Our blog poss about the end of NCYM-FUM have been read widely. And a question has recurred in comments across Facebook and in other media. It is: How did this happen?? It’s a legitimate question; and it’s one we’ve been grappling with for three years. It’s also one this blogger is feeling a bit overwhelmed … Continue reading How North Carolina YM-FUM Did Itself In: A Blog Review
There’s a notorious set of photos from St. Louis, of a public housing project called Pruitt Igoe, being brought down in a controlled detonation of high explosives. The story is that the project, meant to provide sturdy housing for the poor, had become toxic and uninhabitable. It could be a fitting parable for North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM – NCYM for short)
Yes, all too soon, I had to pack up the car and head out of Frederick Maryland back south to North Carolina; first to join my colleagues in the cast of “Pathway to Freedom,” a Quaker-inspired outdoor drama about the Underground Railroad, followed later today and tomorrow by the final session of North Carolina Yearly Meeting FUM, which, unlike BYM, is about to go out of business after 320 years.
More on that later. I drove over to Interstate 81 to take the scenic route down through the Shenandoah Valley, then jogged east toward Charlottesville and then turned south again in US 29, through Lynchburg and Danville to the North Carolina line.
Lynchburg has been practically absorbed into the ever-expanding Liberty University complex, down to and including the Jerry Falwell Parkway, to memorialize its late founder.
Sixty miles farther, Danville, or at least some of its prominent residents, made their sentiments clear in a couple of ways . . . .
Banning TG folks from the military is the first big chunk of red meat thrown to the sex-phobic theocratic right by the Liar-in-Chief; it will only make them hungrier for more and bigger chunks.
Can Weinstein & MRFF get backup from an activist, interreligious coalition to face them down?
They could. They should. Now we’ll find out.
The “curtain” will rise at 8 PM July 6, 2-17, for “The Sword of Peace.” This gripping outdoor drama is based on actual events related to the American Revolution, in which many Quakers were involved.. Convictions of patriotism, Quaker religious devotion to peace, courage, suffering and mercy all clashed in the historic Battle of Guilford Court House in 1781. This will be its 44th season.