Same-Sex Marriage, A Generational Debate

The reasons why and the political calculations President Obama contemplated before finally stepping forward for gay marriage have been already exhaustively analyzed. In accordance, I have nothing new to contribute to that discussion. I do find it interesting that the history-making aspect of the event has been greeted completely without the accolades normally given to matters this important. In a less preoccupied, exhausted electorate this would have been a momentous occasion.

It is easy to be cynical about the political calculation Obama took in reaching this decision. My thoughts have gone in those directions, too. As someone who identifies as LGBT himself, I’ve always that believed that marriage equality was an eventuality, not the product of bombast and confrontation. A series of incremental steps, invisible when analyzed one by one, have caused a huge sea change in popular opinion. The sweeping visuals and fevered mechanizations of another era are nowhere to be found. Here are no planned campaigns stretching from city to city, few stirring speeches, and a modest amount of boots on the ground.

It hasn’t been needed. Older gay men and women remember the days where the entire world seemed to be against them. But these are different times. For many under the age of 40, gay marriage is a non-issue. LGBT rights seem to turn the conventional wisdom of achieving a basic Civil Right upside down. A majority of Americans now favor same-sex marriage, which has required neither a revolution, nor a strictly revolutionary attitude to achieve. Even the same states which define marriage as a strictly heterosexual union, if generational attitude is any clue, will change dramatically when their voting demographics do.

The 2008 Presidential Election was, in some ways, an extended dialogue between Baby Boomers. Gay marriage will also take this form, at least for now. To reiterate, approval and tolerance of marriage equality and homosexuality in general are generational issues. I must remember to see the broadest possible understanding, as I form my own. Even though my parents were not very accepting of my bisexuality when I came out to them in high school, many other Boomer parents were. Among my friends, throughout the course of my life, this controversy is anything but controversial. Political affiliation and ideology, to them, are secondary.

It may be that we, as Americans, have recognized we have had no need to march and protest as we once did. The Occupy movement revealed that even a dramatic call to arms, no matter its potential, produced no significant seismic shift in affecting policy. No one knows what path marriage equality will take, but nevertheless, prior battles have been fought thus far at the ballot box or within state legislatures. More will follow. The timing of when same-sex marriages are pronounced legal in all 50 states will be a measure of how competent government is in setting lasting policy.

It is a broken political system with which we content currently, and expecting it to respond effectively and with haste in this situation may be expecting much more than is feasible. In less than half a century, the United States of America, by itself, has radically changed its perception of homosexuality. An example of the basic evolution we have gone through as a country follows.

The Quaker Meeting of which I am a member splintered in the 1980’s. It was caught between two warring factions who took opposite sides of the gay marriage debate. Some, disgusted with the back and forth left for other Meetings in the area, never to return, and some stormed away in a huff. Others formed their own Worship across the property, a Worship setting designed for LGBTs and allies. Though never intended to be more than temporary, it continues to the present day.

I am less convinced that direct confrontation in this form really works. It took most of a decade and a half for the bad feelings to subside in the example I’ve just cited. And to some of a particular age, those memories will never die. What was meant to be a short-term protest site to harbor LGBTs who felt excluded and unsupported has become a Meeting for Worship in its own right. The controversy long since over, some Friends believe that it is past time for LGBTs to Worship together in the larger Meetingroom as we once all did. What was meant to be a temporary division has become permanent.

Our partitions can swiftly become habits. With enough destructive energy, separation becomes calcified. Anger becomes institutionalized. It is for this reason that I am cautious of too much, too soon. President Obama may have endeared himself to his liberal base, but I feel certain that marriage equality as a country is still a few decades off. Should anyone believe that picking a fight would do any good at all, I would ask him or her to really consider the consequences first.

Insomnia

Check back tomorrow, when I can think straight.

The Danger of American Exceptionalism

American exceptionalism has never gone completely unexpressed. Exceptionalism is present in many forms. The jingoistic saber-rattlers clamoring for war at various instances in our history kicked an extant philosophical movement into overdrive. To them, the United States is uniquely qualified to lead ceaseless military or diplomatic action and emerge victorious, the most powerful and influential, with nary a scratch to show for it. Most of this belief is bluster, the sort of important-sounding but meaningless rhetoric advanced by blowhards and gasbags.

Even at our most placid times, we’ve still been told that our national is special and different. For a long time, we proudly recited that we were a nation of immigrants. We even memorialized this ideal with the building of the Statue of Liberty. Terms like “melting pot” once were used to illustrate this greater point.

