Money on My Mind

RantWoman recently promised her readers a good rant about asking for money on a larger scale than individual ministries , specifically money to support the ministries of the average Quaker Meeting. RantWoman reminds readers that the views here are RantWoman's alone and are subject to all the buffering of shared discernment, movements of Spirit, sunspots,...


RantWoman proposes to open discussion with a query thrown out to the Quaker universe: RantWoman assumes most Meetings have financial needs, as well as leadings about stewardship of resources and desires for activities that deepen the spiritual life of the community as well as keep the lights on, the floors clean, the plumbing and roof in good repair: How does your Meeting ask for Money?

Do you ask out loud every week at the end of worship?

Do you place periodic announcements in your bulletin?

Do you send out extremely humble letters full of very, very earnest solicitations written by Finance Committee?

Do you ask Friends to remember you in their wills? It's not that one wants to imply any hurry to be done with anyone, but well, Quakers can't take it with either and those remaining might be glad to assist in disposition. RantWoman includes this query because of an offhand accidental conversation this summer, not because the issue is currently alive in discussion at her Meeting.

Do needed resources just spontaneously flow your direction with orders of magnitude more magical coherence and obvious guidance by Spirit than, say, a typical popcorn Meeting for Worship? (If your Meeting is afflicted with this problem, RantWoman can easily forgive your reticense in sharing the news lest you be beset by Friends beating down your door to learn your secret.)

Do you have a sense of the range of attitudes about and experiences with money or with movements of the Spirit about money among Friends in your Meeting?

Are you satisfied with your Meeting's financial stewardship both in terms of vibrant community in current terms and in terms of concepts like reserves, maintenance, and capital projects?

RantWoman must speak first of her own twitches:

--RantWoman tends to think that cultivating a healthy vibrant community rich in spiritual life is a good way to cultivate financial health as well. However, in RantWoman's experience, financial health does not just occur automatically; it also must be cultivated.

--Rantwoman contributes to her Meeting out of a great sense that her contributions come back to her many times over in terms of fellowship, community and many, many other movements of the Spirit.

--RantWoman was raised with the thought that money or other resources are not entirely ours in the first place, that at the core they belong to God and that shares regularly should be returned to God's work. Absent parallel thought to good stewardship, RantWoman thinks on some level this thought can lead to peculiar ways of interacting with financial realities. For example, RantWoman has at many points in her life not made the wisest financial decisions. RantWoman has also been through some scary financial moments, but RantWoman has never wanted for many, many basic needs that others struggle a great deal more for. Part of RantWoman's thoughts about giving are motivated by this experience of being so deeply held in spite of many, many blunderings and failings in this realm on her part--and RantWoman here will not even go near venality, greed, and other moral chasms on the part of others.

--In RantWoman's youthful life as a Baptist, there were a couple occasions a year where there were THREE different offerings taken in a single service, and usually at the beginning of every month, there would be a second offering with communion. RantWoman thinks shared offerings could be no less a form of Quaker commuion than silent worship, but RantWoman gets looks of horror that even she can detect when she recounts her Baptist experience to Friends in our Meeting. RantWoman points out that every other house of worship in the city pleads for money so what is wrong with us doing so? Other Friends immediately respond along the lines of "but we're not every other house of worship!" Tell that to the gas company and the electrical utility and the people who take care of the roof.

--RantWoman finds herself continually called to frank dialogue both about dysfunctional financial decisionmaking on a personal level and grander systemic questions about how resources get allocated and how they embody one's beliefs. Unfortunately even in RantWoman's own head some of these dialogues are too contentious for sensible presentation in blog entries and RantWoman is a work in progress in this area.

--RantWoman recognizes that there are many opportunities for Friends to feel guilty for not doing "more" for Meeting. RantWoman sincerely hopes that thoughts of giving as one is able are joy, not a burden and wants a spiritual community where that is the case. RantWoman also humbly and happily reminds Friends that money can enable one's community to do something that one Friend might not be able to get done by him or herself.

--In recent years, RantWoman's income has dropped by a bigger percentage than her reduction in the amount donated. Rantwoman remembers an exercise long ago where Finance committee was asked to tabulate the amounts contributed annually by household. This turned out to be one of those tasks that is easy to specify but took thinking to accomplish. RantWoman at that point had a good job but she had age peers who she expected might have greater incomes. When Finance committee produced a nice chart with annual totals in a nice bar graph based on otals in percentile bars, RantWoman was surprised to discover that her annual contribution amount put her in the second quintile from the top. To say the least, all of this causes RantWoman to think Friends could ask more of ourselves.

