Doug Gwyn on QuakerSpeak: What Does Quakerism Teach About Connecting to Nature?

September 6, 2018

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.

What Does Quak­erism Teach About Con­nect­ing to Nature?

New Jersey Transit wastes our time again

August 20, 2018

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.

Friends Journal seeking articles on Quakers and Christianity

August 7, 2018

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?

YouTube star Jessica Kellgren-Fozard on her Quakerism

July 20, 2018

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.

Quaker Jazz

April 12, 2018

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).

Norval Reece interviewed on MLK Jr anniversary

April 5, 2018

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.