The United States has the largest population of immigrants in the world—over 38.5 million people living in the United States are first-generation immigrants, although on a percentage basis the immigrant population ranks 48th in the world. On an annual basis, the United States naturalizes approximately 898,000 immigrants as new citizens, first in the world in absolute terms, and 8th in the world in per capita terms. From 1960 to 2005, the United States was ranked first in the world for every five year period but one for the total number of immigrants admitted—overall, since 1995, the United States has admitted over 1 million immigrants per year.

Of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as many as the next nine countries combined, approximately 50,000 refugees; in addition, on average, over 100,000 refugees per year were resettled annually between 1990 and 2000; further, over 85,000 asylum seekers annually come to the United States in search of sanctuary, of which approximately 45% are successful in obtaining.

These statistics call into question one especially prevalent and popular argument. Immigration has been generally allowed in the United States, provided, of course, it never deprived the so-called natural born citizen of his or her fully privileged status. The definition of that status or that deficiency has varied dramatically over time. Immigration has been restricted severely multiple times in our history, often for the sake of political expediency.

The qualifying factors for naturalization have changed considerably, too. Whether immigrants were allowed to settle here depends whether they were viewed by the powers that be as necessary for continued American growth or as impediments to a feared loss of economic gains.

We’ve informed the world for years and years that our unique experiment in Democracy is the original and best. We’ve culturally sold the idea alongside our consumer goods and knack for advertising. The hardest sell of all has been especially prominent during election year rhetoric. Being proud to be an American is one thing. Blind devotion is very different. This desire to let politicians speak in place of hard facts reduces debate to trifling cliches and fisticuffs.

Even observant liberals can make mistakes around this idea. The United States, over the decades, has built a solid mythology around itself, which is the envy of any border fence ever devised by human hands. Nor is this an uncommon compulsion. New nations often spell out policy in order to legitimize their gains, goals, and basic identity. However, pride in country rarely stops with pride in self.

For 236 years, it is true in our dealings with more established countries we’ve sometimes come across like arrogant upstarts. But it’s also factual that the ultimate success of our Democratic system, even though the brand has grown damaged, has nonetheless persisted. We have had no revolutions, no coups, and no dictatorial control. Our earliest leaders were afraid that the radical phase of the French Revolution would assert itself on these shores, yet it did not. Cynical progressives often today hint darkly of the final days of the United States of America. Such things must happen, but the end is not yet.

In the meantime, we continue to disagree about how exceptional we are, and what that exceptionalism even means. Americans have been already called to war by one President to make the world safe for Democracy. Three hundred years prior to that, a Puritan leader named John Winthrop wrote that we were God’s country. To him, and to others who followed Winthrop, our nation is still a shining city on a hill.

It is understandable, even enviable that the landed, educated, elite men who set forth a new nation thought so much of their new creation. To this day, anyone with the skills and drive to build something out of nothing would surely rate the importance of their own work about as highly. Forming any new nation is a Frankenstein's monster of a sort. What these men established reflects highly upon them.

And yet, it has been said numerous times of Thomas Jefferson that he loved the common man, but at a distance. Leaders like Jefferson held a snobbish viewpoint, believing that the common person lacked the skills necessary to run any government in their new creation, on any level.

This supposedly egalitarian society was never as fair or equitable as it was said to be. That it has grown corrupt and unwieldy now in the 21st Century surprises few. Faction and competition grew to two competing parties, the same two that exist today. The names may be a little different, but the basic disagreements persist. Oversimplying the heart of the debate reveals one party who trusts government more than capital and the other who trusts capital more than government.

This hearty argument grows explosive quickly and needs no additional flint or tinder. Detonation doesn’t help us. Being proud Americans and refusing to adopt conceit in place of justified pride may stave off future conflagrations or bad Presidents. We can be proud of our country without having to adopt a braggart’s pose. And, for better or for worse, we can see push past the spin to the truth. Nothing says responsible citizen like keeping one’s mind open.

How True, How Very True

Quote of the Week

"All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix."- Lester Bangs

Embassy Days 2012

Saturday Video

Follow me into the desert
As thirsty as you are
Crack a smile and cut your mouth
And drown in alcohol

'Cause down below the truth is lying
Beneath the riverbed
So quench yourself and drink the water
That flows below her head

Oh no, there she goes
Out in the sunshine the sun is mine

I shot my love today
would you cry for me?
I lost my head again
would you lie for me?

I left her in the sand just a burden in my hand
I lost my head again
would you cry for me?

