Tag Archives ⇒ childhood

The gray wave that wasn’t

November 7, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Back in March, Friends Jour­nal and the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion co-hosted an online dis­cus­sion with six Quak­er can­di­dates for con­gres­sion­al seats. The idea and coor­di­na­tion came from the awe­some Greg Woods. I went to see just how high the 2018 “gray wave” had crested.

Spoil­ers: no wave. Four of the can­di­dates didn’t make it out of the pri­maries and a fifth was run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in a long-shot can­di­da­cy. The one can­di­date to win major-party pri­ma­ry was the awe­some Shaw­na Roberts1 of Bar­nesville, Ohio. Shawna’s one of the most down-to-earth, real, peo­ple I know and it was a lot of fun to fol­low her cam­paign. Her twit­ter feed has been a hoot:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly Shaw­na only got about 30 per­cent of the vote yes­ter­day. This elec­tion was not kind to Democ­rats in rur­al dis­tricts like south­east Ohio’s 6 and she was run­ning against an incum­bent. From my van­tage point 30 per­cent seems pret­ty good, though as my sev­enth grade math teacher used to intone in his weary bari­tone, close only counts in horse­shoes and hand grenades. 2 Still, the prospect of a Mrs Roberts Goes to Wash­ing­ton win had me hop­ing against the odds. I’d love to see her con­tin­ue to be involved: 2020 is only two years away.

Stats on everyone’s results are at the updat­ed Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics page. For any­one won­der­ing about Quak­er politi­cians, Paul Buck­ley had a nice overview of our com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to vot­ing a few years ago.


2018 Quakers in Politics Web Panel (Updated Nov 2018)

2018 Quak­ers in Pol­i­tics Web Pan­el (Updat­ed Nov 2018) 

The upcom­ing U.S. Con­gres­sion­al mid-term elec­tions already have at least sev­en Quak­er can­di­dates for office. How does their…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

There’s a num­ber of com­mon gate­ways for seek­ers to dis­cov­er Quak­ers – activism is a com­mon one (see last week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­view with Lina Blount), as is plain dress (my posts on the top­ic are my most pop­u­lar), as is child­hood expe­ri­ences at Quak­er schools.

But a big gate­way is geneal­o­gy. Over the years I’ve got­ten count­less emails and phone calls from excit­ed new­com­ers who start off the con­ver­sa­tion with details of their fam­i­ly tree (when I used to answer the Quaker­books phone, I would let these folks go for about two min­utes before gen­tly inter­ject­ing “wow that’s fas­ci­nat­ing!, do you wan­na buy a book?!?”)

One fas­ci­nat­ing fac­toid in this week’s Quak­er­S­peak video comes from Thomas Hamm:

If your fam­i­ly arrived in the Unit­ed States before 1860, there’s prob­a­bly a 50 – 50 chance that you have a Quak­er ances­tor somewhere.

Quak­er Meet­ings should­n’t try to be the gath­er­ing spots for prodi­gal fam­i­ly reunions. The ear­ly Quak­ers were strangers to one anoth­er, join­ing togeth­er because of the fire of their con­vic­tions. Ours is a liv­ing, breath­ing, ever evolv­ing spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Still: we are also a group­ing of peo­ple. We look for belonging.

The longer I’m with Friends, the more I think ours is a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that draws strength from the ten­sion of para­dox­es. I have a soft spot for the old Quak­er fam­i­lies. If Jesus brings some of the new peo­ple in through Beliefnet quizzes or Ances​try​.com search results, well, maybe that’s okay.

How to Research Your Quak­er Ancestry

Nostalgia comes early

November 25, 2013
· Martin Kelley

One of the most famous scenes in the AMC show Mad Men comes near the end of sea­son one. Kodak has asked the adver­tis­ing firm to cre­ate a cam­paign around a new slide pro­jec­tor that has a cir­cu­lar tray. Don Drap­er presents the Carousel and gives a nostalgia-steeped pre­sen­ta­tion that use his per­son­al pho­tographs to move both the Kodak execs and the view­ers at home, who know that these semi-focused pic­tures will soon be all that left of his dis­in­te­grat­ing family.

No falling apart fam­i­ly for me, but I find myself already feel­ing nos­tal­gic for a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to Dis­ney World that doesn’t start for anoth­er six days. I’ve recent­ly been look­ing through our Flickr archive of past trips (four for me) and real­ize that they are our Carousel. The start with my fiancee tak­ing a cyn­i­cal me on my first trip. Lat­er vis­its bring kids to the pho­to­graph­ic line­up: newly-found legs to run, the joys of messy ice cream, the scare of not-very-scary rides and the big eyes of parades all run through the sets.