--Even RantWoman does not tithe. More to the point, whatever percentage of her income RantWoman allocates to the work of God as she understands it, not all of her donations by a long shot go to Quakers. Why? Because there are huge matters of inclusion and social transformation where Quakers are some among many, because there are many issues needing attention where Quakers have never even shown up to go AWOL from.

Turning, now to Meeting:
In RantWoman's Meeting, current practice is two letters a year from Finance Committee and weekly requests by whoever closes Meeting. People sign up or are recruited to close Meeting and the request for contributions / announcement about how to accomplish them is part of the checklist / script given to the person who closes Meeting.


There seem to be a number of problems about this approach:

--There is some sense that people do not care about too many announcements, introductions, or exhortations to sign the guest book after worship; they just want to get out of worship and go have fellowship, coffee, and refreshments.

--We do not know how much money comes in on Sundays, how much comes in by mail and some other details it might be helpful to use to measure the impact of changes in current practices. These questions would also be a tabulation task for Finance Committee to answer.

--Results as far as message delivered are uneven and to RantWoman's great irritation far too frequently include the phrase "we don't pass the hat," as if passing the hat to support something one believes in ardently were some kind of shameful activity.

--Possibly because of the wording of the script we offer people closing Meeting, sometimes the impression is conveyed either that the only way Friends contribute to the life and community of Meeting is by making a contribution or that one must contribute to be a part of the community. RantWoman always tries for an announcement along one of these lines:

Everyone here contributes to the life and spiritual depth of our community. If you also feel led to contribute to our financial needs, we enthusiastically welcome / gratefully receive contributions....

We gratefully receive financial contributions to the life and maintenance needs of our community.
However, we are a little coy about opportunities to contribute; we accept... through a slot in our office door...

Others' efforts are a lot more uneven and the thought has arisen that requests could simply be made in the weekly bulletin with wording seasoned to convey our desired points.


RantWoman simply advises, give for the Joy of it and don't be ashamed to ask others to do so as well.

RantWoman is aware of the "Give until it hurts" school of hectoring about financial matters. RantWoman would probably still be glad to accept money offered under such circumstances but might be called to inquire, in the event that doing anything until it hurts brings you joy, whether you need more than a house of worship can provide, perhaps, say,something from some of those funky ads in the back of the alternative newsweekly of your choice.

Now if RantWoman's Meeting can figure out how exactly we DO want to ask people to give.

Conversion Stories

RantWoman is still experimenting about how to collect things from the interwebs and present them as clumps of findable items. Here RantWoman is collecting a number of items she has come across that contain conversion stories.



Iris G. Alivia B, Mark W all hypelinked in


http://bloggerbyconvincement.blogspot.com/2010/07/conversion-experience.html




Danny Coleman: Sex and drugs, really a lot of drugs, and Rock and roll, at highway speeds.


http://dannycolemanstory.blogspot.com/

RantWoman is meditating about whether she should link some of the "How I came to be Quaker and Pagan" items she has been reading but maybe now that she has created the tag, that can be a project for another day.

RantWoman confesses: RantWoman's conversion stories run a whole lot more pedestrian: RantWoman falters, God picks her up. RantWoman gets stuck on the God as personal Butler model of Supreme Being and along comes a bracing item from A Silly Poor Gospel about still having to get one's own act together to grasp at the hem of Christ's garments.

For being dead

RantWoman apologizes if the title above seems too irreverent. Please accept it as a token of deep affection for several of the 13 (14?) departed Friends and deep condolences for the loved ones of others whose lives were celebrated at Memorial worship at the most recent NPYM Annual Session.

RantWoman, to be honest, is still of an age not automatically to go to memorial worship. Besides comparative youth, NPYM Annual Session frequently falls near the anniversaries of some other deaths for RantWoman's loved ones and RantWoman someimes attends to her own head and heart first.


This year RantWoman already knew of

3 members of her own Meeting including our last surviving founding member.

a former member of RantWoman's Meeting

Bonnie Tinker

The memorial worship also noted the passing of a young woman by suicide, a founding member of Multonomah Meeting in Portland, as well as several others, including a Friend, Vern, who RantWoman knew when he was an inmate member of a worship group at the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe, WA, and very slightly after he was released.


