 I'm going to go ahead and sit. Hi. Oh yeah, I'm going to sit. I'm going to sit. It's going to be a bit of a spack on the back. We need a light. So we're going to use the lights. I have all on one. I covered a bit of the lamp in the stay house. The water is going to run. And I'll actually mark it. And I'm going to take care of the room. This light is working. OK, go ahead and sit. OK. One in that room. Here. Can I sit over? Go ahead and sit. So you guys can take a seat. I have another chair. I have a chair with a nice little head. I'm going to sit on the floor. And sit outside the curtain. Outside, I think, for me, I'm not going to say that I don't know her until... Oh, yeah. Oh, man, I did just feel like I wanted to make sure. I don't know what I'm going to do, but here we want to close and deal with it too loud. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I was wondering what it's like in here. No. So, yeah, what you're doing is it's like, you're going to start talking to someone, and the people are going to be around you. And you can start by saying, my test is on you, but I'm not really sure. I haven't said that I'm going to be talking to someone. I don't know. That counts for... I was wondering, there was like, I think 10 blocks away from the spot, which was like, I don't know what's going to happen to me. And then why do we want to do that? Because we're just going to deal with it all the time. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, we might just do like a... We might try to deal with it all the time. I mean, we can try to deal with it all the time. Oh, okay. Oh, yes. That's great. Okay. Oh. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This community is where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, psychological, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the entire congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors and to everyone else who is with us, all our members and friends who are with us frequently. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. It is my great pleasure to also welcome Paul Fanwin, whom you all, most of you know as the editor and publisher of the Cap Times. He will be speaking with us later, and we're just thrilled to have him with us. Thanks so much, Paul. I'm now going to ring the gong and bring us into a few moments of centering silence for contemplation, meditation, prayer, whatever we find fulfilling as we settle in and come fully into this place together. Do you theologian and professor? Take courage, friends. The way is often hard. The path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. Deep down there is another truth. You are not alone. And now I will light the chalice as we read together. Please stand as you're able. For the lighting of the chalice, which is a reading which we do all together, mindful of truth ever exceeding our knowledge and community ever exceeding our practice, reverently we convene, beginning with ourselves as we are to share the strength of integrity and the heritage of the spirit in the unending quest for wisdom and love. And as part of our quest, please greet those around you. Meet someone new. Appreciate each other. And now if there are any children who'd like to hear a story, we have a cute story which I think will appear up there. Is that everybody? Anybody else want to come up? Children of any age? Oh, here comes somebody. Come on, sweetheart. You want to come and sit right by me? Have you ever heard the expression liar, liar, pants on fire? Do you know what that means? Somebody told a fib. And so they are taunted by that chant. This book is called Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire, by a woman named Diane de Groot. Oh, goody, there's the... Thank you, guys. Now, this book is full of characters who are little animals who all go to school together. Gilbert was having a bad day. His class had been reading stories about famous people. And now Mrs. Bird, who you'll notice is a bird. That's the teacher, wanted them to make up plays to show what they had learned. Gilbert didn't want to be in a play. He was sure he would get nervous and make mistakes. Even worse, Mrs. Bird stuck him in a group with no-it-all Philip and bossy Margaret. Do you have any friends at school or play group like that? Hopefully not, but you know, they're everywhere. Let's do a play about George Washington and the cherry tree, Philip suggested. Okay, said Margaret, I'll be George Washington. I should be the president, Philip said, because I'm the best student in the class. I said it first, Margaret insisted. Gilbert just wanted to be the cherry tree, so he wouldn't have any lines. Mrs. Bird settled it by writing the parts on slips of paper and having them each pick one. To his surprise, Gilbert picked George Washington. Margaret picked George's father, and Philip was the cherry tree. I bet Philip wasn't happy about that. Mrs. Bird opened a big box of costumes. You can practice your plays now and share them with the class tomorrow, she said. She gave Louis a tall black hat for his role as Abraham Lincoln. That was a different