Carry It On! Remembering 1963 Dreaming 2063

The Echoes of Peace Choir's November 17, 2013 concert and community sing!

Fall 2013 Choir Season Begins

We will be starting up our fall 2013 season on Tuesday, September 3, 6:30-8:15pm. This season we will be meeting at Myers-Wilkins Elementary School in their music room. The address is 1027 N. 8th Avenue East, Duluth (formerly Grant Elementary School).

More details on this web page:
http://www.sarathomsen.com/choir.html

The Heart of Echoes of Peace

The heart of Echoes of Peace is bringing people together through song

Story, puppets and poems, paintings and pictures

To sing in harmonious, cacophonous community together

The heart of bringing people together to sing is witnessing what happens, 

Beholding what begins, sensing what simmers

When a song is sung collectively

When we—in all our splendid, wondrous, irritating, frustrating and

glorious diversity come together to sing as One Voice.

The singing is not about the song

The song is a vehicle, instrument, passageway

To propel us, move us, shake us, beckon and break us

open to wander where our hearts want to lead

Present, Open, Aware, Engaged, Caring

Able to witness the wondrous and horrific world

 Around, within, and about us

The horrific world:

Where children are gunned down in public school,

Where entire peoples are targets of genocide—

Halabja, Auschwitz, Sandy Lake, Wounded Knee

A world where people are raped, lynched, tortured, kidnapped, killed

For their color of skin, religion, gender, sexual orientation.

Clayton, Jackson, McGhie. Matthew Shephard.

Homelessness, hunger, poverty, prisons

War, waste, oil spilling, honor killing

Invasion, denigration, degradation

There is no end to the bad news.

Our hearts turn to stone, shell-shocked souls despair

Stunned, inert, immobilized

Echoing a song is somewhere to begin

A song is a gardener

It picks up a shovel and starts to dig.

Tenderly tips the blade into the burnt and brazed, hard as hell,

Crusted, cranky, depleted, impenetrable soil

at the surface of the heart

Tosses and turns over and around all the scraps, remnants, remains,

All the crap, cruelty, and craziness

Amending, softening, sifting

Activating, aerating, enlivening

A song is a seed

It is not derailed, discouraged, deterred by gated, guarded hearts

It finds every shortcut, crack and crevice

It flits, floats, meanders, winds, works it’s way in

Wakes us up to what is and what can be

It will knock down the wall and fashion a bridge from sundered stone

Enter the soul’s secret garden

Subtly scatter seed

A song will not change a policy, re-write the laws, topple dictators,

End discrimination, stop deforestation

House the homeless, feed the hungry, heal the land

The singing of songs, the piping of poems,

The drumming, dancing, delving, digging, delighting, daring,

Beautiful boldness of art

Will merely crack open the hard shell

 of the dormant heart

And hearts awakened

are unstoppable

May a song, a story, a poem, a painting, a puppet

Tap you on the shoulder

Trickle to your heart

Invite you to Dance

Ripple, rhyme, resound

a pebble tossed

an echo of peace

Sara Thomsen, Artistic Director

Echoes of Peace

Singing Delegation to Rania departs

The 22 member friendship singing delegation to Rania, Iraqi Kurdistan is en route! We've made it to Minneapolis. Next stop Amsterdam, then Istanbul, then Erbil, Iraq. Concert Sunday night in Rania!

We will post updates along the way.

Singing Delegation to Rania, Kurdistan

Echoes of Peace

Using music and the arts to build and bridge informed, 

engaged and caring communities

Dear Friends,

We are excited to announce that an Echoes of Peace singing delegation will be traveling to Rania, Iraqi Kurdistan, in the northern part of Iraq, March 15-24, 2013. Co-sponsored by Echoes of Peace and the Duluth-Rania Friendship Exchange Project, the 23 member delegation will continue the Project's efforts begun in 2009 to build friendship and reconciliation between these two cities and countries.

In the spirit of citizen based diplomacy, the Duluth-Rania Friendship Exchange Project endeavors to establish a tangible friendship based on respect and understanding through cultural and educational exchange between our two cities. Through the recognition of the special gifts that each city offers the world, we strive to create a more peaceful global community.

The mission of Echoes of Peace is to inspire awareness, action and reflection on critical social issues using music and the arts to build and bridge informed, engaged and caring communities. The singing delegation is a unique opportunity to join the peace building efforts of these two Duluth based organizations. Brooks Anderson, previous delegate to Rania and Echoes of Peace Choir member, and Sara Thomsen, Echoes of Peace Director, are co-leading the delegation. We seek your support as we move forward!

Four years ago the Duluth-Rania Friendship Exchange was launched with a Kurdish dinner as a fundraiser and send-off for the first delegation to Rania. The Echoes of Peace Choir spring concert was a benefit for that first group of six (and the concert recording traveled with them). Since that time, there have been two delegations from Rania to Duluth, and another from Duluth to Rania (pronounce “RAH-nia”).

