An “unintentionally hilarious interview of President George W. Bush”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/27/politics/campaign/27bush.html is excerpted in today’s New York Times_. One gem concerned global warming. Just a few days ago his secretaries of energy and commerce delivered a report to Congress saying that carbon dioxide emissions (cars, coal burning plants, etc.) really are causing global warming. Well yes, most of us have figured that out already but this is an Administration that’s runned and staffed by oil industry executives and they’ve insisted for years that the evidence isn’t clear. That they’re now admitting the cause of global warming is big and it should certainly auger a overhaul of U.S. energy policies. But when asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming Bush responded “Ah, we did? I don’t think so.”
He also admitted that he had made a “miscalculation of what the conditions would be” in postwar iraq but said he wasn’t going to go “on the couch” to rethink his decision or his decision-making process. Uhh.., Mister President, maybe you should think about this before offering to serve another four years?
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Yearly Archives ⇒ 2004
NVA: US Military Draft Probably Isn’t Coming Back
August 26, 2004
Rick Jahnkow argues in May’s _Nonviolent Activist_ that there’s a “Decreased Likelihood of Draft”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm. There are many aging pacifists that have become obsessed lately with the idea that compulsory military service might be returning to the United States. For example, I’ve watched the leader of one annual anti-draft workshop predict the draft’s imminent return year after year, in ever more excited terms and wondered what evidence this organizer has seen that I haven’t.
Jahnkow watches this issue as much as anyone in his work for the San Diego-based “Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft”:http://www.comdsd.org/ and he’s been watching the hype build as he’s become more skeptical:
bq. Warnings about an impending draft have been circulating on the Internet for months now. Some are tying a possible draft to the election and predicting with bold certainty that conscription will be introduced in 2005… The energy that�s been generated on this topic has been both amazing and, I have to confess, somewhat seductive to anti-draft organizations like the one for which I work.
Most of the people I’ve seen get excited by a possible return of the draft were in their teens back in the Vietnam War era. Their organizing sometimes seems almost nostalgic for the issues of their youth. They’re trying to save the current generation from having to go through the same trauma. But the older activists’ anti-draft work is often patronistic and self-congratulatory, for it doesn’t take into account the fact that younger Americans don’t need saving.
The bottom line truth is that the Pentagon simply couldn’t reinstate the draft. Jahnkow cites a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that found that 88 percent of people 18 – 29 oppose a return of the draft. There would be mass mayhem if the draft returned. While some young men would surely obey, a huge percentage would actively defy it. Even if only 10% dramatically refused, the system would break down. This is a generation raised in a post-punk culture and many of its members aggressively question authority. They were raised by parents who lived through the sixties and saw widespread lies and abuse of power, including the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The media mythology around sixties-era radicalism has kept us from realizing that there’s a baseline of everyday radicalism today that far overshadows much of what was going on thirty years ago. The Pentagon knows this better than the peace movement does.
It’s not the only nostalgic protesting this generation is engaging in these days and I’ve compared revived organizing around “phone war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000230.php to “recycling dead horses.” I agree with Rick that today’s teens and twenty-somethings have real issues which we need to address. He says it so well:
bq. The latter point leads me to the second reason why I have some negative feelings about the current concern over the draft: Much of the anxiety is coming from people who are ignoring the more pressing problem of aggressive military recruiting, which, among other things, disproportionately affects non-affluent youths and people of color. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals�a poverty draft�and yet it has drawn relatively little attention from antiwar activists. There is a race and class bias reflected in this that needs to be seriously considered and addressed by the general peace movement.
“Here’s the link to his article again”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm
h4. Related:
* Last November we published a provocative article by pacifist Johann Christoph Arnold arguing that “A Military Draft Would be Good for Us”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php and a personal response piece I wrote about how the “pressures of a military draft”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php can force an eighteen year old to really think hard about issues of war and peace.
* Nonviolence.org has guide to issues of “military conscription and conscientious objection”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/conscience.php. We also watch issues of the “peace movement”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_peace_movement.php, and tend to highlight generational issues a lot.
