By TINKY WEISBLAT, for the Recorder
We live in an area with abundant local sources of food. Greenfield’s Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew is getting ready to celebrate this year’s harvest with a “100 Mile Dinner.”
The dinner will take place next Saturday, Oct. 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the church. Tickets must be purchased by this Friday, Oct. 18.
The “100 Mile” moniker refers to the fact that the meal is planned so that the major ingredients hail from farms located under 100 miles from the church.

read more...

By THE REV. HEATHER J. BLAIS, for the Recorder

Recently, we took our oldest child on a tour of my alma mater, Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Our oldest has always navigated life with an insatiable curiosity and desire to know more. I was eager for them to have a taste of the kind of conversations that can unfold in a college classroom, and my most memorable conversations had unfolded in my politics courses taught by my favorite professor.
When I reached out to the professor, he welcomed us to sit in on one of his classes. We joined a group of sophomores and juniors in their class focused on living and learning liberty. The students were making their way through Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” Tocqueville was a French aristocrat and political philosopher who visited America and was fascinated by how well democracy was working here, given democracy did not take root the way many had hoped during the French Revolution.
Now, I’m not sure what I had been expecting, but given our current political climate and the unprecedented events of this year’s presidential race, I suppose I was expecting to encounter some cynicism or some of the general angst that has been simmering in our communities.

Read more...