New Issue of a Quaker Arts Journal — Now Online

Can art help us get through (and bear witness in) hard times? 

The Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts (aka FQA) thinks so. A new example is the just-published issue of FQA’s journal, Types & Shadows, (aka T&S) online right now, right here.

T&S was launched in 1996, the new issue is #101, for Autumn 2024. In its pages you’ll find stunning color photography, striking poetry, a historical Quaker novel excerpt and arts reporting.

For a long time, Friends shunned the arts (more on this here, in FQA‘s free online pamphlet Beyond Uneasy Tolerance ).
But today the arts seem to be thriving among us.

This is always good news. (An archive of earlier T&S issues back into the 1990s is here.)  But it could be even better in hard times. In 2017, FQA sponsored a project, “The Art of Fearlessness,”  as a response in a similarly turbulent period. Continue reading New Issue of a Quaker Arts Journal — Now Online

How Pizza, Porn & Public Executions Made Good Politics in North Carolina

Every Democrat who won a state-level race in North Carolina this week ought to be tossing  at least a fiver into a common hat.

Then that wad of bills should be plunked down at Greensboro’s greasiest pizza parlor, to have at several dozen steamy pies delivered to the front porch of Chez Mark Robinson, topped by an oversize “Thank You” card. On it will be a PS hinting broadly that Robinson should consider making a second run at the state house in 2028.

That’s a helluva lot of pepperoni, but the social media posts unearthed in the campaign indicate that Robinson could handle it, especially if he resumes his particularly spicy diversions to fill his impending surplus of free time. Continue reading How Pizza, Porn & Public Executions Made Good Politics in North Carolina

My Secret Post-Election Plan: Celebration?? Or Consolation??

I’m still not making predictions about the election’s outcome. And I’m so over searching for the hidden meanings in polls.  My record of not answering the non-Hurricane flood of robocalls remains unbroken. Not least, I voted two weeks — seems like two months — ago.

So now there’s only one big question hanging over the official end of this endless campaign season, namely:

What am I gonna do when we have a winner?

I think I’ve found my answer. It’s in a compact box in the cupboard, that turned up at a nearby market: the key ingredient for a forbidden feast.

It’s something I’ve been waiting for a long time. So if the post- voting wrangling lasts til January 19, 2025, I think I can hold out that much longer. (After that, we’ll have to see.) Or if I get trapped in a hundred-hour traffic backup between Niagara Falls and the Canadian border, all bets are off.

But enough of such catastrophizing: time for a bit of untrammeled fantasy: Continue reading My Secret Post-Election Plan: Celebration?? Or Consolation??

Quote of the Month: “It’s the First Amendment, stupid”

Walker was named by Barack Obama in 2018.

[NOTE: the CNN Business report cited below deals with an abortion rights vote coming in Florida. But this blog post, while not discounting the importance of that issue, is focused on a judge in a related lawsuit. More specifically, on a ruling he issued last week. Even more, on a five-word summary of the basis for the decision, which echoes like a thunderclap. The rest is needful context, but the aphorism will, I believe, be what is remembered long after the details have receded into the mists.]

. . . “It’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

That’s what a federal judge wrote Thursday (October 17) as he sided with local TV stations in an extraordinary dispute over a pro-abortion rights television ad. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida granted a temporary restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general after the state health department threatened to bring criminal charges against broadcasters airing the ad.[/caption]

Continue reading Quote of the Month: “It’s the First Amendment, stupid”

Campaign Notes Tuesday Oct. 22, 2024

 

Early Voting – NC -as of 10-22-2024

 

Boston Herald

Biden lays into Trump during New Hampshire stop

By MATTHEW MEDSGER mmedsger@nullbostonherald.com | Boston Herald
PUBLISHED: October 22, 2024

President Joe Biden was in New Hampshire on Tuesday to spread the word about his administration’s work to lower the price of prescription drugs, but he also used the visit as a chance to offer a stark warning about a potential second Trump White House.

Biden joined Vermont’s Independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at NHTI Community College in Concord, for an invite-only afternoon event where the president laid out his thoughts on the choice that voters face this November.

Continue reading Campaign Notes Tuesday Oct. 22, 2024