In 1992, I spent much of my free time planning a murder.
I mapped it out it out to the last detail: victim, weapon, motive, opportunity, covering the tracks, the whole meticulous homicidal mess. In the end, it went almost exactly according to plan, and was a complete success.
Almost.
Fortunately for all concerned, the murder was fictional: the plot of a mystery novel, Murder Among Friends, published in 1993. It sold out two printings; that was the successful part.
Winchester, Virginia Civil War cemetery
But I’m remembering it now for a different reason. One of its central plot elements, indeed the underlying theme — the reason I wrote it —was not the homicide, but the context: the murder was a portent, a forerunner of a larger real-life conflict, with a grim history and an ominous future.
I could feel it coming then; three decades later, long after the novel ended with this part unresolved, it has moved from fiction to perilously close to fact.
Its history was our American Civil War (the first one): my tale was set in one of its most contested killing fields, the splendid and fertile Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, near Winchester. The Valley was fought over repeatedly, and the city changed hands between Blue and Grey dozens of times. Today its landscape is dotted with battlefield memorials and war cemeteries.
It seemed an apt locale for early warnings of a potential repeat catastrophe. Further, the Valley had the other feature I wanted for my story: a long and turbulent, but little-known Quaker presence.
Can art help us get through (and bear witness in) hard times?
The Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts (aka FQA) thinks so. A new example is the just-published issue of FQA’s journal, Types & Shadows, (aka T&S) online right now, right here.
T&S was launched in 1996, the new issue is #101, for Autumn 2024. In its pages you’ll find stunning color photography, striking poetry, a historical Quaker novel excerpt and arts reporting.
For a long time, Friends shunned the arts (more on this here, in FQA‘s free online pamphlet Beyond Uneasy Tolerance ).
But today the arts seem to be thriving among us.
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.
In 1992, I spent much of my free time planning a murder.
The Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts (aka FQA) thinks so. A new example is the just-published issue of FQA’s journal, Types & Shadows, (aka T&S) online right now, right here.