Close your eyes and bow your head
I need a little sympathy
'Cause fear is strong and love's for everyone
Who isn't me

So kill your health and kill yourself
And kill everything you love
And if you live you can fall to pieces
And suffer with my ghost

Just a burden in my hand
Just an anchor on my heart
Just a tumor in my head
And I'm in the dark

So follow me into the desert
As desperate as you are
Where the moon is glued to a picture of heaven
And all the little pigs have God

The Weight

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, "no" was all he said

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side
I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on let's go downtown"
She said, "I gotta go but my friend can stick around"

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say
It's just ol' Luke and Luke's waitin' on the Judgment Day
"Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favor, son, won'tcha stay and keep Anna Lee company?"

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me in the fog
He said, "I will fix your rack if you'll take Jack, my dog"
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man"
He said, "That's okay, boy, won't you feed him when you can"

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

Catch a cannon ball now to take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

A Plea for Common Sense on the National Day of Prayer

Today, May 3, is the National Day of Prayer. The precise date of observance has varied over the years, but is now formally celebrated on the first Thursday of May. Official recognition by the United State Government has only been in place since 1952. President Harry S. Truman’s endorsement, due to its time of enactment, was more than likely meant to separate observant Americans from atheistic Soviet Communists enemies. Religious belief can draw distinct lines setting it apart from others, but it is not necessarily defensive in nature. Faith can be heartfelt and motivated by sincere convictions.

Presidents since George Washington have specified certain days for the purpose of prayer. Often, prayer has been formally encouraged in times of great strain and national turmoil, frequently in times of war. Each of us, regardless of how religious we identify ourselves, often turns to a Divine presence in stressful, similar circumstances. If we were inclined to reject the practice wholesale, context aside, arguments against the National Day of Prayer might ring truer.

As a believer in God and a Christian Quaker, I appreciate our nation’s once-a-year formal acknowledgement of faith. Unlike many conservative believers, I don’t believe that our nation was specifically designed to be Christian or even religious. If the Founders of this country had wanted to establish a Christian nation, they would have done that very thing from the outset and was not a clerical error. Omitting the formal presence of religion would have been a rather gigantic oversight, all told.

There are, very deliberately, no references to Scripture in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. This is even more astounding when one considers that in the late 18th Century, religion held a cultural importance and priority that it does not today.

At the outset, two political parties emerged from the more-or-less unified consensus of the American Revolution. One was the Federalist Party. The Federalists were nominally headed by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, in particular, was leery of a total lack of religious expression, believing it to be the first steps towards cultural, moral anarchy. The French Revolution then raging across the Atlantic reached a radical phase, abolishing religion altogether and sending clergymen by the score to the guillotine. 

The Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson was more skeptical of religion. Though Jefferson was not an atheist or bereft of religious expression, Federalist newspapers and pamphlets made routine accusations of these very same offenses. Republican doggerel fired back, increasing the putrid stench of an era even more hostile and partisan than our own. In its pure state, American religion has always been a largely private matter, only becoming a public one in tumultuous circumstances.

Now, in the 21st Century, a Freethought society called the Freedom from Religion Foundation seeks to overturn the National Day of Prayer. Believing itself to be thoroughly persecuted by religion in any form, its doctrine sees belief as mere superstition and an unfair repression of basic human liberty. The society displays a sign outside the Wisconsin State Capital in Madison during the Christmas Season. It reads as follows: 

At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Freedom from Religion Foundation cause certain faith groups, usually conservative and Christian, to respond forcefully in reply. What we see before us today is an over-correction. The pendulum never swings towards the middle, as reason would surely dictate. Instead, it swings too far in one direction and too far another. Open conflict rarely provides a sensible, logical compromise. The overheated rhetoric of partisan divisiveness reflects fear, over-theatricality, and psychic projection. What it does not produce is a sensible compromise.

However, the paranoia of the Christian Right has taken this argument into very unhealthy territory. Some faith groups purport to speak for everyone, particularly every believer. Among many mainstream Christians, I’m considered something of a heretic. I believe in a strict separation between Church and State. I take Jesus’ ministry not as a justification for the way things always have been, but as a still relevant challenge to authority. As a Quaker, I believe in the equality of men and women. I do not interpret Pauline admonitions towards homosexuality and a proper role of women in the church as both are often defined.

   

Atheistic, often militant associations like the Freedom from Religion Foundation contain a strong core of wounded ex-believers. While I sympathize with their circumstances, I do not believe religion in all its permutations has injured them. Misguided individuals and misguided ideology has created these problems.

Freethought groups can be as overzealous as the religious groups from which members initially fled. Part of peaceful expression is a refusal to resort to overt stereotyping and backbiting. Politicians and political parties have sought to unfairly slander each other for a good long while, but the practice serves no positive end, nor any positive gain.

We are too busy trying to destroy the opposition, to snuff out the very life of those who oppose us. Though a civilized people, we have only within a few generations given up the sword for the pen to best resolve debates. Now we fight a war with words, hurting each other intellectually, but also emotionally. Words harm us in ways we may not understand upon their first utterance.

