Tag Archives ⇒ lot

Nineteenth-century Quaker sex cults

March 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An arti­cle in Port­land Month­ly is get­ting a lot of shares today, large­ly giv­en its breath­less head­line: How the Father of Ore­gon Agri­cul­ture Launched a Doomed Quak­er Sex Cult.

It pro­files Hen­der­son Luelling (1809 – 1878) and it’s not exact­ly an aca­d­e­m­ic source. Here’s a snippet:

Luelling had tak­en up with these groovy Free Lovers, whom he met in San Fran­cis­co. From the out­set, the jour­ney had com­pli­ca­tions. “Dr.” Tyler, it turned out, was actu­al­ly an ex-blacksmith who now pro­fessed exper­tise in water-cures and clair­voy­ance. One of the men was flee­ing finan­cial trou­bles, and when the ship was searched by police he hid under the hoop­skirt of a female passenger.

Luelling’s life fol­lows many com­mon themes of mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er life:

  • He was a hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist, first mov­ing to the Port­land, Ore­gon, area and then to a small town near Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. Friends had long been inter­est­ed in botan­i­cal affairs. Rough­ly a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er John Bar­tram was con­sid­ered one of the great­est botanists of his generation.
  • Luelling moved from Indi­ana to Salem, Iowa in the 1830s and became a staunch abo­li­tion­ist, even build­ing hide­outs for the Under­ground Rail­road in his house. Wikipedia reports he was expelled from his meet­ing for this.
  • He got Ore­gon fever and moved his oper­a­tion out there.
  • At some point in this he became inter­est­ed in Spir­i­tu­al­ism and its off­shoots like the Free Love move­ment. This was not a Quak­er move­ment but the mod­ern Amer­i­can move­ment start­ed with the Fox Sis­ters in Upstate New York and was heav­i­ly pro­mot­ed by Quak­er Hick­sites Amy and Isaac Post.

If you want to know more about Luelling’s “sex cults,” this arti­cle in Off­beat Ore­gon feels much bet­ter sourced: The father of Ore­gon’s nurs­ery indus­try and his “Free Love” cult:

The “free love” thing is far from new. Over the years, espe­cial­ly in the Amer­i­can West, at least half a dozen gen­er­a­tions have pro­duced at least one “dar­ing” philoso­pher who calls for a throwing-off of the age-old yoke of mar­riage and fam­i­ly and urges his or her fol­low­ers to revert to the myth­ic “noble sav­age” life of naked and unashamed peo­ple gath­er­ing freely and open­ly, men and women, liv­ing and eat­ing and sleep­ing togeth­er with no rules, no judg­ment and no squab­bles over paternity.

He’d also start­ed his very own free-love cult — “The Har­mo­ni­al Broth­er­hood.” Luelling’s group made free love the cen­ter­piece of a strict reg­i­men of self-denial that includ­ed an all-vegetarian, stimulant-free diet, cold-water “hydropa­thy” for any med­ical need, and a Utopi­an all-property-in-common social structure.

Port­land Friend Mitchel San­tine Gould has writ­ten about some of these cur­rents as well. His Leavesof​Grass​.org site used to have a ton of source mate­r­i­al. Dig­ging into one day it seemed pret­ty clear that the Free Love move­ment was also a refuge of sorts for those who did­n’t fit strict nineteenth-century het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty or gen­der norms. Gould’s piece, Walt Whit­man’s Quak­er Para­dox has a bit of this, with talk of “life­long bachelors.”

Many of the Spir­i­tu­al­ist lead­ers were young women and their pub­lic lec­ture series were pret­ty much the only pub­lic lec­tures by young women any­where in Amer­i­ca. If you want to learn more about these devel­op­ments I rec­om­mend Ann Braud’s Rad­i­cal Spir­its: Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Wom­en’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century Amer­i­ca. These com­mu­ni­ties were very involved in abo­li­tion­ist and wom­en’s rights issues and often start­ed their own year­ly meet­ings after becom­ing too rad­i­cal for the Hicksites.

And lest we think all this was a West Coast phe­nom­e­non, my lit­tle unpre­pos­sess­ing South Jer­sey town of Ham­mon­ton was briefly a cen­ter of Free Love Spir­i­tu­al­ism (almost com­plete­ly scrubbed from our his­to­ry books) and the near­by town of Egg Har­bor City had exten­sive water san­i­tar­i­ums of the kind described in these articles.

