Eldering? At the Still Didn't Get The Memo Committee?

Eldering? At the Still Didn’t get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation? REALLY?

 

It could happen. All things are possible…

 

RantWoman! Are you going to TRY to stay on topic or get ranty?

 

Uhhh…How about just hold everyone’s Saturday night in the Light.

 

Appreciations and Vaguely Related Suggestions

RantWoman needs to offer some humble appreciations; some suggestions also clattered out of the keyboard.

 

First  RantWoman wants humbly to offer a comment: if RantWoman includes you in an email, it is because RantWoman values your presence in the community, thinks you might have something to contribute to whatever communication flow generated the email.  RantWoman especially emphasizes this point when she writes email that starts out something like “Please hold in the Light and read as you are able. Please stop here if holding you in the Light is the best you can do.” RantWoman considers this request the equivalent of a live request after Meeting.

 

But RantWoman, the requests after Meeting happen once a week. Don’t you sometimes ask several times / week? Do you suppose anyone might be feeling a little burdened?

 

Good Point. RantWoman may be in a minority, but RantWoman writes a lot and also does not mind in the least reading such requests from other people. RantWoman has lots of Time To pray time on the bus and is happy to add to her prayer queue. RantWoman may respond in person or by phone, but...

 

As far as frequency, RantWoman is going to have to think about this> RantWoman has now thought. You know that part about all life is a prayer. Start there. Apparently RantWoman needs support many times a week. Paths to avoiding the need for email might include someone being brave enough to serve on a committee with RantWoman or some kind of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun reading group about either pedestrian / walkability / women missing in data urban planning theme  (guys welcome too, but the point would be to read women’s perspectives. Second option Say Breme Brown videos.

 

Live connections will ensure that RantWoman will have a greater conversational sense of holding, Oh, and participants will have the awesome opportunity to figure out Blind People in Meetings Issues. Be a pioneer. Do something that never occurred to the Care and Accountability Committee as an action even though RantWoman suggested it. RantWoman THINKS she has also suggested this to Worship and Ministry committee who are responsible for care of Business Meeting, but RantWoman is unclear the invitation has fully been communicated. Anyway, appreciate the brave Quakers who finally accepted RantWoman’s invitation to come to meetings where a lot of people are blind and see how they work. Think what we can try. Who said blindness tourism on Planet Rantwoman cannot be fun?

 

Back to the Still Didn’t Get The Memo Committee

But Rantwoman digresses from the work of the Still Didn’t Get The Memo Committee.

RantWoman appreciates LOTS of people who have hung in there while RantWoman MOST of the time figures out how to make her emails readable and her points clear. This is RantWoman. Emphasis on most of the time and feedback welcome if RantWoman has guessed badly based onat least SOME greater responsiveness.

 

An Edict from Planet RantWoman

Next, RantWoman needs to issue an edict for Planet RantWoman.

 

RantWoman will be honoring NO requests to delete Friends from any moment RantWoman uses the Reply/all command.  This is a point where RantWoman and others striving to be in community with and around RantWoman need to ask each other for support and care.

 

RantWoman uses both a screen enlarger program at 4X magnification and screen reading. RantWoman does not see the whole screen and either has to scroll horizontally with keyboard commands or work visually to see things on the right side of the screen. So Rantwoman many or may not even remember to look for names she is supposed to pick out of lists. OR RantWoman can add a dozen or so extra key strokes to locate the names. That is a LOT of extra work

 

So RantWoman is not going to do it—for anyone. Instead RantWoman is going to offer a couple technical suggestions

 

RantWoman will do the best she can to remember not to include people who have requested not to receive email from RantWoman. Okay, RantWoman will try to remember, even when including one of the requesters seems on point to RantWoman.

 

RantWoman will do the best she can to remind herself “everyone is doing the best they can.”  RantWoman will try to appreciate lots of hard work and try to avoid wandering into swamps of help that is not help and really RantWoman is TRYING to save people trouble if Friends can listen. But this is RantWoman. If instead of just holding in the Light, RantWoman breaks out in a Ministry of Audible Eye Rolling coughing fit because the words “community building” or (another important role) have also entered the conversation, RantWoman will blame the pollen, even in January.

 

Humbly, after decades doing various flavors of tech support, the instinct to suggest technical suggestions is basically hard-wired. Friends who want to send email to people who have requested not to get email from RantWoman or to spare requesters the risk of accidentally getting included in a reply/all have a couple options:

 

Put people who make such requests in Blind Copy. Even if RantWoman does reply/all the reply will not go to people in Blind copy. People who want to reply/all to the original thread will need to use BCC again

 

Forward to people who make such requests AFTER

 

People who use gmail can easily set up rules to file email so they do not have to see it unless they choose to.

 

One of the requesters has a yahoo address. RantWoman means to check whether yahoo also allows this but that has not occurred yet.

 

Here RantWoman comes to another stuck point: what if people who do not want to receive email from RantWoman also list themselves all over the place as contacts for Meeting activities?  Then RantWoman does not have the same access to the activities as everyone else. In RantWoman’s opinion that creates an ongoing harm to RantWoman and to the community. But RantWoman needs to leave further thoughts about options to address that problem for another post.

 

In Light and Faithfulness.

 

RantWoman.