play. Patty wanted to be Sally Ride. That was a different play too. So she got a motorcycle helmet that looked just like part of a space suit because Sally Ride was a famous astronaut. Mrs. Bird handed Gilbert a three-cornered hat. When Gilbert put it on, he felt better. Maybe he would be a good George Washington after all. You see all of them up there with their hats. Wouldn't that be fun? During practice, Gilbert pretended to chop trees for firewood. Then he chopped at Philip's leg. Philip said, ow, and dropped to the floor. Margaret came up to Gilbert and said, oh no, my favorite little cherry tree has been chopped down. Tell me who has done this horrible thing. Gilbert held up his paper ax and said, uh, me? That's not the way it was in the book, Philip said. You're supposed to say, I cannot tell a lie. I cut down your cherry tree and I'm sorry, Margaret added. Then say, because you told the truth, I will not punish you. Philip sighed, I still think I should be George Washington. So they're having a little bit of in-class bickering there. Well, for the rest of the day, Gilbert practiced his lines. At lunch, Patty asked him what kind of a sandwich he had, and Gilbert replied, I cannot tell a lie. It's peanut butter and jelly. During arithmetic, Mrs. Byrd asked him to add six and six. Gilbert said, I cannot lie. The answer is 12. This is going to get annoying, isn't it, if he goes on and on. Gilbert wanted to practice at home, too, with the hat. So when no one was looking, he slipped it into his backpack. Even though the teacher had told them they could not take their hats home. Gilbert wore the hat to the supper table and announced, I cannot tell a lie. I'm starving. His sister, Lola, said, me, too. Try this soup, mother said. Gilbert took a spoonful and said, I cannot tell a lie. I don't like it. Lola put her spoon down and said, yucky soup. Then Gilbert said, I cannot tell a lie. Lola is a big copycat. You get the idea. It went on and on and on. Gilbert groaned. It was hard being George Washington. Then he had to take a bath, as you can see. Before getting ready for bed, Gilbert carefully took the hat into his backpack. He didn't want Mrs. Byrd to notice that it was gone. But do you see that little character there out in the hall? Do you know who that is? Yes, his brother. His little brother has grabbed the hat and gone off with it. So it's no longer in the backpack. The next day, when Gilbert walked to school with Patty, he said, I've been practicing my part, but I'm still nervous about making a mistake. I just know that that bully in Lewis is going to laugh at me. Do you see in the window there? Aha, there's the hat. It's not in the backpack. Somebody's going to be in trouble. Gilbert said, you are a good friend, Patty. I cannot tell a lie. Well, when it was time to get ready for the play, Gilbert opened his backpack and reached inside. He felt his spelling book, his notebook, but he did not feel his three-corner hat. Oops. Just then, Margaret asked, where's your hat, Gilbert? It's not in the box. Gilbert said quickly, I didn't take it. Margaret said, I bet Philip took it. He wanted to be George Washington. Philip, Gilbert said, if it wasn't in his backpack, someone must have taken it, and it must have been Philip. Now, who thinks that was maybe not the right thing to say? Yeah. Yeah. He was going to let Philip take the blame for the missing hat. That was a big fat lie, wasn't it? Pants on fire. But I didn't take it, Philip said. Liar, Margaret shouted. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Gilbert sang, whoa, he's going to. Lewis heard him and asked, what's on fire? Frank said, there's a fire. He ran to Mrs. Bird shouting, the school's on fire. Mrs. Bird said, I didn't hear the fire alarm, and in any case. Gilbert sighed. All I said was, liar, liar, pants on fire. I did not take George Washington's hat. Well, Mrs. Bird opened a shopping bag. Here's the hat, Gilbert. Your mother just brought it from home. You know you weren't supposed to take it home. Oops, Gilbert said, turning red. Have you ever turned a funny color because you got caught in something? I was going to bring it back. Margaret pointed her finger. You lied about taking the hat, Gilbert. Philip almost got in trouble. Gilbert turned to Philip and handed him the hat and said, I'm sorry. You were right. I'm not a very good George Washington. You should have the part. But Philip handed the hat back saying, it's okay, Gilbert. You said you were sorry, just like George Washington. My beard itches, Lewis complained. Are we going to do our play or not? So as each group did their play, Gilbert grew more and more nervous. And Patty, the astronaut, tripped over her space boots. Lewis and some of the other kids laughed. Gilbert didn't laugh. He knew he might mess up, too. But when it was Gilbert's turn, he said his lines without a single mistake. And that's the truth. Now, as you folks go to summer fun, we are going to sing you out with him number. I believe it's 300. Is that right? In 1817, about the importance, the moment we know anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is