The Words of the Christopher Family
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The Words of the Christopher Family |
Henry Christopher is the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS) Public Relations Director. He has initiated a number of projects and activities with the goal of developing more friendly and trusting relationships with the people in the small hamlet of Barrytown, and in the larger Town of Red Hook, and to get UTS more involved as a contributing member of the community.
One of the best ways to gain access to residents, politicians and social leaders in your area is to start a community newsletter. Generally, the media is trusted by the public -- people usually believe what they read in the newspapers, and so they will gradually come to trust you. Add to that a sincere effort to offer your volunteer service to the community, in whatever ways you would enjoy contributing, equals a sure way to become known as a community leader yourself.
By starting a newsletter, even one with just one sheet on both sides, you can become a newspaper person. Leaders answer your phone calls. They ask for interviews in their Offices. They hope you will say something nice about them. When the opposition party leaders read the story, they will call and ask for their point of view to be printed in the next issue.
Local residents will invite you into their homes and merchants will be grateful if you publish an interesting story with photos about their business.
You can do stories on almost anything. Particularly, people like to read about themselves and their neighbors, so I like to write feature stories about the unique and interesting things people are up to in Barrytown and Red Hook.
In the Barrytown Gazette, I have written or published stories on farmers and their farm stands; local artists and their work; a man who keeps two French workhorses named Cain and Abel; the retired Barrytown postmaster; a woman who helps others to get kidney transplants after she successfully received one; a 75-year-old Jewish lady who boldly displays a huge sign on a tree in her front yard stating, "Occupation ain't Kosher," referring to the plight of the Palestinians in Israel, and who works with Jewish Bard College students who support the Palestinian cause; and a New York City Jewish lawyer with a summer home in Barrytown who wrote an opinion piece defending the Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza to counter the students and old lady. Everyone gets a chance to put in their two-cents.
The Barrytown Gazette covers local politics, contentious town board meetings, community events and ceremonies, the problem of substance abuse among teens, sports, social events, parades and holidays. You name it, we do it.
The Barrytown Gazette solved two one hundred-year-old mysteries -- one about where gravestones that were used to build a chimney in an old Barrytown farmhouse came from; and who started the fire that burnt down the riverfront hotel, stores, ice house and docks in 1908.
(It was the Irish grandfather of a Barrytown resident who accidentally burnt the town down when he left the fire going under his tar pot on the roof of the hotel one morning to go down and get a drink. The wind blew it over and started the fire. One evening while chatting with my Barrytown neighbor, her husband and I pried that bit of info out of her and she said it was time the story was told!)
You can make friends and gain the trust of a wide range of people in your town with a newsletter. It's a great way to get inside peoples lives.
A newsletter, coupled with your participation in community service projects and town events are a great combination to become known and respected in your community, even if you are relatively new to the area.
But you must be consistent in your volunteer work and once you establish your newsletter as a weekly or monthly publication, it must come out on time and on a regular basis. You must be dependable.
Our Red Hook Town Supervisor wrote this note to me not long ago:
"Dear Henry, I have just read with sincere admiration your recent copy of the Barrytown Gazette.
In addition to the wonderful piece on the Barrytown Post Office and Gordon Baker's reminiscences, I was gratified to see the reporting of the Town Board meeting of March 10.
I want to personally thank you for the generous offer to make available space at UTS (Unification Theological Seminary) for the District 5 Polling Station, if move it we must. I'm doubtful whether the Duchess County Board of Elections will grant the request to make the move... but I want you to know your interest and offer are much appreciated. Thank you.
I especially want to commend you on the tremendous service you provide the local community with the distribution of the Barrytown Gazette. Personalizing the articles is precious, rare and obviously heartfelt. Making the community aware of neighbors' illnesses is a gift to all and is much appreciated.
My very best regards and sincerest respect,"
Sue Crane
My first newsletter was made in 1976 for a very small section of the upper West Side of New York City.
It was on the occasion of selling home subscriptions for True Parents' first daily newspaper in America -- the News World.
When the News World started up, all church members in the five boroughs of New York City were mobilized. New Unification Church centers were set up everywhere and 8-10 members worked in each area everyday for about a year getting new subscriptions and delivering the News World.
For a month or two during that year, we were on a condition to either get a subscription each day, or fast the next day. I seriously didn't want to fast, so some days I would stay out until past midnight, knocking on doors in apartment buildings in Spanish Harlem until I got my subscription. It was kind of dangerous up there at night, but I took my chances and was pretty lucky not to get hurt -- and I didn't have to fast one day!
