UCNUU Blogspot

Am I a member or a friend of UCN?  The following is taken from the Bylaws:

A member in good standing is a person, 16 years of age or older, who has signed the membership book; participates in church activities; and has made and is fulfilling a current annual pledge.  A friend is a person who may or may not participate in church activities and has made and is fulfilling a current annual pledge.

The labels, member and friend, are an issue now because Maxine is preparing an updated directory and it’s not always clear who gets an asterisk.  To complicate matters further there are some people whose contact information could be useful to the membership and they themselves do not fall in either classification.  Is there a need for a third group?  I think so.

Here is the audience participation part:  What would be a good label for those people that are not members or friends?  Maybe they should be called friend and we could have a new way of designating those that are currently labeled as such.   This third category would consist of persons that advocate Unitarian-Universalist principles and are involved in some way with the life of our church but are neither  members nor friends.   Other is not what we are looking for gang!!  (It’s a user friendly thing and besides I already thought of that one.)

Pass your good ideas on to me by email to president@*ourdomain*, or attach a comment to this blog.  A Bylaws change would likely be needed so changes won’t be happening in the short term but it’s good to be looking ahead.

(Substitute “ucnorfolk.org” for *ourdomain*.)

Tuesdays at UCN are predictably calm and today was just such a Tuesday.  That is, right up until the murder.  The detectives responded quickly and there were over twenty people in various parts of the building.  It’s likely that someone saw something.  Oh, and another detail, it was all captured on film.  And you’ll be able to see the whole episode unfold on television.

 A film crew from Hampton has been here since morning making a TV movie.  Our building has been busy all day doubling as a movie set, dressing room, make-up studio, rehearsal area, and lunch buffet.  The actors and crew are taking a mid-day break now and will be back in action soon.  The plan is to have the movie in-the-can by 10 tonight.  There are no clues coming from me except that the story is a murder mystery. 

The day and time of the broadcast have not been set but you’ll be the first to know. Watch for updates in this space.  It’ll be fun to see how many parts of the building we recognize.  However, the artistic license did permit, in this case, a certain rearrangement of familiar objects, supplements of objects unfamiliar, and uses of our space that we hadn’t even considered.

Late news:  The case was solved and everything was wrapped up by 8:30 tonight!

The photographs made by Reverend Jim Curtis are once again on display in the Curtis room. Check out the new arrangement of the pictures, I think you’ll like it.

Although the pictures are excellent examples of studies of lights and darks and certainly elicit emotional responses, there is a back-story to the photos which makes their message even more poignant. The pictures were taken in Germany in the early 1950′s. That would have been only a few years after the end of WWII. If you didn’t know this part of the story, look at the pictures again with this added context. How about the lady ascending a staircase into the light? There’s no way to know the narrative before or after the photo was taken, but it’s impossible not to drift into a creative writing mode.