In less than a week we’ll start a new set. There will be two new chil­dren in this one. “The babies” are both walk­ing and tod­dling and are at their peak of baby pho­to­genic cute­ness. The old­er two are real kids now and the eldest is start­ing to show ear­ly glimpses of teenage-hood: eye-rolling, exha­la­tion of air (“uh!”) to show dis­ap­proval of incon­ve­nient parental instructions.

Icon­ic fam­i­ly pic­tures will hap­pen. Since our last vis­it five years ago, my wife’s lost her father to can­cer and my mother’s been slip­ping into the for­get­ful­ness of Alzheimer’s. As the wheel of life turns it some­how becomes more pos­si­ble to see our­selves as part of the turn­ing Carousel. Some decades from now I can imag­ine myself going through these pic­tures sur­round­ed by indulging chil­dren and antsy grand­chil­dren, exclaim­ing “look how young every­one looks!”

Theo and Francis, Dec 2008
Theo (then 5) and Fran­cis (3) zonked out after a long day in 2008. Hard to believe they were ever this cuddly.

 

Update post-trip:

There are 104 pic­tures from this trip in our pub­lic Flickr set, with one of our four kids hold­ing hands as they walk to the pool a stand­out icon­ic shot of their child­hood together:
11208956395_863d0ebfb0_k

Places like St Mary’s

February 23, 2011
· Martin Kelley

I’m writ­ing this from the back of St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, a small church built in the 1920s in the small cross­roads town of Mala­ga New Jer­sey. It was closed this past Novem­ber, sup­pos­ed­ly because of a bro­ken boil­er but real­ly because the Dio­cese of Cam­den is try­ing to sell off its small­er church­es – or any church with prime real estate along a high­way. It was reopened with­out per­mis­sion by parish­ioners in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, while we were still in the hos­pi­tal with baby num­ber three, a.k.a. Gregory.

blankWe’ve spent a lot of time here since then. It’s a 24 hour vig­il and has been and will con­tin­ue to be. In Boston there are vig­ils that have been going sev­en years. I try to imag­ine Gre­go­ry as a sev­en year old, hav­ing spent his child­hood grow­ing up here in this lit­tle church. It’s not an impos­si­ble scenario.

I also spend a lot of time talk­ing with the faith­ful Catholics who have come here to pro­tect the church. It’s a cacoph­o­ny of voic­es right now – con­ver­sa­tions about the church, sure, but that’s only one of the many top­ics that come up. Peo­ple are shar­ing their lives – sto­ries about grow­ing up, about peo­ple that are know, about cur­rent events… It’s a real com­mu­ni­ty. We’ve been attend­ing this church for years but it’s now that I’m real­ly get­ting to know everyone.

blankI some­times pon­der how I, the self-dubbed “Quak­er Ranter,” got involved in all of this. Through my wife, of course – she grew up Catholic, became a Friend for eleven years and then “returned to the Church” a few years after our mar­riage. But there’s more than that, rea­sons why I spend my own time here. Part is my love of the small and quirky. St Mary’s parish­ioners are stand­ing up for the kind of church­es where peo­ple know each oth­er. In an era where menial tasks are hired out, the actu­al mem­bers of St. Marys tend the church’s rosary gar­den and clean its base­ment and toi­lets. They spend time in the church beyond the hour of mass, doing things like pray­ing the rosary or adoration.

The powers-that-be that want St Mary’s closed so bad­ly want a large inper­son­al church with lots of pro­fes­sion­al­ized ser­vices and a least-common-denominator faith where peo­ple come, go and donate their mon­ey to a dio­cese that’s run like a busi­ness. But that’s not St. Mary’s. There’s his­to­ry here. This is a hub of a town, an ancient cross­roads, but the bish­op wants big church­es in the splurge of sub­ur­ban sprawl. Even we Friends need places like St Mary’s in the world.

Taking Jeanne’s social class quiz

November 2, 2007
· Martin Kelley

I usu­al­ly skip out on meme games but I thought I’d try out Jean­ne’s class one. Bold are the priv­i­leges I can claim from my youth, ital­ics are ones that I’m unsure of or that are more “yes but” kind of priv­i­leges. My mom’s Luther­an pride kept her from want­i­ng us to look or feel poor. Yes, I did­n’t have second-hand clothes but the rich kids often did. While they might wear scrubs from their par­en­t’s doc­tor prac­tice or vin­tage clothes scored from a thrift-store out­ing, I was in striped button-down shirts from the respectable depart­ment store whose teen depart­ment was always emp­ty of teen cus­tomers. Yes, respectable peo­ple on TV sound like me but that’s because my mom dropped her child­hood Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch accent and was hyper-aware of non-standard accents (a trait I’ve unfor­tu­nate­ly picked up, I correct/mock Julie’s “wood­er” pro­nun­ci­a­tion for water before I can even think about it, it’s like I have a very speci­fic­Tourettes Syn­drome that only applies to non-standard accents). Julie tal­lied up and com­ment­ed on the quiz here in Jean­ne’s com­ments. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to real­ize that although I grew up sig­nif­i­cant­ly poor­er and have less than half Julie’s “steps” she’s much more cul­tur­al­ly work­ing class than I’ll ever be.

