Category Archives: Current Affairs

Spilling The Two Secrets I Know About Garrison Keillor

In Washington DC, after a book party in The big Florida Avenue Friends Meetinghouse there. The book was a collection of stories by Russian and American writers, put together by a joint committee, and supposed to be a contribution to ending the Cold War. This Was just before Gorbachev came in and turned all that upside down. Garrison had contributed a story, and showed up at the party.
After I shook his hand, we both leaned over the refreshment table, and I Saw that it was just the two of us there for the moment; everyone else was in Scattered clusters, many of them murmuring in Russian.
I Figured I only had a couple minutes, so I pounced, and asked the question that had stayed with me all the years I had been listening tomthe show android eading his stuff.
It was the question that he & all U.S. Males of his generation had to answer. Including me. (If you’re of that generation, or think you’re familiar with it (us), think for a minute and see if you can guess what it was . . . .

Carolina Quakers (A Few, at Least) Speak On HB2

As a Quaker Christian community, we at Spring Friends Meeting remember Jesus’ first public words. In the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4), he said he was sent to preach good news to the poor, deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty to those who are oppressed.

We also recall his declaration that those who welcomed the stranger were in fact welcoming him (Matthew 25). At Spring Friends Meeting, we feel called to this same mission, and seek to do our small best, as way opens. As part of that effort, we now express our deep distress at the recent passage by the North Carolina legislature of what is called HB2.

This legislation is much more extensive in scope and insidious in intent than the widely publicized restroom provision.

• House Bill 2 specifically omits sexual orientation from a status that can be protected from discrimination.
• It specifically bans municipalities and other local governments from enacting locally-approved legislation such as a higher minimum wage, anti-discrimination for persons who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, safe-havens for undocumented immigrants or any measure which the State deems contradictory to its arbitrary will.
• The law also removes the ability for persons to use state courts for pursuing redress for discrimination.

We acknowledge the sincere fear that has induced many to support the law solely on the basis of its bathroom provision, and likely without knowledge of the bill’s other clauses. We believe this fear has been used to promote a broad range of real injustices through this law.

We see this law in its entirety as meant to increase oppression, reject and stigmatize those, who some see as strangers, and increase hardship for the poor and rejected.

We are even more dismayed and saddened that this action is supported by some in the name of Christianity, and what they call “religious liberty.”

Checking out “Convention-al” Wisdom

The point of the cops on bikes soon became clear. I discerned several:

–First, the bikes looked harmless. Not like those urban tanks or armored Hummers. I fact, that was likely why it was cops who did most of the work there: cops, especially on bikes, look less threatening, less militarized than national guard troops. And it was clear that this lower-key image was important to the Dems –they didn’t want to even look like they were worried, or were under siege. (Though in fact they were ready for a siege.)

— But they were in fact very much in control of the area. I saw this demonstrated one afternoon when a protest march of undocumented young people barged into the street that passed within a block of the convention center, chanting “Undocumented! Un-Afraid!” as they pushed their way down the crowded, roadway.

Two long parallel columns of bike cops almost instantly appeared. They quickly caught up with the march. Several then walked their bikes in a line across the road behind the march. The others snaked along each side, then dismounted, and walked their bikes alongside the curbs on either side of the march.

A crowd gathered on each sidewalk and shuffled along with them, myself included. The march was illegal; the marchers un-documented: were they all going to get busted? Would there be trouble? An instant forest of raised arms appeared, pointing scores of phone cameras at the scene, videorecording it all — or at least petting images of all the other raised phones in the way. (I saw this, but didn’t get any usable photos; I wasn’t close enough to stick my camera through the electronic shrubbery.)

The march approached the corner of the cross street that led, half a block down, to the entrance of the convention center. Ground Zero. Tension rose both in the street, and in the slow-moving crowd.

But the cops on each side were ready: Stepping on their bikes, they pedaled quickly ahead to the intersection. There they stopped and formed into a tight double line across the corners of the intersection. Then, at a command, they