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I know that it’s crazy that I’m uploading a post featuring my photos from Christmas Eve on the day after Valentine’s Day but that is what happens when I took a couple of weeks off of updating this blog last month (with the exception of the Benjamin Franklin Friday posts). That’s the way it goes.
Christmas Eve was a whirlwind for me because I went to more than one event. First I went to a Christmas sing-a-long at the New Deal Cafe in Greenbelt, Maryland where people sang secular Christmas music (like “Jingle Bells” and “Winter Wonderland”). It was pretty fun running into my friends while we were singing Christmas carols.
As I was leaving the New Deal Cafe I saw this vigil in Roosevelt Center that was next to the Mother and Child statue. A few people were protesting the current Israel-Hamas War where Hamas has taken a bunch of Israeli hostages (some of them are still in the custody of Hamas as of this writing) and Israel has retaliated by bombing Gaza so much that, according to the BBC News, at least half of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
I went to the special Christmas Eve service at my Unitarian Universalist congregation where we sang Christmas songs.
The Chalice Dancers did a special performance that started off the candlelight ceremony.
Then there was the Christmas candlelight part of the service.
After the Christmas Eve service ended I returned home just in time to see Santa Claus riding through my neighborhood in the back of a firetruck.
I attended a Winter Solstice service at my Unitarian Universalist congregation about a week before Christmas. As part of the service they gave out springs of holly while we also sang “Deck the Halls.” We also got this paper with an inspirational saying that said “I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”
I have a confession to make. There was a time when I had never heard of Juneteenth. That was because it was more of an African American holiday and I’m white. In addition, that holiday tended to be celebrated mainly in Texas because the last slaves who were formally freed were in Texas and I have spent all of my life in Maryland.
The first time I had ever heard of Juneteenth was through my Unitarian Universalist congregation, which had put on the first Juneteenth service I had ever attended back in 2012 as part of its ongoing anti-racism efforts. (I mentioned it in this blog post but I took no photos of either the Sunday service or the special Juneteenth lunch that was held following the end of that service.)
But this year President Joe Biden had signed a bill into law proclaiming Juneteenth to be a national holiday. I’m just amazed that a holiday that I had never heard of prior to 2012 is now a holiday and its observance will no longer be relegated to just African Americans in Texas. If it weren’t for my UU congregation, I would just be learning about Juneteenth for the first time this year.
The Space decided to co-sponsor this special free art event where we could make Juneteenth-related art. It was held inside of Beltway Plaza (which also co-sponsored this event). The mall had recently brought back the benches that it had originally placed in storage due to the COVID-19 pandemic so people can once again sit down and relax. (The pandemic is far from over as of this writing. We are still required to wear face masks while we are inside of the mall so we all wore face masks on Juneteenth.)
I decided to do this rough paper collage where I envisioned how the last of the slaves in Texas felt when they learned that they were now liberated because slavery had been abolished. I imagined them as being full of spontaneous ecstasy at hearing the news that they were now freed. Using construction paper I cut out stick figures representing newly-freed slaves in a variety of colors (representing the various skin tones of African Americans in general). I also cut out word balloons where I had them express joy at finally being freed. Here’s my collage.
Since my handwriting basically sucks, here is what I had the stick figures say (just in case you can’t read my writing). From left to right: Woman says “No More Slavery!” Man says “I can now get paid for my labor!” Woman says “I can no longer worry about forced separations from my family.” Man says “Yay!” Woman says “I’m nobody’s slave now!” Man says “I love freedom!”
I’ll admit that what I did wasn’t high art. It was something that I did very quickly with no advanced planning or forethought at all. The people who were around at the table liked it, which was the important thing for me. The Space later took the art that was created on Juneteenth (including my paper collage) and created this display that’s now located near both The Space and the AMC Theatres.
