Category Archives: Quaker Education

A Cautionary Tale and an Inspiration? The “Life of Quaker Service” of Annice carter

Finishing the new book Annice Carter’s Life of Quaker Service, my first query was: What if Annice Carter had ever learned to make bagels? Could that have changed history in the Middle East?

Annice in Middle Eastern dress.

She had the training and experience. With her college degree in Home Economics, cooking, including for large groups, was one of her many skills. And she was well aware of the implications of food for building community in diverse cultural settings.

Besides being a cook, Annice was a teacher, then Jill-of-(almost) all-trades, and later Principal of the Friends Girls School in Ramallah Palestine (started by New England Friends in the 1880s, and established as an elite  school for Palestinian students).

Continue reading A Cautionary Tale and an Inspiration? The “Life of Quaker Service” of Annice carter

Klan Rising: Are The Media (& the Law) Finally Going to Pay Attention? (And, How About Quakers?)

[NOTE: Kudos to the Post & Timothy Egan. The good news here is that when the Klan faced the Law for real, the law won. But in its bloody heyday, in the 1920s & after, it was repeatedly abetted by the connivance, corruption or cowardice of those charged with upholding it.

The bad news also includes something Egan neglects: the widespread Quaker connection. Indiana, the mass Klan’s heartland, was also the state with the most Quakers after Pennsylvania. And Indiana Quakers joined the Klan in droves (also elsewhere). The head of the hugely influential Klan Women’s unit was a prominent Quaker pastor.
Continue reading Klan Rising: Are The Media (& the Law) Finally Going to Pay Attention? (And, How About Quakers?)

Well, FU to Friends University: you Flunked the Freedom of Expression Exam Big Time.

Someday, I’m thinking, there will be a historic marker on (or near) the campus of Friends University in Wichita, Kansas.

Caitlyn Fox, Free Speech Advocate.

And if I last long enough to see it go up, I gotta take a selfie standing next to it. And if I’m really lucky, maybe Caitlyn Fox will take one with me.

I’ll get to Caitlyn in a minute. That Wichita historic marker won’t be  about me, but it will point to where my Quaker journalistic “career” started, in late June of 1977. I lived a year there one week, four and a half decades ago, and from recent reports it seems some things there haven’t changed a bit in those 45 years. Continue reading Well, FU to Friends University: you Flunked the Freedom of Expression Exam Big Time.

Remembering Friend Martha Schofield & Her Courageous Leading

It was a great day for an escape. Maybe not such a great day to die, but for some there was no escaping that.

Imagine we were in Aiken, South Carolina: a pretty town, near Augusta and the Georgia border, with a fine mild climate (headed for the low fifties today, February first, while much of the rest of the US freezes and shovels out).

But we’re visiting there in 1916. Aiken’s climate is a major selling point for the town. It has numerous hotels which attract well-heeled Yankees fleeing the deep freeze of northern winters, and even the heat of summer, plus a railroad to bring them and various cargoes up and down the Southeast. Continue reading Remembering Friend Martha Schofield & Her Courageous Leading

Presidential Showdown Week At Guilford: College Finalists Coming

“Predictions are hard,” said the sage yogi Berra, “especially about the future.”

I agree with that rule, and follow it, mostly.

Yet sometimes there are exceptions — predictions that are easy.

Like this one: Continue reading Presidential Showdown Week At Guilford: College Finalists Coming