Cooperation

O, Day!

We play a sculpting game:

take turns,

add clay

and take away,

caress and punch

until the night

when aproned

       night-shift sculptors

work in the dark.

I’d stopped in the back parking lot to adjust a bike clip and noticed two crows noticing the guy in the apron coming out the back door to dump the garbage. “Lookit that,” the one crow says to his mate, “Opposable thumbs! That is so cool.” His partner picked up a cigarette butt, looked at it, dropped it.

Dear Friends: I encourage you to become familiar with the emergence of Pandemic Bonds. Similar to government bonds for state and local infrastructure development, Pandemic Bonds are vehicles for investing in structures of global preparation for outbreaks of diseases like ebola or SARS. These bonds are not yet offered publicly to small investors, but they could be.

Dear Friends: Klamath Falls (Oregon) Friends Church is a big supporter of Friendly Water for the World. Beginning in 2015, they have been supporting three community groups who have ensured clean water for some 60,000 people and have become entirely self-sufficient in the process.

The following text is an abridged version of a longer article found at westernfriend.org/media/spiritual-reconstruction-unabridged.

John Woolman (1763)

I have explored a lot of Quaker writings, and I also enjoy participating in Quaker practices such as silent worship, worship sharing, and business meetings (yes, those too).

Quakers introduced public banking to the original colony of Pennsylvania, helping the colony prosper. North Dakota created its public bank in 1919, and is currently the only state to own its own bank. There are public banking efforts in more than thirty states, many of them in the west (Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and my own State of New Mexico).

Yesterday morning at 8:20 AM, the last batch of residents at the simple buffet breakfast was discussing the future of capit