How many skeletons might remain buried? Possibly thousands, according to archaeologists, but no one knows. Historical maps are unclear on the cemeteries’ boundaries, but numerous histories portray the grounds as used first by Quakers and then by the poor, whose numbers increased along with the size of the city.
They quote the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting general secretary, who had heard nothing about this. The article also cites a 1880s article in Friends Intelligencer, the predecessor to Friends Journal.
My mother’s death notice is in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
Here’s another installation of mom stories, originally written for a longer obituary than the one running in today’s paper.
A single parent, she earned an associates degree at Rider College in Trenton and worked as a secretary at a number of Philadelphia-area based organizations, include Women’s Medical College and the Presbyterian Board of Publications. In the mid-1960s she became an executive secretary at the newly-formed Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company. An office feminist, she liked recounting the story of the day in the 1970s when the women of the office united to break the dress code by all wearing pant suits. A senior vice president was on the phone when she walked into his office and is said to have told his caller “My secretary just walked in wearing pants.… and she looks terrific!”
When Colonial Penn later started an in-house computer programmer training program, she signed up immediately and started a second career. She approached programs as puzzles and was especially proud of her ability to take other programmers’ poorly-written code and turn it into efficient, bug-free software.
In the early 1990s, she moved into her own apartment in Jenkintown, Pa. She reclaimed a shortened form of her maiden name and swapped “Betsy” for “Liz.” During this time she became a committed attender at Abington Friends Meeting. As clerk of its peace and justice committee, she worked to build the consensus needed for the meeting to produce a landmark statement on reproductive rights. As soon as it was passed she said, “next up, a minute on same-sex marriage!” In the late 90s, that was still controversial even with LGBTQ circles and I imagine that even the progressive folks at Abington were dreading the thought she might put this on the agenda!
In her late 60s, she bought her first house, in Philadelphia’s Mount Airy neighborhood. She loved fixing it up and babysitting her grandchildren. She never made any strong connections with any of the nearby Quaker Meetings only attending worship sporadically after the move. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in 2010, she took the news with dignity. She moved into an independent living apartment in Atco, N.J. and continued an active lifestyle as long as possible.
Strangely enough, the Philadelphia Inquirer has published a front-page article on leadership in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, “Friends frustrate some of their flock, Quakers bogged down by process, two leaders say”. To me it comes off as an extended whine from the former PhYM General Secretary Thomas Jeavons. His critiques around Philadelphia Quaker culture are well-made (and well known among those who have seen his much-forwarded emails) but he doesn’t seem as insightful about his own failings as a leader, primarily his inability to forge consensus and build trust. He frequently came off as too ready to bypass rightly-ordered decision-making processes in the name of strong leadership. The more this happened, the more distrust the body felt toward him and the more intractible and politicized the situation became. He was the wrong leader for the wrong time. How is this worthy of the front-page newspaper status?
The “Making New Friends” outreach campaign is a central example in the article. It might have been more successful if it had been given more seasoning and if outsider Friends had been invited to participate. The campaign was kicked off by a survey that confirmed that the greatest threat to the future of the yearly meeting was “our greying membership” and that outreach campaigns “should target young adult seekers.” I attended the yearly meeting session where the survey was presented and the campaign approved and while every Friend under forty had their hands raised for comments, none were recognized by the clerk. “Making New Friends” was the perfect opportunity to tap younger Friends but the work seemed designed and undertaken by the usual suspects in yearly meeting.
Like a lot of Quaker organizations, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has spent the last fifteen years largely relying on a small pool of established leadership. There’s little attention to leadership development or tapping the large pool of talent that exists outside of the few dozen insiders. This Spring Jeavons had an article in PYM News that talked about younger Friends that were the “future” of PYM and put the cut-off line of youthfulness/relevance at fifty! The recent political battles within PYM seemed to be over who would be included in the insider’s club, while our real problems have been a lack of transparency, inclusion and patience in our decision making process.
