HUU Review Swan Song

I can hardly believe I have edited the newsletter for nine years! I started in the fall of 2000, about 10 years into both HUU’s and the “HUU Review’s existence (becoming, I think, the fourth editor). It’s been a good ride. Now, new roads beckon (as they should always do), and the time feels right for it to end.

The capacity has developed for placing everything on our website that has gone in the print newsletter, and more: calendar, board and committee reports, special events, photos, sermons, and sharing of ideas and creativity. Until now, as postage and printing costs have risen, we’ve continued to print the quarterly newsletter for a mailing list of around 130, struggling with how to keep getting it where it should go without sending “junk mail to many no-longer-familiar names.

I’m a lover of print over cyberspace myself, and mourn the dying print media. The lovely pen the board gave me matches my taste for older technology. I empathize with the few remaining HUU’ers who don’t use or like computers, and hope accommodations can be made. Yet I have watched the “HUU Review become redundant, while at the same time wanting to step back from church organizational commitments.

Online is a different world. It’s actually better, in some important ways. You are more responsible for your own proofing and editing, and less limited by deadlines and space. So, if you haven’t yet fully explored, and sent posts to, this site, set up by webmaster Pat Geary (which has received national recognition), check the guide she has written which you’ll find in the final (Winter, Jan.-March 2010) “HUU Review issue. (HEY! I JUST POSTED THIS MESSAGE MYSELF! IF I CAN, YOU CAN!)

This newsletter, and I, owe thanks to more people than space permits. Recent pages have benefited from Julie Caran’s thorough religious ed. write-ups; Bernie Mathes’ contribution of the “Wheel of Life column; reports from board, committee and Shared-Ministry Team members and General Assembly-goers; essays and reviews by members including Jim Geary, Eric LaFreniére and Merle Wenger; and all the photographers, artists, survey repliers, New Member Profile sharers, and gatherers of news, quotes and jokes.

Last but not least are newsletter team members Norm Lawson (mailer), Pat (aforementioned computer guru), Meredith Moore (office administrator and source of the indispensable e-news), Deb Stevens-Fitzgerald (our “angel who for several years has faithfully provided for the printing service and brought the newsletters to church collated and folded). . and finally, Robin McNallie: proofreader, punster and patient listener to this editor’s rants. :-)

Hope we’ll meet online.