Father went to col­lege (he was secre­tive about past, he might have done a semes­ter at St Joe’s)
Father fin­ished col­lege
Moth­er went to col­lege (two year sec­re­tar­i­al pro­gram)
Moth­er fin­ished col­lege
Have any rel­a­tive who is an attor­ney, physi­cian, or pro­fes­sor.
Were the same or high­er class than your high school teach­ers
Had more than 50 books in your child­hood home
Had more than 500 books in your child­hood home
Were read chil­dren’s books by a par­ent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The peo­ple in the media who dress and talk like me are por­trayed pos­i­tive­ly (because we’re good assim­i­la­tion­ists)
Had a cred­it card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had to take out less than $5000 in stu­dent loans in order to go to col­lege
Did­n’t need stu­dent loans to go to col­lege out of high school
Went to a pri­vate high school
Went to sum­mer camp (day camp at the Y for a few sum­mers)
Had a pri­vate tutor before you turned 18
Fam­i­ly vaca­tions involved stay­ing at hotels
Your cloth­ing was all bought new before you turned 18 (pride kept us out of second-hand stores until we lat­er crossed that class bound­ary where thrift­ing is cool pre­cise­ly because its not a neces­si­ty)
Your par­ents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was orig­i­nal art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your fam­i­ly lived in a sin­gle fam­i­ly house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apart­ment before you left home
You had your own room as a child (I was the only child at home after age 7)
Par­tic­i­pat­ed in an SAT/ACT prep course (my mom thought they were cheat­ing)
Had your own TV in your room in High School (most­ly as mon­i­tor for Radio Shack Col­or Com­put­er she bought me junior year of high school)
Owned a mutu­al fund or IRA in High School or Col­lege
Flew any­where on a com­mer­cial air­line before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your fam­i­ly
Went on more than one cruise with your fam­i­ly
Your par­ents took you to muse­ums and art gal­leries as you grew up (we were more zoo/county fair/Independence Hall tour types (hey, they’re all free/low-cost!))
You were unaware of how much heat­ing bills were for your fam­i­ly (n/a: includ­ed in apt rent, besides my mom would nev­er let on that things were tight)

A list like this can nev­er be all inclu­sive but it seems there are some big omis­sions. Where’s any­thing about fam­i­ly struc­ture and finances, like “You had two parental fig­ures liv­ing in your house” and “Both par­ents con­tributed to fam­i­ly income” or “One par­ent stayed home or worked part-time”? In my own instance, my father had a secret oth­er fam­i­ly and nev­er paid for any­thing oth­er than the occa­sion­al trip to Roy Rogers (secret fam­i­ly to “Lit­tle Mar­ty” at least, the women and old­er chil­dren pre­sum­ably noitced he was only around half the time and con­struct­ed some men­tal run-around to explain it away).

The oth­er omis­sion is social net­works. I have no mem­o­ry of fam­i­ly friends. I can­not name one friend of my father and my moth­er’s friends were lim­it­ed to a hand­ful of “girls” at the office. By the time I got to high school I start­ed to see how cer­tain class­mates were able to work the sys­tem to get the best teach­ers and class­es and this was most­ly accom­plished by par­ents swap­ping notes after Hew­brew class or at church or at hock­ey prac­tice. Friends are right­ly not­ed for the strength of their social net­works and I sus­pect these pro­vide a social priv­i­lege that is far more valu­able than parental salary.

Jeanne promis­es to write a part two to her post explain­ing what this all means to Friends. I’m look­ing for­ward to it though I’m unsure just what easy gen­er­al­iza­tion can be made if we’re look­ing at ori­gins. One of the few sur­veys try­ing to be com­pre­hen­sive found Philadelphia-area Friends don’t reflect Amer­i­can aver­ages yet for many con­vinced Friends our par­tic­i­pa­tion has mir­rored (and per­haps been uncon­scious­ly moti­vat­ed by) an upward class mobil­i­ty. Keep an eye on Social Class & Quak­ers for more!