September 25: Gathering after worship for the purpose of listening--our COVID response moving forward

There will be a hybrid gathering of members and attenders after Worship on 4th Sunday, September 25th, for the purpose of listening to each other's perspectives with regard to our COVID response moving forward. We will gather in the Worship Room and on Zoom starting about 12:30 PM. The Pandemic Response Team would very much appreciate everyone's participation.

News of Friends

Heidi tells us that her mother passed away recently at the age of 82. Please hold Heidi in the Light. Carol McEntee, a former member who moved to New Market, suffered severe injuries in a freak accident last week. Please hold her and her family (Bill and Brian Badgley) and her dear friend Linda Peters in the Light.

Wednesday Walkers

Another Wednesday walk has been scheduled for September 28th at 9:30 am. We will meet at the Concord Audubon Center to explore its easy trails and make note of Fall colors and cooler air. At last!

The Susan N. McLane Audubon Center Website has a google map with directions. The center opens at 11 am which has nature displays and a nature store. During our walk, or after, let’s choose another trail destination for the following week or two weeks.

Please RSVP if you are coming, so that Kathy and Faith will know to wait for you if you are running late.

Faith and Kathy

Helpers Needed for First Day School

The YRE Committee is looking for volunteers to serve as helpers at First Day School. This is a helping role, not a teaching role, and it is a wonderful way to assist with First Day School and spend time with our lovely young participants. There is a sign up sheet on the bulletin board nearest the First Day School rooms, or you may email religiouseducation [at] concordfriendsmeeting [dot] org to express your interest. Those who are already on the list as First Day helpers may sign up directly using this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XAX0pPv1wkzbGu7qR5-CsoAbALnIS_nh_w8hJdP2QWM/edit

Meeting Minutes

Draft minutes for meeting for worship with attention to business are available at https://www.concordfriendsmeeting.org/2022-09-11_CMM_Minutes or via https://www.concordfriendsmeeting.org/Minutes_of_ConcordMonthlyMeeting

Please let me know of any needed corrections. With thanks, Mark

Concord, NH CROP Walk (to eradicate hunger) September 24

As you may remember, the CROP Walk is an annual fundraiser held nationally to alleviate the challenges of disease, disaster, and displacement that leave people hungry locally and internationally. The on-going war in Ukraine, on top of the pandemic and other disasters is causing a global food crisis. Millions are on the brink of famine. Local congregations form teams and members make donations to support those teams. Over the years, CFM has been a strong contributor to this effort.

This year's CROP Walk (38th annual) is planned as a normal in-person walk starting from the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) on Clinton St. in Concord. Registration will begin at 12:00 with a kick-off rally at 12:30 and the walk beginning at 1:00. There will be refreshments at the church afterward.

To Join as a Walker and/or Support the Team

1. Click here: https://events.crophungerwalk.org/2022/team/concord-friends-meeting
2. Click Join The Team to sign up as a walker (you will be able to donate if you’d like from this link), or
3. Click Make a Donation to donate via credit or debit card.
4. Note that donations online can be made anonymously if you wish.
5. Alternatively, you can donate by writing a check payable to CWS/CROP Walk and mail to Sheryl Ingraham, 4 Fogg Street, Concord, NH. 03301

Please contact Sheryl Ingraham if you have any questions.

Air Purifier

JJ writes: I know it's a bit late for this week's newsletter but since I have not seen that yet, you might let people know that PRT decided to put a air cleaner in the fellowship space. It has arrived and I will plan to see to it up this week.

JJ

World Quaker Day - Becoming the Quakers the World Needs

Sunday, 2 Oct (10:30am, also 12:00pm see timetable below) Worship Sharing Queries, Guidelines

Celebrate our diversity and Hold this world in the Light for Peace, for Justice, for Harmony with nature

Timetable for East coast

• Worship sharing begins: 10:30am
• Meeting for Worship begins 12:00pm
• Worship closes 1:30 pm
• Introductions by location 1:30 pm
• Breakout rooms open approx 1:45 pm
• (Regular Daily worship begins 12:00pm)

Dear Friends everywhere,

John Lennon asked us to “Imagine all the people living life in peace”

I am asking you to imagine Friends all around the globe, extending their hands to each other, making a human rainbow chain touching every land, as we “stand still in that power that brings peace”. (George Fox)

I am inviting you to participate with Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) in realizing such a vision on World Quaker Day, 2 Oct. and celebrating the diversity and geographical reach of Quakers. The Daily International Meeting for Worship for Peace will be expanded to welcome up to 1000 participants and extended to 90 minutes.

Please join us in worship for peace, even if for only a few minutes.

