I hope you all have had a nice summer with plentiful recreation and leisure. While having fewer actual vacation days on my calendar this summer I did manage to have high quality restorative time and am coming to the close of the summer fully recharged and champing at the bit in anticipation of the activities of coming months.

As with a number of past years, this year I have chosen a theme to help me organize my addresses and provide an avenue for coordination with the Sunday School an other programs at the Ethical Society. This year’s theme is “Sustainable Living” and through it I hope to bring together a number of topics from the last few years with an eye toward what it takes to implement ideas and bring them to life for an extended time.

We actually started on this path already with the initiation of weekly Sunday meetings throughout the summer—sustaining, if you will, some of the energy of the spring programs while expanding our availability during times when we have traditionally been closed. Our summer meetings were a resounding success—we offered a variety of programs that included video presentations, discussion groups, a dramatic performance, and even drumming circles. Our average attendance was about 18 (including children) and we had at least one newcomer each week—including several families. A special “Thank You!” goes to Ruthanne Worden who presented once, arranged for three additional presentations and did hospitality five times—and did it all with spirited enthusiasm.

Another sustaining aspect to the summer was the wedding ceremonies of two former members of ECSW’s youth group. Jessica Falzerano and Brian Yellen got married on successive weekends in the summer, and it was a great privilege for me to be the officiant. So many of our efforts are directed toward our children and to finding ways for Ethical Culture to add richness and meaning to their lives. Jessica and Brian’s ceremonies were examples of how our ideals and practices become an essential part of our children’s personalities, and how their lives become an important extension of Ethical Culture into the future.

And yet another sustainability event is in the planning stages. Last spring a number of conversations about food, the environment and the challenges of making behavioral changes that stick led to my choosing sustainable living as a theme. Along the way I attended a presentation by Curt Collier at the AEU National Assembly in St. Louis about ways to generate community involvement in environmentally helpful efforts. Curt is one of the Leaders for the New York Society for Ethical Culture and also works for an environmental organization named Groundworks. Curt has agreed to host a presentation on sustainable living projects on the Science Barge—a vessel owned and operated by Groundworks that is docked on the Hudson River in Yonkers. ECSW will be the main sponsor and we are also inviting other Societies from the region to participate in planning the event which will be held on Saturday, October 18. I hope you will mark your calendar and plan to attend what promises to be an exciting and informative event.

And one more item for the future—for several years I have been harboring the desire to have a “house band” that would provide some lively music for Sunday meetings. That desire appears to be reaching fruition, and sometime this fall we should have our first performances of a newly minted and as-yet-to-be named band led by Steve Cadenhead—who has already demonstrated his talent with piano, guitar and voice. How sweet it is!