Mulch or Weedkiller: Signs

Because why WOULDN'T 
the Mask of the Day help somehow?

Continuing a fine tradition of, um, Interesting moments in closing Meeting for Worship at Annual Session.

From a text exchange:

Did a deposit of mulch occur? Or weed killer?

Mulch I hope, though good mulch also helps prevent weeds.

Said deposit of mulch in question occurred in closing worship. RantWoman was in fact publicly eldering a former Presiding Clerk of Yearly Meeting. This does NOT mean things might have gone better in less public circumstances. As RantWoman wrote in an email awhile ago, we ALL need to pray..."

During worship a message that had several parts rose for RantWoman. RantWoman afterward sent an email to selected worshippers, all in Blind Copy, asking what they absorbed. RantWoman has gotten only one reply. RantWoman will specify more. 

First, RantWoman immediately wrote back "Thank you so much for a reply, any reply!"   It was sufficient. 

A bit of the reply to RantWoman's initial inquiry:

"Such an action would not have occurred to me.  I rather doubt that it occurred to the Spirit, either."

[Then there was something about timing and self-justification which RantWoman would rather rephrase as timing with a certain anniversary and signs that one must speak even if bringing up #ADA30 will come with way more tangle of what works and what does not than would fit into standard issue modern 1-hour Meeting for Worship.]. 

RantWoman's response:

Thank you for a response, any response.

Umm, extracting and elaborating on email reply

1. i have a versatile God who gets things done all kinds of ways. Versatile God was well-channeled for me at Annual Session by meanderings of Bible Study AND by both openings and space for acknowledgments in my worship

group. And a younger Friend's suggestion about where to start for Community Night were SO on point: Like I can ask for help and help that is actually helpful will come!

    I talked about all this a little with the Blind Prayer warriors (That honest to God is what this exercise in praying across difference calls themselves some of the time.) Sunday afternoon conference call prayer group and one person said she can tell a difference in my voice about the well-nourished part. Another spontaneously brought up a hat RantWoman wears outside Meeting that she cannot wear with integrity without trying (again? Trying souls about Meeting?) They were also too happy to help pray when I said I am sure I have pissed some people off. (So if RantWoman has pissed you off, please know that you are being prayed for, anonymously, by people you do not even know.)

   And I keep saying over and over several ways  how much I appreciate how hard many people are working to make virtual AS work.

2. I think it possible that people misapprehend nudgings of God but it would never occur to me to presume anything about what God is or is not telling another person.

(Not spoken:)3. Well, well, well, at least this Friend, when delivered of a problematic message did something besides tell everyone to ignore RantWoman's inquiry. So we are at least one up on the Pizza message aftermath, though Blind Copy also helped limit...)       

RantWoman's message had several threads.

Thin Mints and box
as a Placeholder for past
and future children

Concern about the future, resonating with the part of a previous message RantWoman hoped to be able to resonate with. RantWoman suspects, based on the response she received   that this point did not make it out of RantWoman's mouth on the words that did emerge.

A point about clerking and blindness and figuring things out. It is AWESOME to have 50 new clerks but if RantWoman asks to participate, in HOPES of helping figure out some blind person in meetings issues and the message comes back that participation is not permitted, cough. RantWoman is NOT called to go away; RantWoman is offended by the implied message that dealing with blind person in meetings issues is either optional or unsolvable.

Why stop at only the former presiding clerk? RantWoman also meant to elder her entire Meeting over the only come to memorials issue.

Affirmation of RantWoman's faith in praying across difference. Affirmation x 2, one piece meaning to say to another Friend "I see you. I hear you," the other bluntly holding in the Light another younger Friend in the same vein.

The Queen of Spades
Bemused

RantWoman is grateful for:

--Private messages in Zoom chat, such an interesting enhancement over in-person Meeting for worship

--TWO previous Meetings for worship where RantWoman got to speak of matters on her mind related to gunfire, oh and a child safety policy themed topic about which MAYBE more separately.

--The Queen of Spades, the cat dominatrix chez RantWoman. Between regular cuddles from the cat and daily showers, RantWoman is deeply aware of touch even without hugs.

The Quaker Handshake

RantWoman's inbox from a couple days ago contains this fascinating article about the history of handshakes among early Quakers.

https://www.friendsjournal.org/the-end-of-the-quaker-handshake/


HUGE gratitude for Quakers joining the electronic age if only so RantWoman can point her screen reader at Quaker content and get right to the meat of the material without a lot of phone calling or arranging just to arrange for someone to read / help her get access to the content.

