Howard Zinn was neither a Quaker nor a pacifist. But in 1976, he wrote this in his regular column for the Boston Globe: There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who … Continue reading Quaker Stories for Memorial Day
This new collection (now available in paperback and on Kindle) is for those who have been through “a time to lose” — losses that, as I write, are far from over. Some of these losses will have to be endured for a time, perhaps a long time.
Yet if so, they are not to be endured in passive, compliant silence.
These losses will afflict some more, with the weight of an enslaved history on one side, and official bullets on the other. Yet even among those most advantaged, none will escape: the very air that all breathe, the water necessary for all life, are at risk, as well as justice, and what we have known of freedom.
Likewise the ways of resistance are manifold, and guides and programs and checklists for the new waves of resistance strategy are proliferating.
This collection is not meant to add to that burgeoning strategy shelf. After all, no program can fully encompass the resistance. Its scale can include monumental gatherings of hundreds of thousands — even millions. It is also carried on in quiet, solitary acts of defiance. Often these are no more than calm, insistent truth-telling, now an increasingly radical act as lies are embedded in the heart not only of government, but enshrined in the high seats of what is called religion, especially American white Christianity.
Amid this great variety, there are two resources which the resistance handbooks mention, but cannot turn into a formula, namely creativity and imagination. These are weapons more of the weak than the strong, and buckets of money are not enough to quell or substitute for them.
The night was cold now, and her breath billowed faintly over her shoulders as she hurried after the dark figure walking ahead up the quiet street. “Will!” she called again. “Wait for me!”
He stopped and turned. “Esther?” he called. “Is it thee?” He clasped her hands in his as she came up to him. “Esther, I–” he began. “Thee is shivering,” he interrupted himself. “It is cold. Thee has no coat.”
Esther shook her head. “I am not cold, Will. Let’s walk.” She took his arm now, firmly. They went on in silence for a few moments. Then Esther heard singing.
They were approaching the Unitarian Church again. The service was concluding with another hymn. Esther stopped a few houses away, and motioned for Will to listen with her. She couldn’t make out the words, but the rise and fall of the melody was enough.
They stood there, breathing out vague cones of mist, for only a few minutes, through no more than two verses of the hymn. But in that brief span of time, clarity came to Esther.
In her careful schoolteacher’s way, she observed the process with a certain professional detachment, making mental note of how to describe it to her brother Jonah, in answer to his last question of the evening before, as well as for recording in her Journal.
It was nothing spectacular or miraculous, she realized: more like seeing a glass full of muddy water become transparent as the sediment settled to the bottom, or watching a distant ship change suddenly from a hazy blur to a sharply-defined image as she refocussed her father’s old spyglass. There was no new thought or impulse in her mind; rather, she was now able to pull what was already there together in a new way, a way that made new and compelling sense.
“Esther, what is it?” Will perceived that something was happening; she had stopped trembling and was standing quite still, staring into the night. At his question she seemed to return from far away, but then she looked at him intently and tightened her grip on his arm.
It’s Top Ten List season, and how can I refuse? Yet out of more than 130 blog posts, how can I choose?
One way is to do it by the numbers: And the clear #1 on that score went up on February 12. It called out the slighting comments made by Congressman & civil rights legend John Lewis about Sen. Bernie Sanders, in the thick of a hard-fought primary struggle with Hillary Clinton.
I revere John Lewis; but the post also stood up for Sanders’ activist record as a college student — not as a movement hero or leader, but as one of many who did his bit, took his lumps, and had been a loyal ally for fifty-plus years since.
The post must have touched a nerve. Within about 36 hours it had more than 12000 views and had been forwarded too many times to count. And maybe its message made a difference; anyway, Lewis soon “clarified” and softened his statement, in the interest of “unity.”
Further, this spike in readership pushed the total blog views over the 100,000 mark, a landmark important to me. If the post hadn’t quite gone “viral,” it had at least become contagious.
The #2 post in hits also dealt with a public figure, radio host Garrison Keillor, who retired in July from his “Prairie Home Companion” after more than forty years of weekly broadcasts. The piece disclosed what I regard as two “secrets” about him that I had discovered in almost as many years as a fan.
“Watch this, Amber,” Sara said, building up to a big finish. She whirled around and threw her arms out in a wide flourish. And when she did, the scoop of soft cookies and cream flew right off the top of the cone and landed splat! right on the side window of a parked white van.
Sara heard the splat and stopped to look, and we both saw a long white drip sliding down the dark glass. She turned to me, eyes wide, mouth open, ready to start giggling.
But then the van’s window rolled down several inches, and a man in dark sunglasses looked out at us. “Hey, young lady,” he said, “better be careful with that stuff.”
Now instead of giggling, Sara squealed and we both turned and ran down the block, all the way to where our houses faced each other across the street. When we got to her place I stopped and glanced back, and the van’s window was closed again. We both stood by her porch for a minute, giggling and laughing and trying to catch our breath. Finally Sara said, “That was wild!”
“Yeah,” I said, “if Sanjaya had tried that, he would have won for sure!”