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.
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.
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?
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.
[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.]
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)→