Query: how might this bit of Quaker history guide us in thinking about different matters of privilege in our Modern Quaker communities?

Dial-a-Tirade mumblings about the current modern #COVID19 related demise of the handshake among Friends: RantWoman thinks she has said this before, but neither the Namaste bow nor the elbow bump make RantWoman's blind self happy.  Both of them cause RantWoman to fear she will simply plow into someone in a most un-greetingly manner!

But hey, RantWoman is going to knock off the tirades and try to CHILL OUT.    

Quaker Voice Alert: ask Governor Inslee to extent eviction moratorium until March 2021

Friends,

Left unemployed or furloughed by Covid-19, thousands of Washingtonians have been left unable to pay their rent since March. While our state's eviction moratorium has protected many from losing shelter, it is set to expire on August 1. This will leave thousands of renters in Washington State vulnerable to eviction at the same time that enhanced unemployment benefits are set to end.

It is clear that a long term solution to the precarity of renters in Covid-19 must be realized by the legislature in the next legislative session. Quaker Voice will continue to push for rental assistance and protections for renters as we transition into a post-Covid world. Until then, join us in calling on Governor Inslee to extend the eviction moratorium through March 2021 to allow the Legislature time to vote on a longer-term solution to housing stability during COVID-19. You can send a message to Governor Inslee here.

In peace,

Quaker Voice

E

Lay as in ...materials to prepare for Worship Sharing Groups

Who is this Benjamin Lay Dude and why is he showing up in the materials for Worship Group Leaders?

Stay tuned.

RantWoman will be serving as a worship group leader for the #NPYM2020 all virtual Annual Session. Today RantWoman received the following materials, along with a list of who has been assigned this particular excursion via Planet RantWoman. RantWoman thanks those who prepared these documents very much for their efforts. RantWoman is looking forward to meeting her group in Zoom land. RantWoman humbly asks that Friends bear with the remix below. RantWoman also specifically invites Friends to make any accessibility requests known. RantWoman may or may not be able to fulfill requests but can do nothing until Friends speak up about needs. Please see additional comments about accessibility further down.

The Basics for Worship Sharing / Discussion / Music / unprogrammed worship

1. Dates. timing, and Zoom connections (Readers who specifically want to join RantWoman's worship group, please leave a comment and RantWoman is happy to include you. Readers who have not registered at all and want to participate in a worship group but not necessarily with RantWoman, please see the Annual Session Registration page.

2. Other information important for your consideration may be found at these links:

Worship Group Guidelines

• Worship Group Roles
• Queries
• 
  

These documents behave just fine for RantWoman's various #a11y tools. RantWoman always adds the caveat "your mileage may vary," though RantWoman is VERY grateful for the evolution of many things internet in the direction of much more consistent (though never perfect) basic accessibility for assistive technology. Now, about "continuing revelation" in other realms?

When Worship Sharing occurs in person, RantWoman is a worship walking person. Walking optional depending on leading and technology.

Get to know each other

As a worship group leader for the six-week pre-Annual Session series, RantWoman felt called to invite members of her group to provide reply/all email answer a couple get-to-know-each-other questions before we all gathered in the Zoom space.

Previously RantWoman's questions were:

     --What year did you first vote in a presidential election ?
and, because the anniversary of the Mt. St. Helen's eruption fell within the group's correspondence spell,

     --Tell us something you remember about the Mt. St. Helen's eruption.

RantWoman is always fascinated by such Acts of God and really appreciated the detail of the answers.

RantWoman currently has a ferocious leading about the phrase "Friends younger than 60." RantWoman is not yet clear yet what questions she will ask this time but will strive to avoid questions where some Friends may reply "I have no idea because I was not born yet." RantWoman also notes that language in this post may or may not match some Friends' concepts of acceptable Quakerese. RantWoman and Little Sister currently have a thing going about images of flan. Little Sister just sent RantWoman an image RantWoman almost missed the point of: the flan when tapped to enlarge it enough for RantWoman to fully appreciate it, dons dark shades and flashes "Deal with it!" RantWoman is right there!

More on Accessibility

RantWoman is certain some of her readers or others participating in Worship Groups may need some advice about accessibility for activities in Zoom. RantWoman offers a number of comments here. You're welcome.