It is Freedom from Hyperbole that we require. Rather than waging war inside a courtroom, we might first understand our opposition. What pulls us apart is simpler than one might think.

And How!

Hope You Never

The audio embed program I usually use isn't work. Pardon the link below. Please click on the left-hand download after clicking the link on this page. Audio link here.

I hope you never fall in love
Hope you never get your heart broken
I hope you never fall in love
With somebody like you

I hope you never give a damn
Hope you never lose your perspective
I hope you never fall in love
With somebody like you

I wish you well
I wish you everything and more
Forgive my ignorance
I was starting to ramble on and on
Starting to ramble on and on

I hope you never need no one
Hope you treasure your independence
I hope you never fall in love
With somebody like you

I wish you well
I wish you everything and more
Forgive my ignorance
I was starting to ramble on and on
Starting to ramble on and on

I hope you never give a damn
Hope you never get your heart broken
I hope you never fall in love
With somebody like you

I hope you never fall in love
With somebody like you

The January 1998 Abortion Clinic Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama

Homegrown Terror's Role in the War on Women

The War on Women can be easy to conceptualize. The spectacle of men making decisions for women without their consent and input speaks for itself. The most telling distinctions, however, are often relegated to the shadows. Shame and fear have been used with equal measure against women seeking an abortion. Homegrown terrorists have sought to exploit these cultural fissures, all in a misguided belief that violence is a practical solution. Though we ought to monitor foreign terrorist networks and individuals that threaten our safety, the threat of internal attacks need not be neglected, either.

For years, I walked by the New Woman All Women abortion clinic on a daily basis. Adjacent to the campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), it occupies a quiet, but intense corner of 10th Avenue South. Only a few paces across the street is Al’s Deli and Grill, the hangout of many an undergraduate. Busy chatting away, few students ever pause to peer for long at the tenant opposite the restaurant. Even fewer wish to speak at length about the services performed behind the blacked out windows.

New Woman All Women was bombed at 7:33 in the morning on January 29, 1998. Its perpetrator was far-right, homegrown terrorist Eric Rudolph. The blast killed Birmingham police officer and part-time clinic security guard Robert “Sandy” Sanderson, while critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. Those who were living in nearby dorms or on their way to early class that morning remember the sound of the explosion and how it carried across several city blocks. Lyons, severely maimed by the attack, survived. She later became an outspoken abortion rights advocate.

Rudolph’s most ambitious project until then had been the audacious bombing of Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Security guard Richard Jewel was falsely accused of the crime, but later exonerated. Aware he was being pursued by law enforcement, Rudolph headed for the Appalachian region of Western North Carolina, where he lived in hiding for the next several years. While living the life of a survivalist in the mountainous regions of the state, the assailant was aided and abetted by sympathizers.

When eventually caught and brought to justice, in 2003, Eric Rudolph admitted planting explosive devices at two Atlanta-area abortion clinics and at a lesbian bar. The suspect was unrepentant to the very end, refusing to apologize for his crimes.

After Rudolph's arrest for the bombings, The Washington Post reported that the FBI considered Rudolph to have "had a long association with the radical Christian Identity movement, which asserts that Northern European whites are the direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, God's chosen people."

Christian Identity is a white nationalist sect that holds that those who are not white Christians will be condemned to Hell. In the same article, the Post reported that some FBI investigators believed Rudolph may have written letters that claimed responsibility for the nightclub and abortion clinic bombings on behalf of the Army of God, a group that sanctions the use of force to combat abortions and is associated with Christian Identity.

After the front façade was rebuild, the entrance of the clinic looked somewhat like a fortress. A prominent security camera was installed, a feature that may have saved a life and spared physical and psychological trauma had been in place at the time of the attack. For years, the front was a drab, sedate shade of grey, but has since been repainted a dark pink. The issue now, as it always has been, is not what one sees outside as it is what goes on inside.

Unfortunately, the clinic appears to be only a few days away from losing its license to perform abortions. New Woman All Women would need to shut its doors effective May 18, if it cannot regain its ability to perform procedures legally.

The clinic in March agreed to surrender its license and close after a state investigation found problems including two instances in which patients were given overdoses of a drug and had to be transported to a hospital by ambulance. 

The consent decree under which the clinic's license was surrendered followed an investigation into instances in which two patients were given an overdose of the drug Vasopressin on Jan. 21. 

Each patient should have been administered 0.2 cubic centimeters of the drug, which limits blood loss, but they instead each were given 2.0 cubic centimeters.