* The Urban Legend debunkers at Snopes.com have tracked and researched the “draft fear emails going around”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp. They don’t think a draft is coming back and any time soon, citing many sources.
Images of Patriotism and the Swift Boat Controversy
August 23, 2004
The U.S. election campaign has many ironies, none perhaps as strange as the fights over the candidates’ war records. The current President George W. Bush got out of active duty in Vietnam by using the influence of his politically powerful family. While soldiers killed and died on the Mekong Delta, he goofed off on an Alabama airfield. Most of the central figures of his Administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney also avoided fighting in Vietnam.
Not that I can blame them exactly. If you don’t believe in fighting, then why not use any influence and loophole you can? It’s more courageous to stand up publicly and stand in solidarity with those conscientious objectors who don’t share your political connections. But if you’re both antiwar and a coward, hey, loopholes are great. Bush was one less American teenager shooting up Vietnam villages and for that we commend him.
Ah, but of course George W. Bush doesn’t claim to be either antiwar or a coward. Two and a half decades later, he snookered American into a war on false pretences. Nowadays he uses every photo-op he can to look strong and patriotic. Like most scions of aristocratic dynasties throughout history, he displays the worst kind of policial cowardice: he is a leader who believes only in sending other people’s kids to war.
Contrast this with his Democratic Party rival John Kerry. He was also the son of a politically-connected family. He could have pulled some strings and ended up in Alabama. But he chose to fight in Vietnam. He was wounded in battle, received metals and came back a certified war hero. Have fought he saw both the eternal horrors of war and the particular horrors of the Vietnam War. It was only after he came back that he used his political connections. He used them to puncture the myths of the Vietnam War and in so doing became a prominent antiwar activist.
Not that his antiwar activities make him a pacifist, then or now. As President I’m sure he’d turn to military solutions that we here at Nonviolence.org would condemn. But we be assured that when he orders a war, he’d be thinking of the kids that America would be sending out to die and he’d be thinking of the foreign victims whose lives would inevitably be taken in conflict.
Despite the stark contrast of these Presidential biographies, the peculiar logic of American politics is painting the military dodger as a hero and the certified war hero as a coward. The latter campaign is being led by a shadowy group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Today’s Guardian has an excellent article on the “Texas Republicans funding the Swift Boat controversy”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1288272,00.html. The New York Times also delves the “outright fabrications of the Swift Boat TV ads”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?ex=1094018686&ei=1&en=691b4b0e81b8387f. A lot of Bush’s buddies and long-time Republican Party apparatchiks are behind this and its lies are transparent and easy to uncover. It’s a good primer on dirty politics 2004 style.
One of the big questions about this election is whether the American voters will believe more in image or substance. It goes beyond politics, really, to culture and to a consumerism that promises that with the right clothes and affected attitude, you can simply buy yourself a new identity. President Bush put on a flight jacket and landed a jet on an aircraft carrier a mile off the California beach. He was the very picture of a war hero and strong patriot. Is a photo all it takes anymore?
Quakerism 101
August 10, 2004
In Fall 2005 I led a six-week Quakerism 101 course at Medford (NJ) Monthly Meeting. It went very well. Medford has a lot of involved, weighty Friends (some of them past yearly meeting clerks!) and I think they appreciated a fresh take on an introductory course. The core question: how might we teach Quakerism today?
This is the proposal for the course. I started off with a long introduction on the history and philosophy of Quaker religious education and pedagogic acculturation and go on to outline a different sort curriculum for Quakerism 101.
I took extensive notes of each session and will try to work that feedback into a revised curriculum that other Meetings and Q101 leaders could use and adapt. In the meantime, if you want to know how specific sessions and rolesplays went, just email me and I’ll send you the unedited notes. If you’re on the Adult Religious Ed. committee of a South Jersey or Philadelphia area Meeting and want to bring me to teach it again, just let me know.
Thoughts on a Quakerism 101 Course
Over the last few years, there seems to be a real groundswell of interest in Quakers trying to understand who we are and where we came from. There’s a revival of interst in looking back at our roots, not for history or orthodoxy’s sake, but instead to trying to tease out the “Quaker Treasures” that we might want to reclaim. I’ve seen this conversation taking place in all of the branches of Friends and it’s very hopeful.