Accessibility is a very big topic. For example, RantWoman hopes participants in this worship group have furniture that meets their specific needs. On the other hand, sometimes Friends can suggest ways to fulfill particular quests.

RantWoman got concerned about people with hearing issues. So she emailed a number of people whose hearing issues she is well aware of and asked about their experience:

--One Friend says they are able to do all the adjustment they need with the volume controls on their device. RantWoman would add an asterisk for people with hearing aids: there are probably things people with hearing aids can tweak to make best use of them in Zoom. Rant would suggest, contact your provider for hearing aid adjustment issues

--One Friend reported that they lipread a lot. RantWoman suggested just leaving Zoom in active speaker mode so faces will be as large as possible. RantWoman also urged everyone to remember to turn on their video--as well as their mic--while speaking. For people who like seeing full-screen faces, RantWoman thinks it would be cool to have some kind of scrolling function where faces cycle through even if no one is talking. RantWoman realizes this desire is probably a uniquely Quaker requirement: RantWoman cannot imagine many other users of Zoom wanting to plan on long spells of silence and speakers rising at indeterminant moments.

--RantWoman uncovered one Friend who relies on the closed captioning on television a lot. RantWoman and said Friend agree closed captioning can be terrible. Zoom can provide a recording and an automated transcript and there are further commercial options for full CART. RantWoman notes these possibilities and invites Friends really interested to leavea comment and RantWoman will follow up.

RantWoman's own access needs

RantWoman has difficulty seeing faces and people's waving hands. RantWoman expects Worship sharing to more or less manage itself but does invite Friends to consider using the Raise Hand function. RantWoman needs Friends' help to speak up if it seems someone is visibly distressed and RantWoman is not noticing.

Reading the contents of Zoom screen sharing is inaccessible to RantWoman.  RantWoman does not expect to want to share files during Worship Sharing also because RantWoman uses 4x magnification and ordinary navigation can give people vertigo.If anyone is led to share a file, RantWoman will need either a link or a copy of whatever is being shared in the chat area.

RantWoman prefers not to overuse the chat. The chat can be really important if Friends want to share files or links so RantWoman does not want to disable it completely.

The practice of Worship Sharing

RantWoman generally comes with some other thoughts about worship -sharing.

RantWoman remembers a conversation with a Friend from NW Yearly Meeting, the evangelical YM "near" NPYM. That Friend really did not get the point of worship sharing until she tried. it. Let each Friend's message sink into the pool of our shared space for a time before someone else offers ministry.

RantWoman is fond of the concept of Brave Space

Other Linguistic Excursions

Apparently, simplicity is not going to come easily, and RantWoman's word nerd instincts are also at high risk of running amok. Friends who need to address internet overabundance about any of the following--or any other--linguistic rabbit holes are encouraged to try to do so before we gather.

--The Lay of the Host of Igor is a great battle epic from the days of Kievan Rus.'  Why is the title rendered this way? Why is this version of the title so much more interesting than more modern translations... On your marks, get set, use your search engines!

--Lie / Lay Laid. Modern English

--Lay, lady, lay across my big brass bed: RantWoman heard a radio clip of Bob Dylan's new album. Dylan's singing voice has not really improved with age, but at some point RantWoman means to try to grok the poetry. In the meantime, words from an old tune.

--Who the heck is Benjamin Lay in the first place? Links abundant. One RantWoman especially likes is from the Smithsonian The Quaker Comet

--Searching on this blog for posts referring in any way to Benjamin Lay will open several cans of worms that might or might not be helpful for this worship group's time together.

In Light and Faithfulness

RantWoman

The NPYM Annual Session All Purpose Quaker Zoom Machine, blue-haired troll baby and all

Virtual NPYM Annual Session is upon us; to enhance readers' experience, RantWoman has prepared a number of excursions to exotic Planet RantWoman.

Intro

Topical Julian of Norwich quote in a Tweet
Hye Sung (@HyeSungFrancis) tweeted at 5:52 AM on Thu, Jul 09, 2020:
“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”
— Julian of Norwich

That six weeks of virtual worship-sharing has been a great blessing.

The book of Mark is a kickass way to think about disability and the Wednesday Night Bible Study group are grand adventurers in the text.

