But several times I fell in love with a library, and the experience repeatedly changed my life.
The first time came flooding back yesterday, when I saw this news report from AP:
Hegseth, AGAIN?? Sheesh, every time I turn around, he’s messing with me: this time with important memories.
“Army and Air Force libraries have been told to go through their stacks to find books related to diversity, equity and inclusion, according to new memos obtained by The Associated Press.
The orders from service leaders come about two weeks after the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, removed nearly 400 books from its library after being told by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to get rid of those that promote DEI.”
The Western Friend is continuing evidence (tho it’s still news to some) that there is lively Quaker periodical publishing outside Philadelphia. When the editor learned about Tell It Slant, she didn’t hesitate: Friend Mitchell Santine Gould’s review, the first, was included in its current online newsletter edition.
Mitch is a distinguished independent historian with a theological bent. His special interest in the quasi-Quaker poet Walt Whitman has produced many impressive essays, including Walt Whitman: 10 Misconceptions, Least to Greatest, which is here, and very much worth a look (but read this review first . . .)
Reviewed by Mitchell Santine Gould, Multnomah Monthly Meeting (6/19/2024):
Emma and Chuck at a 2017 history roundtable at Earlham School of Religion.
Emma Lapsansky-Werner offers us a sprawling biography of Quaker journalist, activist, and gadfly Chuck Fager, in Tell It Slant. I read the first half with growing appreciation for two essential aspects of Chuck’s life. The first is his truly impressive involvement with so many historic moments in politics, society, and religion. The second, which nicely humanizes this history, is a very frank, very modest account of his own life – warts as well as triumphs. It must be rare that a biography succeeds so admirably on both aspects.
Chuck’s long experience as a professional journalist and author gives perfect clarity to his parts of the overall narrative. However, he had so much to say, that in order to marshal some flow and organization to so many anecdotes, memories, and histories, he was lucky that Emma Lapsansky-Werner extended her invaluable editorial contributions into the role of co-author.
As she put it, “In crafting this narrative, I have echoed Chuck’s scaffolding, weaving my spin together with many of Chuck’s own words; biography is interwoven with autobiography.” Although Dr. Lapsansky-Werner is an academic — a professor of Quaker history — she delivered the kind of powerfully clear and simple journalistic prose that seamlessly matched Chuck’s own. I think given all the constraints, Lapsansky-Werner acquitted herself well.
We’re no longer in an age of book-reading — info-snacking is more like it — and one might set the book aside rather read the whole thing at once. But should you resume in the middle of the book, its humor, charm, interest, and insight will even more deeply impress you. Tell It Slant is inspiring and above all, highly relevant. In addition to his decades of involvement with Quaker faith, practice, and internal politics, Chuck really kept his finger on the pulse of American society and politics — precisely because of his investment in his faith, of course.
When the stories are this compelling, you want the book to be perfect. Viewing Friend Chuck as the modern-day equivalent of history’s Publick Friend, I wanted him to be the exponent for liberal Quaker faith as I understand it. I hoped to see a conscious allegiance to the key innovation of Quakerism: its Inner Light theology. Informal polling that I did years ago revealed that Friends today have reduced the doctrine of Inner Light to little more than a sentimental “that of God in everyone.”
But historically, the Inner Light was recognized as a secret, silent hotline to the Divine, quite specifically as a source of guidance in times of an ethical crisis. Crucially, it was seen as capable of over-riding the two ubiquitous avenues for all moral supervision: the Bible and the clergy. Chuck mentions the Inner Light only twice, exclusively in anecdotes about an old Quaker lady he once admired. In reality, the Light is the power behind the often-praised Quaker virtue known as “discernment.”
Mitchell Santine Gould
Having said all this, let me turn to the controversial proposition that Quakerism can be succinctly described as SPICE: simplicity, peaceableness, integrity, community, and equality. I could write a whole sequel review showing how Chuck hits quite robustly on all these cylinders. And that ultimately trivializes all my criticisms of his book. I believe every Quaker should read it, and non-Quakers will also be deeply inspired, as I have been, by it.
Tom Hamm, applauded as he concludes service as Clerk of the Faculty at Earlham College on the Eve of his retirement, May 2023.
Thomas Hamm was the subject of many tributes and high praise at Earlham College this month, as he retired from more than three decades as a professor of Quaker history and director of the school’s noted archives, built around an extensive Quaker collection.
I was among those who gathered during the weekend of May 19-20 at the Earlham School of Religion, for “Quakerrama,” an extended hybrid tribute to his scholarship at the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
In 1848 Quaker farmer Jonathan Roberts moved his family south from New Jersey to a new farm in northern VA in 1848. He arrived with high hopes and even higher ideals.
The new spread adjoined George Washington’s Mt. Vernon plantation, already a historic site for the still-young nation. Yet with its distinguished lineage, the property brought its characteristic issues: the fields had been exploited to grow tobacco, which brought quick profits but depleted the soil; and the white owners had been corrupted by maintaining themselves and their culture on a system of enslaved labor and chronic indebtedness.
The more scarred the land became and the deeper in debt many planters sank, the more belligerent they had become in their system’s defense, threatening rebellion and war if it were at all disturbed or upset.
By acquiring land among them, Roberts intended to change all that: renew the soil and make it sustainably profitable; do so entirely with free labor; thereby they would show the slaveowners a way out of debt and the thrall of their brutal human commerce. This would undermine and banish the slavery system, not overnight, but by invincible example and thus without falling prey to the scourge of war. Continue reading The “Quaker Scout”: Highlighting A Very Relevant Piece of Quaker History→
We’re no longer in an age of book-reading — info-snacking is more like it — and one might set the book aside rather read the whole thing at once. But should you resume in the middle of the book, its humor, charm, interest, and insight will even more deeply impress you. Tell It Slant is inspiring and above all, highly relevant. In addition to his decades of involvement with Quaker faith, practice, and internal politics, Chuck really kept his finger on the pulse of American society and politics — precisely because of his investment in his faith, of course.