I assume at least some of the participants of the Quakerism 101 course will have gone through other introductory courses or will have read the standard texts. It would be fun to give them all something new – luckily there’s plenty to choose from! I also want to expose participants to the range of contemporary Quakerism. I’d like participants to understand why the other branches call themselves Friends and to recognize some of the pecularities our branch has unconsciously adopted.
Early Friends didn’t get involved in six-week courses. They were too busy climbing trees to shout the gospel further, inviting people to join the great movement. Later Quietist Friends had strong structures of recorded ministers and elders which served a pedagogic purpose for teaching Friends. When revivalism broke out and brought overwhelmingly large numbers of new attenders to meetings, this system broke down and many meetings hired ministers to teach Quakerism to the new people. Around the turn of the century, prominent Quaker educators introduced academic models, with courses and lecture series. Each of these approaches to religious education fiddles with Quakerism and each has major drawbacks. But these new models were instituted because of very real and ongoing problems Friends have with transmitting our faith to our youth and acculturating new seekers to our Quaker way.
The core contradiction of a course series is that the leader is expected to both impart knowledge and to invite participation. In practice, this easily leads to situations where the teacher is either too domineering _or_ too open to participation. The latter seems more common: Quakerism is presented as a least-common-denominator social grouping, formless, with membership defined simply by one’s comfortability in the group (see Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years.) One of the main goals of a introductory course should be to bring new attenders into Quaker culture, practice and ethics. There’s an implicit assumption that there is something called Quakerism to teach. Part of that job is teasing out the religious and cultural models that new attenders are bringing with them and to open up the question as to how they fit or don’t fit in with the “gestalt” of Quakerism (Grundy, Quaker Treasures and Wilson’s Essays on the Quaker Vision).
The greatest irony behind the Quakerism 101 class is that its seemingly-neutral educational model lulls proudly “unprogrammed” Friends into an obliviousness that they’ve just instituted a program led by a hireling minister. Arguments why Q101 teachers should be paid sounds identical to arguments why part-time FUM ministers should be paid. A Q101 leader in an unprogrammed meeting might well want to acknowledge this contradiction and pray for guidance and seek clearness about this. (For my Medford class, I decided to teach it as paid leader of a class as a way of disciplining myself to practice of my fellow Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Friends.)
The standard Quakerism 101 curriculum compartmentalizes everything into neat little boxes. History gets a box, testimonies get a box, faith and institutions get boxes. I want to break out of that. I can recommend good books on Quaker history and point participants to good websites advocating Quaker testimonies. But I want to present history as current events and the testimonies as ministry. The standard curriculum starts with some of the more controversial material about the different braches of Friends and only then goes into worship, the meeting life, etc. I want discussion of the latter to be informed by the earlier discussion of who we are and who we might be. The course will start off more structured, with me as leader and become more participatory in the later sections.
Curriculum:
What I want to do is have one solid overview book and supplement it with some of those fascinating (and coversation-sparking!) pamphlets. The overview book is Thomas Hamm’s Quakers in America. Published last year, it’s the best introduction to Quakerism in at least a generation. Hamm wrote this as part of a religions of America series and it’s meant as a general introduction to contemporary Quakerism. His later chapters on debates within Quakerism should be easy to adapt for a Q‑101 series.
Session I: Introductions
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Ohio Yearly Meeting sessions, p. 1), reflections. (maybe start this class 2?)
- Introductions to one another.
Session II: What Are Our Models
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of First Friends Church of Canton, p. 3), reflections.
- What are our models? Roleplay of “What Would X Do?” with a given problem: JC, George Fox, Methodists, Non-denominational bible church, college. Also: the “natural breaking point” model of Quaker divisions.
- Reading for this class: “Convinced Quakerism” by Ben Pink Dandelion
Session III: The Schisms
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Wilmington Yearly Meeting sessions, p. 5), reflections.
- Reading for this class: Quakers in America chapter 3, “Their Separate Ways: American Friends Since 1800,” about the branches
Session IV: Role of our Institutions
- Worship
- In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, p. 7), reflections.