Now, RantWoman is packing her invisible knapsack (Earth to RantWoman, Invisible?: #DigitalEquity anyone?). RantWoman is lining up her hashtags (#DisabilityPrideMonth #ADA30 #ADAInColor #DisabilityVisibility #DisabilityTooWhite #AbledsAreWeird #CripTheVote #A11y #Accessibility . RantWoman is gathering memes together. RantWoman is dancing with the calendar and the schedule. And RantWoman is loading up her Quaker Zoom Machine with "Oh, my Gawd, Who AM I worshipping with?"  But first, some checkins.

The first iterations of RantWoman's TWO interest groups have gone where they needed to if not where RantWoman first thought they would go. There is a wonderful little girl and her family to hold in the Light. There is also RantWoman to hold in the Light for round two. RantWoman WILL post outlines and connection info separately.

Business Sessions

Documents to be presented at Business Session already have their own link. Now it is RantWoman's responsibility to read them, ask in advance if there are any accessibility hiccups. ... And if RantWoman does not get everything read, it is still her responsibility to take good care of the Meeting for Business time and space. RantWoman humbly and gratefully notes how much opportunity to prepare in advance makes events more accessible for RantWoman.

Here is topical comment, exhortation and relevant link from the Clerk:
We approach Annual Session with months of preparation already completed by our committees. We will receive committee reports. In most cases we will have an opportunity to ask questions of the committees about the progress of their work. In some cases we will be asked to approve the committees’ recommendations. If we come to plenary prepared, we can do the work of plenaries more efficiently, reduce the strain of excessive Zoom time, and soak longer and more comfortably in the abundance of Spirit that fills our meetings. Some Friends will want to study committee reports in detail, others will prefer to release personal control and trust in the hard work of our committees. All the documents for our plenaries are collected on the web page Pre-Annual Session Reports found at <https://as.npym.org/pre-annual-session-reports>.

Accessibility Twitches

In terms of playing well with accessibility tools and wide variety of options, Zoom is by far the most accessible video conferencing tool RantWoman has dealt with. That does not mean things are perfect by a long shot.

RantWoman thanks one interest group presenter for asking whether Google slides will work with RantWoman's most-used browser screen reader pair. NOTHING in the screen share window works in Zoom with screen readers, so it's time for charm, teamwork, and alternate methods. RantWoman can be, um, a little charm-challenged. Hold that problem in the Light. RantWoman also noticed teamwork coming up for others in the many pre-event Zoom practice sessions. Finally, RantWoman notes that probably people connecting by phone will appreciate brief summaries of key points as agenda items are addressed.

Readers dying for a peek at RantWoman's video conferencing accessibility world tour are invited to check out her non-Quaker blog. What generally works for RantWoman is to have a file or a link in the chat. RantWoman needs her own machine to be able to do certain things, details of which RantWoman is glad to have had time to figure out. RantWoman is also happy to go on at length or in tedious detail with anyone interested.  RantWoman also appreciates if presenters offer names and contact info out loud. For one thing both in Zoom and in #MeatSpace it can be hard for RantWoman to find and connect with a person who has said something which as attracted RantWoman's attention.

RantWoman thinks she will post more meditations on accessibility separately. RantWoman considers it a great good thing to INVITE people to speak up about needs. Here RantWoman trips over multiple awkward realities: if one invites people to speak up, the no fairy godmothers rule may still stumble into the picture. Consistent results may or may not occur even in the best circumstances. It is all very well not to ask an oppressed person to do all the work of educating the community RantWoman can cite MULTIPLE moments where if someone would just ASK RANTWOMAN what is or is not working, sometimes people could save themselves a whole lot of stress and agony, even before thinking about easing the workload by working on ways to LEARN APPROPRIATE TERMINOLOGY and to share burdens(Sorry. RantWoman is still on a post-birthday high and overflowing with Dial-a-Tirade motivations).

The Zoom Machine: Rename ourselves

Pretend the lineup below is a Zoom screen. Check the alt text for commentary, and pretend the Alt Text is like the Rename Function in Zoom. Well sometimes the Alt Text is like Rename. For some of the pictures the Alt text is someone's  unholy judgmental thought bubbles needing to be purified in the cleansing torrents of Meeting for Worship. Sometimes the Alt Text is grocery lists or obsessive fixations or lust charged mental meanderings. The point: It's Meeting for WORSHIP and belongs to God, even before we do the land acknowledgements.

Speaking of "belongs to God," Friends upset that RantWoman would never promise to do as asked and always promised to be faithful to her Light could have CONSIDERED asking RantWoman about her considerations. Friends COULD have asked. But back to the Zoom machine.