Philadelphia Friends certainly have their leadership and authority problems and I understand Jeavons’ frustrations. Much of his analysis is right. I appreciated his regularly column in PYM News, which was often the only place Christ and faith was ever seriously discussed. But his approach was too heavy handed and corporate to fit yearly meeting culture and did little to address the long-term issues that are lapping up on the yearly meeting doorsteps.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard some very good things about the just-concluded yearly meeting sessions. I suspect the yearly meeting is actually beginning a kind of turn-around. That would be welcome.
In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Administration’s support for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html: bq.. Washington’s resistance to an immediate cease-fire and its staunch support of Israel have made it more difficult for [US “Secretary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with other nations, including some American allies, as they search for a formula that will end the violence and produce a durable cease-fire.… Several State Department officials have privately objected to the administration’s emphasis on Israel and have said that Washington is not talking to Syria to try to resolve the crisis. Damascus has long been a supporter of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and previous conflicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shuttle diplomacy with Syria. p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are causing irreparable harm to the U.S. image in the Middle East. High-sounding words about democracy ring hollow when we forsake diplomacy.
The UK “News Telegraph is confirming”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/29/nirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/29/ixnewstop.html what many of us in the peace movement have been worrying about all day: that at least some of the four westerners abducted in iraq over the weekend were members of the “Christian peacemakers Teams”:http://www.cpt.org/ bq. A British anti-war activist abducted in iraq was investigating human rights abuses with a group called the Christian peacemakers Team when he was held. Norman Kember, 74, the only publicly-named abductee, is a former secretary of the Baptist peace Fellowship in England and a board member of the English Fellowship of Reconciliation. He’s been an outspoken opponent of the war in iraq. In the “April/May 2005 edition of FOR’s newsletter”:http://www.for.org.uk/plinks0405.pdf (pdf) he talked about challenging himself to do more: bq. Now personally it has always worried me that I am a ‘cheap’ peacemaker (by analogy with Bonhoeffer’s concept of ‘cheap’ grace). Being a CO in Britain,talking, writing, demonstrating about peace is in no way taking risks like young service men in iraq. I look for excuses why I should not become involved with CPT or EAPPI. Perhaps the readers will supply mewithwith some? Here at Nonviolence.org, I’m occassionally chatised for being more concerned about western victims of violence (indeed, how many iraqis were abducted or killed this weekend alone?). It’s a fair charge and an important reminder. But perhaps it is only human nature to worry about those you know. I’ve probably met Norman in passing at one or another international peace gathering; I might well know the three unidentified abductees. I suspect a peace movement veteran like Kember would be the first to tell me that pacifists shouldn’t sit contentedly in middle-class comfy armchairs simply souting slogans or dashing off emails (Quaker Johan Maurer, wrote an “impassioned blog post about this just last week”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/11/saturday-ps-nancys-questions.htm). Part of the reason folks put themselves on the lines for organizations like Christian peacemakers Teams is that they want to do their peace witness among those facing the violence. When the victims aren’t just “them, over there” but to “us, and our friends, over there” it becomes more real. This is what the families of the American military casualties have been telling us. Now, with Kember and the three others missing, our worry is made more real. For better or worse, the peace movement is scanning the headlines from iraq with even more worry tonight. Our prayers are with Kember, as they are with all the missing and all the victims of this horrible war.
President Bush has nominated a “foe of the United Nations to be its U.S. ambassador”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. Ten years ago he declared: “There’s no such thing as the United Nations,” and went on to say “If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” This is a fellow who called his role in withdrawling the U.S. signature on the treaty ratifying the International Criminal Court “the happiest moment of my government service”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. The Guardian reports that “fought arms control agreements, a strengthening of the biological weapons convention and the comprehensive test ban treaty”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1432701,00.html?gusrc=rss. With his nomination, the Bush Administration continues its course of unilaterialism and open contempt for the world community. Not a good way to build a last peace.
