The Extraordinary Women of the U.P. exhibit is now on display in the Munising Library. Please make some time to come and view the wonderful stories about the incredible women whose origins are right here in the U.P. You will not want to miss this exhibit, especially the six from Alger County.
TailSpinners Storytime picks back up this coming Monday, Jan. 6, at 10:30 a.m. Preschool-aged children and their caregivers are invited to attend this 30-minute activity for ages 7 and under. This storytime will be hosted by Jan. We hope to see you and your little one there.
Happy Lamb Knitting Club meets on Tuesday, Jan. 7, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Knit artists at all levels of expertise are welcome to attend. Come and share some tips or learn something new.
New book
This week’s new book is “Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church” by Hahrie Han. This is the publisher’s synopsis: In 2016, even as Ohio helped deliver victory to presidential candidate Donald Trump, Cincinnati voters passed a ballot initiative for universal preschool. The margin of victory was so large that many who elected Trump must have — paradoxically — also voted for the initiative.
How could the same citizens support such philosophically disparate aims? What had convinced residents of this Midwestern Rust Belt community to raise their own taxes to provide early-childhood education focused on the poorest — and mostly Black — communities?
When political scientist Hahrie Han set out to answer these questions, her investigations led straight to an unlikely origin: the white-dominant evangelical megachurch Crossroads, where Pastor Chuck Mingo had delivered a sermon the prior year that set in motion a chain of surprising events. Raised in the Black church, Mingo felt called by God, he told Crossroads parishioners, to combat racial injustice and to do it through the very church in which they were gathered.
The result was Undivided, a faith-based program designed to foster antiracism and systematic change. The creators of Undivided realized that any effort to combat racial injustice must move beyond recognizing and overcoming individual prejudices. Real change would have to be radical — from the very roots.
In “Undivided,” Han chronicles the story of four participants — two men, one Black and one white; and two women, one Black and one white — whose lives were fundamentally altered by the program. As each of their journeys unfolded in unpredictable and sometimes painful ways, they came to better understand one another and to believe in the transformative possibilities for racial solidarity in a moment of deep divisiveness in America.
The lessons they learned have the power to teach us all what an undivided society might look like — and how we can help to achieve it.
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As each of their journeys unfolded in unpredictable and sometimes painful ways, they came to better understand one another and to believe in the transformative possibilities for racial solidarity in a moment of deep divisiveness.
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