RantWoman and the RSOF

FOCUS points

2012-01-30T22:26:00.000-08:00

RantWoman: "...two or three bullet points..."

RantWoman was raised in one of those big western states where even the music teacher's kid can eat the Second Amendment for Breakfast, where one of the state's Monthly Meetings once sang a song at Annual Session Community Night about an uprising led by cows with guns. So RantWoman is a little stuck on "bullet points."

Other Friend: "RantWoman, NOT bullet points. We're pacifists, remember. ...What about FOCUS points?"

Uhhhh, Friend, Focus? Focus! What a concept....but thee really has not reckoned with the RantWoman visual experience. F O C U S...what an idea!

Reading Woolman in January

2012-01-25T18:44:00.000-08:00

A flock of hardy readers from RantWoman's Meeting are embarking on a trek through John Woolman's journal. Early indications are that it will be in many respects easier going than Barclay; RantWoman is versatile and still expects stylistic quibbles and stumbling.

We are starting slow, with chapter 1. We are reading from more than one edition. Several Friends proffered other volumes of commentary and biography. RantWoman is shamelessly going to take advantage of the eyeballs and erudition of Friends who have capacity to read much more.

RantWoman has heard the story of the 6-year-old John Woolman killing a mother robin with a stone and then climbing up and killing the chicks so they would not suffer, but RantWoman was enraged anew reading the journal herself. Okay, so Martin Luther King destroyed one of his sister's dolls too and both Woolman and King grew up to be MUCH more civilized than those childish outrages. RantWoman especially wants to note the merits of regular and searching attention to spiritual questions for both Woolman and King. RantWoman notes this with trembling because she has of late been reflecting on a couple cases where this sort of childish outrage did not get nipped in the bud but instead escalated over others' lives into hideous crimes of violence.

RantWoman remarked and others agreed during the book group that Woolman makes reference repeatedly tovanities, moments of youthful indiscretion, falling into bad company, and other circumlocutions: RantWoman and at least some others are moral cesspools of morbid curiosity and might perhaps have really enjoyed knowing exactly WHICH indiscretions he fell into. RantWoman also would have enjoyed a bit more show your work as far as the content of Woolman's Biblical study and his various spiritual openings. RantWoman, though, appreciates the perceptiveness of her fellow readers. One simply called out the question, what does it mean to live under the Cross? Others began what is likely to be much discussion of indenturement, slavery, and laboring with Friends.

RantWoman finds Woolman a very vivid stylistic contrast to Barclay. Barclay strung citation after specific Biblical citation into highly structured logical arguments. Woolman sort of waves his pen in the direction of the meme he has in mind. Oh Holy Jesus: RantWoman initially found the thought of trying to thumb through all 35 chapters of Ezekial extremely daunting, but the second set of pages she flipped opened exactly to Chapter 8, about the behavior of elders in teh temple. Oh Holy Jesus, as if RantWoman NEEDS more fuel on her fire to elder her some elders.

If RantWoman were good at staying centered she would simply close with the following link.
http://sillypoorgospel.blogspot.com/2012/01/hero-of-faith-dolores-huerta.html

Knowing when to quit would not be the RantWoman Quaker seriously still in progress we all know and love.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/postcards-from-india.html

By way of further commentary the postcard RantWoman received of the Birla Mandar, RantWoman is intrigued by the practice in India of naming temples after the patron who funded its construction. RantWoman is also intrigued by a temple to the goddess of wealth and of Mahatma Ghandi agreeing to appear at its dedication on condition that it be open to people of every caste. Finally, RantWoman was intrigued by this wonderful poem about monkey people running amok when people do not attend to what is right. RantWoman finds it interesting to reflect on monkey people before the theory of evolution. Plus the music is just gorgeous and this is RantWoman. RantWoman may need a couple rounds of the Hanuman Chalisa just to clear out her head enough to live under.....

The Hanuman Chalisa, chanted to keep away evil spirits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqHiyRxykZw

Special Report on Special Commitment Center

2012-01-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

RantWoman can easily appreciate the possibility that at least some of her readers would prefer the churnings of RantWoman's soul and efforts to aerate her spiritual compost heap in a separate stream from efforts to engage with and intervene in public affairs in a clear and sober-minded way.

RantWoman's readers would probably appreciate that but that is not what they get. Here by way of jogging RantWoman's memory that such exists are some links to a current series in the Seattle Times about the Special Commitment Center where people who are deemed by the courts to be "sexually violent predators" are detained.

RantWoman heard of the series on the radio and has not had time to interact but probably is going to need to.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017316159_civilcomm24.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/specialreports/civilcommitment/priceofprotection.html

There is more to this series, but RantWoman expects her readers probably have as much or more capacity to find the right links than RantWoman does. RantWoman already had a long to-do list. While RantWoman was poking at these links she also put together some other data that has been roiling her soul and deided she realized in full-on RantWoman to the Rescue Wonder Quaker Cape Streaming mode she also needs to do something else too.

Why he gets to take his dog everywhere

2012-01-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

What he says:

Nashua Telegraph
By RICK ADAIR
Guest Commentary

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinionperspectives/947468-263/oh-so-thats-why-he-gets-to.html

Would you walk up to a person in a wheelchair and say: "Hey, why do you need a wheelchair?"

Probably not, and yet it's not uncommon for someone to see me with my service dog, Raskin, and ask: "Why do you need a service dog?"

It begs the question: How can you look normal, talk normal, act normal and be disabled?

Here's the recipe: Start by serving a year in a combat zone (Vietnam) at 18 - three months as a combat medic with a mechanized infantry unit, the other nine months in the "rear," where rocket attacks and sappers throwing satchel charges into your hootch are daily threats. Then add "only survivor" status to the mix after your two best friends and entire crew are killed by a mine.

These events were so terrifying for this skinny kid, the death of close friends was so unnerving, that he returned home in 1970 with a problem that grew worse when he was labeled as a "disgruntled veteran" and "baby killer." PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, had yet to be invented.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but being called a "baby killer" at 19
after a tour in Vietnam, crawling through rice paddies and caring for
wounded soldiers, felt like my psyche had been put in a blender and set to
frappe.

To some, this may reinforce their notion that Vietnam vets are whiners or,
as a friend of mine recently admitted thinking, "wimps." (It seems to have
been media policy for decades to only air Vietnam veteran interviews if the vet becomes emotional during the photo-op.)

Some of us may be wimps, but most of us are soldiers, seasoned veterans who did our job well under some of the most hellish conditions that lie well beyond the imagination of the uninitiated.

For this skinny kid, the nightmares after coming home seemed as normal as
the running for cover at a Fourth of July celebration was embarrassing.
Feeling everything from discomfort to anger to rage when someone walked
behind me also felt normal. Not fun certainly, but normal - any idiot knows that if the guy behind you isn't your buddy watching your back, it's most likely someone who will kill you in the blink of an eye.

That was my reality - that was our reality. Sitting with my back to the wall in any public place while taking note of the nearest exit isn't a
disability; it's being a good soldier. Of course I know I'm no longer in a
combat zone, but try telling that to my body, a body that only knows how to survive and isn't convinced the war is over.

Who can blame it, with common city noises replicating the sound of
small-arms fire, people all around in crowds who aren't in uniform
identifying themselves as "friendlies." Come to think of it, if you mention the term "friendlies" to my body, you will likely hear the story of "it" getting into an accidental firefight with fellow GIs. Oops.

Yeah, I look normal, I sound normal, I act normal. I can have a face-to-face conversation with you, and you won't even notice that I'm scanning the room for potential threats. You are probably unaware that the "disabled" vet you're talking to may be the best person to stand next to if a disturbed person walks into the room and starts shooting, or if a hurricane blows the roof off the building. You may just discover the paradox of a "disabled" vet being the most "able" person in the room.

I'm not a hero. As a matter of fact, that word almost turns my stomach for
reasons I can't quite explain or choose not to; I'm just a retired combat
veteran who feels much safer with a dog by my side who always has my back.

If I say "block," she positions herself in front of me; "cover," she goes
behind me; "snuggle," she puts her paws on my shoulders and says "you're
safe." I only use a fraction of the 80 commands she knows because I can take my own laundry out of the dryer, open my own doors and push the elevator button without assistance.

Being blessed with this beautiful dog adds one more "normal" to my list. I
often get to feel normal, even in a crowd and on busy streets. It's a small miracle.

The next time you see a normal-looking person with a service dog and wonder why he or she "gets to bring their dog" into a restaurant, store, plane, etc., whether they're a military veteran, cop, paramedic or firefighter, or they have more obvious mental or physical disabilities, please remember this story and wish them well.

It's 4:30 a.m. and I'm writing this because I can't sleep, so Raskin isn't
by any means a "cure all" for PTSD, but she's my friend and apparently I
earned the Grace in a rice paddy a world away to be her friend.

May Grace also find you and keep you safe.

Rick Adair, of Amherst, is a speaker and advocate for veterans with service dogs.

Pith for the Day

2012-01-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

RantWoman does not automatically look to blind geek email lists for spiritual guidance. Perhaps RantWoman should consider it a blessing sometimes to find such there anyway:

"People who say something is impossible should not interrupt those already doing it."

RantWoman feels obliged to seek spiritual guidance as to possible issues of pridefulness and how with at least a teensy bit more finesse to share her Light related to the above item. For RantWoman's trouble she has been served up:

"As we search the Scriptures, we must allow them to search us,
to sit in judgment upon our character and conduct."
Jerry Bridges, author, speaker and staff member of The Navigators
http://www.navigators.org/

From Musings of a Quaker Witch:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-didnt-speak-up-and-my-conscience-is.html

RantWoman is reading this, substituting concepts and realities significant to RantWoman, to stiffen her own spine and force those around her to try again. Hold this in the Light!

I'd already asked a question that morning, which I felt was misunderstood and taken in a direction I hadn't meant at all.

There are other areas of my life where I feel criticized for "talking too much."

Most of all, I guess I was afraid of that cascade of things that can happen, that does happen all too often, when I stick my head up as a minority.

Ugh!

Even though the issue we were already talking about was one of justice for a minority among us -- what's more (!), one of which I'm a member, and pretty obviously, too, sitting there holding hands with my wife, who'd also given vocal ministry as a member of a same-sex couple.

I didn't want to go there. I didn't want those things to start happening. I didn't want to feel more alone. I didn't want stand up, expose myself as a further minority within my community, and risk things like being more isolated, having my concerns not heeded or simply not seen, being put down or dismissed because I'm a minority and therefore less/not important/because I'm not Christian and therefore less/not important, being told yet again that of course Quakerism is Christian even if not all Quakers are Christian, or that reality and the truth are too complicated for us to present to outsiders/too complicated for this document/not relevant to this issue...

...As if integrity and the truth are ever too complicated or irrelevant to our testimony and witness in the world and to each other.

And I kept hoping that lovely thing that sometimes happens in worship or worship for business would happen -- you know, where someone else says or brings up something, and then you don't have to. Every other thing I was at all uncomfortable about in the draft, someone else brought up. I really hoped someone else could be in the spotlight on this one and I would be off the hook.

Here, apropos of the above, Micah Bales on the glory and responsibility of abolishing the laity:
http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2012/01/abolishing-laity.html
RantWoman is meditating about how on earth thoughts phrased in such terms can apply to the Friend above without the verbal framing being completely disrespectful of that Friend's experience of what RantWoman is used to calling God.

Survey about NPYM Annual Session

2012-01-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

RantWoman is not so vain as to assume anyone reads her blog who might both read her blog and be interested in attending NPYM Annual Session .

RantWoman would like to be wrong. RantWoman would also especially Invite Friends to be clear about barriers to attending Annual session. This survey has information and asks a number of questions about what is important to Friends, whether people understand financial aid policies and other circumstances. In other words, Annual session is about spiritual community and those planning it need to know....

Dear Friends

North Pacific Yearly Meeting is working hard to make 2012's Annual Session (July 18 - 22,2012 in Tacoma, Washington) an accessible and meaningful experience for all Friends in our Yearly Meeting. We need your help!

NPYM's Coordinating Committee has developd a short, on-line survey about recent annual sessions. We would like your feedback, even if you have never attended annual session. There are questions for people who have attended AND for those who have not. Your results can be anonymous though you can share your contact information if you choose.

The on-line survey will not store information about your computer. The survey should take between 5 and 15 minutes to complete.

Because we are hoping to use this information in planning for this summer’s annual session, we‘d like to have your responses by February 1.

Ready to help? Click on this link to start the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NPYM_ANNUALSESSION
If the link doesn't open, try cutting and pasting the link into your browser.

Thanks so much for your help with this. Hope to see you in Tacoma, July 18 22, 2012. Watch the NPYM website http://www.npym.org/ or your monthly meeting's communication channels for more information. If you have questions about the survey, feel free to contact Lynn Travis at lynn.marie.travis@comcast.net .

Questions about Annual Session? Check with your Coordinating Committee Representative or John Allcott at jallcott@pol.net

Thank you

John Allcott
NPYM Presiding Clerk
Jan 12, 2012

Conference on 25th Anniversary of Hirabyashi Case

2012-01-10T05:44:00.000-08:00

Ten points to anyone who can guess why RantWoman is posting this to her Quaker blog:

http://www.law.seattleu.edu/Centers_and_Institutes/Korematsu_Center/US_v_Hirabayashi.xml

The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality will host a major conference Feb. 11, 2012, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Ninth Circuit opinion in the Hirabayashi v. United States coram nobis case.

The conference will celebrate Mr. Hirabayashi's courage in resisting military orders that imposed curfews on Japanese Americans and ordered them to report for incarceration; reflect on his 1943 Supreme Court case that upheld his convictions and the extraordinary work of his legal team in reopening of his case nearly 40 years later; and use his case as a springboard to move forward in the struggle for civil rights.

Admission for members of the general public is free; admission for
attorneys wishing CLE credits is $50.00 for 5.25 credits. There is no
charge for CLE credits for Seattle University School of Law faculty
and staff. All participants must register.

For further information about the conference, please contact Junsen
Ohno, Korematsu Center Administrator, (206) 398-4283,
ohnoj@seattleu.edu .

=======
Hint to schoolchildren everywhere who might be in need of paper topics: the roundup, relocation, and incarceration of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl harbor is an aspect of US history that RantWoman did not encounter in her high school history classes--and this despite living just down the road a piece from one of the inland camps, and despite going to school with descendents of some of those rounded up.

RantWoman remembers a few ardent discussions between her childhood Sensible Quaker Auntie figure an RantDad, but RantWoman was not nearly as engaged about the topic as she was about other concerns inflaming her passions. When RantWoman moved to Seattle and started attending Friends Meeting, there was occasional mention of the Hirabyashi case.

Lest anyone think Quakers were immediately of uniform interaction with the issue though, RantWoman remembers the memorial of a Founding Member of her Meeting. Founding Member was a social worker who worked for three weks as part of the social worker team involved in facilitating the transfers. To her credit, Founding member quit the job after three weeks.

Sometimes simply remembering is important witness

Celebrating the Life and Work of Gordon Hirabyashi

2012-01-06T14:10:00.000-08:00

RantWoman notes that Gordon Hirabyashi is a former member of her Meeting.

http://www.afsc.org/story/celebrating-life-and-work-gordon-hirabayashi

RantWoman commends links on the site above to lots of fun historical documents.

RantWoman sends condolences and respect to Gordon Hirabyashi's family.

When "Spiritual Overseers" isn't Bad Friend enough

2012-01-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Red Alert! RantWoman's bad Quaker vocabulary alarm is blaring away. Mwraaap! Mwraaap!
Mwraaap! Mwraaap!

Dear Friend,

The Cliff Notes version: Please try to find a different way when closing Meeting for Worship to describe the charge of Worship and Ministry committee other than "spiritual overseers." If you need assistance arriving at alternate language, RantWoman would be happy to sit in worship with you while you discern about the matter.

1. It's Meeting for Worship under the care of the Holy Spirit. We are all ministers of God. We DO NOT HAVE spiritual overseers.

2. The term "overseer" is offensive to many Friends of African American descent because it harkens back to slavery and the person, often an African American who frequently brutally fulfilled the task from the plantation owner of keeping everyone in line.

RantWoman appreciates your energy in trying to give a good account of and to help worshippers locate members of Worship and Ministry Committee. The God as Plantation Owner model of Divine presence is not necessarily inconsistent with RantWoman's experience either. Still, the word "overseer" evokes slavery. RantWoman is pretty sure a large majority of Yearly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends disavowed slavery centuries ago.

RantWoman not only is not the least bit nostalgic, if she ever took a break from checks on Friends fulminating beyond Light, RantWoman is pretty sure it would be easy to find many modern manifestations of slavery in need of searing attention from the RantWoman spiritual blowtorch. That is only one reason RantWoman feels some sense of urgency and urges you again to seek some other term besides "spiritual overseers."

In the Light

RantWoman.
(Truth in advertising: RantWoman found it really satisfying to pen this tirade. However, RantWoman neglected to mention this concern today when she needed to call this Friend about something else. Siiigh. Even RantWoman's WonderQuaker persona sometimes falters, has to season its messages,... wobbles sort of pathetically.)

On the other hand, the Really Bad Friend Dial-a-Tirade version:

Dear Friends,

If RantWoman were a nice centered, Friend with even a whisper of capacity to "keep low," she would send this link about the spiritual gift of confrontation http://www.fgcquaker.org/library/fosteringmeetings/0223.html and simply ask you please, when closing Meeting for Worship, to find a different way to describe the charge of Worship and Ministry committee other than "spiritual overseers."

If that "keeping low" version of RantWoman shows up, someone please take her temperature. Consider a DNA test to be sure some kinder genetler Friend Gone Bad has not tried to steal her identity.

RantWoman has been reading over at the Association of Bad Friends about use of the terms Overseers and Oversight among Friends. RantWoman would not in the least mind having at her electronic fingertips some kind of concise summary of history about Quaker practice and usage of those terms; RantWoman suspects it might also be topical to consider usage of the term "Ministry and Counsel."

Historical groundedness is not RantWoman's strong suit.

RantWoman also was amused by a digression over at Association of Bad Friends about oversight in the sense of "Oops well." RantWoman was amused; RantWoman peculiarly does not feel called to delve deeply into possibly overample applicability of this sense of the term in her own experience.

RantWoman read further of the term Overseer. Unfortunately RantWoman is a true Bad Friend. RantWoman does not remember reading of "overseer" in terms of "one who cracks the whip." RantWoman confesses, she can easily see a need for that function--even if the term "overseer" is offensive.

RantWoman thus proposes that the term Overseers be replaced: RantWoman operates a highly non-profitable, multiethnic, multilingual, multinational, multiconfessional flogging bureau. The Flogging Bureau is all about non-consensual floggings and there are innumerable ways to earn its services. RantWoman's Flogging Bureau is perpetually overbooked which may be why it could easily add a Quaker affiliate.

In that case, RantWoman recommends that overseers due for "terminology upgrade" get their orders in early....

Meanwhile, RantWoman will shut up and pray for the right moment...

and RantWoman will be served up....
The Gospel According to Star Trek!
http://hystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/dream-of-confused-quakers-star-trek.html#!/2012/01/dream-of-confused-quakers-star-trek.html

Freedom Project 11th Anniversary Party January 16

2012-01-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

2012 Women's Theology Conference Registration Opens

2012-01-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Friend at Seabeck,Wehave fond memories of the 2010 Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s TheologyConference at Seabeck in 2010. Registration is open for the 2012 Conference, June 13-17, 2012 at the Menucha Conference Center in the Columbia Gorge. We know that this year’s conference will be every bit as rewarding and fulfilling as the 2010 Conference. Will you be able to join us?

Please go to our website for further information and registration. http://pnwquakerwomen.org/

We hope to see you there.InFriendship, Becky Ankeny and Nancy McLauchlan,Co-clerks

From the website:
Welcome to the 2012 Women’s Conference.

We Quaker Women from Northwest Yearly Meeting, North Pacific Yearly Meeting,Freedom Friends Church, and other Quaker groups will gather June 13-17, 2012 at the Menucha Conference Center. In this oasis from the whirlwind and storm of our lives, high above the mighty Columbia River, we will seek God’s grace in the holy and the ordinary.We will worship, fellowship, and work together as we explore the theme, “Living inthe Life and Power: Inviting, Contemplating, and Enacting Grace.” With grace, we will be respectful and open to each other, trying neither to offend nor to take offense, each woman knowing the power of her own truth and the need to make space for other women’s truth. If you find your way clear to join us, and we hope you will, we ask you to take time to explore the theme and write a paper to share with other women. You will find this to be an incredible grounding experience as you prepare for the Conference.

2 Corinthians 9:8 says thereare no limits to the Grace of God. We pray that God’s grace will lead you to be with us.

Speakers
June 14 Christine Hall, Cherice Bock "Livingin the Life and Power: Contemplating Grace."

June 15 Darla Samuelson, Ashley Wilcox "Living in the Life andPower: Inviting Grace."

June 16 Elenita Bales, Carol Uhrner "Living in the Life and Power: Enacting Grace."

June 17 Nancy Thomas Message during final worship

"Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not."
- Flannery O'Connor

Elevator Speech

2011-12-30T21:30:00.001-08:00

RantWoman's recent holiday procrastination party was well covered. Enough people braved seasonal torrents which began just as travel was needed. Friends and people from SHARE who sleep on our floor at night and random other friends of RantWoman's had cheerful conversation. Some brought or wore T-shirts with funny stories. Conversation was relaxed, comfortable. More than one Friend commented afterward that it was nice just to gather without any heavy agenda. RantWoman has also stored up some other voices thinking a quarterly Ministry of Potluck would be wonderful thing. Hold that thought.

RantWoman once threw a party, invited guests of her choice, and had different clumps of her guests all say afterward "we were nice to THOSE people but we would never talk to them anywhere but your house. So please don't invite us to the same events anymore." Fine. RantWoman stopped inviting most of them anywhere. Fine.

This time, RantWoman knowingly, willfully, with intent aforethought included in her invitee list, some combinations of people for whom RantWoman thought it possible she might hear analogous requests. RantWoman invited Mr. and Mrs. Friend with the Remarkable Story. RantWoman invited a few people she knows from their work lives. RantWoman was thinking about her past party story when one of those she invited emailed RantWoman his procrastination / why he missed the party story: he was on a plane because of some form of airline procrastination.

RantWoman looked at the latest job title in this person's email and realized he might, for work reasons, be in a position to have heard of the Friend with the Remarkable Story. RantWoman has been thinking about the possibility of this coming up in conversation. RantWoman found herself thinking of elevator speech angles. RantWoman did NOT find herself thinking of any clear elevator speech except "Guest, this is Friend with a Remarkable Story. Friend with the Remarkable Story, this is Guest who works in...." RantWoman thinks this Guest would handle things with equanamity. Thanks to the airline, RantWoman gets to procrastinate about opportunity to make any such introduction and find out.

At one point in all the cheerful party chatter a Friend asked RantWoman about something from the most recent Business Meeting which also indireclty referred to the Friend with the Remarkable Story. Urk! RantWoman and Inquiring Friend were seated at a table full of people from RantWoman's life outside Meeting including RantMom. RantWoman SO wanted this to be her party. RantWoman SO had no interest in "Ooh! There's a (Friend with a Remarkable Story) at my party" conversations. RantWoman so did not have any clear elevator speech in mind about any of several topics which might need conversational attention. RantWoman so wanted it to be her party and so felt no obligation to go on at length about the Friend with the Remarkable Story. RantWoman to Inquiring Friend, "How about I call you about that?"

Nevertheless, RantWoman is making a list of topics about which good elevator speech soundbytes are apt to be needed:

Restorative Justice

Alternatives to Violence

Sex Offender Treatment

Sex Offender Registration and Notification.

and on the Victim / Survivor side:

Effects of traumatization

Trauma Recovery
(RantWoman in telling too much of the Truth mode currently has a sense that everyone thinks they understand these last two because Meeting has been discussing the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet for a gazillion years. Guess what the Telling too much of the Truth point would be.)

Quaker PR for Dummies. Okay, RantWoman realizes she is already in need of the remedial course of this, but onward in the Light anyway!

God in DC

2011-12-29T17:02:00.001-08:00

RantWoman has been seasoning thoughts related to some blog bits about our nation's capital. If RantWoman were to pose her reflections in terms of queries, RantWoman would say "How is one called to live in the light and power... among the gifts and obligations inherent in a specific place?"

Micah Bales
http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2011/12/holy-spirit-whiplash.html

Jim Wallis
http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/29/time-go-deeper?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sojourners%2Fgods-politics+%28Sojourners+God%27s+Politics+Blog%29

On the other hand, if RantWoman were to offer responses, albeit unsolicited to such queries:

RantWoman feels no call to offer Jim Wallis advice during his sabbatical. RantWoman considers the opportunity to interact with the Sojourners community unquestionably an attraction about living in Washington dC. Rantwoman especially appreciates prayer centered on God in connection with much that seems broken in our nation's polarized political paralysis.

Two words: prayer breakfast. RantWoman has NO clue about the protocol for securing invitations to such. RantWoman just knows that there are options.... Where two or more are gathered in my name...

The gift of hospitality: being located in the nation's capital guarantees endless opportunities to help different categories of people connect with overnight lodging: visiting Friends, people who come to town for FCNL events, people who come for other lobbying reasons, as well as demonstrations. One need not overdo hospitality in one's own home to have an endless stream of visitors and opportunities for dialogue, shared tourism experiences, other entertainment.

Staying in touch with your home state: RantWoman's experience is that one never really stops being from somewhere. Sometimes this means one is both blessed and called to interact on that basis. RantWoman has the impression that every state probably has some kind of a club for people from that State. When RantWoman lived in DC, she went with an old family friend to a couple events for people from her natal state. RantWoman ALWAYS met interesting people and had interesting and unexpected conversations she might never have had otherwise.

Mostly, RantWoman thinks, trust your Light also about when it is time to stay in one place for however long one is led to do that.

Blow Guns--ON TIMEOUT

2011-12-22T01:26:00.000-08:00

RantWoman needs to hold two stories of the World's Most Irrepressible Nephew and weaponry. RantWoman is thoroughly rattled on her own behalf by the second weapon tale, about which PERHAPS separately. In the meantime, is one a completely Bad Friend if one heaves a monstrous sigh of gratitude because blow guns are now on Time Out at Irrepressible Nephew's house for ALL of Christmas vacation?

The first weapons story: there was the time a couple years ago when Irrepressible Nephew was expressing typical holiday STUFF desires. He was especially interested in swords and may even have wanted to forge something. RantWoman is unclear about how the fantasy forge was to get fired up; RantWoman just remembers it being a theme one time at Little Sister's house.

Also a theme: oh, Quaker Auntie, YOUR nephew wants to make weaponry. Would you please talk him out of it?

Mind you, the household is bathed in television and permissible movies are heavy on "hero saves the world" themes where a certain manly mastery of weaponry is part of the ambiance. Auntie does not get asked about this. Auntie does not necessarily entirely object and even manages to be a little broad-minded, respectful of Nephew finding his own path and more understandings--unless Quaker Auntie also gets called in for emergency sword persuasion.