On the same day that the observance of Juneteenth has finally gained mainstream acceptance across the United States (complete with President Joe Biden signing the bill into law that now proclaims Juneteenth to be a national holiday), I learned that another friend of mine has died.
Her name was Susan Bruce and she was primarily a political writer. She regularly wrote a column for the local New Hampshire paper The Conway Daily Sun. Some of her column writings are archived on her blog, Susan the Bruce, which was devoted mainly to New Hampshire politics. On her Twitter account she prided herself on being blocked by the Twitter accounts of both the New Hampshire Free State Project and the New Hampshire Libertarian Party.
She also prided herself on being the direct descendant of the famed Scottish warrior king Robert the Bruce, who was portrayed by Angus Macfadyen in the 1995 movie Braveheart and again in the 2019 movie Robert the Bruce. She felt that she had inherited some of her famous ancestor’s traits, especially when it came to her willingness to take on the power elite who control New Hampshire politics. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and many New Hampshire politicians have found themselves the targets of her barbed criticism directed at them in her column and blog. Here’s an account of what happened when one of her blog posts had riled up the local GOP so badly that they cried foul like a bunch of delicate crybaby snowflakes and it even caught the attention of the major online media outlet Politico.
I first met her when my then-husband and I were members of a political discussion forum that has since been knocked off-line. We actually met Susan in person a few times. The first two times were when she had come to the Baltimore area to attend this annual conference that was put on by the union that she belonged to and the conference was held at a hotel near the Arundel Mills Mall. Both times we went to Arundel Mills where we ate dinner at one of the restaurants there. I found her to be highly intelligent and witty. We found out that she was a Unitarian Universalist like we were and she was a member of a UU congregation in New Hampshire.
The last time we met her in person was in 2006. The members of that political forum decided to have a meetup in Montreal, where some of the members lived and my husband and I decided to travel there so we could meet the people behind the forum posts (plus it was a great opportunity to visit Montreal). Susan wanted to go to that meetup but she was unable to attend. My husband and I decided to stop by her place in New Hampshire since it would be on the way back from Montreal.
We stayed at a bed and breakfast place in New Hampshire then headed over to her place where she gave us a tour of her area of New Hampshire, which has all kinds of natural wonders as shown the photograph below.
She showed us Mount Washington, the famous mountain that has inspired plenty of people to put “This Car Has Climbed Mount Washington” bumperstickers on their cars. Driving up Mount Washington requires going on a road that’s very treacherous and it’s definitely not for inexperienced drivers or the faint of heart. My husband, who did all the driving on this trip, didn’t want to subject his then-recently-purchased Honda hybrid car to such a road so the three of us ended up seeing Mount Washington from afar, where I took this photograph.
Towards the end of our visit I took this photo of Susan.
That trip turned out to be the last time I ever saw Susan in person although I kept up with her online. According to her LinkedIn profile, in addition to her newspaper column, she was also the producer and cohost of The Attitude With Arnie Arnesen, which aired on radio station WNHN-FM. Her LinkedIn profile mentioned that she had recently retired from her radio job in order to devote more time to her writing. Two months ago she had appeared as a guest on this episode of the podcast Have You Heard. (Susan Bruce appears around the 18:20 mark.)
Now she’s dead, which is a big shock because she never indicated that she was ill or anything like that. Based on what I had learned online, apparently she was found dead in her apartment with a head injury. Right now the authorities are investigating her death to see if foul play was involved. Given her frequent outspoken opinions that were aimed at the Republicans, Libertarians, and Trump supporters who dominate New Hampshire politics these days (and the three groups tend to frequently overlap), it’s reasonable for the police and doctors to do a thorough investigation of her death since some of these people—especially Trump supporters—tend to be unhinged enough to be capable of murder. (They definitely demonstrated their violent tendencies to the world when they stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. Officer Brian Sicknick was beaten with a fire extinguisher by these invading thugs and he later died of his injuries.)