not that people are not informed. How can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. A lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end, you get not only one lie, a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days, but you get a great number of lies depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can do what you please. Our second reading this morning is by the Reverend Paige Getty, the senior minister at the UU congregation of Columbia, Maryland, and she's reflecting on our fourth principle of free and responsible search for truth and meaning. As responsible religious seekers, we recognize that we are privileged to be free, to have resources to pursue life beyond mere survival, to continually search for truth and meaning, to exist beyond bonds of dogma and oppression, and to wrestle freely with truth and meaning as they allowed. This privilege calls us not to be isolated at its health center, believing that our single perspective trumps all others, but rather to be humble, to be open to the great mysteries of truth and meaning that life offers. And those mysteries may speak to us through our own intuition and experience, but also through tradition, community, conflict, nature, and relationships. As a faith tradition, unitarian universalism makes sacred the right and responsibility to engage in this free and responsible quest as an act of religious devotion. Institutionally, we have left open the questions of what truth and meaning are, acknowledging that mindful people will, in every age, discover new insights. Unitarian in 2000 was some of the long-time connections by members of the faith community. This place was a meeting and felt entirely appropriate, like meeting a new... First reading today, I quoted John Adams on Freedom of the Press. Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, were both Unitarians and of course both were presidents of the United States. In fact, Quincy Adams was a founding member of All Souls Unitarian Church, which I have attended and is located a couple miles north of the White House in Washington, D.C. Other brilliant early intellectuals, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, were also deeply interested in freedoms of religion and speech so central to unitarian universalism. I also quoted the Reverend Page Getty, on the fourth of our seven principles of free and responsible search for truth and meaning. That principle makes today's conversation about the current state and future of the American press feel crucial and timely, especially as we celebrate our national independence. In brainstorming my remarks today with Michael Shuler a few weeks ago, we discussed linkages between our liberal religious traditions here and a commitment to freedom of the press that dates to the founding fathers. He noted that the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits establishment of restrictions on religions by Congress. Of course, the First Amendment also assures freedom of the press and freedom of speech among other provisions and that way religious freedom was closely linked to press freedom by our founders. In fact, most of our founding fathers were liberal religious thinkers with strong convictions not only around separation of children, church, and state but also about a free and vibrant press. So it is against that backdrop that the state of the press in mid-2018 seems like an entirely appropriate topic for this venue on this steamy mid-summer morning. In the newsrooms of newspapers everywhere there's an old adage against the sin of what we call burying the lead, which means not getting to the main point or points early enough in a story. Well, my lead today would be that a free press does not necessarily guarantee a strong press in our country. And sadly there's lots of negative pressure on the press in America on two fronts. One concerns economics, the other is about trust. Sometimes I think we tend to be so focused on attacks on press integrity by President Donald Trump and Republicans and others that we might miss the even bigger story that most of our journalistic institutions are undergoing economic upheaval that may be historically unprecedented. I'll talk more about both themes today, but let me begin with the story that some of you may have heard because it's one of the most well-known stories associated with the Cap Times, the venerable 100-year-old Madison Media institution where I serve as editor and publisher. It was this time of year, 67 years ago, when a newly hired reporter for the Cap Times looking for a story idea for the holiday, for the July 4th holiday came up with a novel idea. His name was John Patrick Hunter. John became a longtime member of this congregation. In fact, I recall attending his memorial service in the landmark auditorium in 2003. John was a slightly-built and intense fellow who grew up in the Depression in West Virginia, fought in World War II and had the distinction of being aboard the battleship Missouri to witness the Japanese surrender in 1945 and was one of the first Americans into the devastation of