Isles of Shoals Association (Unitarian Universalist), Inc.
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About the Association
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IntroductionThe Isles of Shoals Association was founded in 1897, and is the organization from which conferences on Star Island originated. While conferences now have a life of their own, the Association still works behind the scenes, fostering community, comfort, safety and fun.Our main objectives are best described by our Mission Statement:
The ISAUU is a non-profit organization of volunteers dedicated to promoting the spirit and traditions of religious and educational programs at the Isles of Shoals. We:
We invite all like-minded people to participate as members.
Hundreds of people are members of the Association, supporting our work with their memberships, contributions and volunteer efforts.
Much of what the Association contributes is discrete and behind the scenes at Star Island.
Some recent support for Star Island included the purchase of chairs, lanterns and sports equipment, as well as funding for conference speakers and workshop leaders. In addition, we operate the Star Island Gift Shop, offering souvenirs and memorabilia to visitors and conferees. All income from the Gift Shop support our activities. If you would like to join, please refer to our membership page.
October, 2007 Musings of a long-time ISAUU Board member, Susy Mansfield: I retired last November after 23 pleasant and satisfying years on the ISAUU Board of Directors. It was a thrill to be on the Board as we celebrated our Hundredth Birthday and the Centennial of Conferences in 1997, marked by the creation of the video STAR ISLAND, Our Spirits' Home, produced in collaboration with the Star Island United Church of Christ, and by the release of the 7th and Centennial edition of Ten Miles Out,edited this time by Ed Rutledge, another long-time ISAUU Board member. During the past years the ISAUU also launched the Conference Grant program, which enables conferences to attempt new and different programming, including some creative diversity on the island, while at the same time controlling their registration fees. The Conference Grant program includes scholarship funding as well and that has been well-utilized as the room and board rates have soared. More recently, the ISAUU initiated the Clergy Grants program, which funds the entire cost of room and board for UU ministers and their families. We believe that Star Island conference attendance should provide both rest and renewal for our denominational leaders, and that conferences benefit from their participation as well. The mission of the ISAUU has never included oversight or funding of the 'bricks and mortar' aspects of the conference center; those are the responsibilities of the Star Island Corporation. This ISAUU has rather concerned itself with supporting and enhancing the experiences of conferees during their weeks on the island. Toward that goal, the ISAUU has funded new chairs for Newton Center, Elliott Hall, and Brookfield and bought and replaced rowboats, endless A/V equipment (trying to keep pace with electronic progress and conference needs), and smaller amenities like reading lamps. For five years the ISAUU funded the Rutledge Marine Lab to the tune of $3000 per year. The exception to the 'no bricks and mortar' funding has been in the ISAUU's central relationship with the Chapel. Even before Uncle Oscar Laighton gave the keys of the Chapel to Thomas Elliott (President of the Unitarian Summer Meetings Association and later of the Star Island Corporation), the Unitarian and Congregationalist conference delegates needed a Chapel for their worship, and the Unitarian Summer Meetings Association (now the ISAUU) rose to the challenge of restoring the Meetinghouse. This story is wonderfully told in Ten Miles Out and more fully in both The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend and in Something Like A Star The ISAUU provided major funding 75 years later, when the Chapel was entirely restored in 1977-79 and again for the recent work done to repair the interior, replace the roof and shore up the belltower. Taking a broad view of it's mission, the ISAUU has underwritten the Vision 2000 undertaken by the Star Island Corporation, and the creation of the Council of Conferences, and has provided preservation grants both to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, for the curation and preservation of the Shoals Collection, and to the Lighthouse Kids who are restoring White Island Light at the Shoals. These various projects, both conference-oriented and history-minded, are a great source of pride as I look back at a quarter century of service on the ISAUU Board. They read like a list of accomplishments, and they are. Here's the important part of this story: All the work I've done on the ISAUU Board, and before that as an employee of the Star Island Corporation, grows from my convictions as a birthright UU and an engaged religious liberal. I believe - as did those early Unitarian conference delegates - that the experiences of our conferees at Star island compliment their home church life, and serve to enhance their religious consciousness and actions. That this is the very reason for conferences at Star Island. That our real work on behalf of Star Island is to broaden and deepen - as Fred McGill wrote so beautifully in the third verse of Gosport Harbor - the beliefs and convictions that our conferees take home with them. To bring to life their dreams. Fancy words. What do they mean in real terms? I have had the fortunate opportunity, as an ISAUU Board Member, to help bring some into reality - in the grants programs, in our support of conferences and the island in many ways. I believe that as engaged religious liberals, we must be ever mindful of our birthright - of the remarkable place we have inherited from our UU and UCC forbears - and even more so, of the endeavor to which we are heirs. Something very unusual can happen at Star Island. Something electric and life-changing. Something that is less about chair cushions and comfortable beds, less even than the Pelican Show and the meal menus. Something that is about engagement and connection and commitment. It sends you out into the world uplifted and clear-minded, and the work goes on. This is as close as I can get to defining 'the Shoals spirit' and it works for me. Very best wishes, Susy Mansfield Below are the opening words from our 2001 Annual Meeting, presented by one of our younger members. Part of our mission is to support Star Island in ways that will nurture similar life-long experiences for all shoalers. Hi I'm Molly Mansfield, for those of you who don't know me, but I think most of you do. When Mike asked me to give these opening words, I asked him what he had in mind and he said I should just say something about Star Island and what it means to me. So.....what Star Island means to me: To any old day-tripper, Star Island is just a rock ten miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. But to me Star Island is a whole lot more than just your common rock. It is a home I have known my whole life and it is a safe place. When I am on Star Island I know where I am and where I stand. I am surrounded by people who, as my mom would say, have known me since before I was born, and who have known each other for....well, lets just say since before I was born. It is these people who really make Star Island what it is, and there are so many of them it's no wonder that Star shows up in my life all the time, even when I least expect it. For example, I was walking down the hallway at my high school a couple of weeks ago, wearing my favorite Star Island sweatshirt, when a teacher I'd never met before stopped me, pointed to my shirt and said, "So when are you going to be a pelican?" My jaw dropped and it turns out that she and her husband had attended a conference years ago. Or how about last month when I was working at our town library and stopped to look at the new art display that had been put up. It was the art work of a woman whose name I didn't recognize. The display consisted mostly of color photographs of Paris, all of which had little price tags beneath them, but the last piece of artwork was a simple oil painting and the tag beneath it read, "Chapel on Star Island - not for sale". So Star Island is a big part of my life as well as many other people's lives, and it is not so much the island itself that makes it so special, but the fact that there are so many good people out there that care about it and that come together a few times a year to care about each other, on this island, that make it so special to me. So I just want to thank all of you for caring and for making such a big part of my life so good and special; and to say that I hope I can do the same for my children someday. And when that teacher stopped me in the hall at school and asked when I was going to be a pelican, I smiled at her and said, "soon." Thank you.
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