Thoughts on the sur­prise Tru­itt fam­i­ly vis­it yes­ter­day, because I know Quak­ers can be real­ly real­ly bad at this… Make sure you have a web­site that lists a phone num­ber that rings through to a real per­son in real time. One that also lists an email that will be prompt­ly read and answered. This event came togeth­er pret­ty fast. From the first phone call from town­ship offi­cial Sta­cy Webb late Tues­day after­noon to my unlock­ing the meet­ing­house doors was about 24 hours.

I was on a video call when Stacy’s first call came in so I had to let it go to voice­mail. So also have voice­mail set up. After my pre­vi­ous call end­ed I was able to reply to Sta­cy’s email and then fol­lowup with a quick call to con­firm details. This was one less detail she had to wor­ry about in an event with lots of mov­ing parts. (In addi­tion to a half dozen Tru­itt fam­i­ly mem­bers we had the may­or, deputy may­or, town­ship man­ag­er, a police liai­son, and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions staffer with a cam­era. That’s a lot of peo­ple to coor­di­nate.) In a lull in the event, Sta­cy told me it was great that she find and reach some­one at Crop­well Meet­ing so easily.

I know com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be hard but we need to be acces­si­ble. I’ve been ghost­ed SO MANY TIMES when try­ing to call or email Quak­er meet­ings. And it’s not just the small ones that don’t get back to me. Some­times meet­ings with paid office staff also don’t return mes­sages. Crop­well uses a Google Voice num­ber to for­ward phone calls to my per­son­al cell and emails also auto­mat­i­cal­ly for­ward to me. It’s not over­whelm­ing, not in the least — I let things for­ward to voice­mail when I need to and I have ringers turned off at night. But because Crop­well set this up even before I became involved, I’ve been able to respond to inquiries quick­ly, once even as I was dri­ving to meet­ing on Sun­day morn­ing (don’t wor­ry, I pulled over). Peo­ple already think we’re extinct. Don’t give them more rea­sons to think that’s true.