Normally I would say “rest in peace” but Susan had never liked using certain phrases regarding death like “passed away.” Instead I’ll just say that I felt very fortunate to have known her, I’m very sad that she’s gone, and I’ll miss her.
UPDATE (June 22, 2021): The Conway Daily Sun, the newspaper where Susan Bruce published many of her columns, has published this obituary that provides more information as to how she was found dead as well as a detailed look at her career as a writer and political activist.
There are some stuff going through social media about the personal life of the late Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was among those who stormed the U.S. Capitol building last week and was killed by a police officer when she attempted to crawl through a smashed window in an effort to reach a secure area of the Capitol. Apparently she was part of what the media called a “throuple” where she lived with her husband and a girlfriend. The three of them lived and loved peacefully together until Ashli Babbitt decided to travel to DC in order to fight for Donald Trump staying on as president (despite having lost the election).
I think some people in the media have been watching way too much threesome porn featuring a man and two women because this coverage of Babbitt’s personal life is along the lines of “Ooooohhh!!! How kinky and titillating!” How in the hell is Ashli Babbitt’s living arrangement anyone else’s business?
First of all, there is an official term for the lifestyle that Ashli Babbitt, her husband, and girlfriend lived. It’s called polyamory. Secondly, the media should focus more on the fact that she was killed because she engaged in terrorism and sedition after she was inspired to do so by Donald Trump, who was impeached yesterday because of his role in the Capitol siege.
Ashli Babbitt’s lifestyle is far more common than the media thinks. I’ve met a few polyamorous people through my Unitarian Universalist congregation. The reason why we’ve attracted such folks is because the UU faith is not about patrolling the sex lives of consenting adults and it places a greater emphasis on the inherent worth and dignity of all people. They feel comfortable being themselves in our congregation without fear of being shunned or ridiculed. At the denomination level there is even an organization called Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness.
There’s one woman who is openly polyamorous who used to belong to my congregation and whom I still keep in contact via Facebook. Her name is Anita Wagner and she has her own website called Practical Polyamory where she provides information about polyamory. She also gives the occasional interview about polyamory, such as this one.
As for the current members who are polyamorous, I can’t go into too many details about them because 1) I don’t have permission to write about them in this blog and 2) some of them tend to keep quiet about their personal life outside of our congregation out of a fear of being discriminated against in jobs, housing, and other matters. What I can say is that all of them are peaceful law-abiding citizens and none of them have ever engaged in terrorism like Ashli Babbitt did. My polyamorous friends are just as horrified at what happened in DC last week as my monogamous friends.
The bottom line is that Ashli Babbitt died because she was engaged in violent sedition and terrorism not because she was polyamorous. Let’s emphasize the sedition and terrorism part of her life, not the polyamorous part because the latter is irrelevant to what happened at the U.S. Capitol building.
For bigger perspective on why Ashli Babbitt died, this tweet shows excerpts from a video shot by someone known as Jayden X that includes the moment before Ashli Babbitt was shot to death by the police.
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1349577153789243392
You can view the full version of Jayden X’s video right here. (Jayden X claims that he was embedded with the rioters in his role as a journalist, although this Twitter thread casts doubts on whether he is really a journalist. By the way, Jayden X has just been arrested for his role in the riot.)
My denomination is engaging in a program called UU the Vote where various congregations are trying to improve voter participation in the upcoming elections and maybe—just maybe—actually get a government that is by the people, of the people, and for the people.
One of the various UU the Vote actions is to do a postcard writing campaign in conjunction with Reclaim Our Vote reminding registered voters on how, where, and when to vote in order to make their votes legally count. Some people in my congregation decided to organize around such actions and we are currently engaged in writing postcards to registered voters in Georgia. Since our church is only meeting via Zoom we had to volunteer via email then meet one of the organizers to pick up our pack. I got a pack including a list of 30 voters in Gwinnett County, Georgia, postcards, stickers, and stamps.
