Playgroups and Children’s Activities have combined with new leaders, Ashley Hatfield and Brittany Miller, organizing fun ways to get together each month. If you are on Facebook and not yet a member of the “Holliston Newcomers & Neighbors Playgroup” group, please join us there! We will have a calendar of our events and local events pinned to the top of the group so you can always check to see what’s going on each week. The link to join is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hnnplaygroups

With the holidays in mind, November will feature just two activities. On Friday, November 12th between 11am-1pm we will be at Altitude Trampoline Park in Franklin for their Junior Jump (ages 6 and under). You can find more information and purchase discounted tickets here: https://altitudefranklin.com/junior-jump/

And on Tuesday the 16th we will be meeting at the Choate Park playground in Medway at 10am. You can text or call Ashley at 617-281-2609 to find the group. We’d love to see as many of you as possible so we can learn what you’d like to do over the coming months and what schedules work best!

Ashley & Brittany
Children’s Playgroups/Activities Committee
Ashley Hatfield   ashleyjbenoit@gmail.com  Phone: 617-281-2609

Brittany Miller   brittanyacronin@gmail.com

We hope you will join us on Thursday, November 18 at 7:30pm when we will meet up, catch up, and discuss this month’s book, The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. BYO beverage and snacks and join us on zoom! Registration will be required to receive the meeting link so please check out the book club Facebook page or email one of the club co-chairs (see below).
 
As always, HNN club members will find titles on reserve at the Holliston library about one month before the meeting. Look in the book club section or ask the librarian for help in finding them.
Looking ahead, we will take our usual break in December and will share our 2022 line up with you in next month’s newsletter.

 “From Kristin Hannah, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone, comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America's most defining eras -- the Great Depression.”

“Texas. 1921: A time of abundance. Elsa Wolcott meets Rafe Martinelli and changes the direction of her life. Her only choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. 1934: Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. Elsa Martinelli, like so many of her neighbors, must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life.” -summary from MLN website.
 
Cindy and Sue, Book Club Co-Chairs
Cindy Carr  carr.cynthiad@gmail.com
Sue Hatton  hncbookclub@outlook.com

Happy Fall!
 
September turned out to be a busy month for HNN! We had a booth at Celebrate Holliston thanks to our booth volunteers, an in-person Ladies Escape thanks to Jennifer Mott & Timea Kovacs, and of course, we always have Book Club thanks to Sue Hatton and Cindy Carr.
 
The fundraising committees have continued to discuss what fundraisers make sense in our current environment, and thanks to Julianne Catlin (and hopefully the weather), the Pumpkin Rail Trail walk will be back! But remember, since there were no in-person fundraiser family events this past spring, our HNN Community Grant Fund will still run low for any 2022 grants. To help make up the difference, you can always contribute directly to the Grant Fund here at https://hollistonnewcomers.org/Donate or mail a check to  Holliston Newcomers & Neighbors, PO Box 6586, Holliston MA 01746 (identify it is for the Grant Fund).
 
For more great news, Ashley Hatfield and Brittany Miller have volunteered to be the Children’s Activities/Playgroups coordinators. We want to thank them for stepping up, as well as Julianne Catlin and Christel DiPippo for their past work on these committees. Ashley & Brittany are deep into the planning, so look for more from them in the coming months!
 
Looking forward to seeing you at future Newcomers events!

Debbie
President
Debbie Colburn   president.hnn@gmail.com

Let’s enjoy the beauty of nature and get together for an easy fall hike at Noon Hill Reservation in Medfield, MA on Sunday, October 17th starting at 3:00 pm. We’ll meet at the Noon Hill Road parking lot and go for an approximately two-mile hike. After that, we will head over to Nosh and Grog in Medfield and have some appetizers and drinks. Please note that parking is free but limited to 15 cars.
 
The trail map can be found here: https://thetrustees.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/NoonHill_Shattuck_MedfieldRhododendron_TrailMap_2020.pdf.
Directions to Noon Hill Reservation: https://thetrustees.org/place/noon-hill/
 
Please RSVP to Timea:at: timusch@yahoo.com

We hope you will join us on Wednesday, October 20 at 7:30 pm when we will meet up, catch up, and discuss this month’s book, The Storyteller’s Secret by Sejal Badani. BYO beverage and snacks and join us on Zoom! Registration will be required to receive the meeting link, so please check out the book club Facebook page or email one of the club co-chairs (see below).
 
Looking ahead, we will be reading The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah in November and will take our usual break in December. As always, HNN club members will find titles on reserve at the Holliston library about one month before the meeting. Look in the book club section or ask the librarian for help in finding them.