For this third delegation to Rania, we have set a goal of raising $20,000 to help defray travel expenses and provide scholarships. The travel cost is about $2,000 a person. To support this project and learn more about it we invite you to attend our fundraising Kurdish dinner on February 8. You’ll find full details about the dinner below!

If you can’t make the February 8 dinner…

You can still lend your support by a sending a donation to “Echoes of Peace” (put “singing delegation” in the memo). You can give a donation to support the delegation in general or you may wish to support a specific delegate that is a friend, or family member. Just include a note with your request. Note that donations for the delegation in general (that are not person specific) are tax deductible.

Donate online at GiveMN.org or mail donations to: 

Echoes of Peace, 6476 S Range Line Rd, South Range, WI 54874.

Thanks for your consideration and support!

2013 Echoes of Peace/Duluth-Rania Friendship Exchange Singing Delegation

Brooks Anderson, Sara Thomsen, Janine Bjerklie, Alana Butler, Angie Frank, Beth Holst, Bonnie Keeling, Carol Kondrath, Coral McDonnell, Eileen Gannon, Eric Anderson, Faris Keeling, Gudrun Witrak, Judy Isaacson, Kathryn Mongan-Rallis, Lauri Isaacson, Nathan Holst, Paula Pedersen, Peg Apka, Peter Wodrich, Trish O’Keefe, Wendy Ruhnke, Wendy Wright

YOU ARE INVITED to DINNER Friday FEBUARY 8

Back by popular demand, there will be a Kurdish dinner fundraiser

Prepared by Koresh and Jill Lakhan (and team)

Friday, February 8 at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 835 W College Steet.

Dinner will be at 6:00pm with a 5:30 social time and silent auction preview.

There will be a short program during the dinner, including Echoes of Peace harmonies. 

To make a dinner reservation (required), 

RSVP to Wendy Ruhnke at 218-491-4022 or ruhnkews@aol.com

Thank you in advance for your help in making the March 2013

Echoes of Peace Singing Delegation possible!

Duluth-Rania Friendship Exchange Background

In 2002, Michele Naar-Obed began working with the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a human rights-violence reduction organization, with an on-the-ground team in the country of Iraq. In 2006, the team moved from Baghdad to Suleimaniya in the Kurdish north of Iraq. Michele established a strong friendship with the Director of the Rania Youth Center. The director shared the deep feelings of isolation that the people of Iraq have felt from the world community. With the fall of the Baa’th Party led by Saddam Hussein, the people of Iraq now have the opportunity to enter into the world community.

In 2007, Michele returned to the Kurdish north of Iraq with a request from many Duluth citizens; “Is there a city in Iraq that would like to form a grass-roots, people to people relationship with the city of Duluth.” When the question was posed to the Director of the Rania Youth Center, it was received with overwhelming joy and hope that Duluth and Rania would form this partnership.

First steps: In May 2009, the first Duluth delegation visited the city of Rania. The delegation of 6 was heartily welcomed by the city of Rania, from elected officials to the ordinary citizen. In the 7 days the delegation spent in Rania, they toured educational, governmental and human rights facilities.  Since then, two delegations from Rania visited Duluth (2010 & 2012) and another delegation of 3 visited Rania (2011). It is our hope that we will continue these delegations focusing on cultural and educational exchange. We are committed to broadening our circle of friends in our human family where ideas, talents and wisdom can be shared in hopes of making the world a better place.

Visit “Duluth-Rania Friendship-Exchange” on Facebook

Echoes of Peace Background

In 2002, Sara Thomsen began the Echoes of Peace Choir to sing as part of the Art of Peace event in Duluth, a local response to the events of 9/11/01 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Art of Peace event, held annually for six years, brought varied artistic expressions together to inspire and instigate creativity and peacemaking. The Echoes of Peace Choir continues to grow and evolve, presenting biannual concerts and singing at various community events throughout the year. The non-audition choir currently has a membership of about seventy-five voices.

The nonprofit organization Echoes of Peace was formed in 2012, marking the 10^th anniversary of the choir and continuing to grow its mission to inspire awareness, action and reflection on critical social issues using music and the arts to build and bridge informed, engaged and caring communities.

More about Echoes of Peace on Facebook 

& on Sara Thomsen’s website (www.sarathomsen.com)

Who wrote "The Book of Love?"

The Echoes of Peace Choir, directed by Sara Thomsen, will present its fall concert “The Book of Love” at 7pm, Saturday, November 10, at Sacred Heart Music Center, 201 West Fourth Street in Duluth. Admission is a $15-20 suggested donation at the door. Proceeds from the concert will benefit Together for Youth, LGBTQ support group.