Hiroshima, something that shaped him going forward. By 1951, anti-communism in America had reached a fevered pitch led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. A columnist for the Cap Times put it like this, Joe McCarthy, the junior Republican senator from Wisconsin, rules America like a devil king. Against that backdrop, John wondered whether Americans still valued or even understood the ideas he fought for in the war. After all, President Franklin Roosevelt had said the United States waged war partly to protect freedom of speech and expression. So John typed up his petition, a petition that included sections of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the 15th Amendment that extended the right to vote to former male slaves following the Civil War in 1870. Then he headed off to Vilas Park on July 4th. He approached 112 people that day with his petition, asking them to sign it. 111 declined to sign this compilation of some of our most cherished freedoms. Some called him a communist, others admitted they feared for their reputations. The Cap Times headline the next day read, Fourth of July Celebrates Afraid to Sign the Declaration of Bill of Rights. Wire services declined to pick up the story, intimidated by McCarthy, but the Washington Post, which ultimately coined the term McCarthyism, did publish it. So President Harry Truman heard about it, read the story, and brought it up in a speech soon after in front of 60,000 people in Detroit. And he said this. Now listen to this one. This malicious propaganda has gone so far that on the 4th of July over in Madison, Wisconsin, people were afraid to say they believed in the Declaration of Independence. Hunter was briefly a national celebrity, but McCarthy continued to denounce the Cap Times as the Madison Daily Worker, referring to us as a Communist Party newspaper. The term fake news thankfully was not yet invoked, or I'm sure it would have been invoked. The Cap Times had been fighting McCarthy's brand of intimidation since the 1940s, even before he was elected to the United States Senate. Later, after our founder William T. Evue created WIBA radio station here in Madison, we tried to get licensing for a television station when television was still a newfangled thing. McCarthy, who despised Evue, made sure that didn't happen by blocking licensing. Speaking of Evue before I go on, he was eloquent on the subject of press freedom. His most famous quote on the subject seems timely today, though he died in 1970. Let the people have the truth, and the freedom to discuss it, and all will go well. But my title today is not wither the Cap Times, it is wither the press, though truth be told both are subjects near and dear to my heart. I've been a journalist nearly all my life. I was editor of my high school newspaper. I earned bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism and communication. This fall, I will have been in Madison newspaper for 40 years as a reporter, an editor, a business executive, and now editor and publisher. I'm sorry to report that this is a difficult time for my profession. You probably know that. As I mentioned earlier, the challenges are twofold. I'll talk first about the business model. Those of us here of a certain age recall a time when a city would have one or two daily newspapers, the evening news on television, and radio news, and that was pretty much it for competition. That allowed newspapers to have a near monopoly in local markets. Selling help, wanted, and other classified ads, display ads, and inserted flyers, you'll see most frequently in Sunday newspapers. Over the past 20 years, the internet has massively altered reading habits. Print circulation is much lower. Just as Amazon has hurt the bricks and mortar local retail economy, the internet has pounded this newspaper model. Now, a reasonable response by some of you may be that's just the way capitalism works. And maybe many of you prefer consuming news and information electronically. But the hard truth is that those print ads used to pay most all the costs of news professionals, reporters, editors, and photographers. Going back a long time, as I started graduate school in August 1974 in Washington, the same month Richard Nixon helicoptered away from that lawn for the last time after Watergate, I subscribed to the delivery, doorstep delivery of the Washington Post to my apartment for $5, and that was a month, $5 a month. That rate did not even cover the cost of newsprint and delivery, so strong was the advertising model. But that era of subsidized journalism is apparently over. People willing to pay several dollars for a boutique coffee or lots of money for various forms of video entertainment often balk at the cost of serious newspaper and magazine journalism. This has resulted in far fewer reporters and editors working in this country. According to the Pew Research Center, there were 37% fewer reporters and editors in the newspaper industry a couple of years ago compared to 2004. And when I wear my hat as editor and decide how to deploy reporting resources, I'm always aware that the most valuable