RantWoman at the time of that request looked the Nephew up and down. RantWoman thought of the story about George Fox and Ben Franklin and the sword. RantWoman looked at nephew. RantWoman assessed her own capacity (NOT) for telling the story. RantWoman assessed a very high probability of Irrepressible Nephew's, Little Sister's, and RantMom's eyes all glazing over so hard even RantWoman could tell. RantWoman said a prayer and was answered with...RantDad, aka Nephew's RantGrandad.

RantDad performed in the sort of Renaissance ensembles that, a time or two, drew fans from the local Society of Creative Anachronism, medieval re-enactors not generally known to brave the thresholds of the kinds of venues (churches) where the Renaissance ensembles performed. The SCA types admitted to admiring the music. RantWoman is wondering whether some of them also admired the weaponry.

The weaponry? RantDad had a truly awesome and formidable arsenal of medieval mayhem inducement prop weaponry--generally made of cardboard and tinfoil! There were swords, daggers, a battle axe or two, a mace... RantWoman spun the best tale she could of all this and Irrepressible Nephew...immediately lost interest in everything to do with forging weaponry in the living room!

This year, Nephew has been wanting to make himself a bow and arrow. RantWoman admits to admiring archery herself in the abstract, where eyes function well enough to get arrows somewhere near a target. RantWoman is unclear about the presence of actual bows and arrows in Nephew's household. RantWoman IS aware that Irrpressible Nephew is now computer literate enough to fantasize with the help of search engines. The most recent object of these fantasies: blow guns!

A couple weeks ago, the First Day shared RantFamily bus run to our separate houses of worship featured much commentary about blow guns. Irrepressible Nephew regaled Auntie in great detail of different options for tips and scenarios for using the different tips. RantWoman had not previously thought even to need such information, but Irrepressible Nephew was waxing enthusiastic with elan. No one had thought of blow guns when RantDad was assembling his Renaissance arsenal so there was no chance mention of heritage would cause Irrepressible Nephew to lose interest.

Instead?

Instead, Irrepressible Nephew had a bad day on the playground at school on Friday. It was the kind of bad day where Mom gets called in the middle of the morning and must go meet the assistant principal. It was the kind of bad day where nephew was immediately contrite and remorseful. Nephew is responsible for his choices and cooperative, and the situation most definitely needs remorse!

By the sounds of things, Nephew is blessed with a wise assistant principal: Nephew has grown A LOT in recent months and wise principle recognizes that sometimes one's body grows faster than one's mastery of what new forces can do. Nephew also has professionals in his life with different letters behind their name, parents and a grandmother who faithfully noted five behaviors Nephew is to work on. Quaker Auntie requested but so far has not received a copy of the behavior list; maybe Quaker Auntie gets simply to quiz Nephew at some point. Quaker Auntie actually wants to quiz Nephew about responsibility, about forgiveness and restorative justice practices at his school but this weeks's bus ride was not the place! Nephew is suspended for 3 days! And the blow guns are on TIME OUT for all of Christmas vacation!

Hallelujah?

So prayers needed all around.

RantWoman wants to root for the boy growing, learning his own limits! And RantWoman is praying about puberty on the horizon!

UnChristmas UnBirthday Holiday Procrastination Party

2011-12-21T02:27:00.000-08:00

It’s an Un-Christmas, Un-Birthday
Finally Getting Around to Admitting I’m 50
Holiday Procrastination Party.

You and anyone you want to bring are invited.

Wednesday December 28, 2011
4:30-8:30 pm
University Friends Meeting,
4001 9th Avenue NE, 98105

I will supply popcorn, spiced cider and other beverages.
I hope my guests will supply:

--potluck supper, 6 pm: leftovers are fine with me

--singing! There is a piano and some song books. Other instruments welcome. I know lots of people from different parts of my life who like to sing. Enough said

--confessions and exclamations about something you have not gotten around to this month, this year, this lifetime.

Ice-breaker Theme: Been There. Done That. Got the T-shirt.
Please wear a favorite T-shirt and be prepared to tell and listen to T-Shirt tales.

Children are welcome. Singing and storytelling are intended to be all-ages. Children might also want to bring a small item to amuse themselves.

Please DO NOT Bring Alcoholic beverages!

I just want to have a party and gifts are NOT required! However I have not gotten around to letting others help celebrate a half century of my life and I am definitely old enough to be persnickety. If people want to offer gifts for the occasion I am shamelessly offering clear instructions about things I want / need.

-- If you want to spend less than $5, I would love to have bulk spices or favorite salsa, teas or chocolate, in increments costing $5 or less. I also need some new mugs and have not gotten around to checking out options at Goodwill.

--If you want to spend $5-10, I really need a couple items that cost more than this but I would be happy to help people collaborate.

--If you want to spend $10 or more or want a tax deduction, please write a check to the UFM Building Fund.

Look, I know the party starts during work hours for some people. It’s cold and dark and wintry and some people in my life turn into pumpkins early. This party will likely include guests interested in digital inclusion, accessibility, language access, walkability and pedestrian life, transportation, social services, health care reform, and a host of other topics. So tell the boss it’s networking, and if you are the boss…

There is parking on the north side of the building. There is also a paid lot on the east side of 9th Ave NE, slightly north of the Friends Meeting

Send a note if you need more detailed walking directions from nearby bus stops than you can get off the trip planner

The ACCESS stop is on 9th Avenue NE near the level section of the entryway that is most wheelchair accessible.

Hit the Hallelujah Button with Mormons at the Bellagio

2011-12-15T20:35:00.000-08:00

Here is the perfect riposte to all those tiresome, dull as paste, Christmas every day, fly into a lather about worldliness Quakers: the Hallelujah chorus, sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in time with the fountain at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/15/hit-hallelujah-button-what-happens-vegas?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sojourners%2Fgods-politics+%28Sojourners+God%27s+Politics+Blog%29

RantWoman really, really, really likes this. RantWoman could be OVER the Hallelujah Chorus already thank you very much, but there is something so over the top about trying to squeeze the Mormon Tabernacle Choir out of computer speakers!

But check out the Daily Hallelujah your own darn selves and see.

The Final March out of Iraq?

2011-12-15T10:41:00.000-08:00

Dear President Obama,

RantWoman appreciates the concern for our returning troops embodied in the words below. RantWoman means to do the best she can to pen an appropriate welcome home greeting, but so far all that is coming to mind is tirades about matters RantWoman does not consider our returning troops first in line to be responsible for dealing with.

RantWoman also apologizes. RantWoman has been attending to this month's processions of punditry about our troops departing Iraq. RantWoman keeps finding herself thinking of a certain famous photo of your predecessor in office standing on an aircraft carrier under a "Mission Accomplished" sign. RantWoman notes tartly that our troops are coming home because the Iraqi government declined them further invitation to stay. RantWoman also notes that our country is leaving behind the largest US embassy in the world, staffed by more of the unaccountable contractors who have caused so much trouble to our nation's image already.

RantWoman will now shut up and and pray, discern, seek Light and in the meantime....

Good afternoon,
After nearly nine years, our war in Iraq is ending.

In recent days, many of our troops have come home and been reunited with their families for the holidays. Over the next few days, a small group of American soldiers will begin the final march out of Iraq.
This moment of success is because of their sacrifice. More than 1.5 million Americans have served in Iraq. More than 30,000 of these brave men and women were wounded. Nearly 4,500 gave their lives. America’s military families have borne a heavy burden.

As we mark the end of this war, we need to show our veterans and their families that they have the thanks of a grateful nation.

Take a minute to look back at the moments that brought us to this point, then share a personal message of gratitude with those who have served.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/iraq?utm_source=email137&utm_medium=text1&utm_campaign=iraq

Part of ending a war responsibly is standing by those who have fought it. It's not enough to honor our heroes with words; we must do so with deeds.

That's why we've worked to send 600,000 veterans and family members back to school on the Post-9/11 GI Bill. That's why one of Michelle's top priorities as First Lady has been to support military families and why she's worked with the private sector to get commitments to create 100,000 jobs for those who've served and their spouses. That's why we worked with Congress to pass a tax credit so that companies have an incentive to hire vets and have taken steps to help veterans translate military experience to the private sector job market.

In America, our commitment to those who fight for our freedom and our ideals doesn't end when our troops take off the uniform.

You can be a part of this effort to honor our heroes.

Help mark this moment. Write a quick note that troops and veterans all over the world will be able to see:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/iraq

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

God, Spam, Wal-Mart, A White Rose

2011-12-14T21:48:00.001-08:00

RantWoman thinks she has previously confessed to a reflex left over from a long ago spell of employment in tech support to treat all items such as the one below as CHAIN LETTERS, evil cycle- and storage-sucking menaces to electronic productivity. You try explaining this to RantMom. Plus, before that, it came from a church friend of RantMom's who as far as RantWoman knows ALWAYS needs prayers. So...

One more thing: Drive safely. NEVER Drink and Drive. God has plenty to do and does not need more tasks like thi.

Still another thing: this blog post BETTER count as passing it along, okay!

Isn't God Great? If only we all had the Faith of this child!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was walking around in a WalMart store, when I saw a cashier hand this little boy some money back. The boy couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 years old.

The cashier said, 'I'm sorry, but you don't have enough money to buy this doll.'

Then the little boy turned to the old woman next to him, ''Granny, are you sure I don't have enough money?''

The old lady replied, ''You know that you don't have enough money to buy this doll, my dear.''

Then she asked him to stay there for just 5 minutes while she went to look around. She left quickly.

The little boy was still holding the doll in his hand.

Finally, I walked toward him and
I asked him who he wished to give this doll to.

'It's the doll that my sister loved most and wanted so much for Christmas. She was sure that Santa Claus would bring it to her.'

I replied to him that maybe Santa Claus would bring it to her after all, and not to worry.

But he replied to me sadly. 'No, Santa Claus can't bring it to her where she is now. I have to give the doll to my mommy so that she can give it to my sister when she goes there.'

His eyes were so sad while saying this, 'My Sister has gone to be with God. Daddy says that Mommy is going to see God very soon too, so I thought that she could take the doll with her to give it to my sister.''

My heart nearly stopped.

The little boy looked up at me and said, 'I told daddy to tell mommy not to go yet. I need her to wait until I come back from the mall.' Then
he showed me a very nice photo of himself. He was laughing. He then told me 'I want mommy to take my picture with her so she won't forget me.'

'I love my mommy and I wish she didn't have to leave me, but daddy says that she has to go to be with my little sister.'

Then he looked again at the doll with sad eyes, very quietly.

I quickly reached for my wallet and said to the boy. 'Suppose we check again, just in case you do have enough money for the doll!''

'OK' he said, 'I hope I do have enough.' I added some of my money to his without him seeing and we started to count it. There was enough for the doll and even some spare money.

The little boy said, 'Thank you God for giving me enough money!'

Then he looked at me and added, 'I asked last night before I went to sleep for God to make sure I had enough money to buy this doll,
so that mommy could give it to my sister. He heard me!''

'I also wanted to have enough money to buy a white rose for my mommy, but I didn't dare to ask God for too much. But He gave me enough to buy the doll and a white rose.''

'My mommy loves white roses.'

A few minutes later, the old lady returned and I left with my basket. I finished my shopping in a totally different state of mind from when I started.

I couldn't get the little boy out of my mind.

Then I remembered a local newspaper article two days ago, which mentioned a drunk man in a truck, who hit a car occupied by a young woman and a little girl. The little
girl died right away, and the mother was left in a critical state. The family had to decide whether to pull the plug on the life-sustaining machine, because the young woman would not be able to recover from the
coma.

Was this the family of the little boy?

Two days after this encounter with the little boy, I read in the newspaper that the young woman had passed away.

I couldn't stop myself as I bought a bunch of white roses and I went to the funeral home where the body of the young woman was for people to see and make last wishes before her burial.

She was there, in her coffin, holding a beautiful white rose in her hand with the photo of the little boy and the doll placed over her chest.

I left the place, teary-eyed, feeling that my life had been changed forever. The love that the little boy had for his mother and his sister is still, to this day, hard to imagine, and in a fraction of a second, a drunk driver had taken all this away from him.

Now you have 2 choices:
1) Send this message to others, or
2) Ignore it as if it
never touched your heart.
The quote of the month is by Jay Leno, 'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to the other, and with the threat of swine flu and terrorist attacks: Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?'

For those who prefer to think that God is not watching over us delete this, for the others, pass it on!

God Bless You!
-----

Dear God,

The person reading this is beautiful and strong.

Help them to live their life to the fullest in Your service.

Please promote them and cause them to excel above their expectations.

Help them shine in the darkest places where it is impossible to love.

Protect them at all times, lift them up when they need You the most, and let them know when they walk with You, they will always be safe.
-----

Now you're on the clock!
You need to tell 9 friends you care for them. Go!

For Jip

2011-12-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Jip and John are a couple who lived in limbo between University Meeting and South Seattle as the new Meeting formed and Jip lived with MS. Our Meetings are a little erratic about doing memorials when someone is not a member or status is in transition. In Jip's case, both Meetings did a joint memorial minute, read in Business Meeting on Sunday.

Jip before her illness was a nurse and a social worker with an international focus. Jip was from Thailand. When she was first diagnosed with MS, doctors advised her to avoid warm climates such as her native Thailand. At some point it became clear that Thailand was a better place for her to be for lots of reasons. She died there last summer after a long and debilitating struggle with MS. Two phrases stood out besides the biographical details in her memorial minute:

Watering the seeds of joy

It (MS) will make me a better Buddhist.

RantWoman is in no position to evaluate the concept of better Buddhist so she will digress briefly, to matters of Buddhism in European languages, one inquiry from email about French, Braille and accessible dictionaries, one in a movie review about reincarnation in Italy, perhaps with the note that it's an interesting theme during Advent.

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-reincarnation-movie-review.html

Jip's memorial minute said hardly anything about her husband John. Perhaps that is because he helped write the minute. Perhaps it is because he is already way beyond tender about how difficult her illness made Jip sometimes. Business Meeting was clear that Jip's memorial minute should include special appreciation of John's care and devotion.

Jip stopped seeing years ago and probaby never learned Braille, and I think they were vegetarians, but since this poem showed up in my inbox, it's offered here dedicated to John.

http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/POETRYLIFE.html

Except for the poem here, the book is only available in Braille. RantWoman is unclear about legalities and options to turn E-Braille back into text. To be honest, RantWoman wants to savor the poem and think about that question another time.

The Poetry of Everyday Life
This is a collection of 20th and 21st century poets, handpicked by JoAnn Becker and Diane Croft. These are frank poems about young passions and old love, nature and nurture, work affairs and love affairs. This is not your grandmother's poetry - see Sharon Olds's poem below. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "When I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Fish Oil

One midnight, I got home from work
and the apartment reeked of fish boiled
in oil. All the windows were shut,
and all the doors were open - Âup
from the pan and spatula rose a thick
helix of cod and olive. My husband
slept. I opened the windows and shut
the doors and put the plates in the sink
and oodled Palmolive all over. The next
day I fishwifed to a friend, and she said,
Someone might live with that, and come to
savor the smell of a fry. And that evening,
I looked at my love, and who he is
touched me in the core of my heart. I sought
a bottle of extra-extra virgin,
and a recipe for sea fillet in
olive-branch juice, I filled the rooms with
swirls of finny perfume, the outlines
in the sand the early Christians drew,
the loop meaning safety, meaning me too,
I remembered my parents' frowns at any
whiff of savor outside the kitchen,
the Calvinist shudder, in that house, at the sweet
grease of life. I had come to my mate
a shocked being, agog, a salt
dab in his creel, girl in oil,
his dish. I had not known that one
could approve of someone entirely - Âone could
wake to the pungent day, one could awake
from the dream of judgment.

- Sharon Olds

Gay Rain and....

2011-12-02T19:24:00.000-08:00

RantWoman is seeking LIGHT about a personnel matter in her life outside Meeting. RantWoman is SUPPOSED to be one of the responsible adults in the picture. RantWoman is leaving to her readers' imaginations speculations as to which cheery themes from RantWoman's ongoing yucky topics festival the following items constitute a welcome levity break. RantWoman also would ALWAYS prefer that such items come with BOTH closed captioning AND video description enabled. RantWoman is just a demanding bitch, except someitmes when she forgets to check. Or when the material comes from the army and you don't get to need accommodations and stay in the military or ...!

Look, okay, RantWoman LIKES to laugh. Sometimes RantWoman even laughs at things that most assuredly are problematic.

Not your average take on sexual harassment.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/d047cbeadf/sexual-harassment-with-hayden-panettiere-from-hayden-panettiere-judd-apatow-and-notms

A gaythering storm of people terrified about gay marriage, school lunch, and...
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6eddb255b2/a-gaythering-storm?rel=player&playlist=307161

Warning: RantWoman has altruistically viewed the entire video to verify that it is vulgar and disgusting and contains frank language about body parts. So you do not have to look and RantWoman will shortly be washing her brain out.

http://videosift.com/video/Sexual-Harassment-Training-Video-Funny

Trauma Struggle Recovery

2011-12-01T21:31:00.000-08:00

From Today's Blogroll, oddly linked in RantWoman's mind by factors tempting RantWoman to focus only on individualism instead of shared struggle:

A quote at http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2011/12/quote-of-day.html

Without the context of a political movement, it has never been possible to advance the study of psychological trauma. The fate of this field of knowledge depends on the fate of the same political movement that has inspired and sustained it over the last century. In the late nineteenth century the goal of that movement was the establishment of secular democracy. In the early twentieth century its goal was the abolition of war. In the late twentieth century its goal was the liberation of women. All of these goals remain. All are, in the end, inseparably connected.
-- Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., in

from Judith Herman's bookd Trauma and Recovery
http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465087302

RantWoman means no disrespect at all to the liberation of women, but RantWoman finds boiling all the technological and ecological concerns of the late twentieth century down to this sentence a little disconcerting.

Despite the shared / overlapping struggles theme, RantWoman's individualism temptation here has to do with reading, time, needing to steep herself in the right community of people who have read and interacted with the book. WHINE.

Given the wine above about direct unmediated interaction with the text above, RantWoman has a lot of darn nerve even commenting in the specific case. In general, when RantWoman reads some kinds of trauma recovery literature, RantWoman has more than once come away very grateful for practical insights and also hungry for some spark of sustaining spirit.

RantWoman is unclear that Clothe Yourself in righteousness and get spiritually naked is what she has in mind.

http://www.clotheyourselfinrighteousness.com/the-quaker-revolution/

RantWoman appreciates:
--a healthy sense of confession, a concept RantWoman finds more chimerical among Friends than, say, among the baptists of her youth

--The more radical than thou search for self-definitionof thinking youth in every generation.

RantWoman is a little fussy about:
--dissing people who take in Bosnian refugees because doing what one is called to often proves transformative for those so called.

--it's one short video but again rantWoman misses a more explicit connection between the individual and the community, realizing that of God in relations among people, that stuff about peacemaking that is really hard and that RantWoman could barely even think of undertaking in her youth despite obvious and persistent need for same.

Okay, okay, RantWoman has only been doing spiritual striptease all over her blog for awhile now, not obviously to social effect but still.

PTSD Tweeted

2011-11-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

RantWoman needs to promote another increment of conversation. One Friend says "I would like to know more about the experience of abuse survivors. Maybe.... would help." This Friend is not the only voice suggesting the second part of this comment, but one thing at a time.

The point is, it's been quite awhile since RantWoman's Meeting talked in an organized way about many topics that got spoken of when the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet first came to us. Many newcomers were not around for these conversations. Many things have evolved in our national and interpersonal culture. RantWoman has detected signs that others around her besides the Friend who asked...are also fuzzy in awareness. Plus this is the sort of information RantWoman might think to dump into a paper or online informational notebook to support topical ministries. So....

RantWoman is posting this item just to remind herself of some terms connected with PTSD to dump into a search engine for better materials. RantWoman also hopes to seed conversations and recruit some eyes to screen material.

http://paper.li/myptsd1/1300270754

RantWoman notes the nexus of returning war veterans, PTSD, and the experiences of others who have suffered different kinds of traumas.

RantWoman also includes this interesting item about sleep and trauma recovery.
http://paper.li/myptsd1/1300270754

RantWoman is not used to articles which scream like AM radio when the topic is results of scientific study. However, RantWoman stumbled across this one by messing around in the bad visual design eccentric disaster preparedness Twitter feed on her other blog, RantWoman is for now just going to start with what she has.

It's not all burning bushes?

2011-11-30T09:16:00.000-08:00

Ashley W, from the blogroll

http://questforadequacy.blogspot.com/2011/11/forgotten-story.html

At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.) Exodus 4:24-26.
I don't have a nice little homily about this story. We didn't learn it in Sunday school. I don't remember ever hearing a sermon about it (and I have heard a lot of sermons).

I really only have two things to say about it:

1. It's not all burning bushes and parting seas.
2. The Bible has a lot of stories about people interacting with God and some of them are just plain weird.

Oh Dear.

God quite frequently delivers messages to RantWoman in some other idiom besides nice Quakerese. RantWoman's life is particularly rich in thoughts that take form in either the Feminazi Bitch or just the Excessively Plain English subdialects. When RantWoman is being a GOOD Quaker she seasons these messages, occasionally for years, until God delivers Quakerese. RantWoman is not waiting around for Quakerese here.

RantWoman laughed for 10 minutes about item 2.

RantWoman, though, has some suggestions:

--RantWoman herself is not a particularly perspicacious student of Jung, archetypes, psychoanalytic theory, semiotics, or some associated schools of literary criticism. If RantWoman were even a slightly better student of some of these theories, RantWoman would definitely bang away at the symbolism and cultural history of both the passage and Friend Ashley's comments some more and see where the "weird" leads.

--As far as never hearing a sermon about this exact passage, RantWoman notes that lots and lots of pastors are male. RantWoman knows LOTS of men who wince when talking about neutering their pets. Even among people who believe passionately in everything associated with circumcision, it also has a gigantic wince factor. So RantWoman is unsurprised that this passage has not yet leapt to the fore as the basis for a sermon. But is Friend Ashley perhaps called to be the first to deliver such a sermon?

Salt, Light, Blindness

2011-11-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

Tonight RantWoman is called to reflect on two pieces from the study guide for the World Gathering of Friends that speak about blindness. Please bear with God and the RantWoman metaphor manglement service:

http://www.saltandlight2012.org/bales.html

RantWoman has briefly been seasoning a leading to go all literalist about the Biblical linking of darkness with blindness. Doesn't GOD know that what adds up to non-seeing is only in rare cases total blackness. RantWoman has written in extravagant detail elsewhere of her own peculiar experiences in matters of seeing. She would not in the least mind if SOMEWHERE in the Bible there were references to blurred vision, double vision, fog stabbed by bright flashes, and numerous other distortions in what one sees.

If Christ is going to be removing spiritual blindness, RantWoman thinks it reasonable that he remove or ameliorate the right things. Of course the fact that RantWoman cannot see but things happen might be part of the point, but RantWoman may have to cavil and quibble and complain about it awhile longer before she sees.

http://www.saltandlight2012.org/ayala.html

RantWoman is really touched by the man carrying a light he himself cannot see. RantWoman has had that experience a time or two.

RantWoman is also amused by the compunding of a flammable gas, sodium, with chlorine, which in pure form would be lethal to make salt which when dissolved in our bodies has the power to carry messages throughout the body.

RantWoman still seems to be discerning what kind of lampstand can hold up to her Inner Blowtorch.

Próximamente en español, posiblemente.

RantWoman probably is NOT going to offer translations of her own posts into Spanish even though in terms of equal participation and all voices being linguistically present in the conversation, RantWoman wishes that the English and the translations were all available at the same time. RantWoman wishes this regardless of a number of practicalities including the work of translation AND the question of who has access online or in print n the first place.

RantWoman most assuredly feels called to uphold the work of translators and interpreters for the World Gathering. RantWoman also actually expressed willingness in some contexts...if way were to open for one of the open spaces. RantWoman would probably prefer that way open to make sure as many Friends from the global south as possible can attend. RantWoman feels plenty to do in her home community. And RantWoman still would not object if way were to open.

An Apology for True RantWoman Blog Tagging and Vocabulary

2011-11-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

RantWoman supposes it might sound tighter and more literary if God delivered from her keyboard tidier parables, but RantWoman is a Friend in progress.

RantWoman is not in a position to comment about whether her readers care about the logic of some of RantWoman's more obscure blog tags. In case anyone besides RantWoman does,

Salt and Light Machine: the most recent addition. RantWoman's tag for refletions specifically related to the upcoming World Gathering of Friends.
en español
en español

Compost: RantWoman's processing of a number of matters involving God, mentors, and occasionally actual compost. RantWoman apologizes but she still has not gotten around to the Composting Quakerism podcast.

Charm School: RantWoman branches out from reflections on one Friend to utter Charm, eloquence, and possibly telling too much of the Truth about workings of God, numbers of Friends and a specific prottracted conflict exercise.

Fufferings: RantWoman knows that the term originally is a typography presentation of the word Sufferings, usually in reference to early Friends sufferings for Truth. For RantWoman, Fufferings tends to refer to some kind of ailment or other difficulty of the corporeal sort.

Safest: RantWoman's commentary about her Meeting's walk with a low-level sex offender who has worshipped among us for a number of years. As of this writing, the tag includes items related specifically to this individual, survivor stories of various sorts, informational items about experience in other Friends Meetings and lately a few links about what other denominations' websites say about the topic. RantWoman probably should make this tag into some distinct categories but RantWoman does not promise to do so.

Remarkable: Items related to another member of RantWoman's community.

There are a number of other tags which probably need commentary. RantWoman invites her readers to ask.

Somatics Trauma, and Social Justic Intensive: APPLY NOW

2011-11-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

Somatics, Trauma, and Social Justice Intensive in Seattle!

*Applications due Dec. 11th*

The Capacity Project and Generative Somatics areexcited to announce the upcoming Somatics, Trauma, and Social JusticeIntensive
Jan. 20, 21, 22,9am-5pm,
Central District/Seattle,

*application required*

This course will introduce somatics as astrategy for addressing the impacts of individual and collective trauma, whileorganizing for sustainable social change. This body of work was developed byStaci Haines, author of The Survivor’s Guide to Sex and co-founder ofGeneration Five, an organization committed to ending the sexual abuse ofchildren within five generations.

Members of the Generative Somatics teaching team will be facilitating this training as a part of the ongoing somatics and social justice work that The Capacity Project is building in this area. This is a unique opportunity to engage with this work in Seattle, and we hope that you will consider joining us!

This intensive will introduce you to:- a somatic understanding of how trauma andoppression impact individuals and communities- body-centered practices for accessing resilience, experiencing mutual connection, boundary setting, centered accountability, and being present amidst deep emotion and transformation- processes for transforming trauma andoppression in individual and collective bodies through somatic awareness,skills-building and bodywork

More about somatics: From the Generative Somatics orientation, theaim of healing is to create more choice, more well-being and the ability to take more powerful and effective action in our lives and in the world. We don’t see healing as separate from our participation in our communities, the world, and social change, but rather as an essential part of it.