The provided Reclaim Our Vote postcard is quite colorful. Basically we write the address of the voter on the front then put a stamp on it.
For the back we have to follow a script to write. We are basically providing information on how to send an absentee ballot (whether by dropping it off at an official dropbox or at an elections office or sending it by mail) and what the deadlines are in order to have that ballot count as an actual vote on November 3. The provided stickers has phone and text numbers of various election offices in that county that we could stick on the back (which definitely saves on additional writing). Once we are finished with that postcard, the next step is to put it in a mailbox.
We have until September 20 to finish writing and mailing these postcards. So far I’ve finished the majority of them and I’m hoping to get the last few cards done before the weekend.
I even look on Donald Trump’s Twitter feed in order to motivate me to continue with writing these postcards. Both the UU the Vote and Reclaim Our Vote efforts are supposed to be officially non-partisan and I don’t know if the voters I got on my list are registered Democrat, Republican, Independent, or other. I am hoping that the people I’m writing to are just as disgusted by President Donald Trump as I am and will be motivated to do their part to vote this bastard out.
My Unitarian Universalist church had a special all-ages service on abundance. As a way of illustrating this, there was a reading of the book Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen followed by a special activity. Afterwards everyone was given a piece of yarn.
Then we stood in a circle and tied our ends of yarn together.
Then the kids and some adults stretched the yarn into the lobby.
Eventually the long yarn was stretched outside.
The yarn was long enough to stretch from the church entrance to the parking lot.
During the weekly Sunday service on January 26, 2020 my church decided to do something a bit experimental. We were each given tiny baskets with the Unitarian Universalist flaming chalice on the side along with some small notecards.
We were instructed to either write or draw positive messages then place them in other people’s baskets. Here are the notes I did before I gave them away to other people.
In exchange I got a bunch of messages in my own basket written by my fellow church members. I got a great haul of notes. It’s so nice when other people care about you.
I went to a nighttime all-ages Yule service at my UU congregation in order to observe the official Winter Solstice. It was my way of trying to observe the winter holiday season even though I wasn’t feeling it that year mainly because I was temporarily laid off from the Census Bureau and my finances were dwindling because I wasn’t able to find steady work before then. I felt better being among other people.
There was a lighting of the chalice along with a few inspirational words being said.
They passed out a branch that symbolized our own personal Yule log. We could decide whether to throw it in a fire, toss it into the woods located behind the church, or take it home with us.
I opted to put mine in a fire pit that was set up on the deck outside after the service ended.
The church had marshmallows available for the kids to roast over that fire pit.
It’s hard enough dealing with the death of my mother just a few days ago but now I’ve just learned of another death of someone who was a major part of my life.
His name was Reverend Rick Kelley and he was the Unitarian Universalist minister who presided over my wedding. He was the first UU clergy person I’ve ever met and he was the one who inspired my then-fiancé and I to sign the membership book just a few months before our wedding.
I came by Unitarian Universalism through a roundabout way. I first heard of that faith when I was in the seventh grade and my social studies class had devoted a unit to religion. Basically that unit consisted of three days of watching filmstrips with the accompanying audiotapes. One was about Judaism. One was about Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Christian Orthodox faiths. The third was about Protestantism. The Protestant one devoted a chunk of the filmstrip to the Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Methodists because they were among the largest Protestant denominations at that time. Towards the end that filmstrip said something like “Here are other Protestant faiths” as it rattled off a list of these faiths and one of them was Unitarian. (That filmstrip even got the name wrong because that faith had been known as Unitarian Universalism since the Unitarians and Universalists decided to merge in 1961.)
I was raised Roman Catholic but, for a variety of reasons that I don’t want to go into now, I found that it really wasn’t for me. By the time I entered college I had ditched that faith. I considered myself to be a secular Christian, similar to a secular Jew except I still followed the teachings of Jesus. I just didn’t want to formally belong to a church. The fact that there were quite a few fundamentalist born-again Christian groups (such as the Campus Crusade for Christ) who frequently proselytized students on campus (and many of them simply didn’t take “no” for an answer) didn’t endear me to organized religion at all.