- Reading for this class: “The Authority of Our Meetings…” by Paul Lacey
Session V: Controversies within Friends
- Could pick any 2 – 3 controversies of Hamm’s: “Is Quakerism Christian?,” “Leadership,” “Authority,” “Sexuality,” “Identity,” “Unity and Diversity,” “Growth and Decline.” Early in the course I could poll the group to get a sense which ones they might want to grapple with. The idea is not to be thorough covering all the topics or even all the intricacies within each topic. I hope to just see if we can model ways of talking about these within Medford.
- Reading for this class: Quakers in America chapter 5, “Contemporary Quaker Debates,” p. 120
Session VI: Role of worship, role of ministry, role of witnesses.
- Focusing on Worship/Ministry (Witness)/MM Authority (Elders). If the calendar allows for eight sessions, this could easily be split apart or given two weeks.
- Reading for this class: “Quaker Treasures” by Marty Paxton Grundy, which ties together Gospel Order, Ministries and the Testimonies.
Session VII: What kind of religious community do we want Medford MM to be?
- This should be participatory, interactive. There should be some go-around sort of exercise to open up our visions of an ideal religious community and what we think Medford Meeting might be like in 5, 10, 25 years.
- Reading for this class: “Building the Life of the Meeting” by Bill & Fran Taber (1994, $4). I’ve heard there’s something recent from John Punshon which might work better.
- Also: something from the emergent church movement to point to a great people that might be gathered. Perhaps essays from Jordan Cooper & someone at Circle of Hope/Phila.
Books Used:
- “Quakers in America” is Thomas Hamm’s excellent new introduction to Friends is a bit pricey ($40) but is adapting well to a Q101 course.
- “Convinced Quakerism” by Ben Pink Dandelion mixes traditional Quaker understadings of convincement with Ben’s personal story and it sparked a good, wideranging discussion. $4.
- “Quaker Treasures” by Marty Grundy. $4
- “The Authority of Our Meetings…” by Paul Lacey. $4
- “Building the Life of the Meeting” by Bill and Fran Taber. $4
Considered Using:
- “Why Friends are Friends” by Jack Willcuts. $9.95. I like this book and think that much of it could be used for a Q101 in a liberal-branch Friends Meeting. Chapters: “The Wonder of Worship,” “Sacred Spiritual Sacraments,” “Called to Ministry,” “Letting Peace Prevail,” “Getting the Sense of the Meeting,” “On Being Powerful” – I find the middle chapters are the more interesting/Quaker ones).
- Silence and Witness by Michael Birkel. I haven’t read through this yet, but in skimming the chapters it looks like Birkel shys away from challenging the Quaker status quo. Within that constraint, however, it looks like a good introduction to Quakerism. $16.
- “Quaker Culture vs. Quaker Faith” by Samuel Caldwell.
- The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Quakerism 101 curriculum. It’s not as bad as it could be but it’s too heavy on history and testimonies and too focused on the Jones/Brinton view of Quakerism which I think has played itself out. I’ve seen Q101 facilitators read directly out of the curriculum to the glazed eyes of the participants. I wanted something fresher and less course-like.
Quaker Youth Ministry
August 9, 2004
h2. Incremental vs. Prophetic
Since I’ve written a lot about “young adult minstry among Quakers”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/young_adult_friends.php I feel obligated to post the address of a new “Yahoo group”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuakerYouthMinistry/ about the topic, focused on high school youth. I really don’t feel led to contribute. No one there is looking at root causes for the crisis in youth retention. The suggestions for improvement offered so far are incremental when what’s wrong is fundamental: deep-rooted institutional ageism and a fear of a robust and challenging prophetic ministry. There is hope for youth ministry among liberal Friends but I don’t think it will come from this quarter. Still, it’s worth checking out and some Quaker Ranter readers might want to join in the discussion.
