Western Friend is open for business! I invite you to stop on by for a cup of tea anytime you are in town. Just look for Kathy Hyzy in the electronic directory next to the elevator, and dial me up. Or call the office phone to make sure I’m there.

Phone: 503-956-4709
Email: editor at westernfriend dot org

Mailing address:
Western Friend
833 SE Main St
Mailbox #138
Portland, OR 97214

Note  the USPS address lookup may tell you this address is incorrect, but it’s not.

Physical address (use ONLY for visiting! Do not send mail to this address):
833 SE Main St, Suite #212
Portland, OR 97214
(AKA the SE Activspace building)

Western Friend Staff

Kathy Hyzy is the editor and sole staff for Western Friend magazine. A Quaker for more than half her life, she has an abiding interest in sustaining and increasing the connections among Friends everywhere. She is a member of Multnomah Monthly Meeting in Portland, Oregon, and has long been an active participant in North Pacific Yearly Meeting.

Building cross-generational bridges among Friends is also a longstanding interest for Kathy. She has worked with the middle school group at Multnomah, served as an advisor and Friendly Adult Presence (FAP) for Junior Friends (high school), and led efforts to create opportunities for youth and adults to get to know one another through NPYM’s ad-hoc Committee on Intergenerational Communication.

Prior to beginning her service as editor in June of 2008, Kathy spent nearly a decade working for various environmental non-profit organizations, often in communications. She holds an MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana, and remains passionate about bringing people in step with the planet. As a volunteer naturalist with Metro, she delights in showing elementary school kids the wild wonders of the world.

In 2005, Kathy attended the World Gathering of Young Friends as a representative from North Pacific Yearly Meeting. She has also participated in the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theological Conference and a number of other gatherings that seek to encompass the theological diversity found in the Religious Society of Friends.

Kathy also enjoys gardening, hiking, photography, reading, singing, and spending time with her friends, partner Stacy, and their three cats and one dog.

Western Friend/ Friends Bulletin Corporation Board

Western Friend is published by the Friends Bulletin Corporation, an independent 501 (c)(3) non-profit established jointly by Pacific, North Pacific and Intermountain Yearly Meetings. While Western Friend is the official publication of these three Yearly Meetings, the opinions expressed within the magazine or on this website are those of the authors, not of the Meetings.

Friends Bulletin Corporation’s Board of Directors is comprised of three members each from the three Yearly Meetings. The board meets three times a year, rotating between the regions of the Yearly Meetings. Meetings are typically hosted by a local Friends Meeting, and local Friends are more than encouraged to spend time with the board and staff!

Meet the Board

Pacific Yearly Meeting (California, Nevada, Hawai’i, Guatemala, Mexico City)

SANDY FARLEY is a member of Palo Alto Meeting in Pacific YM. As an ESL teacher, she is intimately acquainted with and amused by the quirks of the English language. She has served as recording clerk for several Friends organizations including her monthly, quarterly, and yearly meeting. She has served on the board of Quaker Earthcare Witness [when it was FCUN] She is the principal author and illustrator of Earthcare for Children. She is a storyteller and essayist whose writings have appeared in Friends Journal and Friends Bulletin.

A lifelong Friend, STEPHEN MATCHETT has been a member of San Francisco Monthly Meeting since 1982, serving over the years as clerk and in various other capacities. After more than a decade representing state prisoners in California’s appellate courts, he recently laid down his legal practice and is devoting much of his time to conducting nonviolence trainings in prisons and on the outside with the Alternatives to Violence Project. When the opportunity arises, he also finds great fulfillment in making presentations to Friends and others on reading early Quaker writers and the Bible, a subject with which he is obsessed.

LANGDON ELSBREE is a member of Claremont Meeting and a product of Quaker education (George School and Earlham College) with advanced degrees (MA Cornell; PhD Claremont Graduate School in literature).  He taught in various colleges and universities for forty-seven years and retired in the year 2000.  These institutions where he taught included Miami University in Ohio, the Claremont Colleges (mainly Claremont McKenna), Ain Shams in Egypt on a Fulbright, and Carleton as a visiting faculty member.  Langdon has served on a number of committees of Pacific Yearly Meeting (Ministry & Oversight, Site, Publications Policies) as well as committees of the Southern California Quarterly Meeting and most of the standing committees at Claremont.  He was a founding member of Friends Association for Higher Education, and was very active in planning and making presentations for many years.  He also served on the board of the then-Friends Bulletin when Nancy (Yarnall) McLauchlan was editor.  His publications include co-editing six editions of the Heath Handbook of Composition, two books on ritual and story, and a substantial list of reviews and essays.  The range of his publications includes subjects from the dance in the novels of Austen, Eliot, Hardy, and Lawrence  to critical studies of Frost, Orwell, and other poets along with other modern writers.  Various grants (National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar, NEH summer stipend, research monies from Claremont McKenna College, etc). helped sponsor these books and essays.  He is married and has one daughter.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana)