Stay tuned for MORE RantWoman meditations on different aspects of accessibility, including when RantWoman can see and hear better in Zoom than in many other worship settings, when it can be easier or harder for RantWoman to connect by Zoom than in person.

To get started, the lineup, with special blindness tourism elements:

--Most of the dolls were made by RantWoman's next door neighbor who is almost totally blind. RantWoman finds the dolls interesting both because their faces are very idiosyncratic and because the dolls and their clothing represent all kinds of textures and tactile elements such as jewelry. Some of the dolls also excel at a blind person in meetings behavior one observant Friend has commented on: sighted people expect the people they are conversing with to look at them. Blind people look all over the place and can neither provide nor interact with the visual feedback sighted people are used to. None of that means blind people are not paying attention. RantWoman gets that this reality is daunting for sighted people. RantWoman has NO patience with a variety of sighted people who have not so far been able or willing to try to work through this reality. Continuing revelation anyone?

Anyway, Next Door Neighbor can see enough color, when she comes over to ask for help, to know generally what colors she is dealing with. RantWoman is VERY grateful to have enough color perception in between a whole bunch of eyeball wonkiness to be able to help her.

--Please imagine phone number or random drawbridge avatars in the white spaces. Please scroll past the "Zoom screen" for more comments.

 

  

 

  

One more Live vs Zoom comparison and invitation to share comparable moments no matter how weird.

RantWoman is certain the world is aware it needs... scratch that: RantWoman is called to deliver further meditations on RantWoman experience at live events and the RantWoman Zoom experience. In particular, a retreat from quite awhile ago came up recently in conversation. RantWoman called the many organizer contact to ask about hearing issues and got blown off as in hung up on. So much for thought about whether people can hear during the experience? 

Apparently at this same retreat there also was another exercise that would have sent RantWoman around the bend if she had arrived in time to be subjected to it. According to RantWoman's informant, there was some kind of exercise where people were invited to touch each other's faces. YUCK. GROSS, not even counting COVID! SOME blind people like to do that touch faces thing. Around strangers RantWoman is more likely  to be in a zone of "Keep your grubby mitts off my glasses!" 

Interestingly though, in screen land with touch screen or settings, RantWoman can delight in touching people's faces with her finger or the cursor and the screen reader will read the person's name.RantWoman finds this SO helpful, SO MUCH nicer than paws all over faces in person. 

But the how to feel connected over Zoom theme...? Anyone else?

Link stashed here FYI though not necessarily because RantWoman expects this framework will feel like a fit for RantWoman.

FakeEquity: moving from allyship to solidarity

Need for police presence?

Adult Religious Education July 19, 9:30AM Abolition Starts at Home - a presentation by the QuEST Fellows As neighbors living in Quaker House, we would like to eliminate the perceived need for a police presence on the UFM campus and in our personal lives. QuEST Fellows will discuss what we have been learning about prisons/police/abolition and invisibilized violence. We want to be in conversation with you all about and make connections to Quaker values. Register in advance for this meeting: Zoom registration to join the meeting After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

RantWoman's Light

RantWoman is VERY clear to ask (Again) to be present to hear QuEST fellows speak in their own words and to tend to her personal safety concerns as someone who travels regularly by foot and bus near UFM. RantWoman has more to say further down. If everyone is lucky, RantWoman may hit a stopping point and save some of the more scorching Light roaring out of her inner blowtorch for another post.

RantWoman means it about wanting to center the QuEST fellows speaking in their own words. RantWoman also feels considerable compulsion to share her Light. Fortunately or unfortunately, RantWoman is unclear how much of it will be needed at this Adult Religious Education session. Nevertheless RantWoman is clear to offer some of it here.

--RantWoman thinks talking about police abolition is a really good idea. In the meantime, there are good reasons police officers might be around, besides RantWoman (checks notes: praying across the street.). --RantWoman notes that imperfect as current accountability measures are, it MATTERS to be able to expect that officers will have both their name and their badge numbers uncovered. RantWoman further notes that police officers should both have their own bodycams on and expect that others may be videotaping.

--RantWoman would also LOVE to hear out of the mouths of Quakers that at least some of them are familiar with the Office of Professional Accountability, "the consent decree," and the latest in the Seattle Police Officers' Guild contract between police and the city.