While somatics as a discipline hashistorically been used as a vehicle to bring increasing resilience and capacity to the individual body - we believe that this framework can also be used inprinciple and in practice to inform a deeper understanding of systemic traumaand collective social change, and increase the holistic effectiveness of community organizing and movement building. We recognize that this framework is not only powerful for individuals and groups working on themselves, but has the potential to be a transformative framework for individuals and groups working to change relations of power in the world.

Logistics:This intensive will be held January 20th,21st, and 22nd from 9am-5pm in the Central Districtneighborhood of Seattle (exact location TBA).

Participants must attend allthree days.

Participation is limited and application is required. The fee for this training is on a slidingscale, from $150-450. We hold a strong commitment to making this training financially accessible, and we will not turn anyone away for inability to pay. Solidarity funds are available for up to the full cost, as needed. Low-income and workingclass folks are encouraged to apply. To apply, please email a request toseattlesomatics@gmail.com by Sunday, Dec. 11th. Please include your name in the subject line of your email and feel free to email with furtherquestions.

(RantWoman apologizes but she is unable just to attach the application she received.)

Facilitation:The lead trainers for this intensive will be Generative Somatics teaching team members, Vassilisa Johri, Elizabeth Ross, and Liu Hoi Man, with assistant trainers Briana Herman-Brand and Nathaniel Shara. This training is being organized by The Capacity Project, which worksat the intersection of personal and social transformation to build the capacityand sustainability of individuals, collectives, and organizations doing social movement work. We do this by offering individual and group-based politicized healing work, political education/consciousness raising workshops, and transformative justice education and organizing. For more information about The Capacity Project or to request a copy of the application form , email seattlesomatics@gmail.org.

Disabilities Awareness Item du Jour

2011-11-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

Here is a really fun radio broadcast from awhile ago and replayed today to help keep RantWoman out of trouble for Black Friday.

http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=18196

It's a great interview by Steve Scher of two relative newcomers to the Seattle Disabled community, Laura Obara Gramer and Peggy Martinez. Fun things to listen for:

Perspectives they assume many people share regardless of disability

What language the two guests favor for different issues: yes, for them it's fine to use the word disability. It's fine to use the word "see" around a blind person....

Lots of different stuff about weather.

Lots of different experiences dealing with "the built environment" and getting around the city.

Various comments about disabled communities working together even when there are different needs.

Comments about service dogs, bad assumptions, hidden disabilities

The daily diet of curiosity, lack of awareness, clueless insensitivity

RantWoman has cut back on her mass eldering campaign about disabilities awareness, but the blog as filing cabinet / apology for the true RantWoman reality / journal and travelogue through the RantWoman spiritual compost heap is stil definitely in force. RantWoman decided she had to give up on trying to listen to her screen reader and just, gosh dang it, try to do ONE THING AT A TIME.

Not quite just one: First RantWoman gathered up several months of empty prescription bottles to throw away. RantWoman DID find the new bottle of eyedrops which somehow had gotten into the empty bottle pile instead of into RanWoman's usual place for things she is using. RantWoman HAS to be grateful for the circumstances that ensure she has a comparatively easy path to steady supply of needed medications. RantWoman is also feeling nostalgic: the RantDad used to use a lot of old prescription bottles to store oboe and bassoon reeds. RantWoman would not mind knowing someone who might continue the tradition.

Then RantWoman did a healthy increment of banging around her kitchen. RantWoman also decided she could attempt the visual task of locating a specific page of notes written in her own handwriting and lying somewhere in the piles on her desk. RantWoman found LOTS of other things and evn threw some out but did not find the exact item she was looking for. Sigh.

Queries for Adult Education November 27

2011-11-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

How can we as a community and as individuals support UFM members and attenders experiencing economic difficulties?

Thoughts and queries which may help guide our discussion:

From Pendle Hill pamphlet number 259, Stewardship of Wealth by Kingdon Swayne: “The concept of stewardship as I use it here goes far beyond its common use as shorthand for charitable giving. It expresses both the notion that what is mine legally is not really mine, and its corollary that my custody of wealth imposes on me an obligation to use it responsibly…ultimately , none of us owns anything.”

Swayne paraphrases John Woolman: “Be content with a small income and conveniences that are not costly, to lead a life free from “much entanglements”. Look to the sources of conflict and oppression in our possessions. Turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love.”

From Faith and Practice (NPYM): Mutual Care: “Our need for love and care, and our response to this need in others, make up a rich part of our lives. In an exchange truly grounded in love, each of us is both giver and receiver, ready to help and accept help. Neither pride nor fear keeps ups from the unconditional love and care of God manifested through others. Let neither comfort nor self-centerdness blind us to need of others.

We listen to one another with openness of heart and in good faith, aware that greater wisdom than our own is required to meet our human needs. We lift up our hearts to the Source of all wisdom and power.

Are we charitable with each other?

Are we sensitive to each other’s personal needs and difficulties and do we assist in useful ways?”

Other queries:

How can (or does) UFM model John Woolman’s statement: “…Of all we call ours, we are most accountable to God and the public for our estates: In this we are but stewards, and to hoard up all to ourselves is great injustice as well as ingratitude.”

With limited resources, how can UFM best discern how best to use our resources?

Can you think of examples in which stewardship at UFM seemed Spirit-led?

How can we better serve those in our community in financial need?
==========

RantWoman feels endlessly blessed with prodigious capacity to rant and ramble, but RantWoman is doing the best she can to post the queries unadorned and to wait until after Sunday to inflict upon the world what churns up out of her own practical and spiritual compost heap

Seattle Occupied

2011-11-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

From this week's bulletin:

Peace and Social Concerns Committee asks that Friends hold the Occupy movement, our police and our elected officials in the light. We hope that a common ground of love and humanity will enable young activists and others to invigorate our democracy, give voice to the real concerns of American people, and to discern a way forward.

Friday evening November 24, from 6-9 pm Susanna Kromberg of Salmon Bay Meeting will be serving as "chaplain" at the Interfaith tent at the Occupy Seattle encampment at Seattle Center Community College.

Holding Space

2011-11-21T15:04:00.001-08:00

This item about Quaker practices around listening absolutely falls in RantWoman's put it in the blog as filing cabinet column, and not just because it is on the internet instead of in some dusty pamphlet for RantWoman to sneeze over:

http://chronicler-3.blogspot.com/2011/11/holding-space.html

RantWoman is interested in both the theological language used to formulate the eldering or spiritual support discussed and the process elements involved in the meeting described here. RantWoman, of decidedly not straightforward faith admits to a certain program evaluator's reflex about "does it work?" But if one thinks of RantWoman's recent "this I know experimentally" item, what do we mean, "does it work?"

RantWoman also notes with care the convenor's acknowledgment of his need to care for himself spiritually. RantWoman has no official training in counseling, spiritual direction, pastoral attention to the life of a community. Instead RantWoman keeps stumbling into situations where such gifts are highly topical, where something in RantWoman's experience speaks to the situation EVEN when what speaks to RantWoman is a sense of being out of her depth, needing more care than can be had with only superificial increments of time.

Scratch that: RantWoman may be out of her depth, but RantWoman of late frequently also hears others about her even more at sea than RantWoman, at sea to the point they cannot even interact with RantWoman's points. RantWoman is meditating about"we are all ministers of God" and how we are called to care of each other with or without any specific academic or cultural credentials, with or without a tradition of some in a community being recognized for seeking and achieving training in specific areas.

RantWoman so wishes she felt like George Fox on Pendle Hill about all this. RantWoman would even settle for clarity about how to proceed among her own Meeting.

Restorative Circle Workshop December 3

2011-11-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

Restorative Circle workshop Sat, Dec 3 in Seattle

Dear friends,

Please join me at this Restorative Circle facilitation workshop on Saturday, December 3, 2011 from 9:30 - 5:00 in Seattle (at the Center for Spiritual Living). Registration is open at: http://www.spiritualliving.org/classes.

I have been studying Restorative Circle practice for the last year and a half and very inspired by how it compliments our Compassionate Listening practices. It provides a structure of shared leadership and empowerment for a community - whether a small family to a large organization.

It empowers everyone, keeping all parties out of the triangle and into self responsibility and mutual understanding. The deeper one's practices and skills of Compassionate Listening, the deeper the healing and transformation in the Circle process. I hope you will join us and learn more!

Here is some information:

Are you interested in greater harmony in your community, family and organizations? Can you imagine engaging conflict in a way that builds relationships?

Would you like to learn about Restorative Circles, cultivate compassionate communication, and practice restorative justice?

Is your family, organization or neighborhood interested in Seattle Restorative Circle Pilot Project, a project of the Compassionate Action Network?

A "Restorative Circle" is a restorative justice practice that empowers communities to deal with conflicts in a way that efficiently and effectively meets the needs of those involved and deepens connections among its members. Restorative Circles (RC) harness the generative wisdom and shared power of community. The facilitated RC process supports people to step into important and bold conversations with safety and provides a mechanism for vibrant, ongoing, community-based restorative justice systems.

Developed in Brazil by Dominic Barter, this practice is used in a wide range of groups, organizations, schools, court systems, communities, workplaces, and families around the world and is beginning to take off in Seattle and surrounding communities. In the immediate aftermath of a Seattle police officer's fatal shooting of John T. Williams, a First Nations wood carver, a Restorative Circle was held between Police Chief John Diaz, top department officials, and the grieving family. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014113565_diazreport03m.html.

Now we are engaged in a Pilot Project to create a restorative justice system in Seattle based upon Restorative Circles. See the CAN website: http://my.compassionateactionnetwork.com/profile/RestorativeCirclesSeattle.

The workshop on December 3rd will allow you to explore the Restorative Circle practice for yourself and, if you like it, consider participating as a leader in establishing restorative systems in your own communities. It provides participants with the experience and support to embrace conflict in a way that deepens connections, empowers all individuals, and builds strength of community. In this workshop, we provide foundation for the elements and purpose of each part of the restorative circle process, and create a supportive environment within which participants engage in hands-on facilitation. We also guide participants in considering the adoption of restorative circle systems in their own communities.

Please register for the workshops at http://www.spiritualliving.org/classes or in person at Center for Spiritual Living Seattle. COST: $75 per person if registered by November 27 at 9pm, $95 after. DISCOUNTS to $55 per person for early registration of groups of two or more.**

Mark your calendars! A future Restorative Circles Facilitation Workshop will be held on March 10, 2012 9:30 - 5:00 and a deepening workshop will be held May 5, 2012.

The December 3, 2011 Restorative Circles Facilitation Workshop will be facilitated by Andrea Brenneke and Susan Partnow.

Andrea Brenneke is a passionate advocate for justice and facilitator of individual and community healing and empowerment. She practices civil rights and employment law at MacDonald Hoague & Bayless in Seattle and is a certified mediator. http://www.mhb.com/. She also serves as a licensed practitioner with the United Centers for Spiritual Living, Seattle. Andrea has been offering facilitation in Restorative Circles and working with communities to build restorative justice systems using Restorative Circles since 2010.

Susan Partnow is a community builder, mediator, organizational development and training consultant. She serves as a catalyst for positive changes through workshops, retreats, and coaching. Co-founder of Conversation Cafes and Let's Talk America, and former advisor to National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation, Susan facilitates processes to transform conflict and promote co-intelligence in ways that expand collective capacity, such as Open Space, World Cafe and Appreciative Inquiry. She is a Sr. Trainer and co-creator of the Advanced Training and Certification track with The Compassionate Listening Project. As founder and Executive Director of Global Citizen Journey she has led delegations to Ghana, Nigeria and is training Peacebuilders in Liberia in Compassionate Listening and Restorative Circle practices. A former teacher and speech pathologist with B.A. and Secondary Credential from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. from Northwestern University, Susan wrote Everyday Speaking for All Occasions and currently works as Sr. Organizational Development consultant for Swedish Medical Services. http://www.susanpartnow.com/.

For more information about Restorative Circles and the work of Dominic Barter, please visit his website: http://www.restorativecircles.org/.

Questions? Feel free to contact Andrea Brenneke at abrenneke@gmail.com or 206.696.1843 or Susan Partnow at susanpartnow@gmail.com or 206.783.8561.

** Because a restorative circle works best as part of an established and ongoing restorative justice system, we encourage two or more individuals from a community or organization to take the workshop, learn to facilitate, and support one another in the establishment of a system that works for their own community

Susan
Susan Partnow
Sr. Certified Facilitator, The Compassionate Listening Project
4425 Baker Ave NW
Seattle, WA 98107
tel. 206-783-8561
fax 206-782-7786
http://www.compassionatelistening.org/

http://www.susanpartnow.com/ Partnow Communications, Organizational Development, Consulting & Facilitation
http://www.globalcitizenjourney.org/ Founding Director
join our mailing list
http://www.conversationcafe.org/Co-Founder

"When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other." --Margaret Wheatley

Dear Santa Claus

2011-11-17T03:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Santa Claus,

First of all, if you need to argue about whether or not RantWoman has been a good girl, it's going to take either a long prickly phone conversation or really a lot of email. Between Charm School, the continued fermentation of RantWoman's spiritual compost heap, and RantWoman's well-documented capacity for telling WAY too much of the truth, RantWoman regrets to inform you that you are not even first in line to argue the matter.

Second, RantWoman really does not recommend crawling around her building's ventilation system trying to deliver presents anyway. As usual, RantWoman is really going to need some Divine presense for the season regardless, so unless you and the reindeer need some serious psychodrama, how about you and I together figure out how to help some kids struggling with too little of something have enough for at least one day?

And by the way, could you please deliver us all from TOO many opportunities to overdose on

--holiday cavils and complaints, especially by almost everyone in RantWoman's circle who needs stern reminders of all we have to be grateful for.

--too much angst, anguish, ennui, aggravation....

Peace and love

RantWoman

Oh wait, you wanted to hear from the Real RantWoman.

I will not offer irreverent comments about other people's spiritual practices.

I will not offer irreverent comments about other people's spiritual practices.

I will not offer irreverent comments about other people's spiritual practices.

I will not offer irreverent comments about other people's spiritual practices.

Wait. Let's begin with tidings of great joy throughout the land: Meeting for Business took less than 10 minutes to decide that on Christmas day we can bear the thought of the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet worshipping with us at 9:30, at 11:00 and throughout any post-worship socializing as long as he has one or more chaperones.

The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet has more chaperones listed with the Department of Corrections than any other sex offender in WA. Ensuring that there are chaperones about should not be difficult. RantWoman may have to beg off if Sensible Auntie has the World's Most Irrepressible Nephew n tow, but RantWoman is getting ahead of herself.

Business Meeting got eldered by a newcomer on multiple grounds, some of which RantWoman unites with. Sex offenders get one level of public fixation; other people who commit crimes of violence or substance abuse qualify for MUCH less supervision and post-release support. Second, in Friend Newcomer's "home" Meeting, somewhere in Philadelphia, Christmas is just a day like any other. Yeah, thought RantWoman, in terms of taditional Quaker custom we're definitely heterodox on that point. Christmas falls on Sunday this year anyway and a really good party is always a blessing.

After being eldered, Business Meeting had to consider logistics of accommodating The Safest Sex Offender's rules for himself about not being near children: it is the Safest Sex Offender...'s practice to move to another sectionin our worship room if a child sits in the same section where he sits. One Sunday, a young newcomer who did not know of the rule sat in the Safest Sex Offender...'s section; next a friend of the young Newcomer also sat in the same section and felt awkward when the Safest Sex Offender moved. On Christmas day, there tend to be more children than usual; Business Meeting agreed that any adults who are able will surround the Safest Sex Offender so he does not have to move.

Confessions:
--What with Ambassador Thwack and RantWoman's fabulous inate capacity for centeredness and Inner Blowtorch, it's all RantWoman can do many days to keep herself out of jail and we won't even talk about her proclivity occasionally toward civil disobedience. The point is, RantWoman is happy to be a chaperone but the Safest Sex Offender... is the one ultimately responsible for keeping himself out of jail.

--RantWoman is conscious that the Safest Sex Offender's obsessive fastidiousness about rules including things to do with children is partly his way of dealing with fear of public overreaction and hyperventilating, some of which has absolutely no relationship to the Safeest sex Offender...'s actual behavior. RantWoman is seasoning a leading about whether some of the new support and accountability committee's "support spiritual growth" activities might aim for different discernment in this area. Dear Friend, LOTS of us believe in you. We trust our chaperone practices. Even if one person goes off the deep end, there are LOTS of people around to...."

--Similarly, recently RantWoman spent part of her day's highly constrained quota of print consumption scraping her eyeballs over The Safest Sex Offender...'s conditions from the Department of Corrections, the document assembled from Meeting minutes, and especially the paragraphs about chaperones. RantWoman found helpful advice for everyday non-dating non visit in household situations like "everyone must remain clothed. Oh thank heaven! RantWoman is all for people being comfortable with their bodies. "Legally decent in the state of WA" also leaves more latitude than ANYONE needs to explore for this conversation anyway, but that seems like a pretty basic starting place.

--Then there is the point about not doing anything "irresponsible." Okay, RantWoman can make some guesses but how the heck is RantWoman necessarily supposed to know what constitutes "irresponsible" for the Safest Sex Offender....?

--The Department of Corrections / treatment program part of the conditions next mentions ...."civil penalties," assuming any lawyer is undeterred by RantWoman's utter lack of anything worth suing for, files a claim. In other words, we are still back to moral center and sense of social contract, and probably for a LONG sequence before any external levers would kick in.

--Next the conditions documents tell chaperones to report violations to Oversight. There has never been a violation that would get the Safest Sex Offender... barred for the specified month. In fact, even though some of the conditions seem muddled to RantWoman, the only things that have happened or not happend have to do with what different parts of our Meeting do about telling newcomers about this ministry. That topic is worthy of its own rant.

--RantWoman is new to the chaperone thing. RantWoman also cannot necessarily see either children the Safest Sex Offender wants to move away from or clear paths to move away. This makes for interesting dance about the Safest Sex Offender....'s rules for himself, which are stricter to begin with than either the Department of Corrections or the document in Meeting. This point is part of what is behind RantWoman's leadings. So RantWoman seasons....

--RantWoman's other problem: any children who might bump into a fully-clothed Safest Sex Offender... in connection with Meeting for Worship are as of the current situation MUCH lower on RantWoman's Fret about Chidren list than a whole bunch of other categories including:

--the world's most irrepressible nephew, for obvious reasons. Not that RantWoman is anywhere near the front of the line about who is expected to deal, but....

--baby gangbangers, the VERY occasional entanglement with sex trafficking, and general adolescent oblivious among fellow bus passengers. RantWoman rides in the front of the bus a lot. She cannot just shut off her ears. Dealing with that topic in a sensitive, centered way is a very big part these days of how RantWoman is called to live the peace testimony. For this reason, RantWoman is VERY glad to know of Project Safe Place. RantWoman thinks others in her Meeting might also appreciate this nugget of info but so far except for people who might read RantWoman's blog and not admit it, RantWoman keeps forgetting to say anything.

--Any child in or around RantWoman's Meeting who might, God/dess forbid fall into the zone of a comment RantWoman has made a couple times aroudn her Meeting "When RantWoman was a teenager, if anyone in the RantFamily had been willing to talk, say to SOMEONE at her house of worship, there would have been things to hear." RantWoman spent a whole HOUR in Business Meeting awhile ago speaking about things she keeps hearing as "shut up." RantWoman anachronistically posts the actual minutes. "Shut up" got edited out.
RantWoman has said several times several ways that she needs to speak in a different place than Business Meeting about all the things on RantWoman's mind. RantWoman freely admits she wants ways to check her own ferociousness about the topic in context of some concerns she has based on her experience of others' awareness and engagement. RantWoman is also not clear about what actions might make sense. However, RantWoman considers just being told "go talk to your counselor" insensitive at best. RantWoman is pointedly omitting the title of the Friend who made that comment and RantWoman is going to try AGAIN off-blog about a whole bunch of themes tied up with the topic.

--Next in ine for frets, not that RantWoman has ANY capacity to do anything about it, children who might bump into the digital inclusion volunteer RantWoman has written of previously with the, um, radioactive taste in porn. RantWoman has every indication that Digital Inclusion volunteer himself and the computer lab wher ehe works are attentive to issues of responsible behavior, but RantWoman feels like fretting a little anyway.

--and finally the well-watched tykes of our community who might cross paths with the Safest Sex Offender on the planet in worship on Christmas day.

Okay, okay, RantWoman is aware that holidays can bring all sorts of expectations about socializing with people who trample the boundaries of adults and children around them. RantWoman thinks it would be at least sporting to offer some kind of resource for coping with such.

Possibly topical, though RantWoman will try to do better and will post if delivered of such, on forgiveness and reconciliation:

http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2011/11/thinking-about-forgiveness-and.html

Seattle Unoccupied

2011-11-16T23:01:00.000-08:00

RantWoman is really energized merely by the existence of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

RantWoman has also been feeling herself VERY humble and grateful to have a warm dry place to sleep and a cat to herd her to bed. RantWOman has so far felt NO call to do overnights but has walked through a time or two.

Once RantWoman made a specific effort to impart a concern which had crackled over bus radio while Metro was riding downtown; RantWoman was glad that the message sseemed to e holding afew days later when RantWoman visited again and happened to think to ask.

Crusty Activist friend "The Occupy people seem to be struggling about process. I think we old-timers could teach them a thing or two and maybe they need help."

RantMom to RantWoman "Honey, you could give them lessons."
RantWoman to RantMom "Mom, they seem like they are doing just fine without me."

Really Good Questions Friend: "We were down there visiting and I am amazed about the decisionmaking process. It feels just like Business Meeting to me."

Sunday November 20, Friends from our Meeting will hold Meeting for Worship at 2 pm at the multifaith tent at Occupy Seattle. RantWoman was glad to sign up.

December 9-10 Talking about Race Event

2011-11-15T10:22:00.000-08:00

I would like to invite you to the Seattle Race Initiative that will held on December 9th and 10th at Mount Zion Baptist Church. It is designed to help us have everyday and nonthreatening discussions about race. To assist with this, the Initiative has a remarkable Master Facilitator, Dr. David Campt, known as the Race Doctor (http://www.davidcampt.com/ ).

Friday evening will look at race through the lens of the arts, looking at ways that artists explore race through literature, dance, music, the spoken word and visual arts. We'll be led in a fun discussion about how we perceived the art then have Q and A with the artists. During the day on Saturday we will work in groups based on our work and/or interest identities. This is a great way to ensure that participants start with something important in common. The groups will have members of different ages, life stages, races and ethnicities, neighborhoods and experiences with race and racism.

While one weekend cannot change how Seattleites speak to each other, taking conversations about race out of the realm of blame is a great start. I hope to see you, your friends and family there!

Location: Mount Zion Baptist Church, 1634-19th Ave, 206.322.6500, www.mountzion.net
Cost: FREE
Meals: Provided
RSVP: l-emckinney@comcast.net

Thank you,
Lora-Ella McKinney

Public

2011-11-13T16:45:00.000-08:00

RantWoman is meditating about the phrase "attend Meeting for Worship just like everyone else." RantWoman COMPLETELY supports that.

RantWoman is also finding herself grateful that Meeting for Business has interacted with big circumstances in the life of the Friend with the Remarkable Story. RantWoman heard summaries of extensive and very positive evaluations before the Friend with the Remarkable Story was released from prison. RantWoman learned that the Friend with the Remarkable Story is being notably open with his neighbors, even some who post hateful and alarming things on neighborhood blogs. RantWoman heard much that is positive and not a single negative thing about the Friend with a Remarkable Story.

RantWoman heard one Friend grumble "Why does this even need to come to Business Meeting? It's apples and oranges in important respects from the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet." RantWoman and everyone else who spoke said it's an important story and it's important to speak Truth and to be strong in the story.

RantWoman is collecting some items off the internet. RantWoman is clear that a number of people in her Meeting currently have both the capacity to look things up on the internet and enough information to know why one would look things up. RantWoman learned today that some in her Meeting did not have to look things up. Elders may think the blogosphere is a big echo chamber full of middle class people and their computers, but younger families plugged into neighborhood email lists have decidedly other views.

RantWoman is glad that information and inquiries have now come to Meeting for Business. RantWoman is still feeling surprisingly fierce about some points she is seasoning what to do with, but RantWoman would feel fierce about these points with or without the Friend with the Remarkable Story.

RantWoman is clear that many more conversations are probably going to need to happen. RantWoman is clear about her own views, and RantWoman is praying for centeredness as conversations unfold and Light about where to go next.

RantWoman wrote the rest of this earlier including the blog as file cabinet listings. RantWoman does not feel called to edit out the anachronistic elements.

If Quakers ever write an etiquette book RantWoman would be glad to help about a chapter on whether or not it is a social gaffe, if one is not feelng centered enough for where a conversation might go, to "forget" to introduce two people who need to meet, the Safest sex Offender on the Planet and the friend with the Remarkable Story. RantWoman has to be VERY frank: despite being in a unique position about the matter, RantWoman herself is easing in very slowly. RantWoman is clear in her own discernment that immediate reaction is NOT needed about some issues. Rantwoman is also clear that others may not share her view or may need thoughtful discernment to get there.

The Friend with the Remarkable Story introduced himself again during announcements after worship last week. That happens to be one of the weeks each month when the safest sex Offender on the Planet worships at 11:00. The Friend with the Remarkable Story is quite forthright about having just gotten out of prison and about being part of the Monroe Worship Group. At this point in our Meeting's life, there exactly two people attending regularly besides the Friend with the Remarkable Story and his wife who participated in the Monroe Worship Group, RantWoman and.... and only RantWoman was present.

So,when the Friend with the Remarkable Story introduced himself during announcements, RantWoman felt called to rise also. Despite pleas from parents of squirming children for brevity in announcements, RantWoman spoke of the Monroe Worship Group, of how LOTS of Quakers are involved with Alternatives to violence in prisons, but the Monroe Worship Group is unique in terms of inmates getting out and continuing to worship among friends. RantWoman also specifically said she is glad to have the Friend with the Remarkable Story and Mrs. ... Remarkable Story worshipping among us. Neither the Friend with the remarkable Story nor RantWoman have so far felt called to say more of what RantWoman knows there is to say. Thinking more about that problem a day or two later, RantWoman was led to ...the search engine of her choice, and to some links to follow from what turned up!

Understand, in the world of RantWoman and e-torrents, if it's all over the internet, sooner or later either someone else in Meeting is going to notice or someone is going to turn up and ask. Either way, let's hope it's God, not just RantWoman trying to mix PR and centered community discernment.

The nub of the matter, if a set of topics which evoke a whole range of thoughts in RantWoman and about which many in RantWoman's Meeting have so far had no or very little occasion even to think about can be called a nub:

RantWoman never has trouble holding couples living through great challenges in the light!