Both women were transported to an unidentified Birmingham hospital by ambulance after vomiting, though there was no indication their condition was life-threatening, a report said.

These reports only reinforce anti-choice rhetoric. Abortion foes have scrutinized this center in an effort to find any detail they can to discredit its existence. Should New Woman All Women be forced out of business, as seems likely, it would leave the Birmingham Metro area with only one remaining abortion provider. In a Metro area of 1.2 million people, the disruption of services would be felt acutely. Ironically enough, in another addition to a national issue already in hot debate, Planned Parenthood Southeast would be the one remaining option.

Abortion remains a highly combustible issue. As surely as terrorist plots against us are being planned across the world, domestic terrorism shares that very same threat level. Even the language of the abortion dialogue has taken on militaristic, dogmatic trappings. Those who support abortion decry anti-choice factions, implying that their opposition would restrict a woman’s basic freedom and liberties. Pro-life forces speak stridently about killing babies.

The latest debate over Planned Parenthood has only turned up the heat. Where is this argument headed, beyond the Supreme Court? If we expect further instances of violence, looking inside our own borders is essential. Who is the next Eric Rudolph or the next Timothy McVeigh? One hopes that our vigilance with disrupting Radical Islam carries over to other Americans with destructive intentions.

The Beginning of Presidential TV Appearances

1968 Republican Nominee for President, Richard Nixon, Laugh-in.

Quote of the Week

"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"- Oliver Cromwell, dissolving the Rump Parliament, 1653

Saturday Video

A great song, but a creepy video.



She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good lookin' momma who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on an Indiana night

Well she moved down here at the age of 18
She blew the boys away, it was more than they'd seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin'
She said, "I dig you baby but I got to keep movin'"
On, keep movin' on

Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin' in and I'm
Tired of this town again

Well I don't know what I've been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I'm tired of screwing up, I'm tired of goin' down
I'm tired of myself, I'm tired of this town

Oh my my, oh hell yes
Honey, put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song,
Take me as I come 'cause I can't stay long

Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin' in and I'm
Tired of this town again

There's pigeons down in market square
She's standin' in her underwear
Lookin' down from a hotel room
Nightfall will be comin' soon
Oh my my, oh hell yes

You've got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit the last number, I walked to the road

Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin' in and I'm
Tired of this town again

Movie review: Klute

1971’s Klute was released alongside considerable controversy. Leading lady Jane Fonda had been outspoken on behalf of perceived radical causes. The next year, she starred in a propaganda film by the Communist North Vietnamese, a decision that would forever win her the derisive nickname of Hanoi Jane. At the same time, this film established her as a feminist icon, in the height of the second-wave era of Ms. Magazine and Gloria Steinhem. Director Alan J. Pakula’s second directorial effort was his first to embrace a malevolent, shadowy world of paranoia and conspiracy. Two more movies along the same lines would surface by the end of the decade.

John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a small-town private detective seeking his best friend, Tom Gruneman, a Pennsylvania executive. Gruneman is feared dead, having disappeared without a trace around a year before. Klute’s searches and inquiries put him in contact with Bree Daniel (Fonda), a New York City escort. Despite his humble roots, Klute’s persistence begins to pay off as a formerly cold case begins to slowly unravel. Sutherland plays Klute as the very definition of the strong, silent type.

Fonda’s portrayal of a streetwise, formerly high-end call girl won her an Oscar for Best Actress. Though a sympathetic rendering of a burned-out sex worker with larger ambitions, it is difficult to suspend disbelief from time to time. A woman in these circumstances would mostly likely have solidly working class pretensions, and Bree Daniels (Fonda) is a little too bourgeoisie to be believed. Now consumed with the desire for self-improvement, Bree might well have once attended college at an Ivy League school.

In this role, Fonda’s role is more Brechtian than naturalistic. We know she is acting and don’t care. It is the skill of an actress who has smartly studied her part that appeals most to viewers. Technique aside, it is nevertheless laudable, even groundbreaking that the character of Daniel humanizes what is still often a stigmatized and demonized profession. Her character manages to keep her head above water in a world of drug addiction and general dysfunction.

Perhaps a strictly literal presentation is not intended. Bree Daniel is on some level meant to stand in for every woman, as she finds her freedom consistently compromised by the complications of a man’s world. Her enthusiasm for turning tricks has waned considerably; she now charges her johns a fourth of what she did even a year before.

She’d rather be an actress for the stage, but finds the competition heavy in a city already over-saturated with aspiring thespians. Even the parts for television modeling commercials are competitive and impossible to attain. Bree seeks to reform herself, but finds herself stuck in the meantime as a successful sex worker but unsuccessful actress.

