreat house called Senexet in northeastern CT. More	From the Editor: Suggestions for Contributors. This Week’s Feature Articles Cool Music on Summer Night Planned Calling on your WIT at Noah Webster & Rawson Songs of the Spirit Service Planned Cool Music on a Summer Night Planned 8/29 - 7:30 PM. Cool Music Flyer  -- It’s time to think ahead.  One big challenge for the Music Department is the absence of USH funding for our Section Leaders who make our choir as good as it is, meaning we need to do our own fundraising for that.  Here’s where you all come in, and we hope you’ll show enthusiastic support for the music program that enlivens and enriches your Sunday services.   What can you do?  The biggest thing is the easiest – please come to our next fundraising concert, which will be a great one:  our recent team of piano wizard John Jesensky and scintillating soprano Katie LaPorta Jesensky (yes, they were married last summer) are coming back to treat us to their musical magic.  John will be playing favorites by Billy Joel, Elton John, Ben Folds and maybe, The Beatles!  As a special bonus we’ll also hear from our dear friends Patrice Fitzgerald and Richard Leslie, our cantor Melissa Paul, and a few surprise guests to join the fun and entertain us on a summer evening.   Here are some of the details, and a few ways you can enjoy a great concert and help the music program at the same time.  Most important, put this date on your calendar: SUNDAY, AUGUST 29TH  at 7:30 pm:  COOL MUSIC ON A SUMMER NIGHT Think of friends you can invite for a terrific night out Email right now to offer to help.  There aren’t many tasks, but many hands distribute such jobs as ushering and greeting, and make it all more fun. Here is the address: music(at symbol)ushartford.com Join us with this end-of-summer fundraiser, and get comfy with some cool tunes. - Mattie Banzhaf Calling On Your WIT (Wise Inner Teacher) At Noah Webster School or Rawson School - We have a really effective partnership going between several interfaith Hartford congregations and Noah Webster School and Rawson School – both K-8 elementary schools in Hartford - organized by the good folks at the Greater Hartford Interfaith Coalition for Equity and Justice (GHICEJ).  I am part of what is becoming a small army of volunteers who go into the school for two hours a week and tutor a couple sweet kids in reading or math.  Our work is bearing fruit, as Noah Webster is now the top performing school in the district on the Connecticut Mastery Test, with scores increased by 11% over last year.   There are many reasons why I tutor – the children who hug me, my astonishment at their improvement in reading fluency over just a few months, the teacher who hugs me, the absorbing stories in the challenging reading text, the committed staff people who hug me, the brightly colored school full of light, the security guard who hugs me (yes!).     But I thought I would relate an experience – a true “Aha!” moment -- from my tutoring where I did the learning, not my student. This experience called to mind the WIT (Wise Inner Teacher) that Reverend BJ claims lurks inside each of us, ready to be accessed when our spirit calls for it.   One of my third grade students this year, I’ll call him Jake, is about the funniest kid I know. He can roll his eyes or screw up his mouth in such a way that you cannot help but double over laughing. He is a riot, and he knows that I love his sense of humor.  Jake is also very bright and quite a good reader.  The problem is that sometimes he would rather not read, preferring to play one of my word games or just plain fool around and entertain me. I suspected that on these occasions he was also “too cool” to read to me, or perhaps embarrassed about his solid reading ability.  So I would then focus my efforts on lecturing him about the values of reading, hard work, achievement in school, blah, blah, blah.   Then one day the teacher asked me to tutor another boy, Tommy, at the same time I was tutoring Jake.  I reluctantly said yes, fearing that Jake would now prefer to play to a bigger audience of two rather than engage in any serious reading.  How wrong I was!   Jake immediately assumed the role of teacher, assigning several pages of reading to Tommy and me, but explaining that he would read aloud to us the lion’s share of the story and point out the dominant themes of the story to us.  And he did.  And he did it so well.  Is there a more gratifying moment for a teacher than to have your student take over the class?   And so I did some learning here.  My Wise Inner Teacher told me that I had underestimated Jake’s ability to play a more active role in our learning together.  I had forgotten that we are all different and have different learning styles, that my job as a tutor was to experiment a little and find out which style fits this unique learner.  From then on I let Jake run the show. He would assign the pages to be read and by whom.  And for the most part, he did a good job of it. He learned too.   My point here is to encourage you to at least consider tutoring at Noah Webster School or Rawson School, for it can be a learning experience, even a soul-satisfying experience, for both you and all those wonderful children.  The partnership project of GHICEJ does a great job introducing and preparing you to tutor, including a Tutor Training Manual and several tutor meetings, the first of which is on September 14.  If you’re interested, you can e-mail Shai Cassell at scassell54@comcast.net. - Mike Roy On the Calendar - Please notify Brian Mullen of all additions or changes to the calendar. Follow this link to all our scheduled events A Matter of Opinion Social Justice Journeys (From the UUA) And from USH External Events and Educational Notes Energy Audit of your Home at Little or No Cost: - If you are over 65 and customer of CL&P, you can have a free energy efficiency audit made of your home.  CL&P is paying the normal $75 copay for seniors.  You must register by Sept 30.  Call to schedule audit (about two hours long). More information may be found at the web address below: http://www.hesprogram.com/why-the-hes-program/ If you do this, let us know so we can keep a count and pass it along to the Green Sanctuary Folks. Click here ALS Walk Saturday 25th September More
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