Sex Offender Registration with various informational links.
http://www.icrimewatch.net/offenderdetails.php?OfndrID=1425116&AgencyID=54473

A bit from the local Fox news affiliate. Rantwoman cannot locate any content except the picture but thinks there musht be some.
http://www.q13fox.com/news/kcpq-daniel-pens-level-3-sex-offender-living-in-ballard-20111020,0,3373116.photo

A blog entry with a range of comments ranging from, to RantWoman's ear, vehement ranting to sensible thought.
http://www.myballard.com/forum/topic.php?id=11650

An important appellate case about treatment programs that encourage offenders to acknowledge offenses they cannot be prosecuted for and whether or not those admissions can be cited as aggravating factors in sentencing.
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/902/1464/164758/

An OLD Letter to the Editor of The Stranger, a local newswekly whose stylebook most assuredly does not eschew the F word and which regularly curls the hair of many readers:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/letters-to-the-editor/Content?oid=6497

The original article about Tamara Menteer and the Whitestone Foundation:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-rape-revisionist/Content?oid=6343

A book review:

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/99_displayNews.aspx

and as previously mentioned:
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/Default.aspx

Eid el-Adha / Kurban Bairam 2011

2011-11-12T04:28:00.000-08:00

The headine "80,000 Muslims pray on the streets of Moscow" caught RantWoman's eye. The visuals and the text about need for more mosques also caught RantWoman's eye. Without further comment:

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/80-000-Muslims-pray-on-the-street-in-Moscow-2254975.php

Quakers and Sex Offenders

2011-11-09T23:17:00.001-08:00

RantWoman's Meeting has a lovely library. As previously posted, RantWoman is unclear whether material there about sex offenders is useful and current. That is a whole conversation in its own right. In the interest of RANTWOMAN being in a position to speak from topical Light, more items for the blog as file cabinet, with the proviso that one should also check the search engine of one's choice for newer material

RantWoman would like to have more of a separate info stream, beyond the items RantWoman has been collecting, about matters specifically to do with survivors. Stay tuned.

In the meantime:

Nice 2003 item from Quaker Life, FUM
http://www.fum.org/QL/issues/0306/responses_abuse.htm

Sex offenders are people too from Friends Journal
http://www.friendsjournal.org/sex-offenders-are-people-too

FGC library about Rochester MN MM
http://www.fgcquaker.org/library/fosteringmeetings/0305.htm l

http://www.quaker.org/sexuality/Readings.htm

http://thefriend.co.uk/articledisplay.asp?articleid=1540

Tim Newell on Circles of Support and Accountability, also a PDF to download from a Swarthmore Lecture.
http://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/88

Search Engines, Sex Offenders, Congregations

2011-11-09T21:37:00.001-08:00

RantWoman has truly ODD taste in after hours reading. Tonight RantWoman has been led to see what the internet is serving up about religious congregations and sex offenders.

"But RantWoman," someone will say, "Quakers are DIFFERENT." RantWoman really does not care. The point is that LOTS of congregations deal with sex offenders. Does our Meeting have anything to learn from others' experience? Who knows, but RantWoman is not ashamed to consider the question.

The Unitarian Universalists: a couple different situations and articulation of some general points about each situation being unique. Also, lots of links.
http://www.uua.org/safe/children/23531.shtml

Another great checklist:
http://www.churchstuff.com/sexuality/pcmso.aspx

Really interesting Christianity Today article about practices at different churches, also Circles of Support and Accountability
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/september/21.49.html

last page of article above with multiple links
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/september/21.49.html?start=7

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/september/21.49.html?start=7

A 2007 item from Good Morning America about a UCC congregation. The audio starts automatically which I found annoying. The reporter is kind of gushy. The pastor talks about Safe Church practices.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3144748&page=1

The United Methodists:
http://umsexualethics.org/LocalChurches/SexOffenders.aspx

Faith Trust Institute:
http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/news/sex-offenders-in-congregations

Really frank about sex offenders already among congregations and about congregations as part of accountability system.
http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/blog/marie-fortune/8

Part 2 of the above: don't forgive us so quickly
http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/blog/marie-fortune/9

ELCA page with multiple PDF's
http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Office-of-the-Secretary/Congregation-Administration/Legal-Issues-for-Congregations/Questions-About-Protecting-Children-and-Adults-from-Abuse/How-should-our-congregation-respond-to-the-sex-offender.aspx

The ELCA page:
http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Office-of-the-Secretary/Congregation-Administration/Legal-Issues-for-Congregations/Questions-About-Protecting-Children-and-Adults-from-Abuse/Sexual-Misconduct-Policy-and-Resource.aspx

Something from Agape Resources
http://www.agaperesourceministry.org/Is%20Your%20Congregation%20Ready%20for%20a%20Sex%20Offender.pdf

http://www.stopbaptistpredators.org/article07/sex_abuse_in_churches_preventable.html

The google search string:
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=crnk_totw&cp=25&gs_id=2d&xhr=t&q=sex+offender+congregation&tok=JhayOqBVLoh00mSCGds4cg&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=sex+offender+congregation&aq=0v&aqi=g-v1&aql=f&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=bdf357a7f2cc5c4d&biw=1680&bih=786

Who is Steve Jobs to You

2011-11-07T03:07:00.000-08:00

RantWoman is meditating about her call to post this in her blog both in terms of how much the blogosphere needs more reflections about Steve Jobs and the circumstances behind this item coming to RantWoman.

This item arrived via email from Sentimental Classmate. Sentimental Classmate was one of the handful of classmates who appeared in photos on every section divider in the high school annual. RantWoman thinks she and Sentimental Classmate were in Calculus together but seating was alphabetical and our last names are far enough apart we interacted little, or more correctly barely talked in high school. This classmate, like RantWoman moved far away from high school. Unlike RantWoman, Sentimental Classmate has not been back at all; Sentimental Classmate also has a life path pretty different from RantWoman's. However, in connection with a major year reunion neither of us attended, Sentimental classmate asssembled an email list and most of the time RantWoman is finding herself surprisingly grateful for what arrives via the list.

A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve JobsBy MONA SIMPSON

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.

When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif. We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco. Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true. He was the opposite of absent-minded. He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited. He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church. He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood. Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”

I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”

When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.

None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing. His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.

Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans. When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”

When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.

They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there. And he did.

Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.

Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.

He treasured happiness.

Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him. Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.

One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.

I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”

Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.

For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.

By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us. What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.

Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.

He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”

When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.

Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us. His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it. He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.

He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.

This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude. He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.

Way of the Spirit Discernment

2011-11-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

RantWoman has no idea whether she has readers who might be interested and are not already on a mailing list to receive this. RantWoman is also mostly self-taught about many points of using HTML that comes out of email. RantWoman does actually know how to make links that look like text humans would want to read instead of raggedy url's but RantWoman is not always patient enough to do this.

The main point: RantWoman HIGHLY recommends the following item and RantWoman is looking for way to open to participate herself!

Way of the Spirit, Module One: Discernment, January 12-15, 2012
[1]View this email online instead
[2]Way of the Spirit: Module One Discernment
Links:
1. http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=1af0ef3a0d956f5082f3005c1&id=4d9fd9cb7d&e=dc9e7201e0
2. http://goodnewsassoc.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=1af0ef3a0d956f5082f3005c1&id=ba5306546f&e=dc9e7201e0

_Way of the Spirit_ begins

For people in leadership or service roles within and beyond faith
communities — clerks, pastors, elders, counselors, educators, social
activists, and others following their leadings—_Way of the Spirit_ builds
practical tools for faithfulness.
* Distinguish God’s inward guidance
* Strengthen understanding of discernment in scripture, and in Christian
and Quaker heritage
* Integrate content with contemplation, prayerful dialog & shared worship
* Face challenges in discernment
* Follow up the retreat with an online reflection group

The January module begins a year-long _Way of the Spirit_retreat series
continuing in April and September. Register for the January module as a
trial, or sign up for the entire series. More information: curriculum
overview, articles and "Is this for you?" _[3]Online Here_.
Links:
3. http://goodnewsassoc.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1af0ef3a0d956f5082f3005c1&id=e83917a31b&e=dc9e7201e0

January staff:

_Christine Betz Hall, _Way of the Spirit Coordinator and Facilitator, Good
News Associate
_Margery Post Abbott_, Speaker, Author of _To be Broken and Tender: a Quaker
Theology for Today_ Other guest speakers to be announced

Details

* Thursday 1/12, dinner at 5:30, through Sunday 1/15 lunch
* At Seabeck Retreat Center on Hood Canal, 1.5 hours from Seattle
* Small cohort of 8-12 people aligned with the Way of the Spirit vision:
Unprogrammed and Evangelical Quakers, members of diverse faith
communities and unaffiliated seekers
* Approximately 10 hours of readings before the retreat

Fees

* January module includes three nights lodging, meals & tuition
* 10% registration discount through December 11th
* $350 for Module One trial, $2,250 for year-long program
* + 10% after 12/11 ($385/$2475)
* [4]More fee information
Links:
4. http://goodnewsassoc.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1af0ef3a0d956f5082f3005c1&id=f080412836&e=dc9e7201e0

_Christine Hall, Way of the Spirit_
You received this message because you expressed interest in a program like School of the Spirit Ministry.
_Our mailing address is:_
Christine Hall, Way of the Spirit
7351 Barred Owl Way
Clinton, WA 98236

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University Friends Meeting Fall Retreat November 5 9-4:30

2011-11-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends.

RantWoman is back to speaking of herself in the third person. Cope. RantWoman has a sense of many things seasoning. In the meantime, join us for this great retreat!

University Friends Meeting Retreat
November 5, 2011

9 am - 4:30 pm.

Please bring: Potluck dishes to share
Optional reading: “The Spirit Level” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket

Schedule
Time Activity

8:30-9:00am Coffee (Social Hall)

9:00-9:30am Introductions (Meeting Room)

9:30-9:50am Opening meeting for worship (Meeting Room)

9:50-10:40am “10 Chairs” (Meeting Room)

10:45-11:00am Visualizing Equality (Social Hall)

11:00-11:20 am Break-out sessions (Social Hall)

11:20-11:45 am Pre-lunch closing (Social Hall)

12:00-1:00 pm Lunch

1:00-3:30 pm Work party

4:00-4:30 pm Closing meeting for worship (Meeting Room)

Queries:
What kind of society would be consistent with the Quaker belief in equality? In simplicity?

Can you dream of a world of the beloved community where all can thrive?

How am I advantaged/disadvantaged by local, national and global inequality?

How does UFM participate in maintaining or overcoming inequality?

How can we as Quakers practice more sharing instead of materialism and individualism?

How do we genuinely reach out to others in order to foster inclusiveness?

==========
This would not of course be a RantWoman blog entry without RantWoman rants and rambles.

RantWoman is terribly excited to have the tidings here in advance electronically.

RantWoman is terribly grateful to have the schedule. RantWoman will need to leave early. RantWoman does not get much choice about helping the RantFamily celebrate Brother-in-Law's birthday and that is important, unfortunately for RantWoman's sincere wish to uphold Meeting maintenance tasks more important than the work party.

RantWoman even has a beloved electronic gizmo to help her tote around topical materials including this text and the book mentioned. In fact, RantWoman is so happy to have this particular electronic device that RantWoman is going to have to speak to the simplicity inherent in enough materialism to have exactly the right material things for one's purposes even if , for instance, the forces of global marketing probably wish RantWoman would darn well spend more, more, more or, even worse, RantWoman herself might feel called endlessly to whine and moan about inconveniences and frustrations that come with this particular mode of information access. RantWoman perfectly well knows she gets to be grateful to have such problems. So?

RantWoman confesses, the book has tons of citations on the topic and tons of data all pointing the same way. In fact the book has SO many citations all pointing the same way that RantWoman might want either to click on some hyperlinks and read additional bites of the studies cited OR to test some of the items against others' views. RantWoman thinks it darn well is going to be a great retreat regardless of cavils RantWoman might not even get time to deal with anyway!

October 31 Disabilities Awareness Item: Scary enough for the whole month

2011-10-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Happy Halloween. I have numerous scary topics on my mind . I am going to start with some whines and a couple Halloween blog entries.

My laptop and my monitor are doing weird things as far as video. Editing with only a screen reader, excuse me, SUCKS. Okay, I know thousands of centered well-adjusted much blinder people do it all the time, but…. Luckily at last the monitor has decided to do it’s daily mess around through several cycles of power on and off until stable display results. Possible issues include failing components and video controller issues if I have my accessibility software installed wrong. So if Friends can hold my technology and paths to the wherewithal to update… in the Light. If Friends really cannot get through the day without more technological esoterica, I am happy to share further.

Update: visited another computer where the monitor works and the blue screen of death was at one point an improvement. Not necessarily reassuring to know that everyone in town is having some of the same issues with the newest upgrades. Grrrrr.

Speaking of seeing scary things, please hold my nephew in the Light. His school bus was going by as a bad incident involving a bridge or overpass happened last week. I think I saw a headline but did not click and read. My sister said my nephew saw a whole bunch of details I am not going to repeat, more than the kids in the other school bus who also saw the event. The kids who saw things got asked not to talk about it to the other kids at school which seems reasonable but my sister was complaining that the kids who did see things did not get to talk to a counselor right away. So please just hold the whole thing in the Light.

A scary technology headline:
http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=6661
The scary part for me is the headline: speech recognition software tends not to work well with people who have non-standard speech patterns as many hearing impaired people do. I had to read the article to see itis the doctors who are using the software which actually sounds kind of ingenious.

The blogroll does Halloween:
http://sillypoorgospel.blogspot.com/2011/10/christian-view-of-halloween-repeat.html
http://blog.sojo.net/2011/10/28/halloween-and-jesus-a-reconciliation-in-the-dark/

A fast way to respond to this year’s query from Pagan Ministry Friend about whose deaths one has noticed from my blog:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/search/label/Memorials .
Names that stand out are Lara harding, Agnes Schmoe from Eastside and
Amy Trice, former tribal chief of the Kootenai tribe. Read obist
yourself if you feel led. The other two have the names in the titles; here is the item about Lara.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/05/shame-vulnerability-courage-fertilizer.html

My ramble of last year.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/10/reformation-and-chocolate-eyeballs.html
This post was about the time of Pagan Ministry Friend's Samhain post which drew a letter to the editor in Western Friend. One funny follow up: I saw the editor of Western Friend, last summer at Annual session and the subject of the letter and my response came up. Friend Editor said that the author of the original letter posted something from one of the blogs I mentioned in my response on Facebook. I probably would never have known about the FB post unless Friend Editor told me because I just interact in a pretty limited way with Facebook. But I was glad to hear my suggestion spoke to the other Friend’s condition.

One part of Facebook I do interact with is the Association of Bad Friends. The Association of Bad Friends exists to encourage Quakers to poke fun at ourselves. Unfortunately most of the Bad Friends who post regularly are so earnest and serious that we cannot help frequently straying into serious topics. For instance, recently in some kind of exchange that started out about appalling things people do in Meeting for Worship, Pagan Ministry Friend mentioned how much our Meeting’s support of her ministry means. I am glad she feels well supported.

At the Association of Bad Friends one is only allowed to nominate
oneself for Quaker roles, not anyone else, even though as Bad Friends
we may be quite certain someone else deserves nominations. I used to
be clerk of the Committee on Doing Sudoku in Meeting for Worship
committee. I had to lay down that ministry but now one of the roles I
am seasoning is the Still Didn’t Get the Memo Committee on Email
Immoderation. I am unclear how I am going to be led about further
emanations. I am probably not up to the daily pace but I would still
be happy to receive Friends’ comments or further inquiries.

I am VERY clear there are a number of topics that still need further
conversation and I am unclear how I am called to proceed. I am
specifically seasoning what more needs to be said and where about a
number of scary topics, including what feel to me like contradictions
in my own thinking. Thoughts?

For instance, I complained a lot in June about it feeling like a lot
of people spent a lot of time talking ABOUT me and a lot less time
talking TO me. So then I decide I cannot deal with endless one on one
conversations. I decide to seed the conversation and tell you all to
talk amongst yourselves. At this point, I am inclined to collect
Friends questions or maybe have someone else, such as my clearness
committee collect Friends’ questions and then try to answer many
questions at once.

I told the young woman who called me about interpreting as a career
not to be afraid to contract out the parts of her work that she is not
good at. I think I did not make enough of teamwork too. On the other
hand, I have multiple gripes about points that feel to me like people
passing the buck. What does it mean to anyone else that we are all
ministers of God? What does it mean as far as specific people being
called to specific service?

(Here RantWoman intervened and is still seasoning a substantial tirade, a tirade which even by the RantWoman School of Tact and Diplomacy standards is TOO MUCH just now for the blogosphere. Hold centered discernment, seasoning,.... in the Light.

In the Light

(RantWoman)

PS: Here is another item about sex trafficking, just to toss in another scary topic.
http://blog.sojo.net/2011/10/26/lawyers-surreal-world-and-the-fight-against-selling-children/

October 30 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

Thank you to everyone who has given indications that you are interacting at least some with the content of my messages.

Thank you to the Friend who finds a paragraph or so in several entries to relate to. I am aware it’s too much. In case my comments have not made it clear, it’s too much for me too BUT

1. I am aware this approach to mass eldering is kind of annoying. I am also aware that additional increments of wordsmithing would not necessarily lessen the annoyance level enough to be worthwhile for quick dispatches.

2. I am aware of having both muddled and seemingly contradictory messages as well as complicated circumstances in mind about some topics. The fact that they are “too much” does not mean this does not need to be talked of further, but there is plenty here for today.

3. I am not even trying to guess at things that would speak to everyone with the same points and I think too much wordsmithing might scrub out some particularity that speaks particularly to one or another person.
Here is a blog item about this last point, with a number of other good links inside it.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/03/spoons-and-twitches.html .

I mentioned being willing to talk about my white cane. It’s not like you all are obliged to ask, but there are a couple more clear messages I probably need to make sure get through in addition to the moments below from my blog. Using my white cane REALLY helps as far as some back and neck issues. Using a white cane SOMETIMES increases the odds that bus drivers will do things I find helpful, some of which like calling stops they are supposed to do anyway. I have a time or two tried to have conversations with someone about a Meeting-related issue connected with my cane. Some of the time there has been fine progress. A time or two, someone has missed key points or their eyes have glazed over. Hold that point in the Light.
Here are an assortment of especially piquant adventures, some of which could probably be boiled down to a couple paragraphs containing the point. In other cases, the totality of the story is really part of the point.

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/07/healed-blessed-jesus.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/06/not-blind-that-we-know-of.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/06/artifact.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/09/radical-dialogue-for-ramadan.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/06/allergic-to-joy-and-peace.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/08/we-are-all-transgendered-now.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/02/happy-valentines-day-rantwoman-style.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/12/ambassador-thwacks-school-of-percussive.html

Oh Good: some more cheerful statistics
Disability.gov shared this report comparing crimes against people with and without disabilities, 2008 thru 2010 The report is based on the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS).

Highlights include the following:

• Persons age 12 or older who had disabilities experienced an estimated 567,000 nonfatal violent crimes in 2010.
• In 2010, the age-adjusted violent victimization rate for persons with disabilities (28 violent victimizations per 1,000) was almost twice the rate among persons without disabilities (15 violent victimizations per 1,000).
• In 2010, for both males and females the age-adjusted rate of violent crime was greater for those with disabilities than the rate against those without disabilities. The rate for males with disabilities was 23 per 1,000, compared to 16 per 1,000 for males without disabilities; for females with disabilities the rate was 26 per 1,000, compared to 15 per 1,000 for females without disabilities.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2238

On a completely different note, an item from my blogroll possibly of interest to people with fundraising or Meeting architecture concerns, an item about a Turrell Skyspace to be installed at Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in North Philadelphia
http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/art-entertainment-sports/item/29004-chestnut-hill-on-track-to-get-a-james-turrell-skyspace-building

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 29 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-29T15:08:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

So here’s the deal: I am feeling uncharacteristically attentive to thoughts of different people’s speaking and learning styles and posting here an assortment of links. Of course as far as disability awareness lifetime rather than disability awareness month and having further conversations that speak to us as a community, having everyone on different pages may or may not be helpful, but here we are.

To be honest, for me sometimes it is a lot easier to talk about something from our culture than something specific on my own mind, so I would be really pleased if Friends have anything to say in person about any of the items here. One topic I am pretty used to explaining different things about in person is my white cane, why I decided to start using it, some really clear benefits from doing so, some things that are really different for me than for other people who also use white canes, why I sometimes refer to my cane as Thwack or Ambassador Thwack. So feel free to ask.

This blog is by a Quaker cartographer. Somewhere on my Quaker blog I saved an interesting link about how people got around before there were visual maps. It mentions some books that sound interesting Maybe when I have time either to think systematically about how some people I know deal with spatial issues or for more conversations with blind people about different ways people get around, I will look up the titles. In the meantime, this item is interesting in itself and it has a link to a video of a British psychiatrist about localization of different activities in different parts of the brain.
http://maphead.blogspot.com/2011/10/feelings.html

Here is the PBS web page for Lives Worth Living, the documentary that aired Thursday night. I have not had a chance either to watch the documentary OR to read comments here, but perhaps Friends will find it interesting.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/lives-worth-living/

And then there is South Park and Crip fights. This video is toward the LESS tasteless end of the South park vernacular. For one thing I do not recall hearing the F word even once.
Jimmy and Timmy join the crips:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104357/crips-4-life

Topical themes: born vs late in life, fitting in, people having NO CLUE what language means.

Next, thinking about ways people get around and the people one meets and where one might or might not feel specific Quaker calls, some items about my experiences aboard Metro:

Here is an, um, interesting item about some “grammar students” I met one day on the bus. Judging by the garb of the grammar students in this item, one issue was gang affiliation but the guys in this entry were clearly trash talking AND they desisted when the driver asked them to so….
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/08/grammar-lesson-conjunctions.html

Some more Quaker-themed reflections. To be VERY clear, I am VERY grateful about many things to do with the bus, the fact that the Seattle area has what in MANY respects is a really good bus system, always with room to grow, the fact that I have the stamina and capacity to use the bus easily, the color and connections of my bus experiences. Well, read on.
Whole new windows on matters of faith:

Warning: this item includes a verbatim comment from a drunk and contains the F word.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/11/im-very-religious.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/04/time-to-pray.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/08/bus-eldering-123.html

And finally, one about a VERY cool thing I learned about at a recent meeting, Project Safe Place. Project Safe Place is a way for kids in difficulty to tell the bus driver they need a safe place. The blog entry has a link about it. I think LOTS of Quakers who ride the bus might like to know about it whether or not anyone might necessarily feel called to intervene about things one might hear on the bus. I personally am glad to know people talking about it at public meetings are aware of the trafficking issue even though I want to make NO assumptions about how often that specifically is an issue.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-safeplace-right-meeting.html

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 28 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

Today’s posting is all somewhere between work and poetry and translation and being rightly led. If you like, read it fast and think of it as throwing the pot of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks for whom. The poetry part is mixed in unfortunately. Also it’s pouring rain and I do not know whether I will go out so my fingers have more time to run wild than some days.

Here is DiversityInc’s item from today about Disabilities Employment Awareness Month. It has some statistics I have not read and some other links that look interesting:

http://diversityinc.com/diversity-facts/disability-employment-awareness-month-facts-figures-2/?mgs1=bbee5ZAqcE

someone I know only from interpreter email lists who I will call Blind Poet recently got a job teaching at a new community college.

The “rightly led” piece has a number of aspects.

First, I did a phone interview for a student of interpreting from Pierce County community College. She got my name out of the local translators’ society directory and found my comments about the business of translation and interpretation and life and networking much more “spiritual” than someone else she talked to. At the end of the interview she asked me for advice. I told her something like:

--Here is my experience and special circumstances. Your mileage may vary.

--There are a large number of ways to have a difficult career and a large number of reasons another person she talked to might be right on about it being a miserable business BUT there are also opportunities.

--Follow your heart and the money will come

--Know yourself and what you need to take care of. Some people enjoy the gamesmanship of business negotiations. Some people find it rewarding to accompany people through medical care and other sometimes heartrending difficulties. Especially recognize what you need if you are walking with people through traumas.

--Network with other interpreters; teamwork rocks.

--Never be afraid to contract out the things you hate or are less than adept about.

Second, I spent FOUR HOURS writing up life experience in response to supplemental questions for a job I applied for. The “rightly led” was just that, even though my resume shows no paid jobs that answer their questions, the words to explain how my experiences DO relate kept coming and coming. Luckily the torrents still left time for at least a fast proofread.

Then my mind wandered to last year’s Disabilities employment event at Microsoft, a couple guys I talked to from disability insurance companies who were all hot about the issue of ergonomics and a story about someone I will call Blind Poet. I have never met Blind Poet in person but she is a very incisive contributor to a couple email lists I am on. In addition to translation and interpretation work she also teaches business writing at different community colleges. Awhile ago, at the school where she was teaching, someone in the administrative food chain above her got upset and did some kind of very discriminatory review of her teaching. Blind Poet had to file a discrimination complaint and ask her students to help her document the issues which she ultimately won about.

Recently Blind Poet got a new job at a different institution and found herself grousing: as a result of making a reasonable accommodations request, she had to step through a 29-point questionnaire. One of these days I mean to get a blog post written about how at least there is a 29-point list to help overcome some awkwardness. But then, thinking of the guys hot about ergonomics I have been wondering, what if instead of only disabled people having to deal with the 29-point list, everyone got asked the same questions. I am sure some people think that would just lead to lots of people slacking off and asking for help they don’t “really” need, but I think asking everyone could cut down on a lot of workplace-induced strains and encourage people to get help before problems become disabling.

Apropros the workplace, I would be interested to know whether any of you who are reading my dispatches with an eye to your workplace experiences, whether you hire people or just deal with co-workers, have found ANYTHING I have sent vaguely topical to issues or questions in your workplace. For my part, I have been meditating about one difference between self-employment and working for someone else: at the moment I am self-employed so I get to call this month’s efforts free consulting. I am not sure what I would call them if someone I were supervising undertook such a campaign. But it’s Friday and I feel more like poetic excursions anyway:

Looking at the site for last night’s PBS documentary, Independent Lens short of an ASL poetry slam

http://video.pbs.org/video/2144680866

One of the things I like about this short is the way the translations are shown in parallel with the movements of ASL. For comparison, one time I went to a concert by the Seattle Pro Musica. The program was all different settings of the Ave Maria so the words were always the same. There was ASL interpretation and one of the interesting things to me was what what the interpreter did with the text to reflect differences in the music.

More from the teenagers in the poetry video: What do you love about being Deaf?

http://video.pbs.org/video/2144612276

Another really fun item. The Turrell Skyspace is this wonderful room designed by Quaker architect James Turrell at the Henry Art museum on the UW campus and this is a link about an upcoming event there.