JONATHAN BROWN is a member of University Friends Meeting and an attender at South Seattle Preparative Meeting. In addition to the board of Western Friend, he was recently appointed to the NPYM Steering Committee; this reflects his interest in increasing his meeting’s exposure to and involvement in the wider world of Western unprogrammed Friends. He has served on various committees of his meeting, as well as on the boards of the Friends Committee on National Legislation and the Friends Committee on Washington (State) Public Policy. He works as a computer programmer. He is married (spiritually, but not yet legally) and has two young sons.

JESSICA MANLY BUCCIARELLI is a member of Bridge City Friends Meeting in her hometown, Portland, Oregon. She is a past member of Strawberry Creek Monthly Meeting (Berkeley, California) and Orange Grove Monthly Meeting (Pasadena, California). Her current or past associations with Friends organizations include Earlham School of Religion, Quaker Lesbian Conference, Pastoral Care Newsletter and Ben Lomond Quaker Center. Currently employed by Portland’s transit agency, Jessica has in the past worked for herself, for small nonprofits and for a university. Her career involves publications, communication and organization development.

JEAN HAND TRIOL joined Friends at age 13. She is a member of the Glacier Valley Worship Group which is under the care of Missoula Meeting. She edited the Montana Gathering of Friends Newsletter for 7 years and is now the Corresponding Clerk for that quarterly meeting. She is fluent in German and recently retired from a career in cytopathology. Her watercolors have graced the pages of Friends Bulletin and the cover of the EarthLight book.

Intermountain Yearly Meeting (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, bits of Texas)

POLLY KMETZ is a member of Phoenix Monthly Meeting in Intermountain Yearly Meeting. She has served as recording clerk for the two meetings of which she has been a member (Phoenix and Beacon Hill in Boston) and as clerk of Beacon Hill Monthly Meeting. Currently, she is clerk of Phoenix Meeting’s Ministry and Adult Religious Education and Nominating Committees. She is an editor of textbooks, trade books, and other publications and projects across a broad spectrum of disciplines. She is also a yoga practitioner and teacher.

PETER ANDERSON is a member of Durango Monthly Meeting. He graduated with an MDiv from Earlham School of Religion where he subsequently taught writing for several years. Currently, he teaches English at Adams State College and publishes Pilgrimage Magazine near his home in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. He is the author of a dozen children’s books on themes related to nature, history, and the American West as well as a collection of essays, First Church of the Higher Elevations–Mountains, Prayer, and Presence (Denver; Ghost Road Press; 2005). and lives on the western edge of Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Range with his wife Grace and two daughters, Rosalea and Caroline.

MARIA MELENDEZ is a member of Logan Monthly Meeting in Utah. She has published two collections of poetry: the chapbook Base Pairs (Swan Scythe Press, 2001) and How Long She’ll Last in This World (University of Arizona Press, 2006), which received Honorable Mention at the 2007 International Latino Book Awards and was named a finalist for the 2007 PEN Center USA Literary Awards. Her essays and features appear in Altar, Orion Afield, and Isotope, and several of her essays on arts and activism have been broadcast as part of NPR’s American Democracy Project. She co-coordinates Poetas y Pintores: Artists Conversing with Verse, a traveling exhibition of contemporary Latino art and poetry. Her own poetry and fiction appear in such magazines as Barrow Street, International Quarterly, and Ecological Restoration, and she has edited two anthologies of poetry by poet-teachers and K-12 students for California Poets in the Schools. She received her M.A. in English/Creative Writing from UC Davis in 2000. From 2000-2003 she was awarded grants from the California Arts Council in support of her work as writer-in-residence at the U.C. Davis Arboretum, where she taught environmental writing workshops for the public. In 2003, Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, appointed her Research Fellow at the Center for Women’s InterCultural Leadership. She currently lives in Logan, Utah, where she teaches creative writing and American literature at Utah State University. Her next collection of poetry is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press in Spring 2010.