Category Archives: History

Cross-Generational Issues, Death & Dying, Democrats, Ecumenical & Interfaith, History, Politics—U. S., Remarkable People, Remember . . ., Stories - From Life & Elsewhere, Wisdom

Jimmy Carter: “Coming to the End”

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Grandson says Carter is ‘coming to the end’ in brief update about former president’s health

Michelle Shen, CNN — May 14, 2024

Jimmy Carter’s grandson said Tuesday that the former president is “coming to the end” in a brief update about the 39th president’s health.

Jimmy Carter – in church

“(My grandfather) is doing OK,” Jason Carter said at a mental health forum named in honor of his grandmother, the late former first lady Rosalynn Carter, at the Carter Center. “He has been in hospice, as you know, for almost a year and a half now, and he really is, I think, coming to the end that, as I’ve said before, there’s a part of this faith journey that is so important to him, and there’s a part of that faith journey that you only can live at the very end and I think he has been there in that space.” Continue reading Jimmy Carter: “Coming to the End” →

Black & White & Other Colors, Colleges & Education, Conservative Perspectives, Current Affairs, DEI, Hard-Core Quaker, History, Kids, Quaker Education, Quaker History, Quakers, Slavery, Stories-Quaker

They’re Making an (Anti-Woke) Example of Quakers in their “Christian” School:

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[NOTE: This prominent article mentions Quakers 12 times, 11 times favorably. What do Friends think of that?]]

Washington Post
They quit liberal public schools. Now they teach kids to be anti-‘woke.’

By Hannah Natanson — April 15, 2024

Kali and Joshua Fontanilla

Kali Fontanilla used to teach public school in California. Now she leads her own online Christian school in Florida. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA — Kali Fontanilla repeated the lesson title to herself one last time — “‘A Com-plete History of Slavery in America’” — sipped her peppermint tea and hit record.
“Hello, Exodus students,” she said, addressing the group of 90 fifth- through 12th-graders who would eventually watch the video as part of their lessons from the Exodus Institute, an online Christian K-12 school Kali and her husband founded in 2021 with the motto “Exit Public Education.” The video, which Kali was recording in her guest bedroom-turned-office, was the latest in a special enrichment program dubbed the “Young Patriots Academy,” which aims to “debunk the ‘woke’ lies taught in most public schools,” per the Exodus website.

Kali, who is half Black and half White, had a particular target that Friday: what she calls the left’s unquestioning advocacy of reparations, the theory that the government should pay restitution to descendants of enslaved Americans.
She told her virtual class they were about to learn of the Quakers, and how White members of that religion helped fight slavery. Continue reading They’re Making an (Anti-Woke) Example of Quakers in their “Christian” School: →

"Dog Days" Diversions, Arts: Music, Canada, Current Affairs, History, Revolution, War & Peace

Solar Eclipse? Meh. Wake Me When It’s Over.

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A photo of the July 10, 1972 solar eclipse in totality, taken in Siberia. My experience was a bit different.

The best part for me about the total solar eclipse I actually saw (on July 10, 1972), came several months later, in Carly Simon’s wonderfully bitter tune “You’re So Vain,” and the line about the cad she was sticking it to went to Saratoga New York for a horse race, and then:

“You flew your Lear Jet up to Nova Scotia,
To see the total eclipse of the sun . . . “

That’s what I did. Continue reading Solar Eclipse? Meh. Wake Me When It’s Over. →

Activism, Antiwar activism, Conscription/military draft, History, Israel, Israel/Hamas War, Jews & Judaism, Karma, Military Matters, Other War Notes, Palestine, Religious Issues & Conflicts, Remember . . ., Resistance, Signs of the Times, Southeast Asia, The Law — Inside & Outside it, The Military Industrial Complex, Vietnam

Flashbacks! I’m Having 1967 Anti-Draft Flashbacks! From Vietnam to Jerusalem

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Sheesh! Did somebody slip one (or two) of those “new” cure-all psychedelic pills into my low-sodium tomato juice??

Must have, because I’m having wild and weird hallucinations from —I don’t know— 1967?  They’re full of long-haired young men shouting slogans against the draft.

I can tell they’re hallucinations because other than the hair, the protesters are dressed all alike in the most un-hip getup ever:  not a tie-dye in sight, nary a scrap of paisley, and no roaches anywhere. Maybe it’s a back alley scene from the Haight-Ashbury?

Also, the slogans seem to be aimed at overthrowing the government, but they’re all in some exotic local slang that, from the accents, sounds kind of —  kind of, like, maybe, Hebrew?

I know I’m delirious because I heard one of the longhairs talking English to some TV guy, and he  insisted they’re gonna make the revolution so they can all be free to — what?? Study Tarot? “Say what?” I asked. “Dude, like, the Age of Aquarius is so over.” He just grunted and flipped me off.

I must really be having a bum trip, I figured . . . .

Continue reading Flashbacks! I’m Having 1967 Anti-Draft Flashbacks! From Vietnam to Jerusalem →

Annals of Inequality, Cross-Generational Issues, Current Affairs, History, Justice?, Minority Rule, Politics—U. S., Racism, Resistance, Selma & Civil Rights, Signs of the Times, Social Justice, To Save Democracy

Selma Alabama “Bloody Sunday” 59th Anniversary: La Lutta Continua

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Garrison Keillor: “It’s the anniversary of the first March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (1965), known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Six hundred civil rights activists left Selma to march the 54 miles to the state capitol, demonstrating for African-American voting rights.

They got six blocks before state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas.

ABC News interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary to show footage of the violence. In the blink of a television set, national public opinion about civil rights shifted. Demonstrations broke out across the country.

Two weeks later, the March from Selma made it to Montgomery, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, federal court protection, and these words from President Lyndon Johnson: “There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.” When they got to Montgomery, they were 25,000 strong.

In response, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. That law enfranchised millions of excluded Americans. It made possible the election of three presidents: Carter, Clinton & Obama.

The American right worked relentlessly to roll back the law. In 2013 the Supreme Court began to gut it, and vote suppression has become a legislative crusade in much of the country.

The struggle continues.

 

More on Selma & the struggle here.