Playing the Lottery Winter 1969, Boston. I was driving a cab at night, while attending Harvard Divinity School. I had run through some scholarship and loan money, and needed cash; Christmas and all that. But I also thought it would be a “good experience” for a wannabe writer. When I turned my cab onto St. … Continue reading Another Quaker Holiday Story: Playing the Lottery
For a reporter, even a retired one, there’s a charge of adrenaline in a scoop — getting a story before other journalists. And if the scooped rival is the Big Kahuna, aka the New York Times, there’s an extra kick to it. So I’m preening this morning, after noticing that the august Times, fresh off stuffing another … Continue reading Scooping the Times, With Grim Satisfaction
Some liberal pundits are predicting a tidal wave of backlash against the leaked SCOTUS decision to reverse Roe & Casey, the decisions that have made abortion a right since 1973, forty-nine years ago. (The full text of the draft decision is here.) I’ve written that, while a Roe supporter, I’m not at all sure any … Continue reading Quakers & the End of Abortion Rights: A Very Mixed Bag
My fate was heavily shaped by a small card that came in the mail in late September 1965. That card, and fate, are back on my mind now, 57 years later. I was in Selma, Alabama when the card arrived, still working with the civil rights movement. A few weeks earlier the endurance, courage and … Continue reading A Quaker Reconsiders His Peace Testimony
SPECIAL FOR WOMEN’s HISTORY MONTH — NOW BANNED BY PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDER It was a great day for an “overground railroad” 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 … Continue reading Remembering Friend Martha Schofield & Her Courageous Leading