Join us on Friday, July 30 at 7 p.m. at the WUUC Church Campout at Manchester State Park in Port Orchard for a meeting of the WUUC Nonfiction Book Club. We will discuss “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson. RSVP to Alaine. RSVP not required, but helpful for planning purposes.
If you aren’t attending the campout, but are still interested in reading and discussing the book, consider volunteering to lead a Zoom discussion on the same day!
“‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents’ [is] an extraordinary document, […] an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far. It made the back of my neck prickle from its first pages, and that feeling never went away. I told more than one person, as I moved through my days this past week, that I was reading one of the most powerful nonfiction books I’d ever encountered. —Dwight Garner, New York Times Review of Books
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
.– Adapted from an Amazon review
Four times a year, the WUUC Book Discussion Group gathers to read and talk about a nonfiction book. You only attend the meetings about books that interest you, so we end up with a different group of participants every time. We meet to connect and talk about a book in depth. Anyone is welcome to suggest a book and/or lead a discussion. Contact Alaine to RSVP, suggest a book, or offer to host a future discussion.
I conduct blood drives. I coordinate with BloodWorks and churches in our interfaith group to schedule drives and sign up donors.
I was a regular blood donor when I lived in Honolulu, starting about 40 years ago. After I moved to Woodinville in 1992, I looked around for blood donating opportunities and discovered that WUUC already had a program for this. WUUC had recently joined with 5 other churches to form an interfaith group. I became the coordinator for the blood drive effort on behalf of Cottage Lake Interfaith Partners, CLIP.
In Honolulu, I attended a self-help seminar which, among other things, encouraged people to get involved in community service. My personal blood type is AB negative which is the rarest of all the standard blood types — only .5% of the population has it. This blood type makes me the universal plasma donor. Any other blood type can receive my plasma, and it can be frozen and stored for a year. Emergency rooms keep it on hand for trauma victims who need a quick transfusion of plasma without taking the time to check their blood type for a match.
One of the things I have found most gratifying in doing this is the connection I have made with so many people. A memorable event occurred when we had a blood drive scheduled for a few days after 9/11/2001. People were desperate to help, and flooded into Wooden Cross Lutheran where the drive was being held. We handled about 85 donors that day before running out of supplies and having to turn many others away.
Statistics show that 70% of us will need blood sometime in our life, yet only about 5% of the population gives blood.
Being a blood donor is the easiest, quickest and most powerful thing we can do to benefit our community. The most amount of time you could spend in one year giving whole blood (6 times max) would be about 6 hours. Whole blood is separated into its 3 main components (plasma, platelets, and red blood cells). Each donation could be given to 3 different patients depending on their individual needs, so your 6 annual donations have the potential of benefitting 18 people.
I think of it as the lazy man’s way to save the world.
By Cora Goss-Grubbs Learn the do’s and don’ts of bystander intervention in this virtual, interactive workshop designed to help learn and practice the skills of reacting in the moment to street harassment. Rather than utilize a one-size-fits-all approach, we also explore context and positionality to help give each individual the tools needed.
The training is led by Courtney Wooten, founder of Suburbia Rising. She has also served as an equity consultant in the Pacific Northwest, focusing on educational spaces, family engagement and faith communities. She serves as a lead organizer with the Edmonds Neighborhood Action Coalition, sits on two Snohomish County Commissions, and is a board member for the Creative Dance Center.
There’s no cost for this training – it’s brought to you by WUUC’s Racial Justice Task Force (RJTF)! The training is limited to 30 attendees. You’ll receive a confirmation and meeting link after you sign-up at https://forms.gle/txFpZXA4jtLoo5ZQ9, and we will start a waiting list if needed. Contact Pam Green at pgreen@wuuc.org with any questions.
Sunday Special Collections
In May our congregants raised $575 for Circle Faith Future, an organization chosen by the WUUC youth group. Circle Faith Future provides a healing presence to organizations and communities in Oregon, Washington and Idaho by offering chaplaincy, presentations, workshops, crisis intervention, and/or local conversations addressing climate change, incarceration, poverty, trauma, racism and healing.
On July 18 our special collection will support EarthGen (formerly Washington Green Schools), a nonprofit organization that equips youth to grow their power as change-makers for a healthy environment. Through EarthGen’s science-based, action-oriented programs, young people gain the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to become leaders for climate solutions and environmental justice.
The ASJ Committee thanks WUUC members and friends for their generous support of our monthly special collections, which take place during services on the third Sunday of every month. Instructions for giving are posted during the service, and you can also donate anytime the following week at https://onrealm.org/wuuc/-/give/now, or by sending a check to WUUC at P.O. Box 111, Woodinville, WA 98072. Please make checks out to WUUC and write “ASJ Special Collection” in the notes.
By Jan Radoslovich Retired Women’s Group – we meet to support one another in our retirement journeys, to learn about Conscious Eldering and to have fun and social time together.
Retired Women won’t be meeting during July and August, 2021. Instead, we will be individually working on Life Review activities such as journaling, autobiography work, art projects, picture scrapbooking and other activities.
Starting in September, we will begin a hybrid meeting schedule. We will meet twice a month on the first and third Thursdays of the month. On the first Thursday, we will have a lunch and social gathering from Noon to 2 p.m. Locations will vary. On the third Thursday, we will have a Zoom meeting from Noon to 1:30 p.m. on a topic of mutual interest and facilitated by one of the group participants. Group activity coordinators/facilitators are: Jan Radoslovich and Marian Johnson.
First meeting of the 2021-2022 church year will be on Thursday, Sept. 2 from Noon to 2 p.m. at the home of Ann Lu.
Questions? Contact either: Jan Radoslovich, (206) 718-3399, or Marian Johnson, (425) 931-3674.
By Cynthia Cobb Thank you to DD Hilke for introducing this topic to me. Since then I did some research and found these books discussing the high cost of clothing at the library.
Elizabeth Cline’s first book was Overdressed, The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. In The Conscious Closet she writes “Overdressed was one of the first investigations to draw a straight line between our increasing consumption of fashion and the critical problems of climate change, pollution, and poor working conditions. Driving it all was the meteoritic rise of “fast fashion,” a hyper-accelerated cycle of making, consuming, and trashing clothes that is wrecking our environment and keeping workers locked in poverty.”
Elizabeth Cline’s second book, The Conscious Closet, the Revolutionary Guide to LookingGood while Doing Good, she writes, “If you want to change the world, there’s no better place to start than with the clothes on your back, and the shoes on your feet.” The clothing industry is “among the world’s largest emitters, water polluters, and users of toxic chemicals. As much as 8% of carbon emissions are caused by fashion. A third of microplastic pollution junking up our oceans is coming from what we wear. A garbage truck’s worth of unwanted fashion is landfilled in the United States every two minutes. And in an industry that makes some people so fantastically rich and famous, there are somehow only a handful of garment workers earning a living wage anywhere.”
These books offer lots of ideas for changing your relationship with clothing by reducing social and environmental impacts from clothing purchases. Consider applying the 5 R’s to your clothing buying choices; Refuse, Reduce, Repair, Repurpose, and Recycle.
King County Repair Clinics are offering a repair event in Woodinville on July 22 where they will be offering repairs to clothing and textiles, and small household and personal items including some electronics. For more info on the Repair Clinics Program or to sign up for this event see:
