Continue reading Here We Go Again: Trump vs. Transgender Soldiers
I’d prefer to ignore Memorial Day; another militaristic effusion.
But it’s not so easy. My lifetime in the U.S. has been marked throughout by war, with intermittent periods of not-war between the big ones (mostly wth secret wars going on meantime). And even though I’ve been against war for most of it, that doesn’t really erase the memories, even if mine are from much physical distance from the battlefields. Or at least, the most visible ones.
Here are two collections of images from the perch at the edges of the killing fields. They embody memories fitting for the occasion. Continue reading A Quaker Reflection on Memorial Day
Earlier this year I posted about a controversy at Friends Central School in Philadelphia, where a Palestinian Quaker, Sa’ed Atshan, was invited to visit and speak, then abruptly disinvited & the two teachers who invited him, Ariel Eure and Layla Helwa, were suspended.
The previous posts are (here, here , here & here).
The news site philly.com reported on May 10 that the two teachers have now been terminated effective June 30. Along with that decision came an invitation from the school to Sa’ed Atshan to speak at Friends Central sometime in the future, on “his personal experiences and path to peace education.”
The report added that
[The suspended teachers] were offered severance pay of $5,500, but that is contingent on their dropping a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit, said Mark Schwartz, their lawyer.
“This is a ridiculous offer,” he said. “I’d be surprised if they took it. Unlike the school, these two have some principles.”
School representatives on Tuesday declined to give a reason for the terminations.
No, really: Just today I found an unimpeachable source, shown below. I saw the outline of the plan sitting there, exposed & unguarded — and, once an investigative reporter, always an investigative reporter — scooped it up.
Opening it, in an out-of-the-way corner of the undisclosed location (disguised as the checkout line of a certain big-box retailer), I whipped out my hidden camera and snapped the key pages, which are about to be revealed here, regardless of the risks. . . . Continue reading Never Mind Armageddon: World War III Is Coming First — I’ve Seen the Secret Plan
The Carolina Friends Emergency Consultation – March 25, 2017
Spring Friends Meeting, Snow Camp NC
(For Directions, click here)
The Consultation Schedule:
Continue reading The Carolina Friends Emergency Consultation – March 25, 2017
A Marker for her Mother: A Survivor’s Journey
On October 1, 2007, several news shows in eastern North Carolina ran a story about a remarkable ceremony that was held in Fayetteville. It was a memorial for an army wife from Fort Bragg who was murdered by her husband.
The case itself was old news – 33 years old, from 1974. But only in 2007 was a marker to be placed on the victim’s grave, by her daughter.
The victim was Beryl Mitchell, killed by her Army Green Beret husband on December 1, 1974: stabbed, strangled, and dumped nude in a wooded area of Ft. Bragg. Mitchell was buried in the cemetery across from Fayetteville’s VA hospital, but without a marker. Her husband was convicted of murder and spent several years in an Army prison. Continue reading A Marker for her Mother: A Survivor’s Journey
The Party That Went On Too Long
Seat belts were only for airplanes when I was nine, in 1951. So one day I leaned over the back of the front seat, to ask a question of my mother, who was driving.
The radio was on, and a news report had just finished. The announcer had said something about the Communist Party.
This party had been mentioned before, in other news reports I had begun, just barely, to notice. We had no TV yet, so it was all scattered words without pictures, which gave rise to my question:
“Mommy,” I said, “how can a party go on so long? Continue reading The Party That Went On Too Long
The NC ACLU staff lawyer then was a very smart, genial, friendly, but “git ‘er done” pro, and after genially threatening a court fight, she negotiated a deal which got our friend and Sgt. Abe into the school there.
Let’s Salute the Flag & Stand for the Anthem — Oh, Wait!
This flag was flying over the Manzanar relocation camp in the high desert of California in 1942. Manzanar, as well as nine other camps were packed with more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans, who were taken from their homes shortly after the U.S. entered World War Two against Japan & Germany. Most lost everything they had owned.
Manzanar is now a National Historic Park. And it’s one that Quakers have a lot invested in, though not many of us know that.
Continue reading Let’s Salute the Flag & Stand for the Anthem — Oh, Wait!
Dog Days Profile: Jim Corbett, Sanctuary Prophet of Post-Desert Quakerism
Friend Jim Corbett, of Pima Meeting in Tucson, died on his Arizona ranch August 2, 2001 after a short illness. He was 67.
With his passing a quiet Quaker giant departed.
I for one am grateful to have lived in the same two centuries as he. For those who become familiar with the important strands of Quaker thought and action of our time, I believe Jim’s life and work will loom even larger with time.
Not that we’ll see a lot of monuments to him; he deserves them, but that wasn’t his way, and Quakers aren’t much for it.
But a tribute is due, and here’s mine. It’s an adaptation of a profile of Jim that was part of my book, Without Apology. Continue reading Dog Days Profile: Jim Corbett, Sanctuary Prophet of Post-Desert Quakerism