This whole parade of great gifts and vivid lives was crammed into 1.5 hours of worship. Almost every memorial moved RantWoman deeply in some way but the cumulative effect, with barely time to breathe between was almost overwhelming. RantWoman must particularly linger over a couple moments:


--RantWoman thinks family members should never be required to read a loved one's memorial minute. However, RantWoman was awed when Lynn Waddington's partner Margaret read Lynn's memorial minute: walking with one's partner as closely as Margaret did is also a testmony about Margaret's life and especially her life during that time.


--RantWoman is sometimes the sort of solipsist who, in the presence of a memorial or some other intense moment involving someone else, first gets stuck on something about herself. RantWoman knew Vern only a little and when she was very new to Friends. RantWoman only saw Vern once a month when the worship group met at the prison. Time and use of space were very controlled There was very little opportunity for more than basic check-in and there were many things one just did not ask.


When RantWoman joined the Monroe Worship Group, she was still barely handling silent worship at home in her Meeting. It seemed like everyone RantWoman talked to was all into Alternatives to Violence, something there was no way RantWoman felt able to do at the time. However, RantWoman rented a room from Seriously Weighty Friend who was a big believer in the Monroe Worship Group. Somewhere along the way the question of RantWoman joining the worship group came up, and since RantWoman was guaranteed a ride and interesting travelling companions, she assented. RantWoman will write separately of some of her own very short protest-related incarceration encounters. These experiences apparently did not stand in the way of processing RantWoman's application paperwork, but RantWoman does take note of a certain irony.

RantWoman dutifully went through training offered at the prison: the thing which stuck most with RantWoman was the administration's admonishment that in the event of riots, volunteers were to lie on the floor, keep their heads down and only move when specifically told to. RantWoman still thinks of that sometimes when attending to certain news items, but the biggest challenge for the worship group was negotiating space, either in a room run by the chapel or in a different room in the visitors' area,


All RantWoman did really was show up and help hold the space. be present in worship. RantWoman still follows one member's prison journalist work, RantWoaman could also perfectly well check in more intentionally with this Friend's wife. In any case, enough of the guys got released or transferred and energy shifted. RantWoman does not remember the sequence of Vern getting released and the Worship Group getting laid down, but she supposes the whole story is the sort of thing that should be called to mind again just so people new to the story know it happened and can ask questions if led.

Only during memorial worship did RantWoman learn hints of the transformations Vern had gone through in connection with Alternatives to Violence. From the comments later over minutes, RantWoman also gleaned that Vern had laid down his membership, and RantWoman found herself meditating, including in an email exchange with a certain figure of RantWoman's long acquaintance, about the unknown stories behind that.

RantWoman finds herself regretting that, since Vern laid down his membership, there is likely not to be a memorial minute. RantWoman thinks the few words here are in no way sufficient and again.finds herself nagging a certain problematic mentor figure to find ways of expressing these stories, writing them down, both for what they say of his walk and for figures like Vern who might otherwise pass unnoted.


One of RantWoman's driving companions on the Missoula trip has a great deal of experience in different Yearly Meetings. On the long drive home from Missoula, he spoke of how in a non-creedal tradition, people's lives are a testimony of what they believe, what matters most to them. Like RantWoman this Friend thinks that memorials deserve enough time for respectful worship. Friend Driver also spoke of some Yearly Meetings where one or two memorial minutes are read at the end of each plenary. RantWoman thinks that is an interesting way to give a little space to each departed Friend. However, despite the temporal overload, RantWoman's spirit was deeply enriched by all the stories she heard and she would not want to risk missing some if responsibilities or other cares kept her attendance at plenaries as spotty as it was this year.


Holding in the Light...

Committing Civilization: No Human Being is Illegal. Immigration Reform

RantWoman commends to her readers the following call to action about immigration reform, SB1070 and related issues:

http://blog.sojo.net/2010/07/29/the-immigration-fight-isnt-over/

RantWoman has been feeling strong pangs about immigration issues for a good while. RantWoman has also been feeling the kind of paralysis that sometimes comes with an overload of matters screaming for one's attention. RantWoman is very humble about a quest for simplicity and centeredness and focus, even if the thought of some kinds of grand campaigns just gives RantWoman a headache, RantWoman is aiming for the grounding to do a little each day and to treat every difficult conversation as an opening for transformation.