Gohn Brothers, broadfalls, & men’s plain dress
July 26, 2004
A few years ago I felt led to take up the ancient Quaker testimony of plain dressing. I’ve spoken elsewhere about my motivations but I want to give a little practical advice to other men who have heard or even gotten ahold of the “Gohn Bros.” catalog but don’t know just what to order. I certainly am not sanctioning a uniform for plain dress, I simply want to give those so inclined an idea of how to start.
Just as background: I’m a thirty-something Philadelphia native, brought up without any formal religion in a Philly suburb. I first started approaching Quakers (Friends) back in college. In my early twenties, I started working at a collectively-run pacifist book publishing house and living in what was then the sort of downscale hipster neighborhood of West Philadelphia. In 2002 I attended a week-long workshop that had some plain dressing Friends and felt the nudge to experiment. I’ve left Philadelphia to become a resident of a small farming town in South Jersey (what love will do) but I still spend a lot of time in the city and in decidedly urban settings. I don’t aim to be historically correct with my plain dress and I don’t want to simply “look like an Amish” person.
Gohn Brothers is a store in Indiana that sells “Amish and Plain Clothing.” It is currently celebrating it’s 100th year in business. It’s known for it’s simple print catalog, which is updated every few months. It does not have a website. You should get a copy of the catalog to get current clothing and shipping prices. It’s address is:
PO Box 1110, 105 S. Main St., Middlebury IN 46540
Phone: (574) 825‑2400. Toll-free: 800 – 595-0031
When I first started “going plain,” I simply wore regular dark pants with suspenders found at a generic department store. It was important to me that I was wearing clothes I already had, and I wanted to be “Sears Plain,” by which I meant I didn’t want to go to any extremes to find plain clothing. When I first bought a pair of broadfalls (the zipperless pants favored by plain men), I didn’t wear them for months. Slowly I started started wearing them out and feeling more at ease in them. They were made of rugged denim, wore well and were quite comfortable.
As my pre-plain clothes have worn out, I’ve started replacing them with Gohn Brothers-produced broadfalls. They’re just as inexpensive as any cheaply-made jeans from Old Navy but they hold up and are presumably made in Indiana by seamstresses earning a decent wage.
Broadfalls
Gohn Brothers offers many different weights and fabrics for their broadfall pants, numbering them for ease of ordering. I have bought two pair, both of which I like:
- #66: 10 oz. solid grey denim, 100% cotton: $22.98
- #92: 100% cotton blue jean denim (11 oz.): $24.98
Coats
Gohn Brothers produces a number of coats, also called “overshirts.” In these purchases I have tended to be more distinctly Quaker. I have two Coats:
- #225: 9oz. Poly, cotton. $41.98 at the time of this post. I have opted for a few alterations: A “regular cut” for $3.00, a “standup collar” for $2.00, “button holes with metal buttons” for $3.00 and a “quilted lining” for $5.00.
- #125 9 oz. Black drill denim. Poly/cotton. Unlined Jacket, black drill. Alterations: “standup collar” for $2.00. (for this I had the default “snaps” in place of buttons and the default “full cut”).
I’ve prefered the specialized “regular cut” coat over the standard “full cut.” The regular cut feels more like the standard suit jacket that most professional men wear to work, while the full cut felt more like a wind-breaker. I also prefer the buttons, as the snaps contributed to the wind-breaker feel.
Suspenders
Also known as “braces,” all you need are dark broadfalls and suspenders to really look “plain” to the world. “Tabbed” suspenders fit over buttons in your pants, while “clip-on’s” use alligator clips to fasten onto standard pants. Tabbed look better but I can’t help thinking of Michael Douglass in “Wall Street”; a lot of ordinary anabapist men I see have clip-on’s.
I’ve heard the story that there’s a good-hearted ribbing between the Iowa and North Carolina Conservative Quakers about whether thin or wide suspenders is more plain. I’ve started to throw my lot in with Iowa and have gotten the three-quarter inch suspenders. (Fashionistas will remember that thin suspenders were popular with a certain kind of high school geek in the mid-1980s – think Cameron in Ferris Beuler’s Day Off; fair disclosure requires that I admit that I wore them around Cheltenham High). Again Gohn Brothers:
- #550T 3/4″ tab. Black: $7.98
- #552C 3/4″ clip. Black: $6.98
Hats
While Gohn Brothers does hats, I haven’t bought any of theirs. Instead I’ve gone for the Tilley T3 hat. I’m not complete happy with this, as Tilley’s seem to be associated with a certain kind of clueless traveler, but I’ve noticed that there are a lot of men in my yearly meeting who wear them, I think as an unconscious nod toward plainness. The Tilley is also friendlier to bike commuters: its tie-down strings wrap easily around bike handlebars, and it’s very crushable and washable.