An early scene shows a star in decline. No longer able to financially afford therapy, Bree spends her last session lamenting her attraction to the world’s oldest profession, weary of the demands of the job. The female psychologist questions whether Bree really believed that she’d be completely cured of the compulsion to trick while in her care. It is control that Fonda’s character wants most, the kind of control over her own destiny that is so seldom afforded elsewhere. The presence of danger represented by a killer at large strips aside her cocky veneer.

Klute is more concerned with allegorically exploring the psychological currents of the early 1970’s. Beyond women’s rights are hidden, frighting source of violence and coercion, both of which were an omnipresent part of the late Sixties into the early Seventies. That this most looming threat is not spelled out directly and alluded to darkly only accentuates the fear of the viewer. It should be said that as a textbook thriller, Klute sometimes promises more than it provides. One must first accept Pakula’s quirky worldview, then proceed from there.  

Quakers are Way Cooler Than You Think

Because of time constraints, I'd like to re-post this recent article. Anyone in charge of young adult activism or organizing can see parallels within this post. I thank Friend Churchman for her perspective.

Quakers are Way Cooler Than You Think
by Emma Churchman

George Fox was 28 years old when he stood on the top of Pendle Hill and envisioned a great people to be gathered. Samuel Bownas began his ministry at the age of 20 when traveling minister Ann Wilson caught him sleeping in the back of his meeting for worship and called him to account. She asked him essentially why he was wasting his life, and within just a few weeks, Bownas spoke in meeting for the first time. In 1698, when he was 22 years old, he set off on his first ministerial journey, walking across Scotland with a traveling minute from his monthly meeting. When he was in his 70s, he wrote a seminal guide for Quaker ministers: A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister.

John Woolman was 23 years old when he experienced his first leading to stand against slavery. Susan B. Anthony was 28 years old during the Seneca Falls Convention. Friend Thomas Kelly was also 28 when he went to Germany in 1921 to work with American Friends Service Committee, after having served for two years as a professor at Wilmington College. Bonnie Raitt, who was raised in New York Yearly Meeting, produced her first record album when she was 23. Jon Watts did so when he was 21 years old.

Friends have a historical track record of Young Adult Friends shaping the direction of our religious society. Today we have a steady decline of young adult Friend members and attenders in our monthly and yearly meetings.

I have known many older Friends to bemoan this, wring their hands, pray about it, talk about it, and wish it were different. I’d like to encourage us to shift the question from “Why don’t we have more young people in our meetings?” to this:

How are we meeting the needs of our young adult Friend members and attenders, and how could we meet them better?

These days I mainly hang out with high school and college-age Quakers through my job at Earlham College. This is what I love about working with younger Friends: They are open and inquisitive and engaged. They are still figuring out who they are and how they want to be in the world. This generation especially is remarkably intuitive and so smart about so many different things. They are always interacting with their growing edges. They are, in fact, our hope for the future, and I want to encourage them and support them to bring their brilliant, beautiful selves into our religious society in powerful ways. They are our true leaders of tomorrow (often even today!), and I want to do everything I can to help equip them for this leadership and keep them engaged in our Society.

Here are some specific ways you can help to equip and engage them:

Ask. Here’s a radical idea: Ask the young adult Friends you interact with what it is they need to feel engaged in your monthly or yearly meeting, Quaker organization, or just our religious society in general. What do they need/want/desire and how can you help them get it? They might surprise you with their specific ideas.

Be invitational. Here’s another radical idea: Invite someone under the age of 40 to clerk your meeting or your membership committee, or to serve as a director of your Quaker organization.

Or just begin by saying hello to a young adult at your meeting. I travel in the ministry, and 95 percent of the time I’m at a new meeting, no one introduces her/himself to me, even when I’m the guest speaker. Yikes! And, technically, I’m not even a young adult Friend anymore. Can you imagine how YAFs must feel when they attend a meeting for the first time and no one talks to them?

Be willing to transform. The structure of monthly and yearly meetings doesn’t work for a lot of younger Friends. Many young adult Friends identify with a yearly meeting rather than a monthly meeting. Other YAFs identify themselves as Quaker without membership in a monthly or yearly meeting at all. These young people are unable to commit to a monthly meeting primarily because they move so frequently, or because they attend school far away from the meeting in which they grew up. They struggle with membership in a religious society that requires them to remain in one place. Often, they also are unable to fulfill the financial requirements of membership.

Other YAFs feel that their needs are not being met in the context of a monthly meeting. Nothing entices them to become engaged. They are looking for like-minded peers, for social and social justice activities that help them explore their interests, and for opportunities to make a difference and be nurtured as leaders.

