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FFA tradition lives on at Housy
FALLS VILLAGE — Every February, FFA members around the country celebrate National FFA Week.
For the general public, here’s what FFA is and how it impacts our community.
FFA began in 1928 as Future Farmers of America. In 1988, it changed its name to The National FFA Organization to reflect the growing diversity of the agricultural industry. The name change also promoted the organization’s objectives of public speaking and leadership opportunities.
In the 97 years since FFA’s creation, it has helped millions of students grow as leaders, and achieve career success in and out of agricultural fields. FFA members use the skills they learn through their experiences to attain real-world accomplishments.
More than one million members in 9,235 chapters across all 50 states, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are currently part of FFA. Of those members, 112 belong to the Housatonic Valley FFA chapter.
Housatonic Valley FFA members participate in events at the chapter, district, state, and national levels every year. Last year, members attended the Washington Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., and the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis.
These experiences allowed students to interact with members from across the country. The Housatonic Valley FFA Alumni Association sponsored both of these events.
Students also compete in Career Development Events and Leadership Development Events. This past fall Delanie Keeley, Hannah Johnson, Darwin Wolfe, and Madison Melino placed first in the state Equine Evaluation CDE, and Madeline Collingwood, Cole Simonds, Sidney Crouch, and Michael Gawel placed first in The Nursery Landscape CDE. Both teams will go on to compete at the National FFA Convention this fall.
Students also attend workshops hosted by state FFA officers throughout the year as well as participating in a variety of community events. Members volunteer at the Big E, Goshen Fair, and Falls Village Car Show and sponsor rabies clinics over the summer.
Chris Crane, Housatonic Valley FFA president, said “FFA is such a great opportunity, I can’t wait to celebrate our chapter and see what we have in store for the rest of this year.”
What’s in store: Spring Career Development Events, Leadership Development Events, and our annual agriculture education open house, when the community can see first hand what the FFA students are doing.
Housatonic Valley FFA members are grateful for the continuous support from our community and are eagerly anticipating the upcoming opportunities to show our students’ personal growth through our program.
People use a word, “disinformation,” loosely because it means nothing more than words spewed out devoid of actual meaning, context, proof, fact, or ownership.
That does not mean those words were spewed without intent, written without intent, broadcast without intent. The old adage of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me” was wrong when I was a kid and even more wrong in the age in which we live, where words can travel to millions of people instantaneously, permanently circulating, always causing harm. I’ll take physical sticks and stones over diarrheal vituperous words promulgated on the Internet any day.
The world we are entering, where a sole person can decide to rename a 600-year-old, internationally accepted place name as a whim requires us to stop and think of the dystopian world that’s being built around us, for us, encaging us, corrupting us. The Gulf of Mexico being renamed may seem like a trivial matter as it rebounds to and is endorsed by Google, MSN, and other Internet platforms. However — at a stroke — truth and fact have been obliterated. This is a modern form of book-burning. Once burned, those books cannot be re-read, cannot be learned from, cannot influence thinking and intelligence. The Gulf of Mexico as historic fact has been obliterated, sanctioned by the very backbone of the Internet providers.
But, like book burning in the ‘30s, they have shown their hand, their capitulation to the new dystopian world; no doubt for profit or ideology. It doesn’t matter which. The fact is this, if you know it is the Gulf of Mexico, has been for 600 years, and someone tells you it is no longer named so, then you can easily decide if that someone is to be trusted. If not, tell everyone you know that they are wrong. Don’t simply roll over. In short, you have to decide if you want to join the book burners or stand against their intent and distortion of fact and reality. Speak up.
Acceptance without revolt is capitulation, corruption of your very being. How do you revolt against such entities as Google, MSN and others? Probably you cannot. But then at least you will know that whatever they make, whatever they promote, whatever they post is not to be blindly trusted ever again. Remember, if it seems false, if it smells like smoke, it is likely a form of book burning in the modern Internet age. You can check, you can become a gatekeeper of truth. You have to. If you don’t, they have won and the world as you know it will not survive.
A solution? Read actual books. Rejoin your library, become a supporter of literary fact, research, and time-tested fact.
Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in Gila, New Mexico.
Inaugural ‘Gospel Preaching’ with gentle voice and strength
Text: Luke 4:14-22
One month ago at the Inaugural Prayer Service, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde preached a call for “unity that incorporates diversity and transcends disagreement — and the solid foundations of dignity, honesty, and humility that such unity requires.”
Initially, her sermon elicited nods of approval: who could object, to a goal so noble? She concluded with a plea for mercy, delivered directly to the president: mercy for those who are LGBT+; mercy for those who are not citizens or lack documentation, mercy for those fleeing war and persecution, mercy for any who might be seen as a “stranger.” All of whom, in today’s United States of America, live in fear.
Some responses levied blistering criticism against Bishop Budde. Accusations of politicizing an event that ought to have been above politics. Calls for her to be deported.Denunciation of her status as bishop because she is a woman. Disparagement of her tone.
She preached the Gospel, with a gentle voice and with strength. She relayed Jesus’ teachings, and their implications today. In that setting, the Gospel stung.
The Bible’s uncomfortable teaching says that we who believe in God may not be first in line to receive mercy. But if we are to follow Jesus, we had better be the first in line to act mercifully — regardless of whether we think the recipient is deserving, because in God’s sight mercy is a measure of the giver, not the receiver. God is no tribal deity, belonging to one people only, and God will pour out saving help on any person in need, including unbelievers and those whom our society decides to expel.
The Bible is full of references to land and borders, and wars fought over the same, but Jesus flagrantly ignored borders, crossing them at will.
There are thoughtful arguments, both secular and religious, in favor of protecting borders. Yet Jesus did not make them, and they contradict a core Gospel teaching: those who would follow Jesus’ Way are to consider every person on this planet as a family member, whose well-being is as important as our own.
To the argument that talk of immigrants or LGBT+ neighbors or economy is political talk, inappropriate in a religious setting: read the prophets and the Gospels. The Bible’s religious topics — by definition, religious topics — are resolutely focused on the wellness of all living beings, and how we treat one another, and how we organize our common life. When a policy or an administration has created hardship, especially for those who are vulnerable in our society, it is not the church or synagogue or mosque or meeting or gurdwara wading inappropriately into political territory, it is the politicians flouting the core message of God’s Living Word.
In the Gospel, might does not make right — vulnerability makes right. In the Gospel, there is no justification for harsh treatment or expulsion of persons who are here illegally — because every person is our neighbor, and such laws fail God’s requirements of morality and mercy. In the Gospel, the accumulation of wealth is a grotesque abomination — an act of blatant infidelity which deserves no reward, and certainly no position of influence. In the Gospel, there is no outsider in God’s eyes, only in human eyes, and God often will give first attention to someone we think of as unfit or undeserving or unwelcome as if to deliver a message laser focused on each believer: “Your way to me, beloved, is through a loving relationship with them. Your way to me is by all of ‘them’ becoming ‘us.’”
In times and circumstances that are hostile to Gospel values, preaching the Gospel will sting. God knows, all that I am saying may be dismissed as political. Call it what you will. I take my stand on the Gospel, and I pray to be accountable to the Gospel alone.
From Sermon preached at the Congregational Church of Salisbury, UCC, Salisbury,on the Third Sunday after Epiphany,Jan. 26, 2025.