Hammonton 2017 Fourth of July

July 5, 2017
· Martin Kelley

We didn’t see much of the Ham­mon­ton Fourth of July parade this year because once again the kids were in the bike parade por­tion (all except Fran­cis, who had a bad melt­down in the morn­ing and stayed home with mom).

The bike parade was again spon­sored by Toy Mar­ket, the inde­pen­dent toy store in town (sup­pli­er of much of our house­hold’s San­ta deliv­ery). They had a table full of red, white, and blue bunting that we could apply to the bikes. We all had a lot of fun.

Notes for next year: a tan­dem exten­sion on a adult bike looked like fun and then 7‑yo Gre­go­ry will be a good age for this (we should dig ours out from the back of the garage). Also: the parade has a dog con­tin­gent so maybe a much-calmer Fran­cis will be able to be part of that next year (we’re due to pick up the ser­vice dog in 12 days!, eeek!!!)

Fake News and Clickbait

November 17, 2016
· Martin Kelley

There’s a lot of talk online right now about fake news pages on Face­book and how they influ­enced both the elec­tion and how we think about the elec­tion. It’s a prob­lem and I’m glad peo­ple are shar­ing links about it.

But when we share these links, let’s take that extra step and point to orig­i­nal sources.

Exam­ple: Some­one named Melis­sa Zim­dars has done a lot of work to com­pile a list of fake news sources, pub­lished as a Google Doc with a Cre­ative Com­mons license that allows any­one to repost it. It’s a great pub­lic ser­vice and she’s fre­quent­ly updat­ing it, reclas­si­fy­ing pub­li­ca­tions as feed­back comes in.

The prob­lem is that there are a lot of web pub­lish­ers whose sites exist most­ly to repack­age con­tent. They’ll find a fun­ny Red­dit list and will copy and paste it as an orig­i­nal post or they’ll rewrite a break­ing news source in their own words. The rea­son is obvi­ous: they get the ad dol­lars that oth­er­wise would go to the orig­i­nal con­tent cre­ators. They’re not engag­ing in fake news, per se, but they’re also not adding any­thing to the knowl­edge base of human­i­ty and they’re tak­ing the spot­light off the hard work of the orig­i­nal creators.

Back to our exam­ple, Zim­dars’s updates on this click­bait sites don’t get updat­ed as she refines her list. In some cas­es, click­bait web­sites rewrite and repost one anoth­er’s ever-more extreme head­lines till they bear lit­tle real­i­ty to the orig­i­nal post (I fol­lowed the page view food chain a few years ago after read­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly dopey piece about veg­ans launch­ing a boy­cott over a TV ad).

So here’s part two of avoid­ing fake news sites: before you share some­thing on Face­book, take the two min­utes to fol­low any link to the orig­i­nal source and share that instead. Sup­port orig­i­nal con­tent creation.

Seeing how it goes

November 12, 2016
· Martin Kelley

It seems a lot of con­ver­sa­tions I’m in these days, on social media and IRL revolve around how we should be respond­ing to Trump’s elec­tion. I know there’s a cer­tain dan­ger in being too deter­min­is­tic, but a lot of answers seem to match where indi­vid­u­als are in the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty scale. Some are coun­sel­ing patience: let’s see how it goes after the inau­gu­ra­tion. Maybe we don’t know the real Don­ald Trump.

Well, I think we do know the real Trump by now, but what I don’t think we know is the actu­al fla­vor of a Trump pres­i­den­cy. Have we ever seen a pres­i­dent elect who was so thin on actu­al pol­i­cy? Trump rode his lack of pol­i­cy expe­ri­ence to vic­to­ry, of course, cit­ing his inde­pen­dence from the peo­ple who gov­ern as one of his chief qual­i­fi­ca­tions. But it’s also his per­son­al­i­ty: on the cam­paign trail and in his famous 3am tweets from the toi­let he often con­tra­dict­ed himself.

He’s a man of high-concept ideas, not detailed pol­i­cy. This means the actu­al poli­cies – and the gov­er­nance we should and should­n’t wor­ry about – will depend dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the peo­ple he hires. Right now it seems like he’s trolling lob­by­ists and a hand­ful of neo­con dinosaurs that start­ed the Iraq War on forged doc­u­ments. He’s bring­ing the alli­ga­tors in to “drain the swamp” and in the last 24 hours they’ve already sig­naled that a lot of key cam­paign pledges are open for recon­sid­er­a­tion. How much we have to wor­ry – and just what we have to wor­ry about – will be clear­er as his team assembles.

