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Olga Zalokoski McAllister

Dave William Weller

Paul E. Wehr

Andrew March

Thomas Robinson Craig Jr.

Poems by Qutbuddin Loren Smith

The Bonds of Animal Affection

• Authored by:
• Gracia Fay Ellwood

This article is in dialogue with “The Bonds of Animal Agriculture” by Friend Joe Snyder in the May-June 2013 issue of Western Friend. I commend Friend Snyder for highlighting the destructive aspects of the prevailing system of plant and animal agriculture, which fail to respect God’s creation. To my mind, Friends cannot overemphasize the seriousness of such threats to our health and global sustainability.

On Love (September 2013)

Patriotic Principles and Quaker Testimonies

• Authored by:
• Sarah Hawthorne

Dad was tight-lipped about the war years and only occasionally referenced his having been “stationed in Guam.” In sorting through my Dad’s papers to write his obituary in August 2013, I discovered his certificate for Distinguished Service as a Navigator in nine successful air flights, 1943-1945, to drop bombs on Japan during World War II. I stared hard at the aged photograph of the young crew in uniform, standing proud in front of their Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Renown for its ability to fly higher and faster than Japanese planes, the B-29 four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber was one of the largest aircraft of its day, with very advanced features such as a pressurized cabin, an electronic fire-control system, and remote-controlled machine-gun turrets. My fears were relieved when further research assured me that Dad had not been on the flights that dropped either Fat Man or Little Boy – codenames for atomic bombs detonated over Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

On Patriotism (January 2014)

Alarmed

• Authored by:
• Kathy Barnhart

In response to Harvard University’s refusal to divest from its fossil fuel stock, a recent mayor of Seattle, Mike McGinn, commented, “[pullquote]We're the first generation to see the effects of climate change, and the last generation who can do anything about it.[/pullquote] To refuse to use every tool at our disposal in this fight – to embrace inaction – is to endorse a trajectory that will lead to suffering, privation, and calamity. We owe it to those who our institutions and investments serve and will serve in the future to do everything we can to prevent this crisis.” With an unprecedented drought ongoing throughout the West, we might be directly experiencing this crisis already.

On Production (May 2014)

A Much Larger Puzzle

• Authored by:
• Frank Granshaw

Dear Friends: In its last issue, Western Friend published a letter to grandchildren everywhere talking about the environmental conditions we are leaving to our grandchildren. While I am grateful to WF for publishing that letter, I am concerned about editorial changes that were made that I was not given the opportunity to review before it went to press. The issue I have with these changes is that they misrepresent what I was trying to say in two important ways. First, the final version gives the impression that all our environmental and social problems revolve around the use of fossil fuels. Our overuse of fossil fuels is just one piece of a much larger puzzle that involves how we manage resources, not just which resource we use. Second, the published letter was edited in ways that oversimplified what I was saying about hope and the factors driving us towards what may be an environmental cliff. In addition to being a grandfather, I am also a geologist and a college educator. This means that I often talk with people who feel that environmentalists are misinformed sentimentalists who are naive about science, economics, politics, and human nature. Because some of the people I eventually hope to reach are adults like my students and colleagues, as well as “just plain folks,” it is important to me that the hope and optimism expressed in it takes into account the complex and harsh realities of our situation. Otherwise we grandparents concerned about the world our grandchildren might inherit from us will be discounted as just another gaggle of naive idealists. We cannot afford to be regarded in this way if we are to have any hope of changing our present course.

On Pride (July 2014)