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All Our Histories

• Authored by:
• Susan Cozzens

To the editor: Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge begins her article in the May/June 2022 issue of Western Friend with her grandfather, modeling the integrity she is seeking from Quakers in North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM). She calls attention to one set of family histories in NPYM, which she calls a “settler-majority” community. I am writing to remind us that there are other family histories in NPYM, too.

On Normality (July 2022)

Friendly Access for Inclusion

• Authored by:
• Gale Toko-Ross,
• Rosemary Blanchard

The following text was transcribed from a recording of an interest group at Intermountain Yearly Meeting (IMYM), where Gale Toko-Ross was a co-Presiding Clerk and Rosemary Blanchard was the meeting’s ombudsperson for accessibility concerns.

On Cooperation (September 2022)

Dancing with History (review)

• Authored by:
• Shelley Tanenbaum

The title of this book beautifully describes George Lakey’s preferred way to engage with the world: Dancing with History. I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir about Lakey’s roots and his path over eighty-four years.

On Cooperation (September 2022)

On Cooperation

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

We are bags full of muscle and bone. And although we can see the leather of the bags, we can only guess at the contents, the memories and desires that propel any life, including our own.

On Cooperation (September 2022)

Please Do Not “Believe in” Science

• Authored by:
• Muriel Strand

Cautious confidence in the scientific process is, I believe, the best perspective. Science is akin to continuing revelation and undermined by groupthink. However, modern science is fundamentally materialistic, and we do not live by bread alone.

On Science (November 2022)

In Solidarity with Migrants

• Authored by:
• Justine McCoy

Annunciation House is a non-profit organization that sustains a network of shelters, facilities, and services for migrants in El Paso, Texas. When I applied to be a volunteer, I had no expectations or even knowledge of what lay ahead, no idea what I was getting into. I only knew I wanted to help migrants.

On Perception (March 2023)

On Perception

• Authored by:
• Mary Klein

Like circus cars ejecting impossible numbers of clowns right before our eyes, we humans emit endless parades of bright ideas into the crowded world. Then we jostle among all the world’s other creatures – animals, vegetables, minerals – and find ourselves wondering, now and then, about our own integrity, the coherence of our lives.

On Perception (March 2023)

Living Grief, Finding Connection

• Authored by:
• Mary Ann Percy

As climate disasters, species extinctions, and the relentless unraveling of the Web of Life on Earth become ever more impossible to ignore, eco-anxiety becomes ever more widespread. There’s now a name for this unique mental anguish – solastalgia – a term created by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in the early 2000s. Unrelenting hurricane seasons, devastating forest fires, smoke- and smog-filled air, prolonged drought, extreme heat, clear-cutting – all these can trigger solastalgia. Buddhist deep ecologist, eco-philosopher and activist Joanna Macy expresses this well in The Bestiary:

On Loss (May 2023)

The Man in the Dog Park (review)

• Authored by:
• Marybeth Webster

One day in 1982, I realized I was homeless. I didn’t own a single key! No house, no car, no bank box. I had just flown to Los Angeles from Hawaii after selling my business. I tried to rent a car. I was refused for lack of an address! But I had a rather large bank balance, academic degrees, a good vocabulary, the confidence of the educated middle class, and a trustworthy smile. The car rental clerk let me use my Timex as collateral and gave me a car.

On Loss (May 2023)

Nuclear Waste and States Rights

• Authored by:
• Carol Merrill,
• Jeff Radford

On March 17, 2023, the last evening of the state’s legislative session this year, the New Mexico House passed Senate Bill 53 (SB 53), sponsored by State Senator Jeff Steinborn and State Representative Matthew McQueen. This bill concerns state oversight of a private company – Holtec – and prevents state agencies from issuing permits for a “temporary” nuclear-waste storage facility in southeast New Mexico, a facility that Holtec wants to build to hold all the nation’s high-level nuclear waste, even though zero nuclear energy plants are sited in New Mexico.

On Dignity (July 2023)