I was in a center on West 72nd St. in Manhattan, with other New Hope Singers. We were just about two blocks from John Lennon's apartment building, the Dakota. It was in my paper route area so I used to walk by it sometimes hoping to catch a glance of Lennon, but never saw him.
My newsletter was called Cosmos, the West Side Subscribers Club. Whoever got a subscription would also get my two page newsletter, with local information, events, and stories about the people in my area. I sold ads for local businesses to pay for the cost of printing. It came out once a week and I put it in each newspaper of each member's route.
Then one day, the order came from the leaders to stop selling subscriptions, and start witnessing. But not only did everyone stop selling subscriptions, they also stopped delivering the News World, and soon, the paper was losing hundreds of home subscriptions each week.
To stop the bleeding, one person in each center was picked to be responsible for getting everyone's route delivered.
I took the job and immediately advertised in my newsletter for newsboys. When some boys signed up, I would put their photos in the Cosmos and advertise for more. Very quickly I got a newsboy for each of the eight or so routes.
I got to know the parents of each newsboy, and they were grateful that I gave them a job, and was looking after them.
Andrea -- another New Hope Singer in my center -- and I had a pizza party for the boys and their families in our center, and one day we took them on a field trip to the Statue of Liberty.
Without realizing, we began Home Church activities a couple of years before Father even started talking about it.
In 1978, I went to UTS and together with another brother, Monte Vianale, we started the Mid-Hudson Tide: A Community Service Newsletter. It came out once a month, and it was tied to a witnessing and community service project that Monte started at the Seminary.
We went out each week to meet local residents, take surveys, ask questions, write stories about them, and also make friends with local pastors in churches in Poughkeepsie and Kingston.
Soon we were holding interfaith services at their churches and at the Seminary and writing about it in the newsletter.
We wrote in the first issue which came out in January of 1979, the following:
"We are a group of seminary students training ourselves for ongoing community service work throughout the world. We wish to extend our time and talent to all of our neighbors in the Mid-Hudson area. We hope it will provide a very real service to you by reporting on what's happening in your community. Please feel free to send us your recipes, short stories, poems, photos etc. to share with the community."
At the end of 2006, I decided to revive the old Mid-Hudson Tide under the new name, the Barrytown Gazette, and use it as a means through which UTS could make a contribution to the community. The first issue was in January and it had a story about the historic Hudson River Ice Yacht Club which was founded in the late 1800's by the Franklin D. Roosevelt family and other wealthy families who had vacation homes on the river. Today, prominent doctors, architects and other professionals in the area continue to sail some of the old ice boats once owned by the club's founders.
They greatly appreciate UTS giving them access through our campus to the South Tivoli Bay, where they can park their trucks and set up the boats. In the past, the club members brought their boats to the bay through the railroad service road, and then crossed the tracks to the ice. This was dangerous for them as well as the public who came to watch and get rides.
When the right conditions of cold weather and little snow come together, we might find 15+ ice boats on the bay for a week or more in January and February.
Ice boats can go as fast as 70-100 mph and the ride is unbelievably exciting. When the Gazette or local papers announce that the ice boats are sailing on the bay, the public is soon to follow. Parents bring their kids and dogs and spend the day ice skating and frolicking on-the Bay and enjoying ice boat rides.
The club sets up a fire in a large steel barrel on the ice to keep warm and cook food.
It's a wonderful time for all, and it doesn't go unnoticed that UTS is their host.
In the previous column I wrote about our Northern Duchess Communities That Care organization which the Red Hook police chief, a town councilwoman and I started to help kids at risk for substance abuse. One of our first projects was the holiday food drive, where teen volunteers helped collect food donations for the local pantry.
Our next community service project was to participate in the annual town wide street clean-up in April. We also recruited youth volunteers to help senior citizens do spring cleaning in their yards.
Since there is no town newspaper, and the Kingston or Poughkeepsie papers never cover these small events, the Barrytown Gazette wrote a story about the clean-up which was well received by the public and local leaders.
Jeffrey Martin, the town judge said of the event, "Terrific job with the teens. Very inspirational."
In a series of issues last year the Barrytown Gazette followed the progress of Joe Lydon, 24, from Barrytown and his girlfriend, Emily Underwood, 22, who took up the challenge of walking the 2,178 mile Appalachian Trial from March to August. It took them 163 days and three pairs of hiking boots each.
A passage from one of the Gazette stories explained:
Although they have loved the experience of being so close to nature and meeting many wonderful fellow hikers, it has not been easy. They have sloshed through cold, rainy days over half the time on the trail, and their diet has been very light in order to keep the weight in their packs down.
"We have bagels and peanut butter for breakfast, trail mix and dried fruit for lunch, and dried Lipton Soup mix in hot water for dinner," Emily said.