journalism we can create is investigative in nature or at least enterprise created not off of some news event. But that is also the most expensive to create because it tends to be more time consuming and frankly a lot of investigative story tips don't pan out. So the irony is that many smart readers want the kind of journalism that is hardest and most effective, most expensive to produce, but many are not necessarily as eager to pay for it. Looking forward then, the supply of high quality journalism will be directly connected to consumers rejecting what we refer to as clickbait content and instead demanding and supporting strong independent and professional journalism. The second major threat the press faces today is the loss of public trust and confidence in the mainstream media. You know, it's funny, I think I was in my 40s before I knew I was part of something pejoratively referred to as the mainstream media but certainly has taken on today. I saw a poll just this last week that said a mind-boggling 92% of Republicans and Republican-leading independents say they believe that the traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories at least sometimes. Now the Democratic percentage on that was still disturbing but much lower but it's reflective of how news consumers have divided themselves into warring tribes armed with entirely separate sets of facts. You might say we live together, apart in separate information ecosystems. And as this has happened the press has morphed from being mostly regarded as a second objective observer reporting from outside the fray to becoming a primary target. I wrote that sentence even before Thursday's murderous rampage at a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. And I noticed something after. I was struck by something Gavin Buckley, the mayor of Annapolis said. He said that the paper covers kid soccer games and he called what he called good local interesting stuff. The paper is not a liberal newspaper. It's not a right-wing newspaper. It stays in the middle and covers local issues. And my response to that, I was startled. How revealing, I thought to myself, have we come to a place in this country where our first reaction to this tragedy is that we might be murdering journalists over political ideology, which his comments seem to imply. The current climate is scary with the president who calls the press the enemy of the American people. I recommend to you a documentary titled The Fourth Estate that at one point shows glassy-eyed Trump supporters at a rally turning, pointing and hurling profane epitets at reporters who sit impassively at their laptops. I've covered politics for 20, 30 years and nothing like this ever happened before. Someone sent me a recent Republican Party questionnaire and it was mailed to local members, party members in the second district here. There was, between the question that asked whether you trust the federal bureaucracy to act in the best interest of the citizens and do you think political correctness has gone too far was this question. Do you believe the national media has a strong bias against all things Donald Trump and Republicans and fails to tell American voters the real facts about Republican policies, principles, goals and accomplishments? Talk about a loaded question. So how did we get here? Back when I was in graduate school smart and idealistic young people flocked to my profession hoping to become the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein the Washington Post reporters who wrote the Watergate story. Yes, Vice President Spiro Agnew on his way to being pushed out of office and disgraced for corruption called the journalist the nattering naebobs of negativism which sounds awfully quaint today and his attacks really didn't take it. In one of my recent columns I referred to that here when I wrote how journalism was once regarded as contributing to a national conversation based on commonly shared facts arrived at courtesy of professional journalists producing multi-sourced and verifiable information. But then in the 1980s it was primarily right-wing politicians and operatives who saw political advantage and figured out how to convince ordinary people to distrust journalists as liberal out-of-touch elites. This has been going on a long time. This was many years before the so-called politics of resentment expanded the enemies list here in Wisconsin for example to include school teachers, university professors and most any public employee not wearing a uniform. Then in 1987 President Ronald Reagan's Federal Communications Commission dropped a fairness doctrine that required contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance and broadcast media. Soon after talk radio, rife with opinion and free of professional journalistic standards began to flourish. Think Rush Limbaugh and later on television Fox News. Limbaugh popularized the term drive-by media to denigrate the mainstream press as sensation-seeking and agenda-driven. Things continued to devolve unfortunately in 2010 the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court opened the