Category Archives: Remember . . .

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Tom Fox – Quaker Peaceworker Murdered in Iraq March 10, 2006

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March 10: Remember Tom Fox

March 10 — how could I forget? How dare I fail to remember?

Nineteen years and four months ago, John Stephens and I began a blog site called freethecaptivesnow.org , as both a personal vigil and a community service, compiling and posting nightly updates of reports — or mostly the lack of reports — about the fate of four peaceworkers kidnapped in Iraq. They had been taken in Baghdad, and one of them, Tom Fox, was a Quaker and a friend of both John and me.

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The Shadow at the Pride Festival

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A year ago last Saturday, the Friends Meeting I’m part of took a big step, for us: we rented a booth at the Alamance Pride Festival, held in a large park in downtown Burlington NC.

The Spring booth, with a blogger on duty at the table.

Outwardly, our booth was not particularly eye-catching. Amid the fluttering of a thousand floating rainbows, the yellow table banner we made for it is about as gaudy as we get. Spring Friends Meeting has been what many call an “affirming” congregation for more than a dozen years, and we’ve paid our share of dues for that. But we didn’t do it for publicity, and we haven’t done much of what many others call evangelism, which we’d  rather name “outreach.” We have  lots of opinions about things, but are  mostly quiet about them.

Maybe too quiet. Spring has been gathering for Quaker worship in southern Alamance County for 251 years, but we soon found out in the booth that hardly anyone we talked to knew we were there.  Which meant that Pride was a great opportunity for our outreach aspirations, but it also brought home the suspicion that maybe we had been a bit too ready to “hide our lamp under a bushel,” for much of those two-and-a-half centuries, which is something the gospel says not to do. There’s a false modesty which at bottom is mostly a mix of snobbery and pride.
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Nagasaki Atom Bombing: 79th Anniversary: Anybody Listening?

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79th anniversary of Nagasaki bombing

August 9, 2024

The event commemorates those killed when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city. This year’s event was boycotted by the US and UK after organizers decided not to invite the Israeli ambassador.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still evoke strong feelings in Japanese society, and the US has not formally apologized for the attacks
Imagd: Japan Pool/Kyodo/AP/picture alliance

Japan on Friday marked the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the city of Nagasaki, which left tens of thousands of people dead.

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OMG! Nixon Resigned 50 Years Ago! A Great American/Quaker Nostalgia Read

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Richard Nixon resigned 50 years ago. The political world has never been the same.

Portrait of David JacksonDavid Jackson

USA TODAY August 8, 2024

WASHINGTON – Exactly 50 years ago, a beleaguered President Richard M. Nixon entered the Oval Office, stared into a television camera and performed an act that still echoes in today’s very different political world.

He resigned the presidency.

“By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America,” Nixon said in a prime-time address on Aug. 8, 1974.

The level of political healing in America over the past half century is debatable.

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From “Tell It Slant,” Excerpt #2: Encouraging Rejections

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(Excerpt #1 is here.)

In the spring of 1956 — Chuck was in eighth grade — orders came for the family to  leave an Air Force base in California. His father, now a major, was aircraft commander of one of the largest bombers ever, the B-36.

Click was assigned to join a squadron of these bombers at Ramey Air Force Base, in the northwest corner of Puerto Rico. These planes flew long missions — often reportedly carrying nuclear bombs — likely around the periphery of the Soviet Union and “Red” China, though their course was secret too.

Some of the Puerto Rico experiences were pivotal for Chuck, in several ways.

For one thing, since there was no local English-language TV service, Chuck was perforce obliged to wean himself from TV, and thereby transferred almost all his
free time to reading. Here he had help from the Caribbean climate and the Air Force: Puerto Rico was continually hot and humid, with frequent rainstorms (and a major hurricane, Betsy, in late 1956); air conditioning was still a rare luxury. Continue reading From “Tell It Slant,” Excerpt #2: Encouraging Rejections →