Here’s my motto: If it’s not working, stop doing it. Standard membership right now isn’t working for the majority of young adult Friends, especially those between the ages of 18 and 25. What are we going to do about it?

Are you willing to help this age group consider what membership could look like outside of the typical structure of monthly or yearly meetings? What could it look like for them to retain their membership in Friends General Conference, say, or Friends United Meeting instead of a specific monthly meeting? What if we revitalized a national Young Adult Friends Meeting that housed membership for young adults in transition between the meetings they grew up in and their next home meetings? What are we willing to do, as a religious society or at least as a specific branch of Quakerism, to embrace these young people in new ways?

Discern. Most of my conversations with young people revolve around discernment of pretty big life issues: What do I do after high school? How do I make new friends and let go of old friends? How do I respond to my parents getting divorced? How do I grieve my friend having committed suicide? How do I figure out what my passions are? What should I do for a living? Young adults are continually faced with intense life issues like these. Granted, I teach discernment specifically to young adults, but generally this is just an excuse to invite young people I meet to get real with me. On a good day, I can be real in return, which is a rare and precious gift to a young person: to be equally honest, vulnerable, and open with them. Have you been vulnerable with any young adults today? Have you sat with them and really helped them to sift out what they are struggling with?

Stop talking and start doing. Invite the young adult Friends group from your yearly meeting or nearby college to have a weekend retreat in your meetinghouse and cook for them. Become a spiritual friend to a teen in your meeting. Write a letter to a young adult Friend from your meeting who is in college. Better yet, send a care package. Invite a young person to spend one-on-one time with you—protesting, having tea, watching a movie, knitting, playing a game. If you are not his parent, he will love you for it.

Be visible. As a Society, we have got to put ourselves out there! Young adults exploring faith during or just after college may first learn about Quakerism by attending a protest or other social justice activity and meeting a Quaker. Or they learn about Quakerism through attending a Quaker high school or college. At Earlham, we have seen a significant number of non-Quaker students embrace Quakerism as alumni, especially as they are looking for a faith home for their family or looking for like-minded people in a new city.

It takes an average of seven impressions before a person notices a particular message or idea. What types of impressions are we sending about Quakerism, and is this age group receiving enough impressions? When attending a protest, do you talk about Friends testimonies of peace and equality? Do you connect your outward actions with your faith? Is the Quaker high school or college you are connected with proactively teaching Quaker faith and practice?

Many young adults also learn about Quakerism through the Internet. Friends, we need to expand significantly the explanations of Quakerism that are currently available, using the blogosphere and YouTube. Because we currently articulate a narrow understanding of Quakerism on the Internet, young people who are exploring Quakerism for the first time get a pretty skewed view of it through the World Wide Web. You may not want to hear this, but it’s true. We can either accept the technological realities of the 21st century, or continue to lose connections with young adults.

Use the M word. Quakers have a serious marketing issue. We look funny, we talk funny, we refuse to list our phone numbers in the yellow pages or to have updated websites. We figure that people will find us if they need us. That’s cool. And humble. And not working.

For Earlham College last year I designed a T-shirt that declares, “Quakers are way cooler than you think,” as a way to address said marketing issue. When I’m feeling particularly gloomy about the future of our religious society, I like to wear my T-shirt to the grocery store because inevitably someone (i.e., a non-Quaker) will stop in her tracks, stare at my chest and say, “Yes! Quakers are cool!” I love that. And then I get to have a conversation with a total stranger about her theology and my theology. (Yes, that is my idea of a good time.) You can wear the shirt too! It’s for sale in the Earlham College bookstore.

Educate. We need radical education of our young people. We need to take seriously our intention to offer actual religious education in First-day school. I am embarrassed by the number of young Friends I talk with who have no idea that Quakerism has its roots in Christianity. I have students who are 18 years old and who grew up in a Quaker meeting and have absolutely no knowledge of scripture, of Jesus’ teachings, or of the connection between Friends testimonies and our roots in these teachings.

Call me an evangelical if you wish, but here is the reality: By not teaching our young people the ways of early Quakers, we are raising people to believe in whatever they want to believe in and to call themselves Quaker only when it is convenient or makes them look good. I’m not making this up; I literally had a Quaker college student tell me this yesterday. And I agree with him. This model of believing whatever we feel like, when we feel like it, is not serving us in the long run, Friends. I know you know what I’m talking about.

We also need more specific opportunities for young adults to learn our practices, especially the practice of spiritual discernment, the Clearness Committee model, the art of consensus decision-making, and the role of clerking. These Quaker tools are awesome! We need to be more intentional about teaching our young people how to use them. How can we expect to grow future leaders if we don’t provide them with the tools they need?