During my first semester at the University of Maryland at College Park, I was checking out the offices of The Diamondback (the campus newspaper) when the topic somehow turned to religion of all things. (I don’t remember what prompted that discussion.) A woman who was a reporter admitted that she was raised Unitarian. When another person asked her what that was, she mentioned that it was a faith that used other sources for inspiration besides the Bible. However, she admitted that she was a lapsed Unitarian and I don’t recall her seeming very enthusiastic when she was briefly describing her faith so her explanation didn’t inspire me to investigate that faith any further.
Sometime during my senior year I was in a serious relationship with a part-time graduate student who later became my husband (now my ex-husband). One night he spent the night at the off-campus group house I lived in during my senior year. The following morning I managed to snag The Washington Post before any of my housemates could get ahold of it and my boyfriend and I were leisurely reading it. Since it was the Sunday Post, that newspaper tended to be twice as thick as the weekday edition. (This was in the days before the Internet and there were no such things as “digital editions.”)
I was flipping through one of the sections when I came upon the Religion page (which the Post only printed on Sundays). I generally tend to briefly skim that page before moving on. But on that particular Sunday I came upon an ad that said “Instead of Fitting in With a Church, I Found a Church That Fit Me.” It was a testimonial from a woman who was writing about Unitarian Universalism. I was really impressed with what I read so I showed it to my boyfriend. He became impressed with that ad as well.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to investigate that faith any further. At the time there were no UU campus groups so I was out of luck there. The nearest UU church was five miles away from campus, I didn’t have a car, and the Metrobus didn’t run very often on Sundays. I soon forgot about that ad and just continued with my studies. My boyfriend had a car but he was too busy with both work and school to investigate it himself.
My boyfriend and I began to talk about getting married once I finished my bachelor’s degree. (He was working on a master’s degree but he was willing to balance school and work with marriage.) I was a lapsed Catholic. He was mostly raised without religion with the exception of a few years when his family belonged to a Quaker church but they left when that church underwent a congregational split over support for the Vietnam War and his parents decided to quit out of disgust. I was comfortable with the idea of just having a justice of the peace preside over a civil ceremony and I thought that we would end up doing this.
Shortly after we got engaged my fiancé blurted out of the blue that he really wanted a church wedding. I was surprised because he never seemed inclined towards organized religion when we were dating. The only thing I could think of was returning to my original Roman Catholic faith for the wedding. Since the wedding was going to be held in my hometown of Glen Burnie, Maryland (my fiancé and I had decided to go completely traditional for our wedding, including getting married in the bride’s hometown), which meant dealing with my childhood Roman Catholic parish, which fell under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
At the time the Archdiocese of Baltimore had recently issued a mandate for all churches in its territory to require a year-long course for any couples wishing to marry in a Roman Catholic church. It was the Archdiocese’s attempt to stem the divorce rate. They figured that the course would help some engaged couples decide not to get married at all so there would be fewer divorces in the long-run. Given the fact that 40-50% of all marriages still end in divorce, that required pre-marriage course was an exercise in futility but that’s another story.
On top of it the Roman Catholic church generally permits interfaith weddings on the condition that any children born from that marriage would be raised Catholic.
My fiancé balked at both the year-long course and agreeing to have his theoretical future children being raised Catholic. He remembered that ad about Unitarian Universalism I saw in The Washington Post the year before and he looked up the names of local UU congregations in the local phone book. There was also the Quaker faith that his family briefly embraced. His sister had converted to the United Church of Christ as a teenager after the family left that Quaker congregation and she suggested trying that faith as well.