Poetry in Translation at the Turrell Skyspace

http://www.wavepoetry.com/catalog/114-3-days-of-poetry-poetry-in-translation

Another thing about translation, nothing particularly about disability because who wants to talk about that all the time anyway?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/books/review/is-that-a-fish-in-your-ear-translation-and-the-meaning-of-everything-by-david-bellos-book-review.html

In the Light

(RantWoman)

An item off blogroll about leadings:

http://esrquaker.blogspot.com/2011/10/learning-about-leadings.html

Another about language and indirectly about the occupy movement

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/10/thinking-about-afsc.html

October 27 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

Hi All

Today I have been thinking about the inquiry from the Discipline Committee about what our Meeting’s experience / practice has been about mental illness.

On my usual route to Meeting I walk by Magus books on 42nd between the Ave and 15th NE. I frequently feel the way I imagine a recovering addict feels in the presence of his or her previous temptation: I can nearly always read the titles in the window but I really do not dare think of buying either to scrape my eyes painfully over myself or to collect dust while I find time and a human to help me read. On Sunday, the book that caught my eye is called the Essential Nash, a collection of writings by Nobel Prize winning economist John Nash. John Nash was the subject of a book called A Beautiful Mind by Silvia Nasr and also of a movie by the same name. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic. He was not the only or particularly the oddest character hanging around the math library when I was in college. He is interesting in a way I do not have time right now to look up further: at some point he stopped taking medication and as he has aged, either his symptoms have subsided or his ability mostly to control them has increased. The idea of schizophrenia subsiding with age at least some of the time seems like a very interesting idea and it would occur to me to see whether that also happens to others. Sure, in what additional free time, with what flock of graduate students trailing along behind?

Then two Meeting-related people wandered across my mind. One appeared in the form of a letter addressed to the Clerk of Peace and Social Concerns committee. Someone familiar with that Friend’s history was in the office at the same time I was picking up mail. I was VERY grateful just to hand the problem off. The second situation actually has blog entries but the blog entries are not all the story. Both situations wandered across my mind in the same context where people regularly exposed to others’ traumas need to take particular spiritual and emotional care of themselves to stay centered and healthy. Perhaps that is more than enough said. If not, you are invited to ask me in person what is on my mind.

But another Friend comes to mind in a bit fuller palette as introduced on my blog:
Friend Poet. Friend Poet is actually a published poet. Friend Poet's spoken ministry is prone to even more poetic excursions than RantWoman's blog. When RantWoman was recording clerk, she used to despair of capturing, when necessary, the essence, of Friend Poet's words until one day the Light dawned. Friend Poet has a couple favorite themes and there is nearly always a nugget in his words. Further, it's poetry and if one misses part of the point, it's poetry anyway. Even nicer: Friend Poet seldom reads and even less often objects to anything in minutes. Friend Poet's words, while an essential ingredient in the whole stew, tend not to be key to capturing big decisions or sense of the meeting and therefore RantWoman can feel more liberated in her attentions than with some other Friends.
From http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/11/cast.html#comments

Here are excerpts from some more blog entries with substantial content about this Friend.
First, from an entry that wanders among a long list of themes, http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/11/baptism.html

:
…The Holy Spirit showed up in worship--TWICE. The first time was a newcomer offering a memorial for someone for the sort of odor enhanced challenging presence whom many Friends undoubtedly wish God would lead to bathe. The memorial called him a teacher and did not offer further commentary on matters of God and bathing. A good while later came a message about God loving everyone in their own way and undoubtedly loving the Unwashed Teacher just as the visiting speaker unquestionably did.

A message began teasing around the edge of RantWoman's mind about recent ministry offered by Friend Poet during Adult Education: there had been discussion in small clumps of queries something to do with feeling the presence of God among other people. Two Friends in RantWoman's small group offered thoughts related to their station and education and presence in specific communities. RantWoman does not remember what Friend Poet said in the small group but was entranced with what he said when Friends were asked to reflect thoughts back to the larger group.

Friend Poet is among the vast fellowship, people of every station who make all their fashion choices at Value Village and Friend Poet spoke of feeling the presence of God in whatever other people had worn and handled his clothes before they came to him at Value Village. RantWoman suspects that several of those assembled just brushed this off as more randomness from Friend Poet, but this specifically spoke to RantWoman's flair for the physical. …

Two more items where Friend Poet figures.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/09/slug-rut-vulnderable-to-god-and-others.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/01/cliffhanger-catchup.html

Both of these entries have multiple threads. Please bear with and focus only on the Friend Poet parts.

There is much more I think I couldsay about Meeting and this Friend walking together. I do not feel called to say any of it tonight.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

October 26 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

The point of this month’s email exercise is disabilities awareness so I am not displeased just to be able to pull in things that my usual information streams deliver to my desktop. The info is a slice out of time. I am making occasional effort to be comprehensive. Probably there is plenty I am missing including a number of hidden disabilities and cognitive and mental health issues. In general, I am including a mix of things I really need Friends to be aware of about me in particular including a capacity for foam at the mouth reactions and information I think it is extremely valuable for lots of people to be aware of even if some of it seems like weird minutia.

I am aware these posts include many, many topics and many points that could be discussed. Mostly I have not been posting queries or reflection questions and perhaps it would be helpful to do so. In general, although I am not interested in deleting people from the email list, I am interested in your reactions: what stands out? What questions come to your mind? Are there things you wish you knew more about? Does anything especially resonate from your experience?

Friends are again reminded of my offer to take the day off if someone else posts to this email list an item that meets my sort of arbitrary criteria for sufficient disabilities-related content.

Today’s offerings started out from an item about a test of fair housing issues in Seattle as reported in the newspaper. Also included are some links to local resources and then some more material about a spate of Fair Housing cases filed around the US, many related to service dogs. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Property-owners-victimized-black-renters-city-2229188.php

Another item about domestic violence caught my eye, or actually my screen reader. This item reminded me that October is also National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and I decided to check out current offerings on the website for Abused Deaf Women’s Advocacy Services, http://www.adwas.org/
. ADWAS is a pioneering agency specializing in services for Deaf and Deaf-Blind people experiencing domestic violence. Their Resources page has a number of VERY valuable offerings including some about supporting a friend or loved one in such circumstances. I have not looked a the actual item but ADWAAS resources tend to have both good deafness content and good content in general. There is another page that lists similar programs in several other cities around the US. I think Seattle is very lucky to have ADWAS though there are some specific reasons for need in our community. There is a concentration of deaf-blind people many of whom work for the Lighthouse for the Blind.

For those of you who like videos, there is a really fun video about the apartments at the ADWAS transitional housing program. The video is in ASL with captioning in English which I consider imperfectly accessible to me for instance. Nevertheless I expect it will speak to others; again Youtube offers a number of other interesting items.

One element of the apartments that caught my eye is the strobe light fire alarms / smoke detectors. Current housing codes do not, I believe, require strobe light smoke detectors and a homeowner would have to pay extra to have them installed. Most public buildings with modern equipment have both audible and strobe light alarms. This is important for deaf people, but strobe lights can cause seizures or headaches in some people.

A funny aside about modern apartment buildings with electronic entry systems: some buildings just require a person to punch in a resident’s apartment number on a keypad at the entry. Then the apartment dweller’s phone rings and the person at the front door can get buzzed in. I really have no idea what deaf people do with such things. The keypads may or may not be at a height accessible to people in wheelchairs. There might or might not be a readable directory, but my mom’s building has a funny feature that I am not sure her building staff even realize. Often with these systems a person can just punch in an apartment number but that is really not best practice as far as confidentiality of addresses. My mom’s building actually uses individual codes unrelated to apartment numbers.

I figured this out one time by bending over because the door panel is at waist level for someone tall who walks and then peering very close at a display with very poor contrast while scrolling through the directory. Now, though, I just key in the code and do not even bother about the directions to scroll through the directory. One of these days maybe I will play dumb and see whether the staff have been trained about this feature.

Other important local resources
The Alliance for People with Disabilities
http://disabilitypride.org/

The term “independent living center” has a whole bunch of specific legal and service concepts connected with it. For more detail, feel free to use your search engines. The more important point: the Alliance Resources page has information about a whole bunch of different trainings.

The Sight Connection
http://www.sightconnection.org/

This organization has a retail store near Northgate Mall and a whole page full of resource links. I THINK they also offer some trainings but I did not find them in fast poking around.

In the Light

(RantWoman)

PS As a guage of public awareness, this further item about housing discrimination also came in. There are a large number of cases about service animals, an area where Fair Housing law is different and broader than the ADA. To read it one might think there has been a sudden outbreak of discrimination against people with service dogs under the Obama administration; I think it’s more likely that the Obama administration is just making a concerted effort to address widespread problems.
These items are from the White House website. I am unclear why I am unable to reproduce the links.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has recently made several important announcements regarding housing for persons with disabilities. Below you will find the links to each of HUD’s press releases, followed by a brief summary of each announcement.

If a friend forwarded you this email and you'd like to be added to the White House disability distribution list, email us at disability@who.eop.gov .

Hud Charges Philadelphia Condominium Association with Discriminating against Residents with Disabilities Association required residents needing assistance animals to use service elevators, failed to address harassment and intimidation

HUD Charges Florida Property Owner, Managers with Disability Discrimination Management refused to relocate resident hospitalized by neighbors’ second-hand smoke

HUD Charges Utah Homeowner Association, Condo Owners with Discriminating Against a Veteran with a Disability Association and owners refused to accommodate veteran’s emotional support animal Association and owners refused to accommodate veteran’s emotional support animal The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is charging a Park City, Utah homeowner association, property management company, and a group of condominium owners with violating the Fair Housing Act for refusing to accommodate a tenant who required an emotional support dog because of a disability. HUD brings the charges on behalf of the tenant, a Gulf War veteran with a disability. HUD is alleging Fox Point at Redstone, a multifamily housing complex, assessed illegal fees and fines against the tenant and the owners of his condominium unit for the presence of the assistance animal. HUD is also charging the condominium owners for their refusal to renew the tenant’s lease unless he paid the charges. The Fair Housing Act requires landlords to make reasonable accommodations to no-pet rules for renters with disabilities who need emotional support animals.

HUD Charges University of Nebraska at Kearney with Discriminating against Student with Disabilities. University denied student's request to have therapy dog live with her on campus
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is charging the University of Nebraska at Kearney and five of its employees with violating the Fair Housing Act when they refused to grant a student permission to have a therapy dog live in her University-owned apartment and illegally inquired into the nature and severity of the student’s disabilities. The student, who required the dog in order to cope with depression and anxiety, was seeking an exception to the University’s no-pet policy as a disability-related “reasonable accommodation” under the Fair Housing Act.

HUD Charges Housing Providers with Discrimination for Evicting Tenants Over Visitor’s Support Dog The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it is charging the owner and landlord of an apartment building in Reno, Nevada, with violating the Fair Housing Act for evicting two tenants after a friend with a disability visited the tenants with his emotional support dog. HUD brings the charge on behalf of the tenants, alleging that the DeAngeli Family Trust and Peter DeAngeli, the respective owner and landlord of the property, engaged in unlawful discrimination by refusing to make a reasonable accommodation to the building’s “no pets policy” for a person with a disability. HUD also alleges the housing providers retaliated against the tenants by evicting them when they protested the housing providers' refusal to grant the accommodation.

HUD Charges Washington State Property Owner with Disability Discrimination

Lakewood Mobile Home Park Operator Refused to Accommodate Applicants with Service Dogs The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has charged the owner and manager of a Lakewood, Washington trailer park with discriminating on the basis of disability. HUD brings the charge on behalf of the Fair Housing Center of Washington, alleging that Deidra Miller, the owner of Terrace Trailers, and property manager Claudia Welch refused to make a reasonable accommodation to their “no pets” policy for testers posing as applicants with disabilities who needed service dogs.

October 25 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

This item is in keeping with the Pendle Hill pamphlet called On Hallowing our Diminishments about the spiritual gifts of accepting changed capacity. I have not checked the Pendle Hill site, but I THINK in addition to print in the UFM library, this pamphlet is available to order in print or in PDF. I am afraid I am stuck on my own gifts, spiritual and otherwise. Once in awhile I discern that someone else seems to be appreciating their own gifts in this vein; again, if anyone wants to offer their own spiritual gifts in this area, I am happy to take the day off—and MAYBE even be appreciative of your offerings.

I know I have written and I think I have sent more than one account of all the wacky things going on IN my eyes. Here are items about what I do or do not see.

Here is an item about the gifts of not necessarily seeing that would require one to do more housekeeping.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/02/magic-dandruff.html

Here is another item about not necessarily seeing:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/12/armchair-hound.html

There are two not necessarily seeing moments. The one about the underwear alludes to a time I went to dinner at my friends he Weed Whackin’ Wenches’ house.One of the Wenches was a housemate in college and is also legally blind but with different seeing and reading and mobility experiences than mine. We ate in the kitchen and I paid no attention at all to their clean underwear in a heap all over the dining room table. In other words, legally blind guests do not even have to work to overlook housekeeping lapses.

Here is an item about my not being able to read faces issue especially from across a big committee chamber. In this case, if I cannot see someone’s face to tell whether I might be boring the Chairman of a state senate committee, I at least get to be liberated of embarrassment about it. Sometimes it helps to plop one’s white cane on the table. Sometimes it does not necessarily.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/02/testimony.html
The committee chairman in question was both direct and gracious about the matter.

Here are a couple items about when I actually see better than I ever could at normal distances with no magnification because of my screen enlargement software. This does not mean the view is recommendable, but…
Some of my comments about the Quaker-themed bit from Steven Prothero on Steven Colbert where one of them said that Quaker Meeting is like the city bus:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/04/its-like-city-bus-with-botox.html

Here is the bit off my other blog about the topic:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/04/oatmeal-people-ride-bus.html

Here is an item about trying to figure out someone’s electronic imagery.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/01/blowing-up-puppies.html

Here is an item about getting to say with impunity things one probably should not say aboard a ferry
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/06/rantwoman-gets-around.html

Here for the sake of conversational diversity is today’s item off DiversityInc about the Occupy protests. In a fast first pass I see no disability-specific content. Nevertheless, this link is included here to make the following point, which I hope a number of people will take to heart: I really hate not being able to read as much on my own as I used to and sometimes it becomes almost absurdly important tnat there be space in conversations not only to talk about various other Friends’ fixations but maybe possibly to talk about the content of the thimbles full of reading I get done. I see NO conflict between this point, respect for people’s time and TIMELY and APPROPRIATE interaction with requests for help. Extensive further tirade available almost instantly if asked.
http://diversityinc.com/generaldiversityinformation/diversity-strategies-to-keep-occupy-wall-street-protesters-at-bay/?mgs1=8f7c5XPowS

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 24 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-24T13:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Today’s rant includes some observations and suggestions about Meeting life and also some topics that the press of time is probably going to save me from indulging my temptations to ramble too far about. Well probably. As I write I have been pulling out themes and asking myself which themes are specific to me, which speak to things going on in others’ lives as well as mine, and what do I wish Meeting would do about the topics. I am curious what themes or comments in these areas stick out for others. You are welcome to ask me more detail about my thoughts; I am likely to be led to share at least somewhat selectively whether you ask or not. Again, if others emit contributions to my disabilities awareness efforts before I get around to mine, I am happy to share the trouble and to TRY to take the day off.

Today’s to-do list (Meeting Friends might or might not care about anything past about the first 3 items):
Here is a shameless promo link about an upcoming PBS documentary called Lives Worth Living on Thursday night. Check local listings:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/08/lives-worth-living-pbs-documentary.html

I confess, I have two televisions I do not even plug in, and I need to check listings myself. 10:00 sounds too late to invite myself over to anyone else’s house, even some of my more TV-positive neighbors. But I mean to watch somehow and would be curious if Friends watch it about reactions.

Quality of Worship: what if for spoken ministry we decided to do that Human Microphone thing all the Occupy protests are doing? Would people be able to hear any better? Would people passing through be appalled? Would all the people with long protest experience who are very grateful to be sleeping in their own beds feel a glorious sense of solidarity? Would all the Friends who might come to a Meeting retreat about equality but would not necessarily go anywhere near Occupy Seattle be nonplussed? How might our much-eldered Friend with the ministry of audible eye rolling react? Would anyone realize the Human Microphone thing is charmingly retro, evocative of 19th century hymnody and brilliant for “what if the power were to go out even if we had a movable mic?” Should we just start with announcements?

Quality of Worship: It was wonderful to see both Nasturtiums in Salad Friend and Mr. Nasturtiums in Salad Friend at Meeting. Mr. Nasturtiums in Salad, also known as Walk Cheerfully Answering that of God inEveryone Friend had a stroke a few months ago and now lives in an adult family home and uses a wheelchair. It is wonderful to know that they came on ACCESS and that their trip on ACCESS was a positive experience. was also glad to see they found our entry sufficiently accessible, and to think about how much it must mean to Nasturtiums in Salad Friend to stillb e able to worship with her husband.
When I think about Meeting life, although I have rich and colorful experience with bus blessings, that of God aboard Metro, and the peace testimony as realized in the “crip fight” section at the front of the bus, I hear lots of people talking in different ways about time and difficulty of travel. Does this suggest to me any need for more scheduling of events to make the most of time spent traveling and time together? I also in a few cases hear comments where I wish care committees were better informed about ACCESS, how to use its services and how to deal with its exasperating features. What do others hear in this area?

Sartorial decision: what do Quakers look like? If I were to decide to go be part of the faith community contingent to Occupy Seattle, the invitation says to wear clerical garb. Quakers are all ministers of God. In our meeting, two big themes are basically denim and Birkenstocks or Dayglo yellow and bicycle gear. What do Quakers look like to you? What fashion advice do you have about what to wear to Occupy Seattle? Decision of the day: skip the faith community visitation.

Make agenda for meeting I have to facilitate on Wednesday. I get to facilitate because quite awhile ago I persuaded someone else that things would go much better if she shared the task. Now for BIG starters, people at least feel heard.
Work with Blind Next Door Neighbor, one of two surprising volunteers who spoke up when the question of me sharing the facilitation task came up last month. Surprising volunteer #1 used to be a secretary for a local department store executive but she had a stroke fairly young. Now she has to tell us almost every month about the shunt in her head and MAYBE the information and referrals function at the Friendly Neighborhood Center... will manage to connect her with ways to avoid what most concerns her about her experience but maybe not. Anyway, she is on tap to help facilitate next month.
Blind Next Door Neighbor’s catch phrase is “my mother raised me to be a health independent person who happens to be blind.” We get reminded of this frequently,sometimes seemingly at random, sometimes in exact conjunction with some increment of inappropriately assumed need for assistance or offer of help. Anyway, maybe people need a break from whatever my stock utterances are. Work out what parts of the meeting Blind Next Door Neighbor gets to facilitate. Help Blind Neighbor figure out who she wants to ask to be a spotter to help her identify people to call on. Think about whether to suggest that we all look for ways to connect aspiring facilitators with training workshops and ways to practice?
Review some ground rules. The most obvious: one person at a time because at the Friendly Neighborhood Center… people all tend to talk at once when things get hot. I went to a meeting facilitation workshop awhile ago where those in attendance had a go-around and mentioned three different sets of “ouch language.” Maybe meeting under the care of the holy spirit is supposed to obliterate the need for ouch language, but in my experience even God cannot move very easily among us without some kind of shared language.
Do I need to ramble about facilitating while blind, interpreting while blind, interpreting while blind for the facilitator, interpreting for the facilitator while blind and trying to do simultaneous interpretation of other interpreters’ heavily accented English? To be honest, somewhere in here I hit an “it’s TOO MUCH” threshhold, but….

For now skip some possible rambles about disabilities awareness and protests, parenting and protests, parents with situations to hold in the Light, public image and protests,…

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

October 23 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

Paraphrasing a trailer Quaker Tweeter Friend tweeted awhile ago about the forthcoming Muppet movie, this rant rated for APPROPRIATE audiences.

Hi Friends,

Today’s posting is devoted to the Muppets in honor of Muppet Fan Neighbor. I expect there is some Meeting-related point in here, but I have not stumbled over it yet and am open to suggestions.

Muppet Fan Neighbor is one of the regular “building community” customers at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing, the computer lab in my building. “Building Community” works on the same principle as the woman I heard on the radio recently talking about what a great thing it would be if people spent dramatically more time in online games than they already do now. Muppet Fan is one of many customers who come to watch videos and hang with friends and neighbors and talk obsessively about some topic or another, in her case the Muppets.

Muppet Fan Neighbor earns her Nom de Blog by having an interest in the Muppets almost as obsessive as some guys I knew in college who could, in chorus recite every line of every Monty Python movie ever. Muppet fan Neighbor cannot quite do that about Muppet media, but her enthusiasm definitely puts my earnest fandom to shame.

To the delight of funders everywhere, Muppet Fan neighbor actually sometimes also tries to do many of the necessary activities moving online in our modern age. We know Muppet Fan Neighbor does this because she tends to forget steps needed to do it all herself and needs to ask for help. She cannot really read enough to be able to follow my directions and adding a screen reader would just increase brain overload for her. But through the wonders of teamwork there usually is someone around who can help her across her hurdles.

I also esteem Muppet Fan Neighbor for:
--an inspiring but somewhat worn lime-green reflective safety vest, knee-length to boot.

--this wonderful fold-out hat from somewhere in the International District. It’s not just a lovely broad-brimmed hat, it also doubles as a fan.

--sharing my irritation with strobe light fire alarms. I am glad, I guess, for regular reminders that our building’s fire alarm system works. Strobe lights are a very good thing for deaf people but Muppet Fan Neighbor and I have different reasons these alarms give us headaches.

Unlike me though, Muppet Fan Neighbor does not even get to blame her nearly hopeless inability to read social cues of the “Could we have maybe a little less of…” on vision loss.

I missed a meeting of modest consequence on Wednesday. I have been asking people what I missed and Friday it was Muppet Fan Neighbor’s turn. We were both at a multilingual training event about fire safety and disaster preparedness. As soon as I arrived I heard Muppet Fan Neighbor’s voice from across a large room. I had no idea where she was and needed to put things down but I nearly walked into her after I put things down. Someone had already briefed me about a couple subtle points but I needed to hear from Muppet Fan Neighbor what it was I was likely to be hearing about 100,000 times from Muppet Fan Neighbor and several other neighbors.

Alas. Not even Muppet Fan Neighbor absorbed whatever the news is about high quality nutrition in the vending machines. Still I was really, really glad Muppet Fan Neighbor was there. The information we needed to absorb is not that complex. It was important to get “everyone” in a room with interpreters to sort out misinformation connected with different cultures and histories AND we need people like Muppet Fan Neighbor who, HOPEFULLY can help repeat the key points a zillion times for everyone they meet so introverts like me can pay attention to what else might be needed.

Anyway, now edification written by other people:
Chatter about muppets with disabilities
http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/muppets-with-disabilities.1949/

Chatter by Muppet fans about their disabilities. Not much about Muppets even though it’s a Muppet forum.
http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/disability-corner.11568/

The MuppetWiki
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Characters_with_disabilities

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3941544,00.html

The word Muppet as slang, disability-themed and otherwise.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbouch/F2322273?thread=7268471

The urban dictionary search results about the same topic. WARNING: it’s urban dictionary. Even clicking on the Muppet link will generate vulgarities I would never knowingly have, say, my mother read without warning. The usage show to me reflects more UK usage than US. Other than that, the language ranges between irksome, derogatory, and downright vulgar. Who knew? How dare anyone do that to the Muppets?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Muppet

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 22 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Dear RantWoman and RantWoman’s mass eldering list:
Thanks, (RantWoman) for the idea of the Service Python (or gecko, etc.). I just got this from my brother and hope all will enjoy it. The picture makes it especially funny, but the text does a good job of explaining as well. Enjoy.

Friend who still gets to get by without a nom de blog.

WALKING THE DOG
Reportedly, a woman was flying from Seattle to San Francisco.
Unexpectedly, the plane was diverted to Sacramento along the way. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft the plane would re-board in 50 minutes..

Everybody got off the plane except one lady who was blind.

A man had noticed her as he walked by and could tell the lady was blind because her guide dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of her throughout the entire flight..

He could also tell she had flown this very flight before because the pilot approached her, and calling her by name, said, "Kathy, we are in Sacramento for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?"

The blind lady said,"No thanks, but maybe Buddy would like to stretch his legs."
Picture this: All the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill when they looked up and saw the pilot walk off the plane with a guide dog for the blind!

Even worse, the pilot was wearing sunglasses !

People scattered.

They not only tried to change planes, But they were trying to change airlines!

True story.....
Have a great day and remember.....
THINGS AREN'T ALWAYS AS THEY APPEAR.
A DAY WITHOUT LAUGHTER IS A DAY WASTED.

++++++++++++
Warning: RantWoman humor impairment alert.

RantWoman read the message the first time without looking at the picture. Then RantWoman remembered that this story goes around the internet at least a couple times every year and went back to look at the picture after she had already dispatched a response below.

This text is accompanied by a picture of the pilot in the sunglasses with a dog in a harness. RantWoman can guess why the picture did not survive RantWoman’s reply and forward efforts. RantWoman does not feel called to fuss about it.

If the pilot knows the passenger well enough to call her by name and to have her entrust her guide dog to him, naively I would think the pilot MIGHT know that it is most appropriate for him to use the leash rather than the harness; that MIGHT cut down on confusion. RantWoman has learned that ability to read details like this can never be assumed but RantWoman would not mind if people could just bring themselves just to treat the pilot like a human being and ask.

++++++++++++++++++++
Dear Friend….

First, thank you. This item qualifies. Remember my offer to take the day off--or at least try not to ramble at too great length in reply if someone sends disability-related content before I get around to sending anything out. This item goes around the internet a couple times a year but it definitely qualifies. I do though have a couple hopefully enjoyable items in queue including more than one way to jump up and down about service dog issues.

The service python and service gecko are not original; Friends are behind both of those. Nor actually are the service chickens which someone from a local agency told me about in connection with a previous job. Then there is the 4-foot mastiff named Puppy from my building, but he actually falls under the housing law part of the service dog item and does not, for instance, go to church.

As for blind people operating large moving vehicles, two items:
--The National Federation of the Blind, the self-proclaimed Voice of ...Blind, has been connected for decades to a project that is partly robotics, partly optical processing that theoretically could allow blind people to drive. Driving, cough, is not a priority for me although if the price were low enough to help a lot of seniors with unacknowledged but serious marginal vision issues....

--My friend who I read a lot of Russian history and undergraduate bluebooks for in grad school for a long time dated a guy who drove for the campus bus system. My friend told me that one day her boyfriend let her drive the bus, straight, no turns for a substantial stretch in the parking lot out at the bus barn. I told her I was not sure I wanted to know that and did not think to ask what her Seeing Eye dog was doing at the time.

As for things not always being what they appear, I feel another rant coming on so I think it best to stop for now.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

October 21 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

Friends

If you JUST want extremely useful information I think it would be nice for EVERYONE to understand, up-to-date info about service animals, please feel free just to scroll to the bottom and find the link there.

