Skype a second time

RantWoman at last got to experience the plenary at Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting.

http://www.quakerquaker.org/profiles/blogs/audio-simplicity-integrity



RantWoman observations:

RantWoman thinks it was a lot for Friends to get together and talk about electronic media and their spiritual lives. However, RantWoman heard not one word of environmental challenges posed by old electronic equipment or of the near-slavery conditions behind the production of all the electronic gadgets we are so in love with. If RantWoman were the soul of economic justice and slavery-free spiritual purity that she aspires to be, she would abstain from all electronic gadgetry or at least be able to come up with the digital age equivalent of shade grown fair trade responsible lifecycle electronics. RantWoman is nowhere near this!

Instead RantWoman directs her readers to a play now at the Seattle Repertory Theater, http://www.seattlerep.org/ "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." RantWoman directs her readers there unencumbered by pesky things like fact checking but does note ardent attention from people who have recently viewed it.
But back to the plenary:
RantWoman notes that she and probably half of those in the room are older than ALL the presenters on the panel. RantWoman thinks this has to be fine. RantWoman finds herself wondering though whether that fact in any way colors others' reactions.


During the plenary RantWoman heard a wide variety of experience as far as whether people met in cyberspace before or after meeting in person. RantWoman heard comments offline that seem to insist to firmly for RantWoman's taste in only one direction of several sequences. RantWoman is noting this point along with humble steadfastness about her own need to take up space and insist in specific directions about some issues and her sense of serious irritation when she hears others' insistence in directions that do not reflect her own truth. Space, space, breathe, breathe....

RantWoman listened to lots of Friends list their technological pedigrees. RantWoman is more impressed by Friends who focus less on the gizmo angle and more on spiritual center. RantWoman especially respects Weighty Friend who is even more afraid of Facebook than RantWoman is.

RantWoman's mind also wandered to.... recording and ... wiretapping. RantWoman's experience is that Friends have different issues about recording sessions out of worship. RantWoman does not have an opinion about whether more of a sense of worship is to be desired for the Quarterly Meeting plenary than average in daily life. To be honest, neither the question of recording nor the sense of worship at the plenary entered the mind of THIS planning committee member un til now!

However, in WA laws about recording phone calls are pretty direct:
it's illegal to record unless everyone on the call knows they are
being recorded. RantWoman is not a lawyer. RantWoman has no opinion about whether a Skype session involving remote participants falls in the same zone, but it occurs to RantWoman simply to cite general experience.

In addition to warning messages in lots of bureaucrats' phone queues, RantWoman goes to LOTS of different geekish meetings where more than once during the meeting the facilitator announces something like "this event is being recorded and will be posted /replayed..." RantWoman does not think anyone is going to hunt down Quarterly
Meeting and make a big deal about no warnings in this case, but it's one of those behind-the-scenes digital age points--like appropriate rights for use of music that it behooves Friends to pay modest attention to.


In other news, highly though not solely specific to RantWoman, RantWoman suspects she is the subject of one of the questions at the end. RantWoman means to TRY to keep having conversations with the Questioning Friend whose words RantWoman noted although she also would not mind initiative from the other direction as well. RantWoman is having trouble distinguishing "Season yourself" from "shut up" in conversation with that Friend. RantWoman is also both having trouble detecting actionable hints AND detecting a certain obtuseness and uneven inclination to ASK RantWoman even to clarify.

(RantWoman does not particularly apologize at this point to any readers who wish that RantWoman and Questioning Friend would just pry ourselves out of our various electronic corners and actually TALK to one another. RantWoman would not mind if her electronic corner helped find more openings for that to occur.)

Here RantWoman must digress and make a confession. RantWoman was recently led boldly to acknowledge via the email that others find so vexatious that she can be astoundingly adept at screwing up communications, sometimes in more than one medium at the same time. As a result of this frank acknowledgment on RantWoman's part, RantWoman got back something she has pointedly requested multiple times previously: feedback and feedback responsive to other points of concern to RantWoman, including feedback alluding to a moment when RantWoman and Question Friend yelled at each other in a meeting.

RantWoman thinks a few different things about that yelling; she is collecting thoughts here because she is unclear which of them she will be led to offer which audience in real life.

--Questioning Friend literally has his job because of a lot of upppity dificult challenging people, people just like RantWoman and people on whose shoulders RantWoman humbly rests her own sundry efforts at presence. RantWoman recognizes the importance of this job and this fact; RantWoman is willing to TRY to cut Questioning Friend some slack about difficulty interacting with actual difficult people.

--RantWoman really does not want a steady diet of yelling in meetings, but the yelling in that case was not the worst thing about RantWoman's day.

--The worst thing about RantWoman's day in that conversation, besides the, cough, "opportunity" to collect data about yet another issue, was a highly esoteric point RantWoman did a lousy job of articulating in the midst of the yelling. IF RantWoman had been able to articulate it in the moment, MAYBE it is reasonable to think Questioning Friend would be more likely to get it than others in the room. It is a point so specific to RantWoman's life that she saw but did not interact with all of a stream of about 65 email messages on a professional nonQuaker mailing list complaining about one of the issues motivating RantWoman's point of view.

The issue is highly relevant to RantWoman but probably not one others around her have ever grappled with. The fact that there were that many messages on the thread means, even if the thread wanders from the subject line, that the topic is HIGHLY important to others as well. It is an issue that RantWoman does NOT need permission from others in her Meeting to become irate about. For the sake of rantWoman's soul, she will try again for concise explanation and seeking to communicate to that of God even when it shows up in what look to RantWoman like the "dullest fools" from this morning's Psalm (93 or 94)

--RantWoman gets to invoke the "chicks cry" clause. The "Chicks Cry" clause means RantWoman knows more than one woman who can feel much better after a cry, even a cry that is public and embarrassing and totally disconcerting to everyone else around her. RantWoman actually would like NOT to cry in some of the circumstances where she does, but figuring out how to do that seems likely at least occasionally still need the "Chicks cry" clause. Again, RantWoman would not prefer a steady diet..., but again it is not the worst part of RantWoman's day.

Perhaps that is enough said, especially since RantWoman now really does have to pry herself out of her electronic corner, at least for now.