So we had a list of potential churches to check out in an effort to go minister shopping. The first church on that list was a Unitarian Universalist congregation. I remember when we attended Sunday service and I found the people there to be so friendly (in comparison with the Catholic parish I was raised in). They had a female minister speak on the devastating famine in Ethiopia that year (which later led to the famous Live Aid concert) and why it was imperative that we should do whatever we could to help the poor people there. I loved that minister and I was tickled with the idea of having a female clergy person preside over my upcoming wedding.
During the coffee hour socialization period after the service ended, we had people greeting us for the first time and they told us that the minister was a guest minister who was there as part of a monthly pulpit exchange between the usual minister and one of the other area UU churches. They suggested that we come back next Sunday when we would meet the actual minister.
So we came back and we heard Rev. Rick Kelley speak at the pulpit for the first time. While I’ve since forgotten the topic of the sermon, my fiancé and I were very impressed by him. We started to return to that church each Sunday instead of checking out the other non-UU churches that were on our minister shopping list. In time we were invited to a book discussion group and other church activities. My fiancé and I looked forward to attending Sunday service each week. It was the first time in my life when I was going to church because I wanted to go, not because I was forced to go by my family.
We fell in love with both Rev. Kelley and the congregation so much that we signed the membership book. Three months later we got Rev. Kelley to preside over our wedding. My parents and the other guests there were impressed with the minister. (My father was a lapsed Episcopalian so he didn’t raise a fuss over our choice of minister. I know my mother would’ve preferred that I got married in a Roman Catholic church like she did but she didn’t raise any fuss about my choice to get married in a UU ceremony. I think she was just happy that I was getting married in a religious ceremony even if it wasn’t a Catholic one.)
After our wedding my husband and I continued to go to church where we would hear Rev. Rick Kelley make his wonderful sermons. I still remember when he urged us to go to the upcoming National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987 by giving a sermon titled “Gay Rights is Human Rights” where he argued that one doesn’t have to be gay to go on that march. In fact, going on that march was the best way of showing solidarity with LGBTQ people while affirming the first Unitarian Universalist principle that upholds the inherent worth and dignity of each person. He was so convincing with his sermon that a number of us actually went to that march downtown the following week. It was the first time that my husband and I had ever attended anything related to the LGBTQ community.
Rev. Rick Kelley was a very sweet, kind, and gentle man. I am grateful that I had the chance to meet him when I did.
Rev. Rick Kelley retired seven years after my husband and I were married. As a farewell gift the congregation voted to give him the title Minister Emeritus. We also named one of the rooms in the Religious Education Building (later re-named the Religious Exploration Building) the Kelley Room in his honor. One of the congregation members who was a talented painter, drex Andrex, made this painting of Rev. Kelley that still hangs in the Kelley Room to this day.
Rev. Kelley and his wife Mary Anne moved out of the DC area soon after his retirement. They initially settled in Leonardtown in Southern Maryland then later moved to California. Occasionally he would return to our congregation to give a guest sermon. I always made an effort to attend when he was there because I’ve always enjoyed his sermons.
He hasn’t returned to the DC area in a long time so I haven’t seen him in years. Now he’s dead at the age of 93. At least he had the chance to live a long life.
If my mother hadn’t died a few days ago, I would’ve made every effort to contact her and tell her the news since he officiated at my wedding all those years ago. Which would’ve been a major challenge. By that point her multiple sclerosis had advanced to the point where she had stopped answering her phone. She also stopped returning phone calls because using the phone was too physically taxing for her. Even visiting her in person taxed her physically. I last saw her a few weeks before she died and she grew too tired to do much socializing after an hour so the home health care nurse on duty had to put her back to bed.
But my mother is gone as well so I can’t even contact her. Rev. Kelley’s death marks the first time that I can’t contact my mother. There will be many other times in the future when I’ll want to contact my mother but I can’t because she’s now deceased.
Both my mother and my old minister died within a few days of each other in the same week so it’s a double whammy for me.
Rest in peace, Reverend Rick Kelley.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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