Meanwhile, RantWoman hereby holds two other moments;

--The following minute from Intermountain Yearly Meeting, an item no one--including RantWoman--at NPYM Annual session was prepared to run with for this year. Needless to say, RantWoman hopes that those who read it will be moved to act!

Updated: 6/16/2010
IMYM Minute on Recent Immigration Legislation and Comprehensive Immigration Reform

As a faith community committed to welcoming the stranger, we are dismayed and saddened by the failure to find a way forward to craft an immigration system that respects the fundamental rights and dignity of all. We recognize that inaction at the national level has created a vacuum into which states have stepped to create their own immigration laws.

As Friends, we believe that there is that of God in everyone, regardless of citizenship or legal status. Our testimony of community challenges us to live with all of our neighbors in a way that encourages trust, love, and security. Our testimony of equality leads us to value each person as an individual and to respect the human rights and dignity of all persons. Our testimony of peace guides us to take nonviolent action to resolve conflicts in a way that brings us together and promotes justice.

Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and similar proposed legislation in other states divides our communities and criminalizes immigrants. These kinds of unjust laws create a climate of fear for those whose area of residence, line of work, complexion, spoken language or accent is deemed suspicious, even if they are citizens or legal foreign residents or visitors. When state legislation is passed that compels people to hide their identity from authorities, they must live in fear that they will be separated from their families, that they will become victims of crime, that they and their children will not receive an education, and that they will lose their livelihoods and their homes.

We bear witness to our friends and neighbors in our community who suffer division of their families, exploitation in the workplace, and the daily fear of deportation. We bear witness to the thousands of deaths on the border and the destruction of border communities and the environment. The estimated twelve million persons living and working in the United States without papers are essential parts of our communities and economy, yet the system for regularizing their status is woefully insufficient. Criminalizing immigrants and those who care for them, as in Arizona Senate Bill 1070, does not address the real challenges our country faces with immigration reform and resolution of the humanitarian crisis that results from the broken system.

We, as people of faith, are called not only to resist unjust laws and to work to change them, but to take the initiative to act in accordance with higher laws. We call upon Friends everywhere to urge our elected representatives to immediate action on humane immigration reform. We call upon ourselves to act with integrity in response to these challenges and we rededicate ourselves to loving our neighbors, to doing justice, and to walking humbly in the spirit of love.

--RantWoman's other moment, a small item of levity: a delightful flub by an NPR commentator reporting about civil disobedience in Phoenix as some provisions of SB1070 take effect: "...those committing civilzation...." As Gandhi said of western civilization, "it would be a good idea."

For not being dead

RantWoman was just this morning telling someone how much she enjoyed being in the dorm where people stayed up late singing at NPYM Annual Session.



RantWoman does not admit to singing. RantWoman's rule is that if you make RantWoman start singing, you must pay her to stop. However, RantWoman very much enjoys hearing other people sing. RantWoman further thinks it is sweet when people who theoretically are old enough to know better are still sometimes seduced into cutting loose and singing and singing and singing until several hours past their usual bedtime.



RantWoman was already thinking about all this during coffee hour when the opportunity to tell Jana how enjoyable it was to watch her participate in late-night singing. It was not just the singing of course. Jana was also just calm and matter-of-fact recounting all the things she has been told she did in the hospital while recovering from last year's accident.



Jana laughed and said she has been feeling awkward and wishing that people were noticing her for having done something remarkable, by which RantWoman assumes she means world peace or some great scientific discovery or something instead of just for not being dead. RantWoman is still awed by all the layers and circles of Jana's many social connections. Plus RantWoman would point out that Jana has had to work a lot harder than a lot of other people at not being dead for the last year and RantWoman is very grateful for the work!

Tending Ministries of Blogging

RantWoman is seasoning two topics in advance of a certain committee meeting. One is effective oversight of ministries involving blogging or electronic communication. The second topic gets its own separate entry.

RantWoman is feeling very conscientious about attending to matters of confidentiality and group discernment. Still RantWoman's head tends to be muddled enough, and it sometimes takes RantWoman respectable intervals to collect important points about a topic. Therefore, RantWoman is attempting spiritual houskeeping on the fly in her blog.