Not a Uniform
Again, let me stress: I am not trying to specify a modern plain dress uniform. The only time you should adopt plain dress is when you’re feeling actively led by it. Sometimes that leading is an intution, which is fine, but you need to follow it on your own terms. My practice has evolved over time and yours should too. I’ve become more plain since I started this witness simply because I had to replace worn clothes and couldn’t see spending more money for shoddier clothes than I could get at Gohn Brothers. You don’t need to get broadfalls to be “plain,” as “plainness” is as much a state of mind and an attitude toward God and your spiritual community as it a set of clothes. I think of it now as a spiritual discipline, one very fitting for our consumeristic times.
I’d love to hear from others about their plain dressing.
Avoiding Plain Dress Designer Clothing
July 21, 2004
A guest piece by “David,” originally posted on the Plain and Modest Dress Yahoo Group.
From: “mquadd” <mquadd@y…>
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004
Subject: Introduction and questions
Hi. My name is David and I attend but am not a member of the Friends Meeting here. I was actually raised as an Episcopalian although I had several uncles who were birth-right Quakers. I grew up (for my first 10 years) in Chester County, PA which traditionally was an area with a high concentration of Quakers. I would expect that this is no longer true as the area has become quite suburban with a big influx of new residents. Nonetheless, I grew up attending meeting now and then with relatives at various meetings in Chester County and northern Deleware. That was in the 1960s and was a time when some people, mostly older people (people most likely born in the 1800s meaning these people were in their 70s or 80s in the 1960s), still used plain talk. Even in the 1960s, in a fairly rural area, this was more of an excepting than the rule and was limited to the oldest members of the meeting and never used outside the Quaker community. Those who used plain talk never used it outside of the Quaker community – home, Friends, and meeting. As far as I know, they never used this type of talk for business or relations or outside the community.
At age 10 we moved to Lancaster County. At that time, many Memmonites who now no longer dress plain or wear coverings did still did both of these. I went to school with many Mennonite kids. In addition I became friends with several Old Order Amish families (and one Beachy family) with whom I am still friends. That was 35 years ago, I have witnessed the plain testimony weaken in each of these groups including the Old Order Amish. I actually spent much of my childhood and teenage years hanging out with one paticular Old Order Amish family as way to escape the insanity of having drug addicted and alcoholic parents. In their very simple and unstated Christianity, they were very willing to provide food, shelter, and love to a very confused boy (me).
Anyway, the Lancaster Conference Mennonites (now part of the largest Mennonite group) seem to be totally mainstream. Perhaps there are some who still follow the former order. The Beachy Amish now dress like conservative Mennonites and less and less like Amish. Finally, I was watched the Amish allow lots of modern changes in their discipline although their basic clothing is pretty much unchanged but sun glasses are now allowed and many Amish girls and women pluck their eyebrows – both not allowed in the 1970s. By the way, in the late 1960s they had already adopted cotton-poly blends for both clothing and quilts!
The reason for that, perhaps odd, biographical sketch is to give some background on my exposure to plain groups and, more importantly, plain thought. I have toyed with the idea of plain dressing although I can’t give a clear reason why I feel this. Is it a calling or am I just crazy? I do know that the stability I found in that Amish house in the 1970s most likely had a giant influence on me (a happy Amish family where I had fun vs. living in a family that was in the self-distruct mode due to addiction). I also I have clear memories of having Quaker teachers in elemently school and vanity and worldliness was a bad thing. It was during the height of the Viet Nam war, so there was this odd hippy-Quaker thing going on with some of my teachers. I am sure some of you who were around the RSF in the 1960s can relate. So here I am still toying with these ideas and still attempting to define my own religious feelings at the middle of my life (I am 45).
