Six seasons of the awesomest video series about Friends. There’s also a newly reenergized podcast version so subscribe to that if audio is your favorite medium!
http://quakerspeak.com/welcome-to-quakerspeak-season‑6/?fbclid=IwAR1zbq8SwVPqaPecEEQSAoJrJ7MdSW2htwMxrjq5Xi51UCGMzI9MQt7deDE
A new video from Quaker historian Gwyn:
Connecting with nature is about more than just exercise or tranquility. As Quaker author Doug Gwyn shares, even in the 17th century, Quakers were concerned about our disconnection with the natural world and what it would mean for the future.
http://quakerspeak.com/what-does-quakerism-teach-about-connecting-to-nature/
I just came back from what was billed as a kind of hearing/information meeting on New Jersey Transit’s planned shutdown of the Atlantic City Line. At least two of us had taken this seriously enough that we had written 500-word statements (here’s mine) but as soon as I walked into the Atlantic City rail station this morning at 8am, I realized that this was just a pro-forma, disorganized PR appearance.
The chief executive of New Jersey Transit, Kevin Corbett 1, was there telling us the same list of excuses for the shutdown they’ve been telling us, namely, that this is about Positive Train Control (PTC) testing 2. At least I think he was. NJT apparently doesn’t believe in microphones. I squeezed as closely as I could in the amorphous crowd of maybe 100 passengers who had turned up but I still could only make out a few words. Nearest Corbett were video cameras whose spotlights lit up his face. Maybe I can watch the news tonight and hear the meeting that I drove forty minutes to attend3.
I did hear repeated invoking of “PTC” but no of those words were admissions or mea culpas about the long-simmering labor problems that have led to train crew shortages. Because NJ Transit’s management have been behind targets for training new crews, and because engineers have been leaving for better-paying jobs on Amtrak and Metro North, there aren’t enough crews to run all of its lines and also do PTC testing. The easiest fix to the labor shortage is to just shut down the least politically connected train line and redeploy its crews to NYC-bound trains. We’re told this is a temporary fix but what if the management problems hiring, training, and retaining crews continues to bottom out?
After half an hour of this, Transit police found portable line markers so that passengers could line up to talk to Corbett. There were many passengers I recognized from my 15 years of commuting this line and I stood trying to hear them but again, to no avail. It was clear he was just giving the line.
Nearby was a table with schedules. I was pretty unhappy but I asked them a specific question 4. At least the Transit employee said she didn’t know and would look into it. She even wrote “Farley” on a pad of paper. I guess my trip wasn’t totally wasted.
If you’re a South Jersey local affected by all this, there’s a petition to sign. My friend Joseph (bicycleriiights on Twitter) has also done a great job writing about the possibilities of visionary South Jersey transit reform. Update: Also, NoreasterNick did a much better job getting to the front of the line and challenging Corbett. His video is great.
The December theme of Friends Journal will look at the juicy topic of Friends’ relationship with Christianity. I wrote up an “Editor’s Desk” post about the kinds of articles we might expect. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s a series of questions that has dogged Friends since we did away with clergy and started calling baptism a “sprinkling,” and it has been an issue of contention in every Quaker schism: Are we Christian? Are we really Christian? Does it matter if we’re Christian? What does it even mean to be Christian in the world?
One reason we began publishing more themed issues beginning in 2012 was so we use the topics to invite fresh voices to write for us. While we’ve long had regulars who will send us a few articles a year on miscellaneous topics, themes allow us to tempt people with specific interests and ministries: reconciliation from war, climate activism, workplace reform, mentorship, ecumenical relationships, the wider family of Friends, etc.
More recently I’ve started these “Editor’s Desk” posts as a way of sharing some of the ideas we have around particular upcoming issues. The post also gives us a URL that we can share on social media to drum up submissions. I also hope that others will share the URL via email.
The absolute best way of reaching new people is when someone we know shares an upcoming theme with someone we don’t know. There are many people who by chance or inclination seem to straddle Quaker worlds. They are invaluable in amplifying our calls for submissions. Question: would it help if we started an email list just for writers or for people who want to be reminded of upcoming themes so they can share them with Friends?
Jessica Kellgren-Fozard is a disabled TV presenter with 266,000+ followers on YouTube. She’s also a lifelong Friend from the UK. She’s just released a video in which she talks about her understanding of Quakerism. It’s pretty good. She occasionally implies that some specifically British procedural process is intrinsic to all Quakers but other than that it all rings true, certainly to her experience as a UK Friend.
I must admit that the world of YouTube stars is foreign to me. This is essentially a webcam vlog post but the lighting and hair and costuming is meticulous. Her notes include affiliate links for the dress she’s wearing ($89 and yes, they ship internationally), a 8 1/2 minute video tutorial about curling you hair in her vintage style (it has over 33,000 views). If you follow her on Instagram and Twitter you’ll soon have enough details on lipstick and shoe choices to be able to fully cosplay her.
But don’t laugh too much, because in between the self presentation tips, Kellgren-Fozard tackles really hard subjects – growing up gay in school, living with disabilities – in ways that are approachable and intimate, funny and instructive. And with a quarter million YouTube followers, she’s reaching people with a message of kindness and inclusion and understanding that feels pretty Quakerly to me. Margaret Fell liked herself a red dress sometimes and it’s easy to argue George Fox would be a YouTuber today.
Bonus: Jessica Kellgren-Fozard will host a live Q&A chat on her Quakerism this coming Monday. If I’m calculating my timezones correctly, it’ll be noon here on the U.S. East Coast. I plan to tune in.
This week’s QuakerSpeak interviews musician Colton Weatherston. I love the way he relates the communication and collaboration of jazz musicians to Quaker worship:
Especially artists and musicians, we often don’t have the same point of view or even the same background. Each of us will bring a lot of baggage into the meeting of the musicians and we have to build trust with each other and people need to feel free to express their ideas as a soloist without feeling told by the leader how exactly to play — we have to work it out as an ensemble. And I think that’s very true with meetings also.
Those with long memories might remember that I interviewed Chad Stephenson after he made a comparison between new jazz traditionalists and Convergent Friends at the 2009 Ben Lomond conference (I believe he wrote an expanded version for the Spirit Rising Quaker anthology but I can’t find a link).
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Philadelphia TV station interviewed Quaker Norval Reece: Bucks County Quaker, Civil Rights Activist Reflects On Time With MLK
Reece is a proud Quaker and believes it’s his Quaker roots that sent him to Dr. King’s side. “I was raised to believe all people are equal, are born equal, created equal,” he said. Reece met King in 1967 at the old Robert Morris Hotel in Philadelphia. He spent several hours with the civil rights icon. Reece says that night he, King and a few others planned a poverty march for the following spring, but King never made it.
Norval was an activist with AFSC back in his youth, served as a Pennsylvania secretary of commerce, and became a cable television entrepreneur. He’s pretty ubiquitous in Quaker circles these days, linking the activist and entrepreneurial in interesting ways. My favorite part of the video is when they casually redisplay a picture they had blurred out near the beginning (the one in the preview) and don’t bother naming the guy walking just ahead of him.
Yesterday I had a nice video chat with my friend Greg Woods, whose article, Organizing Young Adult Friends Online, appeared in November’s Friends Journal. Greg and I have been having variations on this conversation for years. Back in 2011, we worked together alongside Stephen Dotson to put together a now-dated Young Adult Friends website (watch us eat in double-time in its promotional video!). I believe it was the fourth YAF organizing website I had built since the mid-90s. Greg is now putting together a network of Quaker campus ministries. It’s one of those obvious needs that I hope Friends will support.
