From David Gross

The longer that I am physically separated from our most welcoming and supportive congregational family, the more I long for our next gathering. Like all of you, I have not a clue about how long this pandemic will run. Fortunately, we have the excellent leadership of Rev. Florence and the local public health department keeping us well informed about essential social distancing.

As it happened, maybe only through good luck, Claudia and I were, in the four months just before the pandemic shutdown, at Sunday services in five UU churches and fellowships – UUCUC; Bloomington, Indiana; Atlanta, Georgia; Key West, Florida and Salina, Kansas. We have a long standing, maybe forty year, practice of visiting other UU churches, UUA General Assembly and Camp Unistar. There is great joy and value in connecting with our larger denomination. We have visited approximately one hundred of the one thousand UU congregations.

Four of the five recent visits had something in common, one was lacking. Four had in house video systems with either multiple flat screen TVs or ceiling mounted video projectors that provided excellent sight lines in the sanctuary and overflow sound and picture to fellowship hall and other rooms. Four were fully accessible, either all on one floor or with a real elevator. Each of those four had flexible seating that provided a range of options for individuals with mobility issues. We in UUCUC need to make these improvements in our physical plant.

To conclude on a more positive note, we in UUCUC are maybe leading the pack with respect to the broadcast quality of our Sunday services. Thank you Florence, Michele, Sherry, Brian and especially our UUCUC technical wizards.