The concert, featuring love songs and songs about love, is a celebration and affirmation of the right to love—and if you choose, to marry—the one you love. The concert follows on the heels of the MN Marriage Amendment (on the Nov 6 ballot). Echoes of Peace is one of over 100 Minnesota arts organizations that have joined Minnesota Citizens for the Arts to voice opposition to the marriage amendment.

In addition to the 70+ member Echoes of Peace Choir, director Sara Thomsen and her partner, Paula Pedersen, will be featured singers at the performance. “As a singer, I am often asked to sing at weddings,” says Thomsen. “The irony of singing songs to honor something to which I am not legally entitled—in Minnesota—is not lost on me. I wanted to respond to what is truly a hurtful amendment by singing love songs and songs about love that are a blast to sing, and to do so with my ‘unlawfully’ wedded partner (though we are legally married in Iowa!), in community with others, and in clear affirmation, recognition and honoring of all loving and committed relationships. Including my own.”

Other special guests for the performance include Twin Cities based vocal artist Sarah M. Greer and pianist Ryan Frane, UMD Jazz Studies Director. Songs include Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” The Monotone’s “Book of Love”, Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and many more.

Concert proceeds will benefit Together for Youth which has served hundreds of LGBTQ and allied youth in the greater Duluth area for over 17 years. A social and support group, LSS (Lutheran Social Services) Together For Youth has met weekly throughout this time at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in the Central Hillside neighborhood. Other services Together for Youth offers include one-on-one support, advocacy, educational outreach and maintenance of an LGBTQ Youth Resource Directory. A focus of the group is exploration of queer history with intention to foster engagement with our region’s LGBTQ elders.

The Echoes of Peace Choir is a non-audition community choir motivated by its mission to inspire awareness, action and reflection among choir and audience members on critical social issues, using music and the arts to build and bridge informed, engaged and caring communities.

You Are My Other Me

[The following is the summary of how "You Are My Other Me" became the theme for our 10th Anniversary Concert, which was held April 22, 2012 at Sacred Heart Music Center, Duluth. Proceeds for the concert went to Grant-Nettleton Community Collaborative.]

You are my other me. 

If I harm you, I harm myself. If I respect you, I respect myself.

The Mayan concept of “In Lak Esh”

In January 2012, as this 10th anniversary choir season began, a news report from Tucson, Arizona caught my attention. The Mexican American Studies Program had been deemed “illegal,” and must be discontinued by February 1. If they did not comply, the school district would face loss of funding. And so it was. Books were taken off shelves, boxed up, put away in storage under lock & key.

I scanned through the list of “banned books” and discovered I had one on my own shelves: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire, Brazilian educator. I put the other titles on my wish list: Critical Race Theory, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures, edited by Elizabeth Martinez, Message to Aztlán, by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales, Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement, by F Arturo Rosales, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuña, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, by Bill Bigelow.

I dug a little deeper to find out what sorts of things this program, deemed illegal, was teaching. I should be working on learning the tenor and bass part to that one song, and the soprano and alto part to that other song so I could teach it at choir practice. But books, boxed up and taken away?

My mind flashed on a trip to Berlin years ago. I was walking across the city’s large public square Bebelplatz, with fellow musician and travel mate Hans. We stumbled across a large clear glass plate set into the cobbles beneath our feet. Startled, we bent down and peered through the glass to find a room with nothing in it but a bunch of white empty bookshelves. “They must have taken down the display,” I remember thinking. I hoped the museum and gallery we were about to visit was more up to date.

Then we saw the following words of Heinrich Heine engraved on a tiny plaque: “Das war ein vorspiel nur wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen” (“Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people”). Flipping through our travel book, we discovered we were standing on the site of the infamous Nazi book burnings. 20,000 books up in flames. I looked again at the empty shelves. I don’t remember what else I saw that day. But I remember the books. That I didn’t see.

I really should figure out what’s the best key to do that one song in, so it’s not too low for the basses this time, and I have to remember to get copies of the lyrics for that other tune. But I couldn’t focus on the music. I needed to know: What are they teaching in this Mexican American Studies Program? I stumbled upon these words by María Federico Brummer, a Tucson high school teacher:

“Our opponents claim we teach hatred of “Whites.” There’s no truth to that. Our students see the anti-Mexican sentiment in Arizona, but we teach that we are all human beings and race is a social construct used to divide us. We teach the Mayan philosophy of “In lak ech,” which means “You are my other me.” We ask students to look into each other’s eyes. What you see is your reflection. We teach that human beings should not just respect, but love one another.” *

Tonight we dedicate this evening of song to the Mayan philosophy of “In lak ech.” Everybody’s story is important. If I don’t learn about your story, I don’t fully know my own story, because “you are my other me.” We are linked, one to another, interconnected, inter-woven. We really should get to know ourselves better. Eat, drink, sing, tell stories. Loosen up a little, and get to know your other me.

Sara Thomsen
Artistically Distracted, Echoes of Peace Choir


* NEA(National Education Association) Journal, January 2011