gateway for unlimited corporate spending on political ads which served to overwhelm objective journalism and frequency and intensity. It's an aside that one wonders whether a Supreme Court without Justice Antony Kennedy of course announced his retirement plans this week will further bring dark money into and degrading our information ecosystem. Well, next came the explosion of social media creating a profound muddling of information leading to sort of a manipulated reality culminating in Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election via fake social media news stories. A writer in one of our trade magazines, Columbia Journalism Review had the best descriptor I've heard calling this an era of the propaganda media complex. So dense and confusing is the media ecosystem that many discussed that consumers find other things to do. They simply look away and there's a profound danger for all of us in that. Last fall at our Cap Times Ideas Fest we hosted Marty Barron, the top editor at The Washington Post who was interviewed by Madison native David Marinus, Pulitzer Prize winning author and post editor whose father Elliot was once editor of The Capitol Times. The post has shined a bright spotlight on its current journalist of crisis by adopting the slogan, democracy dies in darkness. So true. A related trend in all this is how the internet has removed barriers to publishing. An old newspaper axiom held that if you were a public figure you'd want to avoid getting into a fight. Actually we use something more colorful than fight to refer to this. With anyone who buys his or her ink by the barrel. That plain notion is no longer apt. There's an upside to that allowing many more voices out there but there are far fewer controls around ethics and motives and standards of professionalism compared with earlier times and politicians are figuring this out. A recent New York Times story headline Never Mind the News Media repeated how politicians from both sides are increasingly using technology to avoid the press altogether by live streaming events and employing other techniques. Obviously Twitter is one of those. The Times reports that politicians are seeking the best way to reach voters in ways that bypass the difficult questions that journalists might pose. Then there is the related problem often referred to as false equivalency. When I hear someone say that Fox News which is I think beyond dispute a propaganda arm of the Trump administration and the Republican Party described as an apples to apples conservative counterweight to the liberal bias in the New York Times, I am appalled. There's nothing about the honesty, history, professionalism and ethical integrity of the New York Times that resembles Fox News in any manner whatsoever. Nothing. So I apologize that in the last few minutes it seemed like a lot of hand breathing so let me move on to offering some prescriptive thoughts as I get through the last few minutes. From the Cap Times perspective for a moment we're helped by being a bit of a homegrown niche brand with family dominated ownership. We are certainly about progressive opinion in the spirit of our founder but most of our staff is focused on objective, high quality news reporting for Madison and Wisconsin. We also have a major philanthropic on some of you know the Eview Foundation which distributes more than $2 million a year to great local causes and institutions. I would point out that's mostly funded by historical profits and investments but we're still out there doing that. At the Cap Times we're becoming more focused on digital journalism and special events as evidenced by the aforementioned idea fest which will get incurred on the UW campus this September. Dave Marinus will once again help us and this year he's bringing David Axelrod, the former strategist for Barack Obama and colleague Dan Balls, a native mid-western earnest post-top national political reporter. I mention this even because we are increasingly emphasizing such events as part of our business as our business continues to evolve. So if you think vibrant and professional press is important and I suggest many in this room do, I'll tick off a few specific suggestions. One, don't believe and push back against anyone who says they're not highly trustworthy people doing the best job they can in professional journalism. Just as doctors and lawyers and accountants and engineers and teachers have professional standards so do we. Two, don't be lulled into complacency by the fact that the papers like the New York Times and Washington Post are doing reasonably well with digital subscriptions in this age of Trumpism. They are but they're still losing the staff even if they do enjoy national audiences that most everyone else does not. Three, I'd ask you to be open to the concept of paying for more subscriptions than national and local news entities you trust and appreciate. It's my job to be well-versed and I try to read widely in titles such as The Economist, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic and of course the Post and The Times. There are many other options including