“From the bestselling author of Trail of Broken Wings comes an epic story of the unrelenting force of love, the power of healing, and the invincible desire to dream. Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family's past. Intoxicated by the sights, smells, and sounds she experiences, Jaya becomes an eager student of the culture. But it is Ravi--her grandmother's former servant and trusted confidant--who reveals the resilience, struggles, secret love, and tragic fall of Jaya's pioneering grandmother during the British occupation. Through her courageous grandmother's arrestingly romantic and heart-wrenching story, Jaya discovers the legacy bequeathed to her and a strength that, until now, she never knew was possible.”  Summary by Syndetics.com 

Cindy and Sue
Book Club Co-Chairs 
Cindy Carr   carr.cynthiad@gmail.com
Sue Hatton   hncbookclub@outlook.com

We had great fun at Celebrate Holliston this year! Central Street was filled with people, and many came to our booth to find out more about HNN and gave their emails for more information. Thanks to all who volunteered to help at the booth. 

There are many newcomers to Holliston, so if you have a new neighbor - say Hi and let them know what a great organization we have!

For membership questions - please email 2ndVP.HollistonNewcomers@gmail.com

Welcome to a new membership year for HNN.
 
Hope everyone had a great summer and are ready to get back into the swing of things. We anticipate this year to still be a little unique but certainly more open than the past year has been. HNN even ventured out this summer at the Summer Concerts - it felt good to be amongst our community again.
 
And yes - I’m back for Year #3 (per Bylaws 2021) as President. Here’s a little background for those new to HNN. My husband Craig and I moved to Holliston from Natick in 1992 with our two boys Matthew & Patrick (who are now 34 & 30  - yikes!). I worked as a software engineer in a few high tech companies throughout my career. While I was working, I volunteered with Holliston Historical Society and was a Boy Scout Merit Badge counselor. When I retired from EMC in 2014, I started looking for different volunteer opportunities starting with Project Just Because in Hopkinton (still volunteering) and then joined Holliston Newcomers & Neighbors in 2016. After volunteering at events and joining a couple of committees, I became Membership VP followed by President. So as you can see, our motto of ‘You don’t have to be new to be a newcomer” is true.
 
Hope you are looking forward to our new year of fun as much as I am.
 
Debbie Colburn
President
president.hnn@gmail.com

Our first Ladies Escape is next weekend!

Want to join us?

On Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021, join the Ladies of HNN on another escape to https://lacantinawinery.com/!  We'll sip some Italian wines outside and relax together with light snacks and conversation.  Our tentative meet-up time will be 1:00 p.m., but we can adjust based on a general consensus. 

Please RSVP to hncladiesescape@gmail.com
 
Cheers!
Jennifer and Timea
Ladies Escape Co-Chairs

Please save the date for our ‘Welcome Back’, first meeting of the year on Wednesday, September 15 at 7:30pm when we will meet up, catch up, and discuss this month’s book, The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett. BYO beverage and snacks and join us on zoom! Registration will be required to receive the meeting link so please check out the book club Facebook page or email one of the club co-chairs (see below).
 
At our June meeting we selected titles to read for the fall and look forward to adding more titles to our reading list for 2022. Currently in our que are, The Story Tellers Secret by Sejal Badani, for October, and The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah in November. As always, HNN club members will find titles on reserve at the Holliston library about one month before the meeting Look in the book club section or ask the librarian for help in finding them.

"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing."--Provided by publisher.
 
Cindy and Sue, Book Club Co-Chairs
Cindy Carr  carr.cynthiad@gmail.com
Sue Hatton  hncbookclub@outlook.com

As our membership year comes to a close and we look back on a unique year, I can certainly say how proud I am to be part of such a great organization filled with fun and caring members.  With all the uncertainty swirling around us, we still came together and fulfilled our civic, social, and community mission.
 
We successfully coordinated a donation drive for both Thanksgiving Baskets and Easter Baskets supporting Holliston Pantry Shelf patrons as well as Thanksgiving Meals for Seniors supporting the Holliston Senior Center. We stayed in touch through our Book Club and Ladies Escapes including our annual holiday party with a no-contact yankee swap, a cross-fit training session, an instructional baking night for Valentine’s Day (those brownies were decadent), and a tea tasting with instruction given from Hawaii! And the children of our membership even enjoyed a number of virtual get-togethers with a show-and-tell your favorite toy as well as a Halloween costume event. I want to thank our Executive Board and the Committee Members who made all this possible.
 
Hope to see you at our last activities of the year coming up in June. There may be some opportunities to get out into the community this summer, but look for HNN to ramp back up in the fall!
 
I hope the summer brings you lots of fun in the sun!

Debbie
President
Debbie Colburn   president.hnn@gmail.com