This item is dedicated to Service Python Friend who wishes to be held in the Light but in comparative anonymity. Service Python Friend will shortly have surgery to rid himself of a vile malignancy on his arm. Even though a spell of disability during recovery should be comparatively brief, Service Python Friend admits, basically, to being scared shitless. He also says he is a guy and guys are not supposed to get to show stuff like that.

Service Python Friend’s other notable concern involves tying his shoes during his recovery while one arm is comparatively immobile. I can relate. I remember wearing shoes I needed to tie one summer while I had my arm in a cast, but I have no idea how I got my shoes tied. I also remember sometimes being glad I had other footwear as well though Service Python Friend just does not seem like he would appreciate, say, Birkenstocks. Maybe I will see whether Service Python Friend needs some of those squiggly elastic laces little kids sometimes get to help them keep their shoes on.

I greatly esteem Service Python Friend and his ministry of mirth in the face of difficulty. Service Python Friend’s latest dispatch reports that he should be free of a vile malignancy and good as new by 2012. That is just in time for election season and getting rid of other malignancies in political life.

During the worst summer of my eye issues, as I was coming to Meeting week after week with a face full of various swelling and bruising, all of which my doctor got paid for, Service Python Friend suggested that what I really needed was a service python!

I demurred. A service python is definitely one of the better “I do not know what to say so I will offer something that might or might not miss the point, might or might not make the situation worse” suggestions ever. However, I don’t want a service animal that might eat the cat. Plus, people who have real credible, certifiable, certified service animals frequently have more than enough problems negotiating with cab drivers, other bus passengers, various kinds of public accommodations. the idea of adding interactions about a service python to all the other things one must negotiate when, for instance getting on a bus, just cracks me up.

Service Python Friend talks about his situation with the same wry comments he brought to my eye yuck; most of the time, I just crack up. I keep telling Service Python Friend he has to tell me if my laughter is too far beyond the bounds of good taste; so far he just tells me the dates of next increments of treatment. Then we digress, for instance about the current fashionable practice of having multiple people with various medical credentials quiz patients before medical procedures. What body part are we operating on? Which side of the body? What Is the problem? How did it occur? This is all well and fine if one’s body has just gone and grown a malignancy without asking permission; it’s plumb embarrassing if one has to keep saying to all and sundry that one has earned one’s trip to surgery trying a Stupid Kitchen Knife Trick or tripping over a crack in the sidewalk.

I suppose I could ask Service Python Friend whether he thinks there is any danger he will qualify for a service python himself. Instead, while he deals with temporary slightly disabling results of treatment, I am going to try the all-purpose conversational awkwardness evoker “oh, you have this problem, have you thought of….?”

If that does not work, I can wish Service Python Friend some surprising and uplifting increment of enlightenment comparable to my arm in a cast experience. During my summer of the worst eye yuck ever, I happened to get a short translation job involving a handwritten document and by far the WORST Russian handwriting I have ever seen—and it wasn’t just eyesight gone haywire. The document was undated but in the course of my work I learned it had been written when the author had his writing arm in a cast because of a fact material to the issue the translation was needed for. Suddenly all the problems with the handwriting made sense. Who would have known that my arm in a cast experience would wind up helping decipher effects of someone else having an arm in a cast?

I do have one piece of bad news for Service Python Friend. There is a small town in California where a woman with some kind of seizure disorder has a service snake or service lizard, I forget which. This service animal can detect some kind of indication that the woman Is about to have a seizure and send her some kind of signal she can use to regulate some of the effects. The local jurisdiction has enacted legislation decreeing that her service animal is entitled to the same considerations as a service dog in all public accommodations in the town. However, those chuckleheads in Congress just are not amused about thoughts of a service gecko, service chickens, or even trained miniature horses. As of last summer and regulations implementing the latest revision of the ADA, the ONLY thing that qualifies all the time as a service animal in public accommodations is a service DOG. A miniature horse sometimes counts too but there are extra regulations for that! In general the regulations are clear and categorical about many points:
http://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.htm

NO Service pythons! I hope Service Python Friend is not too disappointed.

In the Light.
(RantWoman)

October 20 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Today is my brother’s birthday. Some of my brother’s story is disability, although I am not sure how he identifies about the topic and a whole list of experiences. Some of his story is mental illness and substance abuse. Some of his story is someone who loves mountains and plants, listens well when he wants to, and still works with his faith. If you really must click away without reading, please think of all that and think Happy Birthday Brother before you go.

If you are feeling a bit hardier, this year we are already grateful that:

--My brother borrowed someone’s cell phone and called Mom recently. He called in the morning when he is more likely to be lucid and they talked for about half an hour. My brother has some recurring conversation themes. When he is lucid he can also talk about dreams and aspirations, some of which almost sound reasonable and doable. Well current themes involve a Cadillac, a large tract of land somewhere and possibly study of medicine, so maybe doable is too strong a word.

--My brother still has his job at the pizza dough plant. His hours took kind of a hit in the recession and he made a lateral move away from swing shift manager for the same hourly wage but he is still hanging in there. The job at the pizza dough plant is part of one triumph: my brother was on social security disability for a long time because of a rare rheumatological condition diagnosed shortly after high school, when he was just starting to get on his feet and find his way. The condition is so rare that the doctor he saw in Seattle had three patients from the whole NW with his exact condition. The condition most often at some point goes into remission. That happened with my brother years later than usual. As a result of that and of the steady job at the pizza dough plant, my brother did something pretty rare: he worked himself off of Social Security disability and frequently talks proudly about that even though things like health insurance remain a big pain in the neck.

--My brother has had stable housing for several years. It’s not lavish and he complains from time to time but it’s a big improvement over a long previous spell. I had to kick him out of my household twice. I had to help my mother kick him out of her household. Finally, at some point I got sheepish email from a family friend, something like “I haven’t seen your brother lately but I think he might be living in my shrubbery.” It was January—in Montana. I really could not imagine NOT knowing for sure if someone was living in one’s shrubbery though I could imagine this friend being reluctant to confront anyone. Awhile later, I had a “by the way….” Conversation with a social worker I had called about something else and she got the picture IMMEDIATELY. Awhile later I got email from the friend, something along the lines of “you didn’t have to sic a social worker on me but thanks.” Shortly after that, I heard from my brother and he finally got re-established about housing. My brother fancies himself a bit of a mountain man and would not necessarily mind a certain amount of sleeping out, but somewhere after that my brother talked about one time when someone gave him a set of long underwear that he said probably saved his life for awhile.

--My brother sometimes talks about quitting drinking but in the meantime he is a booze snob so he cannot afford to drink as much as if he had less pretentious drinking tastes.

--My brother seems to be free of any other substance abuse besides cigarettes and alcohol. This is really good for cutting back on paranoid hallucinations caused by wind moving in trees or intrusive appearances of space aliens trying to control his mind through the pressure relief shunts in his eyes.

--Maybe the pressure relief shunts really are a new way of communicating with space aliens, especially when combined with the electronic theft prevention system at WalMart. The more important point: something about my brother’s health regimen has so far gotten him several birthdays past the ones near where my dad and I started having detached retinas. Knock on wood. Maybe thank the space aliens?

--One of my brother’s conversational threads is about a long list of enemies. The enemies list starts from some circumstances and my sister and I together had an “Oh crap” moment during one of our “yucky topic good conversation” moments recently about the beginning point of my brother’s enemies list. Anyway, the good news is that despite the march of time and many other opportunities others might find to acquire new enemies, my brother’s enemies list seems to be stable and not growing.

Other items vaguely topical to my brother that might be more fun to read:
This post from my blog is about all kinds of things. The main point as far as my brother: I had some OW experiences because of early eye issues. My brother’s experiences at the same points were more like OW! OW! OW! We also wound up sharing a hospital room after later surgeries. My brother lgot sicker from the anesthetic than I did. He liked to drink a lot of Seven Up and watch more cowboy movies than Mom would permit at home for a whole month. I have no idea whether he even remembers the part about Mom reading to us about the Boxcar children.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-mother-my-mentor.html

Here is an inspiring item about a legally blind kid playing baseball. I have been seasoning a whole disabilities awareness rant about sports but maybe it is enough to say my brother found it a drag to have to keep telling football coaches that no, despite being tall, my brother is not a good candidate for football or baseball. In fact, this problem kept him from being able to do anything enough to acquire skills but did not save either him or me from having to cope with needing the very same skills in Phys Ed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/doug-wells-legally-blind-_n_1003306.html?1318259835&ncid=webmail3

A blog post from Jim Wallis about standing up to bullies. People get bullied because of all kinds of things that set them apart. I appreciate this post’s comments about sexual orientation but I also appreciate the post’s call for others to stand up to bullies too. Probably I could also dig up some depressing statistics about kids with disabilities being also targets of bullying.
http://blog.sojo.net/2011/10/19/standing-up-to-bullies-on-spirit-day-what-would-jesus-do/

But this is enough for now. Happy Birthday Brother.

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 19 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Today’s message is several items about deaf people, language issues, and other life changes. I am seasoning whether to make this more than one entry. Frankly, I am not quite sure why the topic is so firmly evoking Inner Blowtorch but I am offering a variety of choices about how to interact with the topic. The material probably most topical to do with anything at Meeting is at the bottom; I expect Friends will find the excursion to get there variably interesting.

First, a blog link to a video about sign language interpreters, presuming on people’s time and capacities, and privilege.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/07/really-great-client-education-sign.html

The video link on this blog page is about 6 minutes long. Warning: the F word appears once along with pointed discussion of ethics. Youtube serves up a bunch of other videos about sign language interpreting. I followed one link and got some great ones about teachers too.

The interpreter in the above video is a hearing person. Here is an item where people might actually work with a deaf interpreter. This Item is from the Seattle Times via an interpreters’ discussion list.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016474808_bhutanrefugee12.html

The rudimentary sign language used by deaf people who have never had a chance to attend school, for instance with their also unschooled hearing family members, is called home sign. Often an educated deaf person or a very experienced hearing interpreter will have the best success working out how to communicate with people in this situation. The article is interesting to me because it talks a little about this in the context of a community college class helping acclimate the refugees to life in he US and the elaboration of their language as they work together.

When I think about sign language and the power of people coming together, I think about the school for the deaf in Nicaragua. Apparently some member of the Somoza family was deaf and one of the dictator’s female relatives helped organize a school in the 1970’s before the Nicaraguan revolution. The first generation of students came from all over Nicaragua and all used individual versions of home sign. Over a couple generations and across several political regimes, the language has become much more complex with dramatically increased use of abstract concepts and metaphor. There are lots of articles about this; the one here seems like a decent basic introduction.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/09/18/4883.aspx

Now the lawsuit of the week. Medical facilities in Seattle are probably better about interpreter issues than in other parts of the country and I still spend a fair amount of time hearing about deaf people experiencing communications barriers. I expect that more cases like the one in this news item get reported on sign language interpreter lists than on spoken language lists but I see more than one a month on the email lists I read. In other words, 20 years after the ADA, with a number of processes in place to encourage people to get services to deaf people right, LOTS of people still miss the boat.
In the case here issues include:
Relying on fallible and non-functioning technology for one encounter.
Repeatedly failing to book an interpreter even when there is sufficient advance notice.
Repeatedly relying on untrained family members.
Unnecessarily traumatizing a child with exposure to complex and sensitive medical topics.

http://sentinelsource.com/news/local/hospital-settles-lawsuit/article_5673faa3-8b20-5c8d-a0e4-d65e8d021d48.html

Hospital settles lawsuit
A Keene hospital has agreed to pay a $25,000 federal fine and put in place a program to provide interpreters to patients who are deaf or hard of hearing in a settlement of a lawsuit alleging discrimination.

In documents filed last week in U.S. District Court in Concord, Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene disputed the discrimination claim and denied liability in the case, which is the second lawsuit against the hospital alleging discrimination against a deaf patient in seven years.

“We agreed to this consent decree because we are committed to providing effective communications with our deaf and hard-of-hearing patients and we continue to focus on patient-centered excellence at the hospital,” said Sandra M. Phipps, senior director of development and communications. “It’s our commitment to provide compassionate, quality health care for every patient every time and in our looking at the consent decree and examining programs in place, we do recognize that the level and consistency of services to our deaf and hard-of-hearing patients in the past is not what we expected and not what they deserved.”

The recently resolved case involved three visits to the hospital in October 2009 by a patient, Laura Waldren, who is deaf. According to court documents, Waldren made an appointment at the hospital to see a doctor and requested a sign-language interpreter be present at the visit, which was scheduled for two days later. When she arrived at the appointment, an interpreter was not available and doctors and nurses relied on written notes to communicate with Waldren, documents showed.

A few days later, Waldren contacted the hospital to inform officials that she needed to be seen in the emergency room and would need an interpreter. Waldren’s mother, Jeanne Waldren of Vermont, drove her to the hospital, along with Waldren’s 9-year-old daughter. When they arrived, hospital staff said a sign-language interpreter was not available and relied first on a faulty video interpretation system before requesting that Waldren’s mother interpret for them.

Waldren’s mother, who is not a trained sign-language interpreter, had difficulty explaining technical medical terms to her daughter, but felt she had to act as an interpreter for her daughter to receive medical care, according to the complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And because Waldren’s mother had to be with her daughter in the examination room to serve as an interpreter, Waldren’s young daughter also had to be in the room while the doctors discussed sensitive medical issues with Waldren, the complaint said.

Following the emergency room visit, Waldren made a follow-up appointment a few days later and, again, an interpreter was not available so doctors relied on written notes and Waldren’s mother to explain that she would need an outpatient surgical procedure, according to the court documents. Waldren’s mother was not in the room when doctors asked Waldren to sign a consent form for the surgery, which Waldren didn’t understand, according to the complaint. Throughout her visits, Waldren was never asked to sign a waiver form agreeing to see a doctor without an interpreter, which is part of the hospital’s written policies, according to the complaint. The hospital’s policy on providing services for patients who are deaf or hard of hearing was stipulated in a 2005 settlement between the hospital and an unidentified patient and the Disability Rights Center, according to court documents.

According to the 51-page consent decree in the latest case, the hospital has 90 days to design a program to provide appropriate aids and services to patients. Among the requirements of the settlement: the hospital must designate at least two staff members who are available round-the-clock to arrange for auxiliary aids, such as interpreters, when needed by patients; it has to compile a list of freelance interpreters within 30 days and sign a contract within 60 days with an interpreter to be available when needed; and it must create and maintain a log of requests for auxiliary services.

A team of hospital officials has been working for about three months on reshaping the hospital’s program to improve services for people who need interpreters and building its network of sign-language interpreters who can work on-site when requested, said Phipps, the hospital’s spokeswoman The hospital has added a new full-time staff position as coordinator for the hospital’s interpretation services and is in the hiring process, Phipps said. The agreement also requires training for staff members and postings in the hospital directing patients on how they can request interpretation services if they need them.

The N.H. Business Review reported that the hospital also reached a settlement with Laura and Jeanne Waldren that was not disclosed in court documents.

Casey Farrar can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1435, or cfarrar@keenesentinel.com.

Miscellaneous informational bits
A deaf person whose first language is ASL will sometimes write English with ASL syntax. This can be important to know when looking at written documents and can be a big difference between someone who learns ASL as a child and older people who lose hearing after a lifetime of work and reading and writing in English. For extra entertainment value, one can mix in with ASL syntax literal translations done by someone working from a dictionary for another language into English.

American Sign Language and English are two different languages. Assuming someone will use ASL just because he or she has lost hearing is just like assuming someone with vision loss will automatically and instantly be adept at Braille. Ha!

There is a Law and Order episode where the twist revolves around whether a deaf or hearing person wrote a message through the relay system to assist deaf people with making phone calls. Two deaf people who both have TTY’s or an internet connection will contact each other directly and type back and forth. If a conversation involves a deaf and a hearing person, calls will go through a relay system: the deaf person types and an operator reads it to a hearing person; the hearing person speaks and the relay operator types for the deaf person.
For anyone just assembling current info, here is a link to the WA Relay Service; at this point there are also internet-based relay services:
http://www.washingtonrelay.com/

===============
Thinking about different experiences:
My family had a long-time friend who lost hearing due to a stroke at some point in mid-life. I never knew him before he lost his hearing. He could lip-read really well and he and my mother could talk for hours. For me, it was easy to get him started talking just by writing a question or two on paper. I am not sure why no one ever thought to ask him about a Voice carryover telephone, one that would have allowed him to talk but required callers to have a relay service type the other side of the call.
To me sometime it would be interesting to do worship sharing, say at a retreat, about Friends experiences of disability over time, both lifespan and in terms of different realities in different eras.

For the woman in the article above, insisting on communicating by writing notes was completely inappropriate because she used and preferred another communication method. However for many people who lose hearing late in life, writing notes can be really, really important.

Our Meeting has had two different Deaf members at different times. One I think married someone who had done a lot of interpreting for him; they frequently worshipped together and Meeting budgeted for an ASL interpreter as part of including the whole family in our community. In the other case, the Friend relied on his wife and never used any other option; all of their children also used Sign language .

Once in awhile I am called to meditate about whether some message has not gotten through just because of literally not being heard.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

October 18 Disabilities Awareness Response

2011-10-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

Dear God

RantWoman is sincerely grateful for evidence of Friends interacting with the fruits of this month's leading.

RantWoman still keeps showing up in the conversation.

Please have mercy on us all.

RantWoman

Oct 19
Dear RantWoman and others,

I commend this video to you all. I was aware of a lot of what it suggests, but there were other parts that were new. I had long ago learned that you should always ask any person with a disability if they would like help. However, I think the wording of "how can I help you" was especially good in the setting. Maybe we should be asking: May I help you - and if so, how?

The visuals on what different legally blind see was very helpful.

I was aware of the etiquette re seeing-eye dogs (and any service dog), but it was good to see.

All the parts about orientation and how to tell blind people where things were (using the clock image) was really useful.

The statistics on how many folks use white canes and service dogs were surprising to me. It was good to be reminded about the best way to offer guidance.

The examples of how to NOT help were good because they were overdone to make a point, but it was easy enough for me to picture myself making at least some of the errors!

Thanks RantWoman
Friend who for the moment gets to get by without a Nom De Blog

Dear Friend...

I am glad you liked the video and I appreciate your leading to encourage others to interact.

To be honest, I would be grateful to know others are led to interact and maybe led directly to interact even before they hear your bllessings. We are all ministers of God and some of this exercise really is about asking everyone to consider what you as individuals might be called to do.

I am not sure it's fair to apply the concept of gathered meeting from the blog link at the bottom to this particular approach to mass eldering, but the second link does have some further links to resources about eldering that look great. Still, I appreciate many people having the same information so I do not have to interact one on one eighty zillion times about each topic. That does not mean I do not want to interact at all.

I am glad you appreciated the visuals about different vision patterns. I hope you also interacted with the text below about all the wonky extra stuff that goes on for me personally. Excuse me for jumping up and down on the point, but I did not really quit doing sudoku during worship just because of everyone's brilliant eldering. I quit doing sudoku after a procedure involving one eye incrementally messed up both eyes enough that it was just enough more work to do sudoku not to have any benefit as far as centering but there is a whole bunch of stuff I really cannot control.

The information about orienting people and the clock method for food are pretty standard. Personally, usually by the time food is on my plate I can see where things are but frequently the contents of dishes at potlucks are a total mystery until I ask someone.

I agree. The numbers about who uses white canes or seeing eye dogs sounded surprising as numbers. However, if I count up people I know and what they do or do not do,I think the numbers are pretty representative. I also think some blind people are just maniacs and others do denial or do not want to deal with anything that marks them or marks a difficult truth. But you are welcome to ask in person about the blind people as maniacs question. It also occurs to me that I should ask one couple I know whether they realize their walking patterns frequently take them across freeway on- and off-ramps.

As for making mistakes, believe me, I do too.

In the Light
RantWoman

http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/2011/10/gathered-meeting.html

http://inwardlight.org/

October 18 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends,

Email is saving writing time again. This item is a video about how a hospital can better serve blind and visually impaired patients. The video is well-done. The most important thing: ASK how can I help?

The origin of the video is a nice story, which is why I am including the text not just the links. It’s also a nice contrast to my interpreter list lawsuit of the week email, ironically about another hospital in NH that has had to get sued multiple times about abysmal treatment of deaf patients.

I assume the NH Association of the Blind site has interesting material but I watched the video on Youtube and then poked at some of the other stuff served up by YouTube. The video mentioned here is about 15 minutes long; I of course have quibbles, cavils and annotations below the end of the email.

"How Can I Help You?"
Last year, client members of the Advocacy Committee of the New Hampshire Association for the Blind shared personal stories about difficulties they had experienced as persons who are blind or visually impaired in hospitals and other medical practices and facilities.

The group asked:"How can we change things?" "How can we train hospital staff so we can have the same access as sighted people?"

The decision was made: "Let’s make a training video."

With this goal, the committee got serious, deciding what situations would best illustrate the problems blind and visually impaired people often face while getting medical care.

The committee met with Concord Hospital and discovered they had a partner with a strong interest - and the ability to produce training videos. The Committee wrote the script, acted the roles, and trained hospital staff and volunteers, the hospital filmed the video.

Partnering also with the New Hampshire Hospital Association, the NH Medical Society, and the Home Care Association of NH - total memberships of these partners total over 2,000 medical practices in New Hampshire alone - this video is now available to all.

To Watch and\or Download: Go to: http://www.sightcenter.org/ - on the front page menu open Resources Tab, select Video Links, read the story of how the video came about and select Watch or Download.

You can also see it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlP7mCr3LmQ

It is the hope of the New Hampshire Association for the Blind, that any organization that wishes may use this video for staff and volunteer training purposes and to promote accessibility for persons who are blind and visually impaired. We also encourage others to create similar tools and disseminate them broadly.

Thank you,
George Theriault President & CEO
New Hampshire Association for the Blind

Now some quibbles, cavils, at least one confession, and further annotations due to peculiar focus first of all on my own issues:

Vision Experiences
There is a sequence of images simulating several different vision experiences. They left out floaters and double vision and did not mention changes in color perception, reaction to glare, and various other points that, for me, make mind-altering substances basically superfluous. I was reading the other day about some more things to try about indoor glare but that does not do anything about the stuff fgoing on inside my eyes.

Seeing Eye Dogs:
Different Seeing Eye Dog schools have slightly different approaches and commands. The man in the video at one point uses a Follow command. I have never seen guide dog uses I know use that command and I think it might be a different schools issue.

Seeing Eye Dog confession:
In grad school I read for a colleague connected with my program. She had recently gotten her first seeing eye dog, a big friendly Labrador who almost did not make it through her first year ofwork for chasing squirrels. Sparkle, the dog, would recognize me across the library and start dragging my friend toward me. My friend had no idea what was going on and one day I made the mistake of saying Hi to the dog before I said Hi to her. She INSTANTLY knew what was wrong and after that I always said Hi to my friend and TRIED not to talk to the dog until they were safely at the table and the dog was at liberty to greet.

Sighted Guide / Being Led Around / Mobility:
You are getting this video rather than either a rant about things other blind people and I do that completely annoy each other, about how flocks of blind people sometimes handle getting around in groups, or about all the white-cane related things I spent my White Cane Awareness Day doing before I even left the house.

One IMPORTANT point: if you are even thinking of offering to lead me around, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS ask first. I have lots of issues of stride length and body size. One of the things that made me think about carrying a white cane was making a list of lots of injuries of varying severity related to not seeing things. I just DO NOT have either margin about some safety issue or time and words to argue about split-second decisions. One benefit of carrying a white cane is that I use my eyes to avoid big things and the cane finds stuff I used to look down a lot about. When I started using a white cane and walking more erect, a whole bunch of back and neck pain magically went away!

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 17 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

Friends

My last multimedia contribution was so popular, here are a couple other items. I have looked at the first but not the second which I definitely mean to do. I have not thought about these items enough to pull out something obviously relevant to Meeting life—beyond the fact that I promised you all daily dispatches and I have other things I need to focus on today!

Assistant Secretary of Labor Kathleen Martinez on National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/media/webcast/20110916-ndeams/

Last year about this time, there was some kind of event in observance of this occasion out at Microsoft. I got an invitation to go for free and told the coordinator of the (Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing) that I was sure we needed to be there. I did not particularly ask permission; I just said we needed to be there. I prepared some topical materials and spiffed up the “This is my name and here is my elevator speech” routine I trot out about quarterly for trips to Microsoft. Alas, I forgot to invite any colleagues. The forgot to invite is telling: colleagues at the Friendly Neighborhood Center ... can be a mixed blessing. Just coordinating the logistical and cognitive aspects of getting from A to B is sometimes non-trivial for people who don’t drive, use wheelchairs, typically have variable coping strategies. My punishment for this oversight: I had to stay with our exhibits and did not get to hear Sec. Martinez speak except on a giant screen in a noisy exhibitor hall. Then I returned home and realized from a happenstance conversation that I frequently see her sister at a nearby bus stop. Her sister said they did not get to get together at all the last time she was in town.

On a different topic, the National Girls’ Collaborative Project Webinar on making events more accessible for Youth with Disabilities. Emphasis on computer science and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields.
http://www.ngcproject.org/events/events.cfm?eventid=202

In the Light

(RantWoman)

Explicit: "Should"

2011-10-17T00:36:00.001-07:00

RantWoman started out to post about Full Moon Meeting for worship and whether holding Full Moon Meeting for Worship instantly qualifies one for status as a Bad Friend. RantWoman started this before one full moon nad it has lingered in Drafts just past another full moon.

RantWoman regrets to announce that MERELY holding Full Moon Meeting for Worship, in RantWoman's estimation, is NOT enough to qualify one for status as a Bad Friend. RantWoman is acutely aware however that in proclaiming this point she is deviating seriously from the New Testament primitive Christianity Revived world of early Friends. Tough!

RantWoman is perfectly well aware that penning her comment in that tone might most definitely lead others to proclaim exactly that comment qualification for membership in the Association of Bad Friends. Tough.

Rantwoman is more than legalistic enough to point out that one is ONLY allowed to nominate oneself to the Association of Bad Friends.

RantWoman has to be true to movements of Spirit in her life and heart. RantWoman keeps finding herself rebelling against all that New Testament stuff about the God depicted there being enough and people having no need of anything else or anything from previous generations. New Testament characters may have bought the concept that Christ alone is enough. RantWoman for her part is fond of the book of Eccliastes and, horrors, RantWoman hears things in full moon worshuip and tending to the seasons and cycles of time that she really needs to stay oriented. RantWoman also already has a rather long list of ways to qualify for the Association of Bad Friends even without this sort of heterodoxy about observance of ways to mark time.

For instance, RantWoman is relieved to learn via Facebook that at the Association of Bad Friends one can get eldered even if the main occasion for eldering over at AssBadFriends is insufficient silliness! RantWoman will do the best she can to get back to this point. But first...

RantWoman is reflecting on two "once a generation", the World Gathering of Friends in Kenya and revision of the NPYM Faith and Practice.

