Category Archives: Signs of the Times

Gone & Almost Forgotten: the “Peace Movement”

We thought early in 2007 was the chance to pressure the new Democratic Congress to rein in (or better, stop) the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and (secretly) elsewhere. Then maybe Congress could call to account some of the officials involved. I was thinking of who ordered the Iraq invasion under false pretenses, and those connected to war crimes, vast war profiteering & corruption, and the undermining of civil liberties here at home.
That was for starters; I had quite a list, and wasn’t alone in that.
So I was all for the march. I urged that we hold the rally shortly after the new year, to lay out our demands before Congress got seriously down to work.
“That way,” I said, “the Democrats won’t have sold us out yet, so the people will still be hopeful and energized.”
Was I cynical? Yep. But not wrong:
I had guessed right about the timing, in two ways: one, people were still hopeful in January, which boosted rally turnout.
And two, sure enough, once Congress got going, the Democrats swiftly sold out all the main things we had rallied for: accountability (“Impeachment is off the table,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi); there were no serious investigations of war crimes or corruption; impunity for torturers continued, and they voted for all the bloated war spending bills (“gotta support the troops”), etc.
Peace folks’ morale plummeted as quickly.

For Women’s History Month: Lucretia Mott’s Secret Recipe for “Good-Trouble” & Hell-Raising

Nantucket is a fascinating pilgrimage spot for Quakers; it’s best to visit off-season, when it’s easier to look past the opulence, and see how thick the small town is with stirring Quaker history. Among its numerous distinctive features, the one we want to home in on here was the fact that while the harbor was populated with Quaker ships, the town was populated by many Quaker women. And these women, even the most prosperous ones, were kept plenty busy; not just with children, but also with business.

I mean both Meeting business, and business business. Many Quaker men were away from the island for years on end (Lucretia’s father was gone for three years), sailing halfway around the world (or farther) on trips that were always dangerous, and not rarely fatal — and during which communication with home was rare or nonexistent.

Meantime, Quaker women, while still heavily encased in what we would now think of as stereotyped women’s roles, were more educated than many other females of their day; they also had official status in the Meetings; and they — well, let’s hear how Lucretia describes it:

A Quaker Holiday Story: A “Carpet of Light” (Again) for (Another) Shadowed New Year

Out of the silence, as moved, Friends came to the table in ones or twos or family groups, and each lit another candle, which they placed on the table; they spoke if moved, then sat down again in the silence.

From the first time I experienced, the way that the whole room was progressively illuminated, seemed in fact to glow, as the number of flickering flames increased, was very moving to me.

In a way it was a visible, wordless, yet eloquent evocation of Quakerism at its best: a motley, seemingly haphazard collection of candles of witness, more diverse than we outwardly seem, mainly anonymous and individual, somehow joining together to become more than the sum of the parts.

This time, at the end of 2017, a year which for me has been very heavily shadowed, often deeply gloomy, and yes, dark, the full array became something of an encouraging signal for the year ahead.

Holiday Story #2 – How I Got so Lucky

At five o-clock, I was grateful to escape into the icy December darkness, and turned away from the subway toward the department stores a few blocks away. I was behind on Christmas shopping, and there were only a few days left. I went into E.J. Korvette’s, a big discount place that was the Wal-Mart of those days.

Not sure what I was looking for, I wandered from one department to another, and soon was passing the pipe tobacco section.

I hate smoking, always have; but something drew me to the counter. There were large brightly colored round canisters of pipe tobacco on shelves behind it. “Do you have Bugler?” I asked.

The clerk smirked. Most tobacco fans think of Bugler as little more than shredded cardboard. But what did I care? He stooped down behind the counter and came up with the blue labeled canister. The price was ridiculously cheap. “I’ll take it,” I said. “Oh– and a couple packets of cigarette papers.”

From there, it was just a few steps to the electronics department, and a compact-sized AM radio. It took a little longer to settle on a small kid’s record player, with an arm you moved by hand. The real find was in the 99 cent record bin: an album of hymns by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

The whole haul didn’t cost much over twenty dollars. After that, the rest of my shopping came easily.

Christmas morning was still bitter cold, and subway trains were few and far between. It took a long time to get from home to that street, and I stood shivering for what seemed like an hour, pounding on Mrs. Lee’s door.

My Top Ten Books in 2017

For some years, I’ve been keeping track of my reading, especially books. For 2017, with only two weeks yet to go, I’m at 27 volumes, and a total of 11400 or so pages. That’s close to a thousand pages per month. (I might still make a thousand, if I finish another book or two before New Year’s.)

The “page total” figure is somewhat ambiguous, as many of the titles here I listened to on CDs in my car; and several others were read on Kindle. But for me all of that counts as reading; and I have looked up the non-hard copy titles to see what the print page count is.