Here are a few things I do know that apply to me. First, I feel very at odds with our society that focuses on the most superfical things. Our society spends BILLIONS on make-up, hair dye, plastic surgery, breast inplants, push-up bras, designer clothes (that are no different that basic clothes except the label and might even be of lower quality).… People are judged on the these issues. Character and morality (a loaded term that seems to have been highjacked by the rightwing and ultraconservatives)seems to be secondary to these very superficial things. What we tell ourselves and our children is that we are not adequate as we are. We have to change our body and then drape it was overly priced clothes to count. The outside is more important that the inside. This is sick. It is distructive. It is a sin.
Beyond that, my feelings about plain dressing get less clear. Is a uniform what I am seeking? Those groups who were very uniform clothing tend to be insular and often attact as much attention to themselves as a belly shirt and designer jeans! If you doubt this, go to Lancaster County and attempt to drive on Rt. 340. The attraction that the plain people attract in that area rivals any movie star or rock concert. Lancaster gets literally millions of tourists each year. So is that type of uniform dressing that is quite distinct serving a good purpose? I am not sure but am just offering a question rather than a judgement. Other groups that dress quite plain such as ultra-orthodox Jews are not so much a tourist attraction but clearly are insular and seperate from the larger society. Many people view this as being “stand off-ish” which I hope is nobody’s goal. I have heard people apply this type of judgement to plain christian groups also.
So, I would be very interested in hearing what drives others to dress plain? If you are a Quaker, what has been the reaction at your meeting? I once met a plain dressing Quaker who said that he had received more negative than positive reactions when visiting other meetings. Are there any meetings where all or most members dress plain? In my childhood experiences, there was no plain dressing in any Quaker meetings in Chester County or in Deleware. I have not even run into anyone who uses plain language for over 30 years except that one plain dressing man. Clearly, I know no Quakers who have been raised with the idea of plain dressing or plain language including some of my cousins who are worldly to say the least. What makes plain. I know of “black bumper Mennonites” who drive a black bumper Mercedes. Is that plain? Why is a Volvo often considered ok but a BMW is bad? They both cost $40K. Often I see this type of thinking in those who claim to follow a less than worldly life style. I think there is always a risk of falling into the mindset of some labels being good and others being bad. Once a particular brand, say a type of hat or type of jeans, is thought to be the proper “plain uniform” does that not become the designed clothing of the plain dressers? I am not sure. What I find is that once you jump into this topic, it becomes complicated and that is not the point.
One final question, what benefits do you recieve from plain dressing?
Thanks. David
War is Just Another Racket
July 20, 2004
In the LA Times, “Advocates of War Now Profit From iraq’s Reconstruction”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-advocates14jul14,1,614346.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
bq. Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey is a prominent example of the phenomenon, mixing his business interests with what he contends are the country’s strategic interests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior government advisor on intelligence and national security issues, including iraq. Meanwhile, he works for two private companies that do business in iraq and is a partner in a company that invests in firms that provide security and anti-terrorism services.
In Under the Same Sun, “Is This Any Way to Run an Occupation”:http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000110, links and commentary about how politically-connected U.S. companies are pilfering iraqi oil money without audits, competitive bidding or oversight.
Beltway lawyers might find all this perfectly legal, but where I come from we call these kind of kickbacks good ol’ boy corruption. And the rest of the world will just see the familiar pattern of modern-day colonialism: a rich American elite getting even richer by extracting third-world resources at gunpoint. iraqis will pay for all the Halliburton yachts with the schools, hospitals and highways they won’t be able to build. “American soldiers are paying for it by dying”:http://news.google.com/news?q=american+soldiers+killed+iraq&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF‑8&c2coff=1&output=search and the “iraqi children may or may not be paying for it with sodimized abuse at Abu Ghraib prison”:http://lincolnplawg.blogspot.com/2004/07/is-this-sy-hershs-october-surprise.html. We will all pay for it for generations because of all the ill-will we’re earning and the ignorance we’re sowing. How many times do we need to prove that war is just another racket?