We would like to know your location. If possible, sign in using the ID and the passcode instead of the link. After you put in the ID, you will see your name and can add your location at that time. Then put in the passcode and you will join the meeting.

In the tradition that I know, this would be called a Meeting for Sufferings – a special meeting for worship on a specific concern, with worship just as deep as other meetings but with a focus that often leads to more ministry. If you are led to speak, raise your digital hand (*9 on a phone). All mics will be muted, and a pause allowed between messages. Please wait patiently to be asked to unmute your mic (*6 on phone) and try to keep your message brief. Leave your hand raised during your ministry; the host will lower it after you speak.

The meeting time will be extended to 90 minutes, 9:00-10:30 AM Pacific Daylight time [4:00 UTC]. The room will be open from 8:30am for Worship Sharing on the theme: Becoming the Quakers the World Needs. Guidelines for Worship Sharing are below the time schedule. If there is interest, after worship we can open breakout rooms for small group discussions and making deeper connections.

During worship, the chat will be open only for messages to the host or cohost for technical issues or if you cannot raise a digital hand.

Please distribute this invitation widely, including the ID, passcode and link.

Questions or comments may be directed to me at friendshousemoscow2022 [at] gmail [dot] com.

In the light that will reveal the next right step,

Julie Harlow, on behalf of the Daily International Meeting for Worship for Peace, sponsored by Friends House Moscow Support Association

For more information on Friends House Moscow: https://friendshousemoscow.org/

For more on World Quaker Day: https://fwcc.world/events/world-quaker-day/

For more information on FWCC: https://fwcc.world/

To add your location to your name: Meeting ID: 416 500 5614 Passcode: 182805

To join the Zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/s/4165005614?pwd=NUtieEtqbDBYbjBrcGdMMzBKQ3drQT0...

To attend by phone find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kohl8vkT8

Worship/Sharing Queries for World Quaker Day:

• What does the world need from Quakers today?
• How am I striving to become what the world needs?
• How do I “pray for peace”? Why?

GUIDELINES FOR WORSHIP SHARING

The queries are to remind us of some common experiences. It is usually better to pick one to labor with rather than to try to speak to all the queries provided. If we are moved by the Spirit to speak on something else close to our hearts, we should follow the Spirit.

• We come knowing that we will gather in stillness – to listen, to be still, to share.
• We speak from our own experiences and feelings. Experience, like taste, is real and complete; it is not a subject of discussion, but a window into another life.
• We speak for ourselves out of the silence. We do not answer, debate, agree, disagree, or try to solve someone else’s problem.
• We speak only once on each round; we may pass or delay our turn.
• We listen compassionately, striving to understand the feelings of the person speaking, whose experience and reaction may be very similar or very different from ours.
• We take time in the stillness between speakers to hold in the Light what we have heard and to return to our own center.
• We notice the time to be sure everyone has time to share. The convener will remind us if we lose track of time while speaking or when it is time to close.
• We remember that everything said is confidential. Do not repeat what you have heard Do share what you have learned.

NH Peace Action Annual Event 2022:

October 14 @ 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm ONLINE EVENT $10-$30/ticket

To commemorate 40 years of waging peace, we will be joined by former staff as they share important highlights from each of the past 4 decades.

Come see:

• Kurt Ehrenberg (Director, NH Freeze Campaign/NH Freeze Voter 1983-85)
• Patty Bass (Office Manager mid to late ’80’s)
• Seán O’Donoghue (on staff from 1996-2003 first as Coordinator then as Co-Director)
• Jessica Ellis-Hopkins (Administrative Assistant 2004-2007)
• Susi Nord (Office Manager 2007-2011

Virtual Cocktails at 5:30. Once you join the meeting, you’ll enter one of the sponsored breakout rooms with other activists from around the state. Get to know someone new. Do a little networking! Want to sponsor a breakout room? doreen [at] nhpeaceaction [dot] org (Email Doreen) or purchase below.

You can also purchase an event sponsorship. Either option comes with a free ticket and you (or your organization) will be listed here on the event page.

YOU CAN HELP: Krisan Evenson is working on a timeline full of peace-progress events for our 40th anniversary year. Please consider filling in some of that timeline with your own stories! CLICK HERE to access the Google doc and add your story in the right hand column. The left-hand column is the corresponding national Peace Action event list to jog your memories.

Also, if you have some great photos, please email them to Doreen.

Please RSVP HERE.

First Nation people along the Merrimack

Dave came across this writing and wanted to share it with us. Ralph Jimenez sent the message below regarding Native American ancestry on the Concord part of the Merrimack River to board members of Sycamore Community Gardens. From Vt. writer Michael Caduto.