The comments below are what RantWoman thinks today. They do not represent official views of any committee or of her Meeting as a whole. Everything here is subject to change, revision, continuing revelation, mental spasms, interventions from space aliens and of course the milling and digestion processes of community discernment.

RantWoman is specifically seasoning questions of what it means as part of a support committee for a ministry to support the work and writing and information collection done by two people's blogs, her own, and that of another Friend. RantWoman has decided that the conversation is intended to be about general process issues. Therefore, even though RantWoman reads Other Friend's blog regularly and likes it very much on several grounds, for purposes of this discussion, Other Blogger gets one of RantWoman's cutesy pseudonyms. .

This entry began as a conversation with Other Blogger. Other Blogger has a ministry supervised by Friends from RantWoman's Meeting. However, the clerk of the support committee has both practical and attitudinal barriers to interacting with the blogosphere as much as Other Blogger originally hoped. Apparently, RantWoman does not always do simplicity very well, and several other considerations have arisen as elaborated in the queries and comments below.

Similarly, several months ago, RantWoman wrote a topical committee asking in a somewhat undefined way for support and attention to her blog. RantWoman has had a couple conversations about writing style and clarity of expression. RantWoman has also had a conversation about confidentiality with respect to the discussions within a certain committee. Rantwoman has had other conversations with people not in line for any kind of oversight of ministry role indicating that numbers of topics and themes are being followed. RantWoman has not, however, had any conversations formalizing any more explicit oversight and RantWoman is seasoning what if anything to do about that.


In the meantime, what has RantWoman come to so far.

Is the support process for the ministry / blogging effort respectful of technical, time and temperamental capacity of the people involved in the process?

Part of the conversation that arose with Other Blogger is about a member of her support committee who has very big time limitations on his access to the internet. RantWoman finds this situation a challenge for a number of reasons. For one thing, this limitation relates partly to a tough decision RantWoman was previously a part of and still does not regret despite the ensuing difficulties.

For another thing, Rantwoman is very dependent on electronic media for independent access to information and resources and can easily interpret this Friend's attitudes as unwillingness to engage at all in two-way conversation. RantWoman CAN interpret this Friend's attitudes this way. However, RantWoman also recognizes that commitment to internet resources may also mean commitment to paying substantial amounts of money every month for connectivity, putting up with the endless horizons of vast expanses of hyperlinks that can be followed if desired, presentation and commentary patterns very different from print media and to other demands on one's time, liberty, and resources.

RantWoman fully supports a variety of Friends' measures for keeping the internet in perspective: not doing email on the Jewish sabbath, severely constrained interaction with social media during Lent. RantWoman can get crabby about the digital inclusion reasons she herself does not have as much access on the fly every second as she might want. When RantWoman feels humble and disciplined--as opposed to merely cranky, demanding, and greedy, RantWoman can file her own situation in the same opportunity for mindfulness or intentionality compartment. In short, RantWoman wants to work with people where they are and that seems to be several different places.

RantWoman is pretty aware for instance that she can crank out a lot of verbiage and that other people may have many demands on their time that RantWoman for different reasons is free of. Writing is easy for RantWoman. Writing cleanly? Probably room for improvement and writing when RantWoman probably should pick up the telephone is one concern. None of this is any guidance to RantWoman about how to refine her request for support.

Does the support process reflect the desired level of interaction with the process of producing content and with the content?
RantWoman was interested to hear at NPYM Annual Session that the NPYM website, http://www.npym.org/ has two overseers, one who handles technical matters and one whose orientation is technical only to the bare minimum necessary and much more solidly focussed on content and clearly defined functionality. RantWoman thinks this is entirely appropriate and reasonable for a Yearly Meeting but she thinks this model might be a bit much for individual ministries.

RantWoman is coming pretty clearly to the conclusion that if one cares about specific people interacting with one's content, one may have to take measures such as printing out content and using snail mail or else making use of conference calls, in-person presentations, and plain old conversation. RantWoman feels pretty generous about this with regard to Very Weighty Friends who still use manual typewriters, Friends who like their blogosphere served with potluck supper, and sundry other Friends who participate in community life but less so in the blogosphere. It is probably a good thing RantWoman strives to maintain such openness because it really helps with certain person-specific irritations.

Does the blog reflect wide readership for example in terms of people who comment on different entries?

RantWoman should probably check some info sources for her own blog. For purposes of this conversation, RantWoman considers it sufficient to know that such information sources exist and other bloggers might also use them.

