Portal For Change

by Cindy Barnard
All in one day, as it so happened, my ideas came together as to what Portal for Change could accomplish.

top: delivery for Pettengill House Saturday Night Meal gets underway; bottom: signs prepared and ready for visibility campaign.

Since the Obama campaign, I’ve wanted to keep the momentum alive, within myself and my community. I want a new direction for affordable health care and a cleaner environment. I want what then presidential candidate Barack Obama was offering. And now that he is President Barack Obama, I am committed to continue my support for him and his goals for our country.

And so on this day of May 2, 2009, members of PFC joined the Newburyport Dem’s in their celebration of President Obama’s First 100 Days with a visibility campaign on the market square. About 40 – 50 people were present as local voices came together to express their views and support for our current administration; to be heard and seen by the community.

Signs aimed toward political issues read, “Rule of Law Returns”, “Health Care for All Americans”, “Diplomacy is Back”, and “Eco-Progress Already”; other signs of support and affection read, “The Hardest Working Man in America”, “Our President Thinks”, and “100 Days, 100 Ways, We Love Obama!” The campaign was met with broad approval as people drove by the square, but one particular driver expressed himself with what I’ll leave as an undisclosed hand gesture. This gesture, as it turned out, rallied everyone together for one of our loudest cheers all morning, a cohesiveness I hope that will be reflected on Capitol Hill. We are ready for change and are standing up against the tired rhetoric and actions of previous administrations that have mislead the country.

Later that day, I finished preparing a dinner for delivery through the Pettengill House Saturday Night Meal program. Located in Salisbury, the Pettengill House has been helping those in need for 15 years, providing for the growing needs of individuals, children, and families in Salisbury, Amesbury, Newburyport, Merrimac, West Newbury, Newbury, Rowley, Byfield, and Groveland.

One of our PFC founders, Shari Wilkinson, began this effort of helping Pettengill House with their Saturday Night Meal program. On Pettengill’s website, they state their key accomplishments for 2008, “2,585 clients (1,517 adults and 1,068 children, 237 of whom were homeless) received intervention and support services, an increase of 316 clients from FY 2007; 108,142 meals were provided, increase of over 10,000 meals from FY 2007; 240 children received backpacks and school supplies (a four year total of 1,588); 31 children received free dental care through the Massachusetts Dental Society Foundation’s Mobile Access to Care Van; 618 school-age children and their families received support through School Link Services; $28,291.40 was provided in emergency assistance funds to families in need.”

packaging hot meals for Pettengill House

The next Saturday Night Dinner is June 6th. If you can help prepare a meal, or help package and deliver, please contact PFC.

I hope everyone who received a meal on that day from Pettengill House could also feel the community support for them. Without judgement, without second guessing, one just jumps in and helps when they are ready to act. It never hurts us, it never wastes our time. We just keep growing and changing in a new direction and building the momentum.

Pettengill House Saturday Night Meal program continues through June 6. Contact us to help.

many rally on the market square in support of Obama's First 100 Days

by Norm Parker
Are You With It?
People in the greater Newburyport area are getting involved in community service in greater numbers than ever before, it seems.

Volunteering has a long and proud history here, as in most other American communities. What has changed is the expanded variety of volunteer opportunities and the recognition that the quality of community life is enhanced when its citizens are engaged.

In this time of socioeconomic destabilization, on a worldwide basis, the need for an aware and responsive citizenry is critical. Engaging with others, in activities of community interest, has a tendency to raise social consciousness and cause us to become active in helping create positive change.

On top of those reasons for getting involved, veteran volunteers will tell you it can be fun. Ways to get a read on volunteer opportunities? Go to your community’s official website. In most cases there will be a comprehensive list. Other means: Call your town, or city hall, ask at the library, check bulletin boards, ask a friend.

And for those so inclined, please join PFC. We will attempt to get the word out on what’s happening in the world of community volunteering.

by Katherine Blake
On Saturday, May 2nd there was a Meditation and Psychotherapy Conference in Boston with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

It was a real treat to see and hear him answer the questions of many of the most eminent Boston psychiatric and meditation scholars. There were many long, involved questions asked, which he answered simply, sweetly, and always with a laugh at the end – as if to say – these issues are complex ones, but don’t retreat into heavy, serious despair about them. Wise counsel to remember also when we view the current political, economic, and global turmoil on our TVs and computer screens every day.

Portal for Change has a similar way of engaging with the community. One could say that the issues here are complex and intertwining. We have chosen to direct our efforts to simple, but direct actions, e.g. celebrating Obama’s first hundred days in a demonstration on May 2nd in Market Square. This effort originated with the Democratic City Committee and we were able to join them with signs highlighting bills or actions of the President’s by which we have been inspired.

We are also committed to volunteer for a program sponsored by the Pettingill House in Salisbury which involves cooking and delivering hot meals to almost 400 people in Newburyport and four surrounding towns. This monthly effort began 10 years ago for a few dozen people who signed up to have a hot meal delivered to their homes and has multiplied many times over. We join several people who have worked for years on this project.

We want to do more. It keeps us hopeful and inspired with the same message of Barack Obama’s campaign, that is, the way we can be part of this country’s future is to participate on whatever level we can. The Dalai Lama has also been quoted as saying,” Change does not come from prayer and meditation. It comes from action” And as Barack Obama quoted from The Elders of Oraibi Arizona, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Please come join us …there is lots to do!

by Norm Parker
(synopsis of newspaper article)
We all hope President Obama and his staff have a real take on the nature and depth of America’s troubles, and will make the tough, wise moves necessary to create needed change.

The changes the government, and equally important, the American people, will have to maneuver into place in order to have a future, will be dramatic and, for a time, destabilizing — there really is no way around this.

The degree of involvement on the part of the people, in the social restructuring that must happen, will likely be of a nature we have never experienced before. I believe it will test the efficacy of the society we have cobbled together.

There are signs we may be capable of breaking the ties to long outmoded habits, beliefs, and resilient attachments that have numbed our awareness of the relationship we have to critical aspects of being human.

The immediate future at our doorstep is real life at its heaviest. It will rock us back on our heels. Most likely there will be no make-up scenario; we’ll get it right, or we will not get it.

Since THE inauguration, the members of Portal For Change have been making plans for our first general membership meeting. If that was all we had been up to, that meeting would have taken place before this. .But much has taken place since that great day in January, and we would like to tell you a little about that.

It was our intention from the beginning to establish connections with all of the existing community service groups in the greater Newburyport area, and where possible help link volunteers to their efforts. We also wanted to open up to new community service initiatives, where needs exist. You well know that we have also been committed to supporting President Obama programs, by making sure the intent and working parts of his agenda get fair and well balanced play, at the local level.

The steering committee members conducted a very successful food, and homeless-goods, collection on Martin Luther King day The steering committee also has assisted with Pettingill Farm, Saturday Dinner program. For the past two months we have cooked multiple meals. That effort has been of real to the long-time volunteers of that critical program, as the number of meals delivered has sharply increased in recent months.

As all of you are clearly aware, the challenges laid upon this President, and his Administration, are many magnitudes greater than any of us likely anticipated during the long campaign, in which you worked so hard. The collective strength our efforts, that President Obama mentioned so often during the campaign, is a powerful tool of enormous importance to our country’s survival.