--Will the police officers actually show up or will COVID, "blue flu" and  mutual mistrust and community exasperation about cop behavior during recent demonstrations get in the way of effective interactions?

Homelessness ministry

UFM has multiple homelessness issues that might require police attention:
----Graffitti: Someone scrawled "No Bums" somewhere on Meeting property. There is thought of building a fence. RantWoman is not saying that is necessarily a bad idea; RantWoman is a little worred about vague design issues she has so far articulated poorly. RantWoman is also afraid a fence wll just give the graffiti practitioner(s) a bigger billboard.

--RantWoman's ministry of observing notes another homelessness angle: RantWoman assumes the Sunday morning dog walkers are paying Seattle rents and are not required automatically to be thrilled about opportunities to interact with homeless people. RantWoman may be making bad assumptions but notes a continuing need for neighborhood connections and observations.What might Friends do to tend to this point?

--RantWoman vacuumed up an important statistic recently: the percentage of people identified during the annual one-night count of people living on the streets as having some kind of disability has been steadily climbing to over 60 %. RantWoman has no opinion about whether people with disabilities are explicitly either being targeted or ignored.as far as infrastructure near and immediately around Meeting. RantWoman simply notes tartly that current real estate and land use realities treat all kinds of people equally badly. More to the point, RantWoman as a person with a disability is likely to hear and be able to speak to disability specific issues in ways that people who do not identify as having a disability cannot. In other words, if people are talking about lots of people with disabilities and interactions with cops, it is appropriate specifically to include people with disabilities in the conversation and to do so with reasonable timeliness, not by postponing any action on requests for months.

--RantWoman is not current up to the latest shriek of story about one person who is clearly mentally ill. RantWoman has no opinion about some homeless services questions that come to mind in that case. RantWoman just notes that it can be DARNED difficult to encourage someone to get help, that getting to help sometimes involves multiple traumatizing encounters with police and Emergency Rooms. Even though one's odds of getting shot by police increase if one is mentally ill, the effects of lesser  traumatizing law enforcement encounters have much more widespread impact. Truly, some parts of this reality reflect problems that society cannot police its way out of, problems where flat out more revenue is needed and where public funds would be much better spent on community mental health and peer mutual programs than on policing and jails.

--What is the relationship between homelessness issues in UFM's corner of the U-district and flows of people and problems in other parts of the U district?

And add transportation to the mix. 

There is a Light Rail station opening nearby within the next year. There are both infrastructure and human behavior issues r elated to pedestrian and bus travel routes near Meeting: many people are right to be highly concerned about personal safety as they travel to and from places like light rail stations. There is a traffic injury accident hotspot near the Meeting. Wherever besides basic policing some of these realities land in governmental functions, right now much but not all of the work falls to the police department. What transformations need to occur and on what timeline to preserve skills and knowledge and create truly welcoming crime-discouraging public transit and safe walking / biking as well as driving routes to handle traffic increases when the new Light Rail station opens?



RantWoman has specifically asked to be allowed to hear from QuEST fellows in their own words.
RantWoman is happy to invoke Quaker testimony terms like equality, integrity and community though peace and simplicity are less directly to be had. And community is pretty heavily freighted right now by "I don' wanna" and concepts like gaslighting. So it's another day in paradise, er pandemic, er...

RantWoman humbly wants to note one issue about timing of this missive. The missive has been seasoning for quite some time; the end result timing wise is a fabulous tit for tat repetition of RantWoman's experiences with certain elders who in the past have only been available late at night or late in the afternoon before Meeting for Business. RantWoman gets that not everyone reads their email every day and it is summer when even in #pandemic freeze mode, people like to get outside and tend their gardens. However, RantWoman is also called to make the point that disability is not a deal with it at other's convenience. Disability asks everyone in our community to consider small steps to make someone's life better. RantWoman has the nerve to recommend that small steps also make the community's life better.

Further Full disclosures:

RantWoman has been arrested multiple times for civil disobedience. RantWoman has also stopped participating in Please arrest me protest because of the incredible amount of privilege represented by potential employers who say "Good for you" when the subject of an arrest record comes up.

RantWoman has also held crowd management roles and political protest marshal roles where being able to do basic interactions with police has been part of the expectations on all sides.

RantWoman has also called the police many times.