"Everyday we daydream of food, and can't wait until the next town, so we can go get a pizza," she said.
One of my favorite issues was June, 2008, which featured a story on President Theodore Roosevelt, who came to stay for the summer of 1868 at the original Massena House on the UTS property when he was 8-years-old. Letters of his that I discovered at the Harvard Library which he wrote to his nanny who remained in the family mansion in NYC, detail all his adventures that summer. In one such letter he sketched the Tivoli Bay -- where we Seminarians fished with Father -- and he spoke of a rowboat trip he took with his mother, uncle and his dog Jack, across the Bay and up the Sawkill Creek to the waterfalls for a picnic lunch.
The article went on to say:
"Teedie" (Theodore's nickname) wrote of daily pony rides to Crugers Island; wild dogs chasing him and his cousin through the woods; swimming and row boating on Tivoli Bay; and of his budding interest in all types of small mammals, insects, snakes and birds, which he began to collect. They became part of his "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History." The whole collection eventually ended up in the Museum of Natural History in New York City, which his father helped to found.
In his latter life, as president of the United States (from 1904-08), Roosevelt made conservation a central policy issue of his administration.
He established 150 national forests, fifty-one federal bird reservations, four national game preserves, five national parks, eighteen national monuments, twenty-four reclamation projects, and seven conservation commissions. The forest reserve in the US increased from 43,000,000 acres to 194,000,000 acres during his tenure.
Roosevelt advocated for the sustainable use of the nation's natural resources, the protection and management of wild game, and the preservation of wild spaces.
Considering Roosevelt's intense love of nature which was nurtured during his stay here,
Barrytown might legitimately be called the place where the Green Movement began, 140 years ago.
In conclusion, if you persist in volunteer work and start a newsletter, you will have many rewards -- meeting wonderful people, gaining friendships and the respect of your neighbors and the leaders in your town. And best of all, you will feel the accomplishment of making a positive contribution in your community. You might even consider this your Home Church work.
As True Father's says:
"Serve the 360 homes. Go there
every day and serve. Then they will like you. Soon you can say, the
Unification Church has a very good and important message. Your son
and daughter can learn so much, to help them to become better people.
Would you like to come and listen? If you have served them and they
like you, then they will listen to you. They will come to trust
you."
Father Speaks to the Crusade -- 9/5/78, London
Size: One page two sides
Time: A newsletter does not take so much time and effort to produce and distribute, while the public influence it can have is surprisingly great. I usually put mine together in a few days, a few hours each day, and it takes around two hours to deliver each month.
Computer Applications: I use Quark Express. Any publishing app will do. Photoshop comes in handy to enhance photos. Produce in color.
Getting stories: Ask neighbors about interesting people in your area. Interview town council members, mayor, state representatives, etc. Write positive, inspiring stories about town and people. Don't take sides politically, but it's OK to write about serious and contentious issues. Try to be a mediator and stress true public service and volunteerism above party politics. Get neighbors and leaders to contribute stories if possible.
Cost and Printing: Use home printer if it produces sharp copies and prints on both sides, or print where you work and give them some money for paper and ink. Avoid places like Staples which are expensive. You can print as few as 150-250 copies for distribution in your neighborhood and town.
Distribution: Monthly. Knock on doors in your community. Hand deliver first few issues to get to know neighbors and they you. Later, put in newspaper boxes, inside screen doors, etc. Not in mailboxes, it's illegal. Get email addresses of as many people as possible to send a PDF copy. Hand deliver to town hall staff, council members, mayor. Place copies at post office, banks, library, etc. Color copies to special contacts and community leaders, but black and white to everyone else to keep cost down. Your influence in the town will far exceed your circulation when it goes to all the important leaders and is seen around town.
"Thank you, Henry, for the copy
of the Barrytown Gazette. Very nice article and publication.
Your Barrytown Gazette continues to be a great service to the
residents of Barrytown and all in Red Hook who read it. What a
wonderful service to your neighbors and community."
Lisa
Pular, Community Watch leader, former Red Hook Town Councilwoman
"Great reporting in the Gazette!
The post office story, the gardens and especially the local political
shenanigans. Thanks for your good work. Sent copies out and already
got a thank you from Jay and Isabel's daughter Raquel in
France."
"Granny" Barrytown resident
"Henry, thanks so much for
putting together the Gazette. It is really a terrific local "news"
source. I for one am against moving the voting place, and I plan to
let our town board know and the Duchess Board of Elections."
Robert
Burke, Barrytown resident. Director of Safety, Staffing, and Training
New York City Outward Bound