Shitty jobs that don’t exist

November 10, 2016
· Martin Kelley

I don’t think we can ful­ly under­stand the appeal Trump with­out real­iz­ing just how shit­ty life has become for a lot of work­ing class white men and their fam­i­lies. Sta­ble, hon­est union jobs just don’t exist any­more. It was­n’t so long ago that you could grad­u­ate high school, work hard, and have a good life with a ranch­er and two cars in the dri­ve­way. You weren’t liv­ing large but you had enough for a Dis­ney vaca­tion every cou­ple of years and a nice TV on the liv­ing room wall. For a lot of work­ing class fam­i­lies, that just does­n’t exist any­more. Now it’s astro­nom­i­cal cred­it card deb­its, defaults on mort­gages, divorces from the stress. Sav­ing for the kids’ col­lege or for retire­ment is just a joke. It’s easy to get nos­tal­gic for what’s been lost.

A few years ago I wrote about the time when I worked the night shift at the local super­mar­ket. The old­er guys there had decent-enough sta­ble jobs they had worked at for twen­ty years, but for the younger guys, the super­mar­ket was just anoth­er tem­po­rary stop in a never-ending rota­tion of shit jobs. Some­times it’d be pump­ing gas overnight hop­ing you would­n’t get shot. Oth­er times it’d be work­ing the box store hop­ing some ran­dom man­ag­er did­n’t fire you because he did­n’t like the way you look. A lot just did­n’t last at any job.

There was a small core of long-time night­shift crew mem­bers and a revolv­ing door of new hires. Some of the new peo­ple last­ed only a day before quit­ting and some a week or two, but few remained longer. Many of these tem­po­rary employ­ees were poster chil­dren for the tragedies of mod­ern twenty-something man­hood (night crews were almost all male). One twenty-something white guy was just back from Iraq; he shout­ed to him­self, shot angry looks at us, and was full of jerky, twitchy move­ments. We all instinc­tive­ly kept our dis­tance. Over one lunch break, he opened up enough to admit he was on pro­ba­tion for an unspec­i­fied offense and that loss of this job would mean a return to prison. When he dis­ap­peared after two weeks (pre­sum­ably to jail), we were all vis­i­bly relieved. (Our fears weren’t entire­ly unfound­ed: a night crew mem­ber from a near­by ShopRite helped plan the 2007 Fort Dix ter­ror­ist plot.)

Anoth­er co-worker last­ed a bit longer. He was old­er and calmer, an African Amer­i­can man in his late for­ties who biked in. I liked him and dur­ing breaks, we some­times talked about God. One frosty morn­ing, he asked if I could give him a lift home. As he gave direc­tions down a par­tic­u­lar road, I thought­less­ly said, “Oh so you live back past Anco­ra,” refer­ring to a locally-notorious state psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal. He paused a moment before qui­et­ly telling me that Anco­ra was our des­ti­na­tion and that he lived in its halfway house for vets in recov­ery. Despite the insti­tu­tion­al sup­port, he too was gone after about a month.

The reg­u­lars were more sta­ble, but even they were sus­cep­ti­ble to the tec­ton­ic shifts of the mod­ern work­force. There was a time not so long ago when some­one could grad­u­ate high school, work hard, be depend­able, and earn a decent working-class liv­ing. My shift man­ag­er was only a few years old­er than me, but he owned a house and a depend­able car, and he had the night­shift lux­u­ry of being able to attend all of his son’s Lit­tle League games. But that kind of job was dis­ap­pear­ing. Few new hires were offered full-time work any­more. The new jobs were part-time, short-term, and throw-away. Even the more sta­ble “part-timers” drift­ed from one drea­ry, often dan­ger­ous, job to the next.

You can read the whole piece here:


A Nightshift Education - Friends Journal

A Night­shift Edu­ca­tion — Friends Journal 

Learn­ing the val­ue of an hon­est job. “I had fan­cied myself a class-conscious pro­gres­sive. It should­n’t have startled…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

To be clear: I don’t think Trump him­self real­ly gives a crap about these peo­ple. As I said yes­ter­day, he’s all about him­self and his fel­low rich New York­ers. The mil­lions of peo­ple who vot­ed for him most­ly got suck­ered. That’s just how Trump works. He suck­ers, he raids, he bank­rupts, then he moves on (see: Atlantic City). Eight years from now our coun­try will be tee­ter­ing in bank­rupt­cy again, but that’s not the point, not real­ly, not now at least. The Amer­i­can Dream real­ly has dis­ap­peared for a lot of peo­ple. They’d like to see Amer­i­can made great again.

