Meeting this Sunday!

Hey Hippogriffs,

It's meeting time again! We have a lot to discuss:

Hogwarts Express! 

If any of you joined us for the March Justice Sunday, you got to hop aboard our people-powered Hogwarts Express: a train of kids walking from church to Panera and back. Why did we do this? Because we're in Ravenclaw now and that means AIR. In previous meetings, you guys decided that one of the best ways we could address air pollution was to promote alternative forms of transportation, such as biking and walking. How about biking and walking to Hogwarts??? Ok, not literally. But we're going to collectively add up our miles between now and September 1st and see if we can walk or ride the distance between Columbus and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida - by foot, wheel, or broom.... anything but gas-powered engines! It's roughly 960 miles according to Google maps. How many pounds of pollutants do you think that would save, if you walked or biked that distance instead of drove? We're going to find out!

AND we're going to track our steps in a House Cup Competition, already underway thanks to our Justice Sunday friends. Check out the hourglasses in the hall at First UU and feel free to start tracking your steps and miles and adding them to the House of your choice!  You can wear a pedometer or maybe set up a step-tracking app on your mobile device, or just count your steps next time you go for a walk and see how much it adds up! And let's talk at our meeting about ways we can get more friends and family to join us. Everyone's welcome to Hogwarts this year - muggle or magic!

Earth Day

The city has a lot of events set up to celebrate Earth Day - check them out: http://earthdaycolumbus.org. I notice Cycling for All and the Sierra Club are having a cycling event at the Audubon Center on Saturday, April 20. Sounds like a perfect Ravenclaw activity to me! Anyone interested? Or in participating as a group in any other Earth Day activities? 

Accio Books! 

The Harry Potter Alliance is once again doing their annual book drive: http://thehpalliance.org/accio-books. This time they are partnering with the International Quidditch Association and NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month) to help raise books in support of Read Indeed, a non-profit literacy organization and the vision of Maria Keller, a book-loving 7th grader who wants to collect and distribute 1 million books to needy kids by the time she’s 18. Maria is a huge Harry Potter fan and she has already donated over 800,000 books! The HPA is also doing an virtual House Cup Competition of their own right here: http://thehpalliance.org/accio-books/accio-house-cup. How many more books can we add, do you think? How can we combine this project with our other work? Anyone want a book bike like this as much as I do??? http://tucsonvelo.com/news/book-bike-will-take-library-for-a-ride/9635

First Friday: in case you missed previous emails, we have postponed the First Friday event to May since a lot of folks have been out of town for Spring Break. However, there are already plans underway for the May First Friday to create Mother's Day cards that evening instead, so I'm hoping we can combine our activities somehow. Ideas for making Harry Potter Night more of a Mother's Day/Mother Nature theme? Maybe we can make our own ink in Potions class? Recycle items for paper for the cards? Celebrate our favorite fictional mothers like Mrs. Weasley? Have a nighttime bike rodeo out in the parking lot??? What else? Let's do some more brainstorming and planning now that we have more time.

And speaking of Mother's Day... our May meeting falls on the big day itself, so I say no May meeting. Speaking as a mama, I for one would like to stay home and relax that day... besides we'll have already had our fun at First Friday. So the next meeting after this will be June 9, and we'll be getting ready for PRIDE! 

See you this Sunday, 12:30-2!

~Lynne