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The Washington Post embarked on severe cuts despite appeals by the newsroom to owner Jeff Bezos. The paper is to narrow its focus largely to politics and national security.

A Holly Jolly Christmas! A Christmas Concert celebrates the holiday season at the United Methodist Church of Thousand Oaks on Sunday, December 14th at 6pm.

This family-friendly concert is filled with holiday classics such as “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Feliz Navidad.” The UMCTO Choir will also sing George Michael’s Christmas classic “Last Christmas” and a medley of music by Alan Silvestri from the movie Polar Express including “Believe” and “Hot Chocolate.” Juan Gonzalez will sing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Edward Pola and George Wyle.

The concert includes pieces for choir, piano, and string orchestra and will include a piece by the classical composer Mari Esabel Valverde titled “her first snow.” It will also include world premieres of the choral piece “Christmas Alleluia” and string orchestra pieces “Pre-Luge”, and “Snow Day”, composed by our very own music director and conductor Isaac Schanno Johnson.

Admission is free. United Methodist Church of Thousand Oaks is located at 1000 E Janss Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360. For those who are unable to attend in-person, the concert will be livestreamed. The livestream link can be found on our website at umcto.org.

It's a big moment for fans of high fantasy. But for some, the weeks leading up to the release of Amazon's Lord of the Rings prequel series have meant a mix of excitement – and a little anxiety.

Forum to Highlight Heart-based Philanthropic Engagement
A virtual community forum to be held Friday, September 8 at 7 pm PT (on zoom) will feature Lori Barra, Executive Director of the Isabel Allende Foundation (IAF), Ryan Wells, U.S. Executive Director of Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF), and Elizabeth Share, Founder of Wise Giving and philanthropic advisor to IAF. The presenters will take us behind the scenes as they discuss the process of how a donor, advisor, and nonprofit work together to achieve a shared vision. Barra, Wells, and Share will also highlight NYF’s Caste Equality Project which works to empower Nepali Dalit communities.
Isabel Allende established her foundation in 1996 to honor her late daughter’s ideals of service and compassion. The Isabel Allende Foundation supports nonprofits that provide vulnerable women and children access to healthcare, education, protection from violence and reproductive self-determination. Nepal Youth Foundation is one of those nonprofits. Isabel writes “it is a wonderful truth that the things we want most in life – a sense of purpose, happiness and hope – are most easily attained by giving them to others.”

Despite the way the Internet connects us with vast quantities of music, 43% of all albums sold in the U.S. last year were vinyl LPS. Why is this? Why is it that, today, the disc record is the only physical audio format with increasing sales?

A panel of industry and audio experts explores the 130- year history of the disc record and explains why – despite frequent predictions of its demise- the format’s popularity continues to grow. Intertwined with their presentations are demonstrations of period phonographs and recordings that reflect the changing musical tastes and technology since the disc first appeared in the 1890s.

Panelists
Richard Martin – Co-owner, Producer, Engineer, Researcher/Writer, Archeophone, Records
Nick Bergh – Sound Restoration Expert and Found, Endpoint Audio Labs, Inc.
Patrick Feaster – Sound Media Historian: Lead Researcher, First Sounds Initiative

Moderator
Yuri Shimoda – Supervisor of Preservation Services, Warner Bros. Discovery

Presented by the UCSB Library as part of the Early Recordings Initiative (ERI). The ERI is focused on the acquisition, conservation, maintenance, digitization, and study of the earliest and rarest early sound recordings. These records are primarily brown way cylinders but also include other early formats.

Register for the In-Person Event
Register for the Virtual Event