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“The Year to Save the Earth” – Performance by Jim Scott

By Chuck Putney

Jim Scott, who has performed around the world and with the Paul Winter Consort, will present a mixed-media performance on Jan. 7, 2 p.m., at the UU Meetinghouse.

Mixing powerful songs and beautiful projected images, “The Year to Save the Earth” takes us from celebration to grieving, protest to positive vision for the planet. The program was developed under a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Suggested contribution is $20, at the door.

Jim Scott’s lyrical melodies and outspoken poetry celebrate what’s beautiful, amazing, and fragile about our Earth. As well as hard reality, the program’s message is one of optimism with many invitations to join in the singing. Facing the urgency of the environmental crisis, the musical and visual experience challenges us to feel, to learn and to act.

Prolific composer guitarist Jim Scott brings a warmth and humor with his jazz and world music influenced songs. A life-long Unitarian Universalist, Jim has played at over 700 UU churches in four decades and his songs are included in UU songbooks. Formerly a member of the Paul Winter Consort, Jim was composer of their celebrated Missa Gaia/Earth Mass and sang their anthem song Common Ground. He has toured the world, recorded nine CDs of original music and published a growing line of choral works. One of the originators of the Unitarian Universalist Church “Green Sanctuary” program, Jim also compiled the Earth and Spirit Songbook, an anthology of over 100 songs of Earth by many contemporary composers.  

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State of Terror by Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny

From the publisher’s website:

From the #1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise—State of Terror.

After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state.

There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate.

As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an anonymous source.

Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning.

What begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its heels in the international arena.

As the horrifying scale of the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most.

To defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary of state.

State of Terror is a unique and utterly compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling novelist.

 

Book Review: How the Word is Passed

 

 

 

 

 

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith

Little, Brown and Company
June 2021

Reviewed by Carolyn Webb

I first heard Clint Smith being interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” (Fresh Air, NPR, June 1, 2021).   His new book, “How the Word is Passed”, had just been published. His easy manner of speaking belied the seriousness of his topic – how Americans teach, talk about, and even sometimes celebrate our history of slavery.

 

 

Smith visited many of the iconic places of slavery – Jefferson’s Monticello, The Whitney Plantation, Angola Prison, Galveston Island,

Goree Island, the Blanford (confederate) Cemetery, and New York City. As he tours these places, you feel you are along on the tour with him, listening to the tour guides, seeing the places, hearing the words of the confederate celebrators. He asks hard questions, even when he is the only Black person there. He sometimes returns a second time to talk to the tour guides and directors again, to walk the grounds again. His thoughtful writing makes this a fast, but not easy, read. It is a book I’m going to read again, to take it all in again. I want to remember it.

In the Epilogue, he interviews his grandparents. The first sentence is: “My Grandfather’s Grandfather was Enslaved.”  It is stunning to think of how close in time that is to the present.

Smith is also a poet, and his book of poetry, Counting Descent, is a collection of 61 poems, many of which had me holding my breath to the end. It is published by Write Bloody Publishing, 2016. He was awarded the 2014 National Poetry Slam championship. He is also a writer for the Atlantic Monthly.

Here are some links to interviews and reviews of Smith’s book, including a NYT review, NPR article, and