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Cancel Cops, Cancel ALL Cop Shows, NO Exceptions. And Cancel Quakers Too?
Just read a very striking piece by E. J. Dickson in Rolling Stone. It says the “Cancel Cops Crusade,” in order to root out systemic police racism, killings & impunity, also has to take down the...
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Breaking: Axe is Falling at Guilford (Updated)
LATER UPDATE: Wednesday afternoon (July 1) Guilford College posted a statement confirming our report of extensive job cuts. Here it is in full: Guilford College President Jane K. Fernandes announced...
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Karmic Collision – I: The Post Office, Voting Rights & Me. Dog Days Reading.
<one> The time I spent in the civil rights struggle for Black voting rights in 1965 was a very important part of my life. And the time I spent working for the Postal Service (USPS), beginning...
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Ongoing: The Everyday Work of Facing a Racist History
In my experience, the work of overcoming racism and its sordid history has many aspects, and can be pursued in many ways. Some are loud and disruptive. Others are calmly persuasive. Different strokes...
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Insurrection, Civil War & Quaker Dilemmas
A few days ago, a post on a Quaker Facebook group asked what the Quaker position was on dealing with insurrection. An excellent and, er, disturbingly timely question. To which, of course, there is not...
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Quakers: From Peace to Civil War (Again?)
This week, while many American Quakers (& others) wait anxiously to see whether a new civil war is about to break out, the question of what Quakers can or should do in response to such events...
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Patrick O’Neill Just Went to Jail. Again. “By the Grace of God,” he says.
In other news, besides the pandemic, insurrection, the economic crash, climate degradation, systemic racism and a few other “challenges,” did you stop to think this week about how most of the USA and...
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Dr. King on White People & Racism
This red-baiting billboard popped up beside many highways in the South during the civil rights years. This seldom-cited passage is from “The Three Evils of Society,” Dr. King’s speech to the National...
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Going Public, in The New Yorker & Facebook Live
Apropos of Dr. King’s birthday, and looking toward Black History Month, an email came In Monday telling me the New Yorker magazine had posted on its website an article from the April 10, 1965 issue...
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Biting the Bullet: Truth and Consequences
I knew it would happen, and knew I wouldn’t like it, but I did it anyway. The third “it” above was start a Facebook group called “Quakers,” about a month ago, after a previous one abruptly folded up:...
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Coping with General PTSD
Just about every day, Facebook pops up on my personal page a post & photo from this date some year in the past, as a memory. What happens in Vegas–piling on a napping Grandpa February 2020. Happy...
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An Apology (not quite) to Senator Richard Burr
Yes, I admit it. I have often called North Carolina Senator Richard Burr a lazy & unresponsive legislator. I mean, don’t you remember the landmark Burr Act to clean up hog waste & coal...
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Drowning In Our Own Dirty Water
This is personal for me. Also religious. The Quaker Meeting I attend is in the country between Burlington & Pittsboro NC. Those cities and my home town, Durham, is served by the contaminated Haw...
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David Zarembka’s Memorable Writings: A Sampler
Besides his work and example, Friend David Zarembka also left a valuable and underestimated resource of writings for Friends and others. We’ll sample that legacy here, and point to where more can be...
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Broken Churches, Broken Nation (Again?)
“History doesn’t repeat,” Mark Twain supposedly said, “but sometimes it rhymes.” Are the conflicts within so many American churches over LGBTQ and associated issues part of some cruel karmic sonnet?...
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Patrick O’Neill – A Letter from the Hole
Patrick O’Neill, i happier times. My friend Patrick O’Neill is serving a year in a federal prison, for attacking a replica of a nuclear missile at a south Georgia navy base in April of 2018. (A post...
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“Nation Building” on the Moon? Smarter than the U.S. in Afghanistan?
Tom Friedman, longtime NYTimes columnist, treats us to some snippets of diary entries from his first trip to Afghanistan, in early 2002, with then Senator Joe Biden. Friedman opens the piece in the...
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A Tale of Two Conservatives: Liz & Longwell
Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist Are we ready for the canonization of St. Liz, of Cheney, Martyr? Lifetime Catholic MoDo isn’t buying it: columnist Maureen Dowd bats away the shiny new blond...
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A Banished Quaker Prophet: Josh Humphries (Updated)
Friend (or rather, ex-Friend) Joshua Ashlyn Humphries, a banished Quaker and Anabaptist prophet/theologian, is dead, at 39. Josh Humphries, in a happy moment. He deserved more of them. Dead, and it’s a...
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Memorial Day for Those Who Said No
In the May 30, 2021 New York Times, there’s an Op-Ed on military conscientious objectors, or COs. I’m gratified to see it on the brink of Memorial Day. It shows no disrespect for those who agreed to...
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