Up Into The Cherry Tree

July 24, 2015
· Martin Kelley
Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Steven­son’s A Child’s Gar­den of Verses

My moth­er died a few days ago. While I’m over­whelmed with the mes­sages of prayers and con­do­lences, at least at some lev­el it feels like cheat­ing to accept them too ful­ly. This isn’t a new con­di­tion. This is just the final moment of a slow-motion death.

A lit­tle over five years ago my moth­er was for­mal­ly diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s. It was quite brave of her to get the test­ing done when she did. This had always been her most-feared sce­nario for aging. Grow­ing up, we had befriend­ed an active elder­ly neigh­bor who had gen­tly died in her sleep after a minor slip on some ice. My mom thought that was the best exit ever. She swore Mrs. Gold­smith had come to her in a dream the next night to con­grat­u­late her­self, say­ing “See, I told you I was lucky!” For years after­wards, my moth­er con­vinced her­self that she would go in a sim­i­lar­ly ele­gant way.

My mom, Liz, must have sensed that Alzheimer’s was a pos­si­bil­i­ty when she sched­uled that doc­tor’s vis­it. The news didn’t come as much of a sur­prise to us fam­i­ly. I had been jok­ing for years that my mom seemed to have only twen­ty sto­ries that she kept on rota­tion. After she read a study that cross­word puz­zles keep your brain sharp as we age, she became an obses­sive cross­word puz­zler; when the Sudoku craze hit, she was right on top of it. She had brave­ly bought her first house in her late 60s. How proud she was. At the time she let us all know, repeat­ed­ly, that she would be leav­ing it “in a box.” Caulk­ing trim, replac­ing win­dows, and trou­bleshoot­ing a mud room leak that defied a dozen con­trac­tors became her occu­pa­tion, along with vol­un­teer­ing and watch­ing grand­kids. But by 2010, she must have known she wasn’t going to have Mrs. Goldsmith’s luck. It was time to adjust.

When she called to tell me the diag­no­sis, she couldn’t even use the A‑word. She told me her “brain was dying” and that the doc­tor was putting her on Ari­cept. A quick Google search con­firmed this was an Alzheimer’s drug and a call with the doc­tor lat­er that after­noon helped map out the road ahead.

Alzheimer’s is a slow-motion death. She’s been dis­ap­pear­ing from us for a long while. Reg­u­lar out­ings became less fre­quent till we couldn’t even take her out to a near­by restau­rant for her birth­day. As words dis­ap­peared and speech began fal­ter­ing, I’d show her recent kid pho­tos on my phone and tell sto­ries to fill the emp­ty­ing space. Even­tu­al­ly she stopped show­ing inter­est even in this. On my last reg­u­lar vis­it with her, I brought the kids and we had lots of fun tak­ing pic­tures. Mom kept point­ing out at the phone’s dis­play as if it were a mir­ror. But con­ver­sa­tion was too dis­joint­ed and after a few min­utes, my kids start­ed wan­der­ing in ever widen­ing cir­cles look­ing for inter­est­ing but­tons and alarms to touch and pull and I had to round them up to leave.

In the past few weeks her for­get­ful­ness has extend­ed to eat­ing and swal­low­ing. Inter­ven­tion would only buy a lit­tle more time until she for­got how to breathe. Alzheimer’s is a one way trip.

On my last few vis­its she was most­ly sleep­ing. She’s was calm, preter­nat­u­ral­ly calm. Lying on her back, pale and peace­ful, she looked as if she might already be a body rest­ing in a cas­ket. Only the slight rise of sheets as she breathed gave away the news that she was still with us, if bare­ly. I felt awk­ward just sit­ting there. Some peo­ple are good in these kinds of sit­u­a­tions, but I self-consciously strug­gle. With lit­tle chance of inter­ac­tion, I struck on the idea of read­ing from a favorite book of poems that she had read to me on count­less nights as a child.  “Up into the cher­ry tree, who should climb but lit­tle me?” I don’t know if she heard me or pic­tured the cher­ry tree in her haze, but it was a way for us to be together.

The slow-motion nature of Alzheimer’s means she slept a lot until she didn’t. For rea­sons that go deep into biog­ra­phy, she was a won­der­ful­ly friend­ly per­son who didn’t have a lot of close friends any­more. It seems pecu­liar that one can walk upon the earth for so many decades and only have a dozen or so peo­ple notice your depar­ture. But then maybe that’s the norm for those who live deep into their eight­ies. Most of us will leave life with the same kind of qui­et rip­ples with which we entered.