Category Archives: Arts: Blogging

"New Normal"?, 47, Accountability?, Arts: Blogging, Food, Libraries & Archives, Signs of the Times

Hegseth Headed For the Door?? I’ll Believe It When I See It

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Dow-down-900

Well, rest in peace, Pope F, but the crazy merry-go-round of news moves so fast you could have slipped away a month or two ago. But after all, you were 88.

For that matter, by mid-afternoon the stock market was down again — but only by another 900+ points; I, mean, Ho-hum, right? 401k panic is so last week.

The big late Monday news buzz was a growing swell of oddly-camouflaged, anonymously-sourced reports that the SuperLethal Crusader SecDef Pete Hegseth is on the way out.

The podcasts and news shows practically had him already being ushered out of the Pentagon by a team of Navy Seals. Was that a champagne cork I heard pop? Continue reading Hegseth Headed For the Door?? I’ll Believe It When I See It →

"New Normal"?, 47, Activism, Antiwar activism, Arts: Blogging, Bible Study, Black & White & Other Colors, Carolina & the World, Current Affairs, DEI, Fire This Time, Hard-Core Quaker, Heroes, Iraq, Military Matters, NATO, New Cold Wars, North Carolina, Personal, Project 2025, Pushback, Quaker History, Quakers, Racism, Selma & Civil Rights, Signs of the Times, Sweden, Finland, NATO & Nukes, To Save Democracy, Ukraine, War & Peace, Zelenskyy

A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody

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Daffs, going wild again.

 

This past First Day (Quaker talk for Sunday) I Zoomed into worship in my Friends meeting, the one out in the farmland of Flyover County, North By-God Carolina, where I missed one of my favorite annual scenes there: the appearance in the back 40 of a big unruly spread of wild daffodils. But I did hear a stirring message.

No one among the elders knows when or by whom the daffodils came. Their location, out behind the community building we fondly call The Hut, isn’t visible from the road, so passersby mostly miss the spread, too bad for them. Continue reading A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody →

Arts - Poetry, Arts: Blogging, Arts: Storytelling, Civil War, Cross-Generational Issues, Poets and Poetry, Quaker History, Quakers, Remarkable Friends, Virginia, Wisdom

Henry Taylor: A Quaker Poet Departs — A Holiday Read

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Late  one spring morning in 1986, I was creeping along the edge of Ox Road, Virginia route 123, driving with one hand, and shoving mail into the boxes on posts with the other.  I was a substitute rural mail carrier,  working a route just south of the seemingly nonexistent town of Fairfax Station.

FairfaxStation-VA-Sign

Beyond the mailboxes, prefab McMansions were going up on every side, as fast as the builders could hammer them together.

It was the second year of Ronald Reagan’s second term, and the woods along Ox Road were swarming with smalltime winners in the stampede for the billions  that the Gipper and his cronies were shoveling into a grand military buildup. The new settlers were devouring the woods along Ox Road like nuclear powered termites. Their contract profits were  pouring with the concrete under the rows of McMansions, markers of their status as suburban arrivistes.

My Malibu wagon, for postal work. (I didn’t wear a tie delivering the mail.)

Reagan’s frantic rearmament was meant to drive the Evil Empire of Communist Russia into bankruptcy and oblivion trying to match it.

The bankruptcy drive was ultimately successful, but the big plan soon capsized like the Titanic after the iceberg, sunk by the unexpected vigor of the aftermath:  who could have suspected that the Commies’ dark oblivion would turn out to be a den full of new monsters?

Continue reading Henry Taylor: A Quaker Poet Departs — A Holiday Read →

45, Arts: Blogging, Election 2024, MAGA, North Carolina, Politics—U. S., Trump

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

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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?? →

“New Normal”, Accountability, Anti-Communism, Arts: Blogging, Black & White & Other Colors, Carolina & the World, Divergent Friends, Kids, North Carolina, Quaker History, Quaker Theology, Quakers, Racism, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Remarkable Friends, Schools/Education, Signs of the Times, Vietnam

Part Two: Why September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month (For Quakers & Justice Seekers)

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Why September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month — Part Two

[Part One is here.]
[Part Three is Here.]
[Part Four is here.]

[In 1966, Willie Frye Jr., a Quaker pastor in Goldsboro, North Carolina, had not been active in the civil rights struggles that were convulsing much of the South in those years. But his situation was about to change.]

  1. Willie’s wife Agnes had begun working with the new HeadStart preschool program. As it was federally-funded, HeadStart was integrated, both staff and kids.  There she was approached by a Black colleague, who asked if Willie could conduct her wedding.Weddings being a pastor’s specialty, Willie was agreeable. But also cautious: He first offered to do it in their parsonage, informally. But soon the woman reported that RSVPs were piling up, more than would fit in the parsonage; could it be moved to the meetinghouse?
    Willie new such events were outside the limits  of established Jim Crow segregation. So he took that request to Goldsboro’s business meeting, which approved.Willie presided at the nuptials in the meetinghouse, and they were carried out in what Quakers call “good order.”Well, some Quakers called it good order.
    Continue reading Part Two: Why September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month (For Quakers & Justice Seekers) →