many wonderful books on public affairs. I just reviewed one in my column, The Fall of Wisconsin by my former Madison neighbor Dan Kauffman who now lives in New York about the flood of right-wing money and influence into Wisconsin politics during this decade. It's my job of sort of putting it all in context I thought was really a good read. So stay in the conversation by skeptically and conscientiously seeking out a wide variety of sources of first-hand reporting and fact-finding. Four, I struggle with this one myself. Try to read and listen to sources and use information with which you profoundly disagree. Just to better understand, for me that's the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Five, spend less time listening to the endless loop of talking heads rehashing the original reporting done by others or as I like to say the people who sit around and bounce the rubble. Instead spend time reading and listening more broadly and seriously. Six, support local journalism when and how you can. For example, we're developing a membership plan at the Capitol Times. It'll have many benefits including the warm feeling one gets from supporting real journalists. And just be aware that a free press with high-quality, high-professional quality is not free. As I wind up, I would say that too many people, especially some politicians, have been willing to abide outrageous attacks on the media as well as the amount of blatant lying in politics because they apparently are so giddy over deficit-expanding tax cuts or far-right US Supreme Court justices. It will be up to thoughtful people across the ideological spectrum to stop this and decide this thing and not just people on the left, people in the center and center right. Can we stem these relentless attacks not just on the press, but also on many of America's most cherished traditional institutions by recognizing this is bigger, much bigger than any garden variety left versus right squabble? The answer will determine what kind of country, democracy really, we will leave for our children and our grandchildren. Thank you. We join together each week as a community who gathers joys and sorrows written on our hearts. In this place, we love and are loved, we forgive and are forgiven. We give and we receive in return. We come together to find strength and common purpose, turning our minds and hearts toward one another, seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support. I do not have any additional joys or sorrows written in our book, which is out by the front door each week, but this week we certainly do remember the victims of this week's murders in Annapolis. They're survivors, the people of Annapolis who now have a feeling of insecurity, fear and deep sadness, and all of us who feel each time one of these tragedies happens that our world is changing, that things are different and that vulnerabilities are heightened. We also hold all the joys and sorrows too tender to share that live in the fullness of our hearts. May we remember that they are part of a web of life that makes us one with humanity, one with all the universe. May we be grateful for the miracle of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care, to remember and to love. And now, please be generous as we give our offering of financial gifts and listen again to our wonderful music that we have this morning. Thank you. And thank you all for your kind and generous monetary gifts. We also appreciate, in addition to those gifts, all the many gifts of service which come to us each week on an ongoing basis by those folks who volunteer to make the services run smoothly. This morning, we extend thanks to David Briles on sound, Lois Everson, our lay minister, our greeters Pamela McMullen and Claire Box, our ushers, Liza Monroe and Dick Goldberg and Chuck Evenson. Making coffee, we have Nancy Kosseth and Sandy Plich, and I have seen John Powell out there somewhere. He is here to give a tour after the services and if you would like to have a tour of this sustainably designed building and the entire campus, please meet up here on your left near the big windows after the service and John will be happy to show you around. I also want to acknowledge that we have some lovely flowers from Karen Jagger, so thank you all very, very much. Please rise as you are able and body or in spirit for our closing hymn, The Pen is Greater. Please remain standing for the benediction and the... You know what I've done here folks, I apologize. I did not write out separately the words of the closing which are very nice words. Aha, I just found them. I didn't need to confess that, but I cannot tell a lie. This is from Duke T. Gray. The blessings of truth be upon us. The power of love direct us and sustain us. And may the peace of this community preserve our going out and our coming sin from this time forth until we meet again. I will now extinguish the chalice as we end our time here together and begin our time of service to the rest of the world. Please be seated for the chalice extinguishing and the postlude. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.