January has been a great month at church! The good energy is positively contagious. Thanks to all of you who heeded (or, are heeding) the call of the Junior Youth and have brought in bags of gently used and clean clothes over the past couple of weeks. Follen Church (since we have combined our Junior Youth programs) has also been participating in the clothing drive to support Cradles to Crayons, and Debra's (Follen's DRE) office is just as crowded with bags of clothes as mine is! The drive continues for another week, through Friday, 2/10, so if you're still planning to contribute, you have time.

Recent adventures of the children and youth of First Parish include the 5/6^th Grade Youth Group's first event yesterday – bowling. I'm still sore, so we must have had a fun time! The 7/8^th grade Neighboring Faiths class also had a field trip yesterday to Sri Lakshmi, a Hindu temple in Ashland. From all reports, that was a great morning, too. The Elementary Cluster class (2-4^th graders), which is studying Unitarian Universalist people right now, focused on Clara Barton, a Unitarian who founded the American Red Cross. The class hosted a special First Parishioner, Sara Mannix, who joined them to chat about her life as a nurse practitioner, and how her Unitarian Universalist values are practiced in her work. The class then created food pyramid posters, as so much of Sara's work is helping families, women and children especially, develop healthy lifestyles. Thanks for a great morning, Sara!

And Toolkits has evolved from what Alison and I first envisioned last year to a real class with real youth involved – yay! Toolkits is now a “dinner party” for seniors in high school that will be happening from now until June, approximately every other Sunday evening. A schedule will be sent to seniors and their folks this week. At our first meeting last week (Alison made excellent vegetarian chili for us – yummy!), the youth brainstormed a long list of topics that they want more information about before they transition to their next stage in life: away from high school, and for many of them, away form home. The gathering is casual, but the topics are not. As a group, we are discussing things that matter deeply to these particular youth. Alison, Peter and I will lead most sessions, inviting occasional outside guests for certain topics such as money management. We hope to also include an off-site retreat in the spring, possibly into Boston for one last memorable time at Pickett and Eliot, a favorite of these seniors.

Several of you have asked about how my “vegan 'til six” plan is going. It's going quite well, thank you! It's a little hard for me to avoid cheese at lunch, but otherwise, not hard at all. My priority with this is not to eventually become vegan, or even vegetarian necessarily (though I might), but to eat lower on the food chain for most meals. I won't obsess about what's vegan (or not) on the menu when I eat an early meal out, but instead realize that there are days when I will not be able to eat vegan, and that's okay. The point is to eat more sustainably most of the time. And it's just not that hard to do!

A bigger change in the Weygint household this month, also a move toward becoming more sustainable, is that last Monday we gave up our car. We had leased this car three years ago, hoping to go car-free at the end of the lease. That hasn't quite happened, as Willie, our 25 year old son who lives at home while attending art school, came with a car. He agreed that we had no use for two cars, as both he and Pat commute to work/school by public transportation. And it's just plain lazy of me to drive the 1 1/2 miles to work each day, when the bike path is literally in our back yard! I'm happy to report that we each survived our first weekend of car sharing. It was not perfect. Willie's a spontaneous kind of guy. When his cell phone rings with an immediate opportunity, he's there! So when his cell phone rang on Saturday morning and there was an invitation to play a game of pick-up hockey, he was all over it! But Pat had taken the car grocery shopping. His phone rang again on Sunday with another invitation – would Willie like to jam with some friends who needed a drummer? Why, yes he could! Except that Pat and I had “reserved” his car (or so we thought) to go see “The Descendents” at the Venue. We could have walked, no problem, but thinking that the car was available, we waited too long to walk, and, after dropping Willie off at his jam session, missed the beginning of the movie. Obviously, spontaneity is going to be difficult! As Willie said, “You guys are going to be renting cars more often than you thought!” But it was our first “car-free” weekend and no blood was shed! And I am loving my new walking commute to and from work. It will be interesting to see if we ever find a need to own our own car again. Though it has been part of our life plan for nearly 30 years to be car-free, it took us awhile to get to this point. But small steps are better than no steps, right? Keep checking in with me about our new lifestyle and while you're at it, will someone please tell me how “The Descendents” begins?