Put your money where your mouth is. I hear a lot of older adult Friends talking about how important YAFs are to them. I also see a recent trend of eliminating funding for programs that support young adult Friends, especially in terms of nurturing their connections to the religious society of Friends and cultivating their leadership skills. I would like to suggest that there is a correlation between our decisions not to support YAF programs and initiatives financially and the lack of YAF presence in our meetings and organizations.

Can you tell that I’m irritated? I don’t understand, Friends. Who the heck do we think is going to lead our Society into the future? We need to provide generous support for the programs that still exist to cultivate Young Adult Friends’ leadership development. At this point our Quaker colleges are the ones leading the way in this area. Earlham College, George Fox University, Guilford College, and Wilmington College all have scholarship-based Quaker leadership development programs. Donate to them.

There are so many ways for Friends to support our young people as they engage in life transitions and in their articulation of their faith. I encourage you to embrace any of the ideas suggested in this article, and to create new ideas of your own to share! In doing so, I hope that you will also join me in living into the possibility of the religious society of Friends growing its membership in the 21st century by reaching out to and supporting young people more proactively.

Dream Baby

Sweet dream baby
Sweet dream baby
Sweet dream baby

How long must I dream?

Dream baby got me dreaming
Sweet dreams the whole day through
Dream baby got me dreaming
Sweet dreams night time too

I love you and I'm dreaming of you
But that won't do
Dream baby make me stop my dreaming you
Can make my dreams come true

Anatomy of an Evening, Part Three

III.

If you’d just met her, you’d never suspect a thing. An already statuesque woman, she wore the highest of heels, which I believe was an effort to appear authoritative. Instead it accentuated her vertical span. Makeup was applied heavily, but not excessively, likely a way to intimidate more than dazzle. But even then, she sometimes gave off a wounded, vulnerable, lonely air. Behind it, something was sorely out of place. One peered closer, instinctively searching for some visual clue to piece together the full picture.

The missing piece was her arm, the left one, to be precise. A birth defect presented her with only one fully developed appendage. The effect was shocking once one caught on to it, observing the prosthesis that stood in for where nature had not. An attractive woman by any of several metrics, the cruelty of fate had complicated her life considerably. Disability had thrown a wrench into her love life as well as her self-esteem. 

Many men might have overlooked her above-average stature, in the way some women can overcome being regularly taller than their dates. Lacking as she did in the arm department was often a disqualifying factor.

One strange, boozy night in college I’d ended up in a girl’s bed one night. She was too fearful to go any further than embracing and, for that matter, I wasn’t out yet. I’m sure I probably could have put up a good act, but one without much conviction. Beth’s disability was similar to that woman from my past, but not identical. In that situation, the woman’s right arm was shrunken like a child’s to a third of its expected size. In comparison, Beth had no forearm at all. What she had ended at the bicep and went no further.

I often wondered whether an elaborate system of elastic bands was responsible for keeping it in place. The prosthesis looked a bit like a toy, but care had been taken for it to be properly positioned. It held firm but maintained an aspect of the grotesque, one certainly not intended as such.

That earlier experience had been a disaster. Once I left her bed somewhere around four o’clock in the morning, I realized I now had potentially damaging autobiographical information. If I’d wanted, I could have played kiss and tell with fellow classmates, but I didn’t. Even when I later slept exclusively with men I never shared those kinds of detail. She would have been devastated and I was not a mean-spirited person.

I must admit, however, that her complete and utter freak out the next day made me resentful. How was I to know that she worked at the coffee shop I frequented throughout the week? Upon my entry, she acted as though I’d hunted her down. She believed that I’d learned where she worked through obsessive detective work, all in an effort to somehow harass or humiliate her. That would have required time and effort, and more than I could have put together in less than twelve hours. Hangovers rarely are conducive to inspiration. 

It was a testament to effort that I even managed to leave my apartment the next day.

Hey, hey. Her voice was adamant. Hey! She was trying to catch my attention.

We now return you to the present day. I found I was currently slouched over by the elevators, as usual. Every story looked the same in this palace of serious polished marble and hushed tones. The only thing distinguishing this floor from the others was the Polish accent of the secretary. She wore a headset and was unfailingly polite to everyone, though reserved and not much inclined to small talk.

I kept telling myself don’t stare don’t stare don’t stare. I started to stare, and then caught myself. The process kept repeating itself, comically. I’m sure this happens to Beth all the time. Even the people with the best of intentions can’t help but get distracted by fake rubber arms, with especially crudely shaped fingers. The fingers were the most problematic aspect of the entire apparatus. The arm section seemed somewhat plausible, provided you didn’t gaze upon it at the wrong angle.