Two recent blog posts related to police matters. The second is tangled. Time was RantWoman LIKED Quakers because they could handle complexity. RantWoman expects SOME Quakers CAN still handle complexity

All Lives Splatter

I pray for

RantWoman was among 89 people arrested in an anti-apartheid / pro divestment sit-in  week before her college graduation, RantWoman was part of the "Not Guilty Caucus," a subset of the arrestees who considered it dishonest to plead guilty when we did not feel guilty about what we had done. The sit-in attracted a colorful spectrum of lawyers. The lawyer the Not Guilty caucus talked to most suggested making the campus police officers look like idiots as part of a strategy. RantWoman is very glad that suggestion was unacceptable to everyone in the group.

The Fruits of Twitter, plus AutoCorrect

There are those nice new testament fruits of the Spirit. Go look them up.

And then there are the fruits of Twitter, gently seasoned with... #Autocorrect.


RantWoman howled watching this sketch over her breakfast porridge (Oatmeal. Thank you for asking)

Take note:
--The pastor needs to hear himself preach. He cannot decide whether he needs silence or feedback

--Have you spent enough time worshipping with other faith traditions to catch the every pastor / choir director conflict ever?

--Listen to the two mamas? What is the same. What is different.

--Can you find the woman in the African American Church lady hat. RantWoman could not find it on her phone, but it's definitely there if one has a big enough screen and enough magnification.

--RantWoman is certain the world needs a whole separate blog post about names, Zoom, accessibility software and alternate weird options suggested in retreats. Stay tuned.

--Proselytizing? Anyone have ideas how the proselytizing shows up? Is it Proselytizing?

This great clip came to RantWoman freighted with  a comment about why every Zoom meeting should be locked down. Autocorrect grabbed hold of a reply and rendered "Religions are supposed to prioritize (Yes, EVEN QUAKERS in our own try to live what we believe" way need to proselytize) Licking down Zoom meetings is not the point."

FWIW, "the Zoom machine" displays a couple different technical difficulties and the number of worshippers balloons by the end, but RantWoman does not particularly see any issues that would be fixed by locking down the meeting. On the contrary, locking down the meeting would probably get in the way of that Quaker THANG called "continuing revelation."

As for "licking down the Meeting," RantWoman has seen plenty of cats come to worship recently. RantWoman has been told that cats sometimes try to groom their humans by licking the same way they would each other. RantWoman's resident cat dominatrix, known on the internet as The Queen of Spades, definitely does this and in pandemic survival pet cuddles mode, RantWoman is very grateful. Perhaps that is enough said about licking.

So RantWoman definitely starts the day with a smile before wading into #ADA30, #ADA30InColor, #NFB20 and some other hashtags, about which stay tuned for more.

Happy? Fourth of July

Happy? Fourth of July

RantWoman has multiple opportunities to go all in her head about Racism right now. RantWoman is starting with Trevor Noah clips.





And here, for RantWoman's edification as much as anything is a whole string of White People, especially, urk, White Women calling the cops on Black people. All of these episodes have passed as hashtags without RantWoman realizing all of the absurd and embarrassing details.

Red Currant

RantWoman is practicing gratitudes.

This is RantWoman. Cranky is also available.

RantWoman is trying to keep a handle on the cranky. RantWoman gets help from:

--Abundance in the realm of water, ice, and other forms of hydration

--A collection of enthusiastic if somewhat disorderly houseplants, some of which need repotting and all of which are at least a pale substitute for the option, not available under the current building management / corona virus deterrence regime of growing things on the balcony across the hall.

The Latest Cat Pic

--The resident feline staff, known on the internet and in weekly #Caturday photo op twitter posts as The Queen of Spades

--An apartment that is quite a bit larger than many apartments on the market with worse transit connections for considerably more than RantWoman is paying. True, the unit comes with, um, interesting neighbors and tiresome rules such as the no plants on the balcony rule mentioned above.

Cue the monthly newsletter and the shared Light embodied in this wonderful picture. Wanna know what's in it? Hover your mouse over the picture.

PS more text below the picture: RantWoman is going to play fragile blind person about any further attempts at some needed fiddling with the image.

RantWoman obviously does not know much about some parts of dealing with images
or things would line up more appropriately.

By shared light, RantWoman means to appreciate

--TEAMWORK, something RantWoman still kind of lacks adeptness with

--The Light of the Friend who contributed the picture and who, with her husband, spent their 50th weddign anniversary tending the grounds at Meeting

--The Light of the newsletter editor who made the alt text happen in the newsletter.

RantWoman will now STOP

In light and faithfulness