Transitions
Transition is in the air. We are moving back to in-person church and Religious Education. We are shifting into summer mode with free and open days during the week and guests in our pulpit on Sundays. And we are changing over from one Director of Religious Education (DRE) to another. Transitions are always a bit tricky. Like passing a baton in a relay race, there is always the danger that someone might drop the stick. Karen Magoon Pearson, our incoming…
Sound Check
On Thursday our Sanctuary Construction Committee was joined by Beth Syverson and Steve Morihiro for a productive planning session on Zoom with professionals from our acoustic-sound system consultant Sound Image of San Diego. Our architects from domsstudio led the discussion. Among the topics were the acoustics of the room and how adjustments in sound might be achieved through baffles and building materials. The consultants also focused on our audio and video equipment needs and placement for the new sanctuary and…
Artful Construction
Our Sanctuary Construction Committee is looking forward to our Zoom meeting this Thursday with our architect David Keitel. He will be presenting revised concepts for the sanctuary that address the need to meet code requirements that are in place because the sprinklered sanctuary structure must be a certain distance from existing campus structures that do not have sprinklers. The revised concepts will also reflect some changes needed to be made due to the increase in building materials due to COVID.…
Marking Underground Utilities
On Friday a representative from our new sanctuary project’s civil engineering firm was on the OCUUC campus to locate all the underground utilities. This is an important step beginning with the project’s demolition phase later this year so the contractor will know which utilities need to be capped and avoided. If you were at the church service on Sunday you may have noticed a lot of various colored dots painted on the courtyard and the parking area. This is the…
Learning from Experience
Memorial Day is often referred to as the unofficial start of summer and this year it has even more special significance at OCUUC as we open the church for in-person Sunday services and we head out on long-delayed travel for the first time since March 2020. You can rest assured, however, that your Sanctuary Construction Committee will continue on the forward path to bring the new sanctuary plans to reality. We gather on Zoom from places near and far to…
Re-opening
If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it’s pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting. Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1867-1957 The quote above describes how I have experienced working with the members and friends of OCUUC. We are the “little engine that could” when it comes to harnessing our ideas, energy and actions to accomplish all things large and small. Due to the roll out of Covid-19 vaccinations, California has moved into…
Play Connects Us
Exciting news! We will all begin to meet in-person for worship and Religious Education—just not in the same location. Back in April the Reopening Taskforce sent around a survey. On the basis of the information we received we got busy planning how to go about the reopening process. Parents told us that they didn’t want their children and youth to meet indoors so the RE Committee and I searched out a suitable outdoor location. We found Estancia Park at the…
Summer Music at OCUUC
It’s almost time for our dear Orange Coast Choir to take a two-month hiatus over the summer. If you have the opportunity, please thank the choir for their continued patience and spirit of adventure as they going with the flow in this changing Covid landscape. We are still creating virtual choir videos, and we have been holding hybrid rehearsals for about two months now — in the church courtyard and on Zoom. The rehearsals have been a major improvement over…
Word Play
My father used to say “I don’t have a sense of humor.” This wasn’t actually true, though I think he said it as he wasn’t someone who told jokes much or did practical jokes. He was a pretty serious, but gentle man. But there was one form of humor he loved: Puns. He called them “punishment.” Groan I remember once when I was studying Latin and Roman History in college, I told him about some of Caesar’s military campaigns in…