First of all, I want to thank all those involved in our online Solstice service, which many of you accessed on Wednesday December 21.

UUCS member Ann Wenger was our excellent narrator. And I thank members Lynn Jinishian and Shane Gronholz for their reading prowess. Our able “behind the scene” techies were Shelly McLallen and Michelle Caldwell. And you may have noticed that this year the service was dedicated to the memory of Ray Emerson.

I must say that cancelling the live Solstice service in December, due to weather, was a real blow to me. I, and so many others, had worked very hard to make it happen after not being able to do it for two years. This service requires an enormous amount of volunteers to do it well—40 to 50 people! We were not able to find quite that many, but I still thought we could have had a wonderful service.

I want to thank all those that put in so much work—even though we were not able to have the evening we envisioned. First of all, deep thanks to the Solstice Singers, 17 women who rehearsed every week from early September: Gail and Carolyn Hammer (sisters), Murphy Sullivan, Bree and Bella Hernandez (mother and daughter), Susanne Croft, Mary Peterson, Deena Romoff, Aimee Stormo, Carolyn Commers, Danielle Geisler, Susan Bachmeier, Shelly McLallen, Janice Mayfield, Monica Lowney, Kathy Calaway and Michelle Baker.

Other top notch musicians were our drummers, Ben Raugust, Mark Tietjen, Michelle Kaye and Ann Jackson-Avery. The talented Pamela Benton was our guitarist.

We had a wonderful Narrator in Kevan Gardner. Kevan had been involved in some of our very first Solstice services at the church. Our Readers were equally wonderful: Lisa Conger, Pat White and Susan Tyler-Babkirk.

Graces and Dragons were: Bette and Tom Brattebo, Katie Cox, Doug Deaton, Ruth French, Daryl Heller, Anna Morrison, Suzanne Rivers, Melinda Stafford, Rosalie Trapani, Barbara Williamson and Amanda Geroux. This crew helps people prepare for the rite through smudging or spritzing beforehand, brings them to their seats and watches for any needs as the service progresses.

The UUCS Care Team took care of “cookie needs” and would have been our “Kitchen Magicians” of the evening.

And thanks to Justin Bell for helping me with setup.

Our church staff was also on board: Stephanie Gronholz as “Sprite Rangler,” Todd Milne as “Sound and Lights King” and Rebecca Adams was responsible for the program.

And I saved the best till last: I could NOT have approached this project without the two women from our congregation who volunteered to help me with the gargantuan job of overall management and organization of this event—Nancy Freitag and MaryAnne Winniford!! Deep thanks and kudos to them both for all the many things they did to make this service possible—even though we ended up stopping short of the goal!

Deb Jacquemin
UUCS Music Director