“It’s very important for people to understand that families were living in these places,” says Michael J. Caduto, author of “A Time Before New Hampshire: The Story of a Land and Native Peoples.”

“A lot of people think of Native history as being kind of static or represented by stone tools and bones and other archaeological findings,” he says. “Those artifacts are just evidence of the life that has been here for over 11,000 years — the Abenakis and all of their ancestors.”

The Pennacook inhabited the land that’s now Concord as well as regions beyond. The group had three main villages on the bend in the Merrimack River where our capital city now stands, and their turf fanned out in all four directions, from Sunapee to Winnipesaukee and south to Massachusetts. In the fertile land stretching from the Concord Heights to Fort Eddy Plaza and up and down the Merrimack River, the Pennacook would plant staple crops such as corn, beans, squash and pumpkins, while awaiting fish runs that would take them to Manchester’s Amoskeag Falls and others for spawning season.

“At the place that we now call Sugar Ball Bluff, in the vicinity of Concord, there was a very large Abenaki presence long before people from Europe invaded the region,” says Caduto. “It was an expansive community —several interconnected villages of up to 500 people whose gardens stretched along the river for a couple of miles. Passaconaway lived in the village at Sugar Ball Bluff in the 1600s; descriptions of him and his accomplishments are prolific in the historical accounts.”

The two other main villages were at Sewalls Falls and where Fort Eddy Plaza sits today. The homeland for these people was known as Gedakina, meaning “Our Land,” and was kept in careful check by a belief system that saw a spirit in all living things. This intimate relationship with the natural world was one of balance, reminding them to harvest only what they needed and to work in cooperation with the land and its seasons.

“One of the most compelling things that I’ve learned in all of the years that I have worked with and taught about New Hampshire’s Native peoples,” Caduto says, “is that Abenaki life has always been heavily influenced by their relationship to their environment, and vice versa — how both culture and environment impacted each other and mutually formed the direction that each evolved over time.”

The Native tradition – Abenaki tradition – is that native people have been here since the snows,” Stephen Berwick, a Concord author with indigenous heritage, said. The last glacial period ended 11,500 years ago, which is when other historians have the first humans inhabiting New Hampshire, too.

Native American artifacts – tools, tomahawk weapons – have been found in several parts of Franklin, including Odell Park. Many of them are now kept at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College.

Despite the destruction of much of the archeological record, there is enough evidence that suggests a long Native American presence in the greater Lowell area in particular, and in the Merrimack River Valley in general. Many material objects and the occasional skeleton have been found by official and unofficial archeological digs. Archeological sites have also been reported during many construction projects in Lowell and beyond throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and, especially in the days before Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAPGRA) and state building regulations, the evidence was often quickly destroyed or discarded. It is also likely that many material objects ended up in private homes and have since been lost. Still, enough objects have been collected and analyzed to show that there was an active Native presence in the region that likely reaches back at least 10,000 years. From what archaeologists call the Paleo-Indian (roughly from about 13,000 to 10,000 years ago), to the Archaic Period (roughly from 10,000 to 3,000 years ago), to the Woodlands Period (roughly from about 3,000 years ago to about 1500 AD), evidence suggests that there was a continuous human presence in the region. The objects, at times in fragmentary form, include stone tools and utensils like cooking stones, mortars, pestles, celts, gouges, and plummets, stone cutting implements, soap stone containers and pottery, ornaments, and pipes. Stone weapons, such as axe and knife, shaped implements as well as projectile points, such as arrowheads and spear points of throwing spears (atlatl) have also been found all over the region. There is also archeological evidence that Native people ate fish and shell-fish from the coast as well as from the river. Shellfish and fish heaps have been found all over the Merrimack River Valley and along the coastline of this drainage system. While archaeologists debate this issue, some evidence suggests that Native peoples in New England also used fish to fertilize their fields (Strobel, Native Americans 15–16).

The Merrimack River has determined the region's settlement patterns for centuries and is the key in digging up a vision of its past, local archeologists say. Historians and anthropologists have excavated the banks for decades to get a glimpse into the life of the first New Hampshire inhabitants. At Sewalls Falls in Concord and Garvin Falls in Bow, archeologists have found remains of Indian hearths, used to smoke meat and fish, dating back 3,000 years and arrowheads used for hunting. Historians estimate by carbon dating artifacts that people have lived in New Hampshire for 10,000 years. Nearly 8,000 years ago, Abenaki Indians camped up and down the banks of the Merrimack River. A site such as the Amoskeag Falls, where fish are plentiful, would have drawn thousands of people, said Bob Goodby, a professor of anthropology at Franklin Pierce University.

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