RantWoman notes that Other Blogger frequently has entries which draw several comments. RantWoman's own blog entries attract few comments--except for a spambot that posts links in Chinese to pictures of what RantWoman assumes are underage or barely of age teenage girls. RantWoman has comments set on moderated and summarily rejects all such contributions; that is not the sort of comments RantWoman has in mind.

Does the blog have many identified followers?

RantWoman specifically notes that Other Blogger has what RantWoman considers a respectable number of people who have stepped through the mysteries that identify them as blog followers. The number of people who have done that for RantWoman's blog is considerably smaller. RantWoman thinks there may be several reasons for this. Other Blogger has been doing her blog longer than RantWoman and also has a ministry with a specific audience.

RantWoman's approach to blogging is a little more hit-or-miss about themes and organization. RantWoman is also interested in some topics such as Quaker peace witness where many of the practitioners may for different reasons be less oriented toward the blogosphere than the Friend's interested in themes related to Other Blogger's ministry.

Finally, RantWoman has spoken to several people she knows read her blog but who have not gotten themselves formally listed as followers. RantWoman imagines this is true for other Blogger as well

Do intersting comment streams arise?

See above.


Do comment streams reflect diverse voices?

See above about the technical prerequisites.

Does the blog use interesting, topical tags and use them consistently?
RantWoman is meditating about what to do with some muddled categories on her own blog; Other Blogger seems to have a nice clear set of tags that are better specified than the amorphous ones RantWoman uses.


Is the content true to Quaker testimonies?
This is one area where RantWoman quite likes Other blogger's blog: it presents many issues in clear interesting language where both the Quaker content and content from other parts of this Friend's interests are quite clear.

RantWoman on the other hand is struggling around the edges: there are good reasons RantWoman maintains two blogs, but the themes RantWoman blogs about frequently have several dimensions including both Quaker and non-Quaker ones. RantWoman does not want to turn off some of the people who read RantWoman in specific secular contexts, but this also means some points are, to RantWoman's mind, underplayed a little.

Frankly RantWoman also sometimes falls short of her own aspirations about respectful inclusiveness. For example, RantWoman has one entry referring to a Friend's hidden disability. No, RantWoman is assuredly NOT going to include a link; the best anyone is going to get--and that by in-person request--would be a search string

RantWoman considers the tone of this entry just awful in a couple respects, for example in terms of telling too much of the truth and also casting an issue in terms that might or might not be problematic to the person involved. RantWoman has decided she feels absolutely no call to edit history. RantWoman has also heard mixed opinions about whether speaking of this Friend's hidden disability is entirely rude and insensitive or whether it helps others feel compassion and interact on a more realistic basis. RantWoman has decided she really must speak to the Friend referred to, to affirm RantWoman's appreciation for this Friend's presence and gifts, and to determine whether this Friend necessarily even minds RantWoman's frankness. Friend herself is sometimes quite frank. RantWoman also knows this Friend in a context outside of Meeting and there is a certain "walk with me, Friend" aspect of that acquaintance that RantWoman also feels called to attend to.


Is the content true to a Friend's calling about some or another question?
For example, RantWoman is finding herself called in ways she sometimes find uncomfortable to speak up about many issues of abelism and people's relationships to people with disabilities and to the challenges of living with disabilities. RantWoman is feeling called to do this not only among Quakers but in other sectors of her life. For a few different reasons, RantWoman has decided to maintain separate blogs though her non-Quaker blog appears in blog roll.


How well does the blog uphold accessibility standards?
RantWoman finds Blogger blogs, including the ones run by Other Blogger, easy to read except for graphics. RantWoman has not paid enough attention to the level of html needed to tag the few graphical items she includes. Even worse, RantWoman's non-Quaker blog has a really fun Flash control that opens a new window with a map of the world and dots showing all the locations where people have visited RantWoman's blog. RantWoman has not tried very hard to figure out whether JAWS would read the city names. RantWoman has decided just to live with this level of imperfection in the realm of accessibility.

Now RantWoman gets to have conversations and to see whether some of her own fixations are even on others' radar screens; Then RantWOman will have to figure out how to blog further. Stay tuned?

America's new racial caste system

RantWoman did not write the headline on the following item. She had only the faintest connection with the writing of this item and she is filing it here in order not to lose track of it!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/northwestvoices/2012264585_americasnewracialcastesystem.html