RantWoman is mentally composing queries for a Friend from her Meeting who plans to attend the world Gathering to pose for our Meeting:

From Really Good Questions Friend, given all our diversity, what holds us together? RantWoman would not QUITE go so far as to characterize her Yearly Meeting as a den of Goddess-friendly, queer-marrying, Buddha-citing heterodoxy, but RantWoman is pretty sure other Friends might and RantWoman wants to uphold the Light of Friends from our Yearly Meeting venturing into the wider maelstrom.

What do we want our Friend to take with her? What might we put into a "briefing book" to help her prepare or give her something to fus with on the plane over? Are there specific Bible passages that speak to Salt and Light meets Full Moon Worship or to that Jewish Buddhist universalist listen with respect to everyone's spiritual language thing?

What do we want the Open Places Friend from our Meeting to bring back? RantWoman is pretty sure there will be much to hear in terms of living with climate change, global challenges, and being a Friend in hostile environments. RantWoman is all ears.

The other once a generation exercise on RantWoman's mind is revising our Book of Discipline. This is proving less straightforward than simply coming up with queries.

For one thing the task of structuring how the chapter on the Monthly Meeting gets seasoned has been delegated to our Worship and Ministry committee. RantWoman is pointedly AGAIN NOT COMMENTING on Worship and Ministry committee NOT INCLUDING RantWoman in its work. RantWoman guesses she is supposed to feel heard because the discussion resulted in articulation again of a request to bring a write-up of our discussion to Meeting for Business where there are likely to be at least SOME Friends younger than RantWoman.

RantWoman has a continuing concern in discussions of the Faith and Practice chapter on The Monthly Meeting: RantWoman continues to be the youngest person in the room (Today, the youngest person from her Meeting because Ashley W of Freedom Friends was also present) in discussions at Adult Education about this chapter. RantWoman thought the discussion might invite itself to a couple places known to be full of younger Friends. RantWoman was dumb enough to mention the idea to someone first; if RantWoman were a teensy bit surer of her Light about this topic, it might have been smoother just to do it.. Bad Friend.

RantWoman was interested to hear one voice known for thoughtful considerations also express concern in this generational shift direction. RantWoman notes that this concern was more about who is going to take care of aging Friends than about a sense of mission and something to share with the world. RantWoman apologizes if the following mental excursion is telling too much of the Truth, but perhaps God can carry RantWoman's intent. Yeah, sure, there are a lot of aging people who are going to need more care than RantWoman at least is happy about acknowledging. But RantWoman is unsure that being young in our age is entirely a picnic. RantWoman continues to listen to God and to what we all have to say to one another. But that is RantWoman and talking into what RantWoman hears is, um, no slam dunk.

RantWoman further notes a reference to the council of Nicea at one point when discussion in Adult Ed grew too Talmudical so RantWoman at least holds out hope for a sense of God alive in the actions of Friends.

The most Talmudical part of the session in Adult Education was about the sentence "Friends should come to Meeting for Business expecting that their minds will be changed." Some Friends felt it sufficient to say should come to Meeting for Business expecting that their minds MIGHT be changed. Either way, will or might are matters of faith; what is the matter of practice if one starts with the "Friends should come to Meeting for Business?"

RantWoman has a lingering thought about what gets written being sufficient for this time and what might be needed forever being a different thing.

In the multigeneration, march of time and difference vein, the question of disability wandered into the conversation. Unfortunately it wandered in as "Everyone has a disability" which is true but trivializes our differences. RantWoman thinks SOMETHING needs to get written into Faith and Practice about this, but RantWoman is unclear that it needs to get written in the chapter on the monthly meeting.

Drat. Now RantWoman gets to season what she herself feels further called to do and what there might be other hands for as well. Uhhhh....

At the time this was originally drafted, RantWoman was led to include the link for The 2011 Swarthmore Lecture

http://woodbrookegoodlives.blogspot.com/2011/10/swarthmore-lecture-2011.html

RantWoman apologizes but at this second she is not led either to re-read the item to figure out why she was led to include it here or to write any kind of abstract.

October 16 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

Query from this week’s bulletin:
10--16--2011 Are we conscientious in fulfilling obligations to the state and society while opposing those contrary to our understanding of the leadings of God?

I was going to write about voting even before reading this week’s queries. I consider voting both a great privilege and an obligation. For now I would like to concentrate on accessibility.

Partly to that end, here is some basic information about people with disabilities and voting. It is current as of the 2011 election season in King County WA. Your mileage may vary in other jurisdictions.

The main King County Elections page
http://kingcounty.gov/elections.aspx

The page that will, when updated carry information about where to go if one wants to vote in person using one of the Accessible Voting Units.

http://kingcounty.gov/elections/voting/accessible.aspx

Accessible Voting Units are special machines with a number of different features to make voting more accessible to people who are blind or low-vision, use wheelchairs, have certain dexterity impairments. As a result of the Help America Vote act, King County bought one accessible voting unit for each polling place. This occurred about 3 years before King County switched to all mail-in voting. The introduction of this accessibility measure made A LOT of blind people really happy because it meant they could vote in private without help from a reader and sometimes multiple officials and observers. Fewer blind people weighed in about the observations from multiple computer scientists that almost every model of touch-screen voting machine raised serious concerns about auditability and other computer security issues.

In King County, the AVU has audio in English; the county is also required by the Voting Rights Act to have ballots available in Chinese and as of the 2010 census apparently also in Vietnamese. The King County AVU has audio only in English. Voters who need one of the other languages either get to use the large print (not actually very large) or bring someone to read them the ballot.

The other accessibility barrier is really a snapshot of various polling places’ ability to interact with accessibility of physical location. Lots of polling places used to be in churches. There would have to be a wheelchair-friendly pathway to the polling place but the route there can be pretty circuitous, say from a parking lot. However there is no guarantee that getting to the parking lot will be doable: one polling place in my neighborhood has NO approach that does not involve very steep hills, hills too steep for most wheelchair users. This would mean a wheelchair user must either arrange a suitable ride or vote absentee.

Presently, with vote by mail, one either solves one’s accessibility issues at home OR one works out transportation to one of usually 3 sites where there is an Accessible Voting Unit. My list of topics evoking rants is already too long, but there are opportunities here if I were to feel so led.

The Secretary of State link about accessibility issues
http://wei.secstate.wa.gov/osos/en/voterswithdisabilities/Pages/InformationforVoterswithDisabilities.aspx

Speaking of civic obligation, the King County Forums are a project to have community conversations about a sequence of public policy topics in King County. I highly commend the Forums even though:
--I find parts of their website difficult to deal with at best and inaccessible at worst.
--The informational video accompanying Round 8 about transportation funding in King County had really a LOT of visual content that would be completely inaccessible to a totally blind person.
http://communityforums.org/

In the Light

(RantWoman)

A page full of graphics

http://kingcounty.gov/elections/widgets.aspx

October 15 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Today’s quandary: how does a peace loving Quaker or a proud member of Cranky Pacifists Opposed to Mayhem Everywhere or someone who has vigorously objected to our nation’s multiple recent military engagements write a sensitive respectful Disabilities Awareness item? I did not want to be creating thousands and thousands of new wounded warriors in the first place. Now I feel obliged and annoyed to need to address all the wounded veterans and their families now being asked to cope with the long-term consequences of our nation’s current war-fighting and combat medicine practices, obstructionist bureaucracies, … ! How?

I do not know. It’s a serious question I would love to delegate. I am seasoning whether I specifically am called to work harder at the task of saying something meaningful about the topic, especially about adding a whole new category of people really badly needing services at a time when our nation’s finances are groaning. Capacity to deliver services is already faltering because funding for services is already under attack (military metaphor intended) at every turn and there are plenty of opportunities to rant and rant and rant.

In the meantime, here is the best I could do:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-nobel-peace-prize.html
In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 14 Disability Awareness Item

2011-10-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Brevity is the soul of wit, or something.

Here Is a quote someone I know uses on the bottom of her email. I make fewer promises about ingenuity.
"Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live." - Neil Marcus

A disability awareness video clip. As a very weighty Friend from Multonomah would say, “It’s in British.” I think that means the sign language is different too.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSG6LGutkHo&feature=related

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 13 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

This Is just two informational items about National White Cane Safety Day. No zippy bullet points exactly though the first item contains a small dose of daily rant. The second item is just a reprinted press release. I have not looked at the info but I need to keep the link and sometimes use my blogs as a filing cabinet …

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/09/building-bridges-of-accessibility-walk.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-acb-pedestrian-safety-handbook.html

As an aside, blind people in the US are almost as good at schisms as Friends: one national blind consumer organization refers to itself as “The Voice of the Nation’s Blind.” The other refers to itself as “Aemerica’s leading ….” It’s nice they agree about White Cane day.

Topics to file that I may or may not get to:
Appropriate interaction with people’s mobility aids.

Other resources about curb cuts and walkability: curb cuts were originally designed for wheelchairs, but a whole lot of people pushing strollers and pulling various handcarts also use them. My mother’s opinion of the week: they are great but in Seattle they really need drainage.

“The wonders of sneaker-net” Just because of being at the right combination of meetings I get to email some telecomm executives about an issue to do with curb cuts and broadband deployment. In other words, Quakers are not the only ones seasoning various modes of meetings, what one does or does not expect of different meeting media, and why sometimes meetings in person really are the shortest route to the right information.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

October 12 Disability Awareness Item

2011-10-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

Friends,

Here are two Meeting-related blog entries behind my frequent observation that Hospitality Committee = Pastoral Care Plus Knives and Hot Liquids. The actual hot liquids moment is in the second blog entry.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/03/coffee-hour-meditations.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/08/god-are-you-out-of-your-mind.html

The first item refers rather frankly to a Friend’s hidden disability. A hidden disability is one that one would have to be told about to identify; the destription in this post is based on the Friend’s own description of her realities. She does not speak of this all the time, but she does occasionally speak fairly frankly of it.

I doubt this Friend reads blogs and I have not asked her whether she minds being assigned a rather too frank nom-de-blog. In fact, I decided that the nom-de-blog in the first entry really tells way too much of the truth. I have chosen not to edit history but do now refer to this Friend by the nom de blog used in the second entry. I also had to evaluate a whole bunch of things and realized that just probably there were a number of circumstances calling me specifically to try to work with some of the points vexing me.

The blog entries are true to my experience. If the details overwhelm you, please just hold them, hang with what I manage to appreciate, and be glad to have only your own problems. I hope it is clear that my thinking about several pieces of the story has lurched painfully into more evolved states as well.

Here is another Hospitality-related entry with a lovely observation by a child. I truly do not mind comments like the one here even though my capacity to seem well-adjusted varies a lot in general.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/04/present.html

For more language about care of community and practical matters as ministry see our Year of Discernment final report. Sorry but fishing for the exact passage I have in mind is more than I want to do right now.
http://blogofdiscernment.blogspot.com/2009/12/final-report.html

As an aside, another reason Hospitality Committee = pastoral care plus knives and hot liquids has to do with helping about memorials and dealing with grieving loved ones. Last year a couple other Friends and I went to a workshop put on by Marge Abbott about support and accountability committees and in general about pastoral care. Friends from Multonomah sent out a whole packet of information and there was a really nice write-up from I think Twin Cities Friends about handling memorials sensitively. Were I specifically telling the NPYM Discipline Committee about resources I would definitely mention this item even though I have no idea whether other UFM Friends have even looked at it.

Come to think of it, maybe there is a second hidden disability issue here : SOMEONE is doing too good a job of hiding distress. SOMEONE went home and poured out her heart in a blog and lots of people think Hospitality committee is just a challenge. SOMEONE has spoken only slightly of her personal distress. SOMEONE has been doing too good a job of seeming to cope and impeding her community’s access to opportunities to walk alongside difficult circumstance in all its messy and occasionally irksome detail.

My childhood kitchen experiences also keep showing up here when I try to write this. The main point: my brother and I both had cataract surgery pretty young and then several years later had surgery to remove scar tissue. In the interim we both learned a lot about the kitchen. My mother must have been absolutely maniacal about safety: she had two half-blind kids and a third one who always wanted to climb up and do what the big kids were doing. But there are also some subtle issues of language, dyslexia, facility about different categories of words, and capacity to articulate frustration all mixed up here. These are too much for this particular item but they still show up to be tripped over sometimes.

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 11 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

Today’s Disability Awareness Item starts with an obligatory rant:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/10/groupware-accessibility-bakeoff.html

Next is a couple interesting obituaries / tributes. The tributes are part of the text because they came in email, not with nice clean links. They are marked TRIBUTE 1 about Steve Jobs and TRIBUTE 2 about a guy named Dr. Jim Bliss, to help you skim. Finally there is another obituary which I hope Friends will find spiritually interesting even if the exact technical esoterica is not necessarily interesting.. Everything today has something to do with technology but I hope you can see it is not all just technology but also a certain crusading spirit playing out a few different ways.

I got this item unattributed. I assume it comes from some publication and has some byline and looking up the attribution is more than I can do in the time I have.

TRIBUTE 1
Subject: [VICUG-L] Stevie Wonder offered a perspective on Steve jobs' impact on the world that didn't get a lot of attention.doc
Stevie Wonder offered a perspective on Steve jobs’ impact on the world that didn’t get a lot of attention in the first round of reports about his death at age 56 on Wednesday from cancer.“The one thing people aren’t talking about is how he has made his technology accessible to the blind and the deaf and people who are quadriplegics and paraplegics,” Wonder said when he called me Thursday afternoon. “He has affected not just my world, but the world of millions of people who without that technology would not be able to discover the world.”Wonder first put his recording engineer, Femi Jiya, on the phone to talk specifically about how the various Apple products Jobs introduced over the last few decades had revolutionized the recording process.“Because of what Apple has done with their technology, everything we’re using in the high-end recording situation is now accessible to everybody,” Jiya said. "A lot of that is through Steve Jobs and his love of music, and him wanting to get that technology to everybody at a reasonable cost.“He developed Garage Band [recording and music editing software], so now a 15-year-old kid can be in his bedroom with his iPad playing around with Garage Band and come up with unbelievable ideas, which can then be taken to the next level… He has leveled the playing field; nobody else had done that.”Jobs also expanded that field to include groups of people who previously had little or no access to many technological innovations. That’s what left the biggest impression on the 25-time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and producer.“His company was the first to come up with technology that made it accessible without screaming out loud, ‘This is for the blind, this is for the deaf,’ ” Wonder said. “He made it part of the actual unit itself; there were applications inside the technology that allowed you to use it or not use it. The iPhone, iPad touch, iPod touch, all these things, even now the computer, are accessible to those who are with a physical disability.“In another sense, he has given the blind eyes to see the world, the deaf ears to hear the world," Wonder said. "I had wanted to meet him for a long time, and I’m just happy that before he passed away, I was able to meet him and say to him, ‘Look, you’ve changed the lives of millions and millions of people you may never ever meet. Truly you’ve been a blessing for those of us who’ve needed that kind of technology to do more things, to be part of this world, to be in this millennium.'“I’m just hoping that his life and what he did in his life will encourage those who are living still and those who will be born, that it will encourage them and challenge them to do what he has done,” Wonder added, “and not making the whole concept so complicated that people can’t use it -- you just make it one of your applications, it’s in your technology. That will then create a world that will be accessible to anyone with any physical disability, and anyone can buy it, even if that person doesn’t have lots of money.”REL Steve Jobs More than a turnaround Artist

TRIBUTE 2, partly free associating from Steve Jobs’ interest in typesetting, partly because a lot of quotes also speak to things to do with language and some points from my own experience about visual, pattern recognition aspects of learning foreign languages:

I know there are other Optacon users on this list. There may be some who don't know that Dr. Jim Bliss, one of the Optacon inventors, is terminally ill. I'm sending along this article about the Optacon and Dr. Bliss that appeared yesterday on an NPR website.

The Optacon allows blind people to "read" complex visual material through their fingertips.

Dr. Bliss:
As so many on this list have already said, the Optacon changed my life...I thank you for your tremendous contribution and may God be with you.
- G.

This week, James "Jim" Bliss announced he is dying.

In an email message Bliss, an MIT Ph.D. electrical engineer who developed technology for the visually impaired, wrote that he has "terminated all treatment" for his multiple myeloma and "joined Hospice" after battling cancer for eight years.

Bliss developed a life-changing device for blind people that few outside that community have ever heard of. The Optacon, which Bliss created with Stanford Professor John Linvill (who first dreamed up the idea to help his blind daughter, Candy, read) looks like a clunky, 70s-era tape recorder with a cable attached not to a microphone, but to an optical sensor. By enabling users to gather visual information through touch, the machine has been a game-changer.

Many report the Optacon is the single best device that allows for a life of independence, to learn foreign languages, become an engineer, read music or simply peruse one's own mail.

Indeed, Bliss's posting about his terminal cancer on a listserve devoted to the device, Optacon-L, generated scores of responses from blind people all over the world describing how the device transformed their lives by allowing them to "read" complex visual information through their fingertips, rather than with their eyes.

In contrast to Braille (which expresses letters as simple raised dot patterns) or speaking machines (which perform optical character recognition and read text aloud), the Optacon, (or OPtical to TActile CONverter) senses dark-and-light areas of ink and paper, converting them into a vibration pattern that can be felt with the fingertip and, with experience, interpreted by the brain. The device can also be used to "read" information directly from a computer display.

What's startling about the notes to Bliss is that so many blind people have relied on their Optacon devices for more than 30 years. Some recount having two machines on hand to make sure at least one is available when the other undergoes repairs. Many report it's the single best device that allows for a life of independence, to learn foreign languages, become an engineer, hold a job, read music, finally understand capital letters or simply peruse one's own mail.

Here's a sampling:

Dear Dr. Bliss,
I'd like to add my voice to all of those many who have praised the Optacon and its incredible life changing impact on all of us who use it...In my opinion, not even the enormous impact that today's most proliferate and productive technologists like the late Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others can in any way measure up to or compare with the positive good and many blessings that your tireless efforts and the work of pioneer John Linvill have brought about via the Optacon. This remarkable instrument...is an example of humanity at its very best.

Or this from a woman in Wales:
Yes, thank you for all you've done in promoting the Optacon. I taught myself cursive writing in Russian and English using it; began transcribing books into Braille; as well as studying New Testament Greek and Biblical Hebrew inmgraduate school. Countless other things, too, but those stand out for me. God give you strength, Dr. Bliss.

"As a software engineer," one man writes, "I have found it to be the mos useful tool I have to do my job."

Bliss apparently took his role as a creator of the Optacon quite seriously, according to Don Bishop, who writes:

I received my OPTACON in 1972 and your wife was one of my original Optacon training teachers at the motel on El Camino where the classes were held. At the time I lived just across the bay in Fremont and I distinctly remember that you personally carried the big box containing the OPTACON out to our car. How many CEO's do that?

I appreciate all you have done in the creation and marketing of the OPTACON as well as your participation in our list here where you've provided valuable input over the past few years.

One gentleman writes that the Optacon "still ranks as the best Enabling Technology invention that has helped so many people around the world have the freedom to read the printed word," and another woman says the device "gave me my job at IBM." A New Yorker writes of seemingly small but astonishing breakthroughs:

Before I got my Optacon, I knew nothing about print. Now, I know, for example, that often in books, the first word is written in capital letters, or the first letter of the word can be very big. I now know what italics looks like. Amazing.

And here, a user remarks on the dignity such a device offers:
Dr. Bliss, I have only one thing to add to all that has been said about the Optacon and that is that it is the one piece of technology which I would never give up. I could live without all the other gadgets, but giving up my Optacon would take away one of the very few links we as blind people have to the sighted world of print information. The Optacon is still the best device in terms of its versatility and its reliance on the user's own intelligence. Thank you for giving us a device that boosts our dignity by its very design.

Earlier this week I emailed Bliss to get his response. He wrote back saying that what surprised him most were the amazing things that long-time Optacon users said they were able to do with the device. "I suspect this is the result of rewiring of the brain to use parts normally used for vision," Bliss wrote. "That is why I've proposed a new Optacon be developed that has higher resolution, greater field of view, and displays more attributes such as color, intensity, etc."

When I asked for more details about Optacon 2.0 a day later, Bliss said he was too ill to write back. He expressed hope, though, that a new team of researchers working on a modern Optacon would soon find success.

(Comment: I think there is a development team working on ways to do tactile representations of images at a bigger scale than the one-finger Optacon output.)

Finally, A Quakerly Obituary about a non-Quaker
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/04/quakerly-condolences.html

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 10 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

One version of the Disabilities Awareness Harangue of the day, about the joys of life on the bus, got eaten by mysterious electronic gremlins. It’s not like I will be unable to reconstruct it, but other obligations are ahead of it in queue. Another version of the Harangue of the Day, about sports and assistive technology in the form of a mask to enable a legally blind kid to play baseball, is still seasoning. Still another about various annoying behaviors and ISSUES is simmering until the Irate Bitch to Quakerese filter goes somewhere vaguely productive. So here are more items about Famous Blind People:

First, former NY governor and Famous Legally Blind Person David Paterson, lately I think headed for a career as a sportscaster.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/02/plug-in-television.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/08/gov-paterson-in-news-again.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/01/belated-happy-birthday-louis-braille.html

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/02/also-rans.html

There is a "is it only blindness or....?" thread running through these items. Word.

Next, a bond trader. Bond trader is not really a career path that ever exactly crossed my mind, which in some respects makes this story even more interesting:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/12/wonder-blind-person-who-still-had.html

Next, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who technically is not “blind” but takes heat for the topic anyway:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/02/another-one.html

Finally, if one is going to adhere to the principle of asking precisely for help and expecting that one will be offered the help one asks for instead of various digressions and opportunities to revisit the trainloads of annoyances arriving here is a problem where it MIGHT be reasonable to articulate some sort of request for help with reliable signals.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/03/eye-rollingand-accessibility.html

In the Light

(RantWoman)

Car ride clearness Committee with Corn Chips and Fresh Caffeine from Cle Elum

2011-10-09T22:01:00.001-07:00

For the record, RantWoman has a Clearness Committee. RantWoman would say her clearness committee is functioning tolerably well. We meet at erratic intervals. We check in and hold changes in each other's lives. Questions get asked. Sometimes answers emerge. Sometimes we just sit with matters in silence. Sometimes RantWoman goes home. Sludge rattles loose in RantWoman's head on the bus ride home or while schlepping about the next day. Sometimes new Light comes. Sometimes RantWoman realizes one or another party has completely missed the point. Sometimes, it becomes clear that something else entirely is needed.

This is a longwinded way of saying RantWoman's current clearness committee is in no way responsible for anything causing consternation in RantWoman's current leading to oblige key individuals in her Meeting to observe National Disabilities Awareness Month. For one thing, RantWoman's entire observance is timed partly as a protest of Quaker Time. If RantWoman waited around to ask her Clearness Committee, this month might get observed sometime in the next millenium, probably after Ambassador Thwack the Badly Behaved White Cane becomes a Friend by convincement.

Coming back from Quarterly Meeting, RantWoman and her car ride companions stopped in Cle Elum for a round of caffeine, lattes all around. We left before lunch to help one of us get to work on time figuring we would munch on the giant bag of corn chips in the car. RantWoman's car ride companions had been listening to RantWoman's oblique grumbles while riding to and fro; they generously formed an ad-hoc clearness committee:

RantWoman, what do you want from your Meeting?

(RantWoman, thinking about how to translate the thought that abject groveling apology for various sins of omission and commission would be nice into acceptable Quakerese)

I really need reliable signals. Have I completely confused or offended you? USE YOUR WORDS because I darn sure cannot read your face. Okay, so lots of people have trouble even telling their right from their left when they try to give directions or orient RantWoman. How the heck can RantWoman necessarily expect Friends will automatically have the right words? Who said anything about RantWoman being reasonable?

There are some simple things that help a lot and that I want LOTS of people to know, but I do not always know instantly what the simple message I need to send is.

I really cannot identify things I CAN change or even apologize about if that is needed until way opens to figure out how to deal better with things I cannot change. So cope, because that's what I get to do too.

It's all trial and error and continuing revelation. If you are not up to that, it feels to me like you are not up to the workings of God. I am trying to leave that between you and God, but it feels like a rift, a disconnecting inconvenience and nuisance between us and I do not like that.

Perhaps that is enough to sit with, besides some blog bits:

http://gtitl.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-i-know-experimentally.html

the parable of the sower: some bear fruit, some fall on fallow ground, some lie about awhile before they germinate.

The ministry of Facebook and in-person contact. RantWoman was amused to learn from the editor of Western Friend that an item from a RantWoman letter to the editor of Western Friend turned up on Facebook, a zone where RantWoman really can only interact with teaspoonsful of the info torrents there. RantWoman guesses sometimes she gets to emit messages into the universe in faith regardless of whether RantWoman even learns of their fruit.

October 9 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Today I went to the library. Thanks to a new login procedure, I THINK people who need a screen reader or screen enlarger can now access these tools from any branch of the Seattle Public Library instead of only the downtown branch and the Columbia City branch.

Oops: the website still says only the following:
http://www.spl.org/audiences/adaspecial-services
but the accessibility tools available at any branch promise is still hoving out there.

Even before I went to the library, I decided just to mention some books I have found interesting:

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman
http://seattle.bibliocommons.com/item/show/2686192030_the_spirit_catches_you_and_you_fall_down

written by a social worker who was part of a care team for a Hmong girl with epilepsy and her family in Minnesota. The book is partly accounts of the medical team, partly discussion of how the girl's family coped and partly commentary on different collisions of culture.

Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language by Nora Ellen Groce
http://www.spl.org/audiences/adaspecial-services

Part ethnography, part history about a period when everyone on Martha's Vineyard used sign language. For 2-3 generations at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, inbreedining and isolation resulted in a population incidence of hereditary deafness about double the average in less isolated populations. This was enough that everyone just used sign language as a matter of course.

Privileged Hands by Geerat J. Vermeij
http://seattle.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1703067030_privileged_hands

When I whine about what a pain it is to do everything with screen readers and my lifelong allergy to things involving microscopes--because of always having to mess up the focus for everyone else, I get to think about going through Princeton in the 1960's, majoring in biology and doing everything in Braille on notecards. Dr. Vermeij is now a climate scientist who teaches at one of the Cal State U campuses. The book talks about his education and career, but I am not sure which of the things I heard him speak about in person are actually in the book.

In person he spoke of benefitting from life in post World War II Holland where the government instituted compulsory education for the blind. He also talks about doing his own field work but having to argue with his institutions about liability concerns when he needs to climb in and out of boats like everyone else. He also said he is bad at academic administrative work so he fulfils expectations about service to his institution by editing a lot of journals.

The best thing about meeting him in person though was one of many invitations to liberate myself from too much distress about not being Wonder Blind person. I was in a group where more than one person was talking about the difficulties of adjustment in midlife and he said very clearly that he thought it would be even harder to adjust to a big change than to grow up with more time practicing skills. He also talked about all this interesting field work along tide lines in different bodies of water but admitted he also still sometimes gets lost on his way to his office.

In the Light

(RantWoman)

October 8 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

I did not start out with any clear direction except that it’s National
Disabilities Awareness Month and I have a strong leading to ask
Meeting to interact about the topic NOW. I promised something every
day. To my surprise, considering my capacity for strong and wordy
opinions about lots of things, this promise is proving more daunting
than I expected; yet I persist. I do repeat my offer to take the day
off anytime I receive something with disabilities content including
content indicating substantive interaction with something I have
previously sent before I get around to sending anything out.

I have heard multiple people ask to be taken off the mailing list. I
am asking that you continue, not that you must read everything I send
but that you respect my concern that our community have shared
language to be able to talk and hear each other. I have heard others
tell me that you will not read this or that, because it’s too long or
to wandering or just because you have the luxury of thinking that
dealing with these issues at your leisure is plenty. One Friend “can
get all this Friend wants of the material anytime the Friend wants.”
To be honest, I concur: wanting is not particularly the point but I do
not think it does anyone any favors to pretend we only have to deal
with things we want to deal with or that problems only come along when
some or another Friend is available to interact. Another Friend would
like everything to arrive in nice easily digestible bits of 250 words
or fewer, this despite just having read something where it took more
than 250 words to explain one aspect of a problem, a problem that took
another 45-minute conversation as well.

Another Friend worries that not solving everything immediately will
prove disappointing: it might sometimes, but that is not an excuse not
to get started, not an excuse to do nothing. We are all ministers of
God and sometimes one only has to trust that something one can do will
matter.

But get started for what? Which items speak to you? Personally? About
something in Meeting life? About something else? Today’s entries are
tougher in some ways than others so far.

Here is an item from Blogging against disableism day in the spring.
Content may be upsetting.
http://blobolobolob.blogspot.com/2011/05/blogging-against-disablism-day.html

I would not mind actual citations for a couple of the statistics
cited; when I find some I will include them.
This blog also has some other entries that look interesting as well as
blog roll from other blogs I hope to poke at too.

The Temple U Disability Studies blog for people with an academic bent.
http://disstud.blogspot.com/

A blog from the blog roll of the first item here:
http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/

This blog makes me smile for two reasons: the url claims specific
language and “Wheelchair Dancer” the title calls to mind a Friend from
our Yearly Meeting. The Friend from our Yearly Meeting is a longtime
wheelchair user and mention of this Friend’s name can strike terror
into the hearts of anyone thinking about site selection for Annual
Session. Once in awhile Friends even paid enough attention to his
concerns to be able to identify issues without him needing to visit
personally.

A few years ago, this Friend and his wife split up after a long
marriage. It was one of those amiable Quaker divorces where both sides
continue to go to gatherings and the first wife was genuinely happy
when the Friend came one year to Annual Session with a new partner.
This Friend not only had a new partner, he had decorated his
wheelchair with flashing green Christmas lights which he turned on
while he and his new love did a waltz at a community dance.

This item offered because I brought up politically incorrect language:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/02/world-wide-spray-can.html

Another RantWoman item offered partly because of something serious on
my mind that I will save for another day:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/01/community-teas-about-rape-and-violence.html

Thank you for your attention.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

October 7 Disability Awareness Item

2011-10-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Today’s Disabilities Awareness item starts with blog roll: Johan Maurer is a Friend from Portland, Northwest Yearly Meeting who teaches English in Electrostal Russia. He writes weekly blog posts. This week’s is typical: a Biblical reference, riffing on some specific news item, in this case the Nobel prize in physics, and reference in passing to other current events, for instance the occupy Wall Street protests. http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/2011/10/light.html

The Biblical reference is about blindness and Light. One of these days for the pure obsessive excess of it, I will look up all the Biblical references to blindness, but this one is one of the more bearable. It’s also fun to be served up pictures of the supernovae connected with this year’s Nobel prize in physics because I otherwise probably would wait to stumble upon them rather than go look.

Literary Digression: two works called Blindness in English, Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago’s novel and a wonderful literary reminiscence by Jorge Luis Borges. I have not read Saramago’s novel though I have read a lot of blind people ranting about who is Saramago, a sighted person, to write about blindness? The blurb on Amazon refers to a plague of white blindness and “the authorities” shipping all the blind people off to an abandoned mental hospital. I think I should read the novel before unleashing the rant starting to form just from reading the blurb. When the novel came up in email discussions, I asked, rhetorically whether anyone on the list had ever felt like the only person in a crowd who sees something. The list members were more metaphor-challenged than usual.

I do not know whether Borges’ essay is available in English. I read it in Spanish and read fast without looking up a lot of vocabulary. Borges went blind toward the end of his life; I do not remember from what cause. The piece is a very tender reflection about many things: his life of letters, some of the people he worked with, being the head of the Biblioteca Nacional in Mexico. The overwhelming sense is of gratitude though at one point, writing specifically of his blindness, he writes that what he misses most is the color yellow. I think of this sometimes when I drop a lemon onto my white floor and get to try to chase the wayward fruit all over my kitchen.

But back to Johan’s blog and to vast adventures available in activities other people take for granted, in this case reading. Johan’s blog always takes a long time to load and does all kinds of weird things with the cursor and what my screen reader can find. I assume it’s entirely rational, somehow, to blame the Russians and that the culprit is one or another of the gizmos, widgets, and gadgets somewhere on the page.

Johan’s blog tends to have reading lists as long and interesting to me as this one every week. I find myself wondering how one person, even one person with a lot more vision than I have can interact with all of this reading in a week. I try not to think too much about this question lest I find another reason to become cranky. Most of the books on the reading list come with live links to Amazon. If I need a reason to become grumpy, I can usually complain if the content is not available on Kindle or if a hardcover edition costs, say, $3 while a Kindle version costs $9.99.
But I will close with the reflection that there are people for whom it’s a great liberation not to have to think about print but just to rely on audio or whatever. That would be why an organization I knew of in college called Recording for the Blind is now called recording for the Blind and Dyslexic.

In the Light

(rantWoman)

October 6 Disability Awareness Item

2011-10-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

Sometimes when one deals with leadings to do something NOW, one overlooks elements that it would be nice to have. For instance, it would have been nice to include in yesterday’s post, some kind of query about Friends’ reactions to the Dining in the Dark items. I mentioned that I had a bunch of different reactions, which Friends are welcome to ask about; that topic though seems contained enough that Friends also might have comments or observations. Do you?

Today’s topics are way more expansive, an event called Accessibility Camp, my experiences in various kinds of meetings, and as an aside, a link to a blog that looks really interesting about autism.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/06/say-word-accessibility.html

An item about a public participation meeting I attend regularly. A couple points stick out about my experience:

--I go there basically to get in people’s faces so I always have something to say.

--I am really not very good at visual cues about whether I have been
recognized and sometimes I just jump in without being recognized. To me it is interesting that the chair, a very bright manager of some kind from Vulcan who I would never otherwise expect to meet, ALWAYS says Thank you to members of the public who comment. He thanks me. He thanks people who make very passionate wandering contributions. Hethanks EVERYONE.

A link for volunteers at Accessibility Camp, the event referred to in
the post above.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/05/accessibility-camp-volunteers.html

The item interests me because of the roles listed and the services and
traits needed in each. The “must be comfortable being touched” item
stood out, especially after everyone introduced themselves at the
event. One of the blind people there asked everyone in their
introductions to please also identify their disability; as with many
gatherings of computer people, people with Asperger’s syndrome were
heavily represented. I myself was a greeter which meant meeting people
in front of the elevators in the downtown library and helping them
find the conference room on The Red Floor, the fourth floor where the
floor, walls, and ceilings of the hallways are ALL the same color of
red. A white cane is SO helpful there in places. It is amusing to
qualify as (comparatively) sighted guide.

A description of the Accessibility Camp “un-conference” format.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/03/accessibility-camp-may-20-21.html

I find the un-conference concept really Quakerly in terms of getting people together to talk and listen and letting the content of the schedule take shape as those assembled are led. Well, that’s what I would call it anyway.

Two things stood out from this event that I do not think have gotten into any blog posts yet:

--A woman who introduced herself by saying “I’m from the IRS and I want a revolution!” Somehow that is just not something I expect to hear from the IRS.

--I threw a number of topics onto the wall. Several of them became the nuclei for different time slots on the grid including two scheduled at the same time, multilingual / multicultural and something else. The something else got grouped with a bunch of other items so I figured people would attend. Since I put the topic up I decided I should show up at the multilingual / multicultural slot. A number of people showed up and people mostly wanted to talk about people with different disabilities talking to each other across disabilities and the different service delivery silos that evolve for different populations.

On a completely different topic, this autism blog looks really
interesting with a whole range of links.
http://autistscorner.blogspot.com/

I think I was seasoning some additional comments but perhaps they can wait.

In the Light.
(RantWoman)

October 5 Disability Awareness Dialogue

2011-10-05T15:02:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

I am sure by now you are certain I have tunnel vision and have forgotten all about all sorts of mobility challenges, hidden disabilities, mental impairments, the entire autism spectrum. I have not forgotten, but decided instead to riff on “Blindness Tourism,” better than blindfolds ways to try one’s hand at blindness.

Today’s email brings news that an upcoming Dining in the Dark fundraiser locally is still looking for blind waiters. I have never, ever, not even once in my life ever held a job as a waitperson and really cannot imagine starting now. More to the point, I am otherwise occupied on the day they need. But I would not mind in the least hearing that the event is being catered by a local blind chef.

But never mind my capacity for ranting beyond obvious Light. Dining in the Dark events started in Germany and are usually fundraisers for some good cause or another. The Seattle one is for something called Global Explorers. Volunteer waitstaff will be given signed copies of a book by Erik Weihenmayer, a blind guy who climbed Mount Everest a few years ago. I personally am amused by a blind guy handing out signed copies of a book in print to other blind people. I am amused by other moments from the commentary below as well. But my amusement meter is set peculiarly.

Enjoy! ? !

http://www.blindness.org/index.php?view=article&catid=85%3Afundraising-events&id=558%3Adining-in-the-dark&option=com_content&Itemid=169

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d548Gqb4j7s&noredirect=1

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2009/05/a_sighted_account_of_dining_in.php

http://www.bizbash.com/dining_in_the_dark_for_foundation_fighting_blindness_was_well_eye-opening/newyork/story/17642

(RantWoman)

Dear RantWoman

I did not follow up with the links you provided but did appreciate my awareness meter rising ever so slightly in tune with your comments in ... this email.

Blindfold Tourism Friend n or n+1

Dear Friend

I am not in charge. A bunch of different clerks of things are not in charge. God is in charge. I really do not expect everyone to interact with everything and it will not take much for BIG progress compared to a whole bunch of issues.

Enough different people are doing the same irritating and / or
uninformed things that I am in one way or another just tilling the
ground about a whole bunch of topics like the life with no vision /
messed up vision issue. It's not really like it's the most fun thing
to invite people to walk alongside about in the first place, but it
also matters that people have enough information to respond when I try
to speak to what is most important TO ME.

I also have ...different levels of convictions about how some of these issues relate to community life. So I am to be tru to the Light I am given, but I am TRYING to stay away from. say, flame throwers.

(RantWoman)

October 4 Disability Awareness

2011-10-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

This is like the SAT’s. Probably no one will interact with everything
here, but who says I know when to quit?

Today’s items:

An item I came across by following links off Twitter:
http://www.helpinghands4theblind.org/dos-and-donts/

An item about a different person’s experience of vision, lots of
assumptions about the blind, some do’s and don’ts from the article
cited and from me as well.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/08/oh-wow-she-eats-sandwiches.html

This item mentions several issues and behaviors spelled out in a
survey I did awhile ago about the experience of people with
disabilities and issues these people face in different contexts such
as transportation, shopping, school…. I could see from my answers that
I am comparatively well off, but I was also checking “would rather not
answer” a little too often for questions about my religious
congregation and a couple other highly important activities.

Two items from my blogs about lots and lots of people having the same
problems and the benefits of someone making a lot of noise to try to
address the situation.

If you think our Friend with the ministry of audible eye rolling is a
challenge, add a memorial:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/07/agnes-schmoe.html

More RantWoman tells too much of the truth but the item about the
healthcare summit is what I am referring to.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/01/death-by-powerpoint-part-n1.html

Those of you who read this item and my previous experience of purple
text on green background may be amused that my very own Quaker blog
now has purple text on a green background. Credit: high-index plastic
instead of glass in my current lasses, dramatically improved color
presentation and flat screen technology on the computer.

One more because it turned up while finding the items above.
Another staple of life with disabilities, the consent decree This
item is a lot of policy nerd content probably not of immediate
relevance for life at UFM. Sometimes access for people who need
language assistance is addressed in the same organizational processes
as access for people with disabilities. This item is interesting to me
because it ONLY cites legislation related to disabilities and only
addresses disabilities but does list an interesting list of kinds of
assistance.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/01/effective-communications-for-people.html

In the Light

(RantWoman)

PS: a more or less serious question: I have a job posting from (large company) about accessibility sitting in my inbox. The RantWoman tendency to tell too much of the truth would kick in: Dear Potential Employer, I thought you deserved to get sued ... about accessibility… I am meditating about some other issues; it’s possible applying would be an interesting exercise even if I did not get the job. In any case, if Friends know anyone in a position to comment on what it’s like to work (at said company), I would be interested in talking…

October 3 Disabilities Awareness Item Exchange.

2011-10-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Today’s topic is hearing loss. Hearing loss probably deserves several
days. No promises.

At Quarterly Meeting John Helding talked a lot about “vibrant
meetings.” There were various aspects of “vibrant.” A couple had to do
with sound. At first all I could think of was our worship room walls
covered in carpet and a lot of members aging and struggling with
hearing loss, but the words moveable microphone also keep wandering
into mind, for numerous situations.

I am amused about the following checklist:
http://www.homeaudiologyservices.com/hearing-loss-checklist.aspx

My mother complains all the time that she wishes people would mumble less.
Talking to Mom on the phone is regularly an adventure in
miscommunication. Come to think of it, maybe I should ask her about an
amplified telephone….

She has had the volume of her television far too loud for me for
years. Fortunately, when I come to dinner she says endearing things
like “Turn off the television. You’re more fun than oil spills.”

Last time I went to dinner, I got to hear all about Mom’s recent trip
to Utah to see her 3 surviving siblings. One of the things they did
was to go visit the college my grandmother attended in Salt Lake city.
They got a tour and got to look at old yearbooks. My mom said she even
got to see a picture of my grandmother’s roommate for whom my mother
was given her middle name.

The other thing Mom said when I prompted her about a favorite uncle
who was just miserable a few years ago with hearing issues when
everyone came to Seattle: this uncle now has hearing aids in both ears
and life is MUCH better. From what most hearing aid users tell me,
much better likely includes increased volume, but increased clarity is
less to be expected.

A couple more items from the top page of Google results.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hearing-loss/DS00172

http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/types.htm

http://www.hearingloss.org/

Amusing to see what DiversityInc serves up today, not particularly
about hearing loss
http://diversityinc.rsvp3.com/diversity-facts/disability-employment-awareness-month-facts-figures-2/

An obligatory RantWoman tells a little too much of the truth item:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-rantwoman-is-one-who-needs-video.html

In the Light
(RantWoman)

PS.Reminder: Anyone who is displeased by the content, presentation,
length or any other attribute beyond mere existence of my daily
offerings is invited to cut ahead of me in line. If I receive an item
with disability-related content as opposed to grumbles about my
offerings, I am happy to take the day off.

Turrell Skyspace

2011-10-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

RantWoman is filing this item for the appreciation of Quaker travellers and museum attenders:

http://www.henryart.org/exhibitions/show/14

RantWoman was led to do this one fine fall evening while waiting for a bus across the street from the Turrell skyspace. It was a clear fall evening. RantWoman had come from a fundraiser for the homeless group who sleep on the floors of our Meeting. The Turrell Skyspace was lit up a lovely shade of blue. RantWoman needed to say some prayers because of something else.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/10/car-vs-bicyclist.html

Is RantWoman inappropiately impeding her Meeting's path to spiritual perfection? Standing across the street, thinking about, several years ago, worshipping in the Turrell Skyspace with its wood-covered walls, oval shape, padded bench all the way around the room, RantWoman was led to think again of trying to convene a Meeting for Worship there sometime this fall.

RantWoman has now spoken to two people on Worship and Ministry about her leading to see whether more Friends are interested in holding worship in the Turrell Skyspace sometime this fall. Worship and Ministry committee would be the logical committee to ask. RantWoman is TRYING not to engage with every opportunity arising to foam at the mouth about that topic.

The other impeding her Meeting's path to spiritual perfection issue: RantWoman mentioned her leading to hold worship at the Skyspace; RantWoman so far has not mentioned the circumstance in the link above that made RantWoman feel especially blessed to think of the Skyspace at the moment her leading arose.

Let's just say, there is Quaker time and there is going to be RantWoman time. Stay tuned.

October 2 Disabilities Awareness Item

2011-10-02T15:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends

Please at least hold the topic of this message in prayer and feel free
to hit delete without reading. If you cannot at least hold the topic
in prayer before deleting, WHY EVEN HAVE PASTORAL CARE COMMITTEES?

...

I have received two requests to be taken off the mailing list,
both from members of Worship and Ministry committee. I am to be true
to the Light I am given about wanting SOME kind of common community
language for conversations. I also find it frustrating to hear Friends
complain endlessly about limitations of energy and then trying to
shoot down energy that emerges. Again, I mean to send something out
every day. Any day someone else sends something to this list before I
get around to it, I will be happy to take the day off.

It is not my experience that God shows up only between 9 and 9 by
phone and only in nice seasoned non-distressing increments; sometimes
all I can do when I see how God shows up for others is to count my
blessings and be grateful to have only my own problems; some of the
time one has no way necessarily of knowing what matters most. I mean
it when I try to speak to everyone mattering, but I also think it’s a
call to be open and witness to the workings of God in others’s lives
AND in our community even when we ourselves might not even want to
look.

The second Friend requesting to be taken off the mailing list is the
clerk of Worship and Ministry. Previously, the Clerk’s approach to
mentoring is “season yourself;” I apologize but that sounds to me like
a suggestion that I show up in Meeting for Worship with giant salt and
pepper shakers. This Friend suggested in person that I try Facebook
which I find very hard to deal with or my blog. I DO NOT consider all
of the content of yesterday’s attachment suitable for a blog, but if
Friends disagree….

I do need to take responsibility for not calling him during spring
nominations season, and I already know I need to find an appropriate
venue to discuss some concerns with him. Also, so many people had
already done so many other concerning things that I did not call
because it seemed like situations were going to be stuck no matter
what.

That Friend and I were part of a lively discussion during Adult Ed
this morning about a number of themes:

--a need in any community for many kinds of pastoral care and
emotional care of each other functions, and respect for different life
experience and ways to fulfill these functions even when there is no
paid clergy who might have encountered some of these topics in their
training.

--whether committee members needed to be compatible or just able to
negotiate conflicts

--whether Friends should show up to Business Meeting expecting their
minds to be changed (or even just show up) This Friend was not even at the June 12 Business Meeting where I said over and over, I cannot tell whether my problem is a wacky circuit in my own brain or a lot of “shut up” messages. I continue to test that issue. At Adult Ed, I said I think it’s important for Friends to show up at Business Meeting expecting that
their minds MIGHT be changed and spoke to my own needs for
conversations with many voices where one is heard at a time and the
result is something maybe no one expected at the beginning.

Today I was chaperoning (The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet) or Adult Education so I am going to write about a few things to do with knowing him. What I mostly mean to write about is maps and how different people decide where to go or not go.

I know I go lots of places many people do not even attempt. I feel
very lucky to be able to do this, but I also put a lot of energy into
the topic. I have to spend a lot of time sometimes figuring out how
different people are going to get places.

Do people walk, ride the bus, use Access or taxis? What happens if
people with different needs and eligibilities want to go someplace
together?

Are the routes level for people with bad knees and manual wheelchairs
or are they so steep that even a person with a power wheelchair or
scooter does not dare attempt them?

What about the sidewalks? Are there sidewalks? Are there sidewalks
level or are the full of the kind of concrete vs tree route
discontinuities that send people to the ER with a broken wrist or,
together with other events from one’s life history cause the words
“white cane” to wander across one’s mind?

Are there curb cuts?

Are the curb cuts installed correctly or will a wheelchair user risk
tipping over onto their face into the path of oncoming traffic if
actually trying to use the curb cut?

Are there stoplights? Do the stoplights have audio signals? How likely
am I to get killed if I rely only on audio signals?

Do the streetlights usually work or do I need to remember to call in
and complain?

How far is it to the bus stop? How far is it from the bus stop to my
destination? Is anyone in the party going to have trouble travelling
that distance? What are people bringing in the way of canes, walkers,
shopping carts, backpacks, strollers, mysterious encumbrances?

How far is it from the bus stop to the Light Rail entrance? Is the
elevator at my nearest Light Rail station working after MONTHS of
announcements that the southbound side is out of order?

What is the sonic environment like around my destination? Can I get
enough information out of the din to cross streets safely?

With all that on my mind, forgive me if I cannot always tell you how
to find a good parking place.

But back to (the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet). This Friend and I had not really talked more than saying Hi in passing for a long time until after the January Meeting for Business when he was given permission to come to Adult Education on First and Third Sundays of the month. The first time he came he asked at the end of the session for people willing to serve as a chaperone.

I filled out the required paperwork (from the Department of Corrections / his program) and reviewed the tasks: it seemed doable. Well, it seemed doable but as with a whole lot of things
everything is an experiment. This item is not going to elaborate on
the experiment and trial and error points in mind, but there are some.

I learned right away from (the Safest Sex Offender...), he has a REALLY different map of the city than I do. He never goes near parks, playgrounds, even bus stops. Just avoiding the bus means his transportation costs and picture are really different from mine. In stores the first thing he does is to
grab a shopping cart so there is always something between him and
wandering children.

Even though the travel details this Friend and I have to manage are very different, I find it interesting that thinking about travel is such a big thing for both of us.

This Friend is also a big coffee drinker and that made me think of another
map drawn as part of a mapping exercise at a workshop I led during one
of my disaster preparedness projects. There were several adults with
different learning disabilities at the workshop and one of the men
made the best map: it was his hand on a coffee mug!

Below my name are a couple illustrative blog links.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)
An item from a couple years ago. Now my mom has two bionic knees which
is an improvement. Perhaps Friends who need to think about how Meeting
ministers to each other as we age will find this evocative.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/08/adventure-travel-crossing-second-avenue.html

Confessions of nutritional sins too.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/10/diner-food.html

Again, when Friends need even more help getting around, can you count
on curb cuts if you need a wheeled mobility device?
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/07/who-says-curb-cuts-help.html

Happy Disabilities Awareness Month!

2011-10-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

(RantWoman GUESSES she is relieved to be able to post this entire email unredacted. Now RantWoman is going to have to review the attachment that went with it and decide whether or not the blogosphere needs any of it. RantWoman is pretty sure the blogosphere is going to need some but not all of it. RantWoman expects it is entirely possible to hold her and her Meeting in the Light without wading immediately into ALL the details of why.)

Dear Friends

This email is an abbreviated version of the attached document.

October is National Disabilities Awareness Month. You have the following promo to thank for the opportunity to be reminded of this.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/09/starbucks-card-in-braille-limited-time.html

What stands out most for you about this item?

What is your reaction to this item?

In observance of this month, I will be sending everyone in the TO: and
CC: fields some kind of email about one or more disabilities issues every day of October. I hope to spark conversations among all of us. I hope the conversations are not more uncomfortable than the ones I am already having. I will do the best I can to offer short intros, clear queries and to force you either to download something if I teem the content unsuitable for a blog or to click on something in order to
help you CHOOSE when to click further.

I expect to draw heavily but not exclusively from my own blogs partly because another focus is life of our Meeting. I apologize in advance because RantWoman, my blogosphere alter ego is a little too in love with her own puddles of purple prose and is not the least bit gracious about the entire topic of editing. I do not particularly expect that everyone will read every item. Trust your Light and trust that what you can do will matter.

Honestly, I would not mind NOT being the only person sending out email on this theme for October. I do not promise I will get my daily item sent out at any set time. On days when I receive something sent to the same list as I have used from someone else, I will be happy to take the day off.

In any case, I request that you hold all of this in prayer. You are welcome to ask me about the content of this and future email, but I do
not promise that I will automatically be prepared to respond. I particularly need to note that noise and clamor on Sunday mornings
sometimes get in the way of all but the most perfunctory conversations. As some of you who have hung in for tough phone conversations can attest, I do not make any promises about drama-free phone calls. I also really do value email for being able to think over people’s words more than once.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

Oh Canada

2011-09-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

RantWoman's drafts folder is still overflowing with what spilled out when RantWoman recently read an astrological invitation to let pterodactyls take flight. Stay tuned.

Here is this week's Canada-themed invitation to Be True to RantWoman's Light:

CANCER (June 21–July 22): Among the surprises spilled by WikiLeaks some months back was the revelation that US diplomats think Canadians feel "condemned to always play 'Robin' to the US 'Batman.'" If that's true, it shouldn't be. While Canada may not be able to rival the warmongering, plutocrat-coddling, environment-despoiling talents of my home country, America, it is a more reliable source of reason, compassion, and civility. Are you suffering from a similar disjunction, Cancerian? Do you imagine yourself "Robin" in relationship to some overweening "Batman"? This would be an excellent time to free yourself of that dynamic.

A sign arrived from the secular world as well:

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/09/starbucks-card-in-braille-limited-time.html

RantWoman thanks Starbucks for reminding her of National Disabilities Awareness Month. RantWoman invites her readers to stay tuned for the clear leading which has arisen from a whole freight train of circumstances.

Lest RantWoman's readers think RantWoman is about to set upon the world in full bore inner blowtorch on maximum mode, RantWoman is tempering the Free Will Astrology meme with:

two different posts about forgiving 70 x 7 times. RantWoman expects this forgiveness thing probably works both ways but who says RantWoman is necesssarily going to manage to execute?

http://questforadequacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/forgiving.html

http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/the-hard-topic-of-forgiveness/

And on the other hand,
http://questforadequacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/nakedness.html

This item looks like something RantWoman would really like to read. Alas, it is only available in print. Whine! RantWoman can either have yet another of her trademark snit fits about changed realities related to reading OR digress on the Canada theme above and fret about when is she going to get around to the post simmering about Canada's Dukhobors and the things one learns when listening well while crossing international borders. What RantWoman heard a number of years ago from a Canada Customs officer quizzing her about her destination sent her off to the library. There Rantwoman learned that a sect which began as pacifists in Russia and settled in Canada developed the purgative practice of periodically stripping themselves naked and burning all their clothing and buildings.

RantWoman figured out, partly from intersecting quizzical looks from the Canada Customs officer that this behavior tends to get one's sect listed as domestic terrorists and even to fry the nerves of and deeply distress some of one's less fervent co-religionists.

RantWoman is, among other things wondering whether the new Naked publication--oranything else in her life--features any themes in similar vein.