Clerking, Come to Think of it, with Digressions

 Clerking…Come to think of it….

Readers aware that RantWoman is conducting a month-long binge blog are invited to meditate particularly on how the topics below relate to National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month, #NDEAM, #NDEAM2020, Pedestrian Safety Month #PedestrianSafetyMonth, and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please be assured, RantWoman can get there easily though not concisely!

Think Better-run Meetings for Business. Think minutes that reflect actual clear instructions to committees.Think how principles of inclusion can make both workplace and Meeting for business saner.

Think the focus skills one acquires fitting public testimony into the time boxes prescribed.

Think RantWoman's REPEATED offers to clerk short-term activities so people do not have to commit to a whole year.

Think RantWoman AGAIN being tempted to put on some kind of SuperWoman cloak and needing to be ....

Lexicography note: Clerking is Quakerese for "meeting facilitation."

Digression They also serve who know bookkeeping.

RantWoman is meditating about some recent meeting experiences.

One was a Meeting for Business. Some small moment of bookkeeping clarity came up while Friends were reviewing minutes. Only one person in the room noticed. RantWoman would be happier actuall if there were more people in the room who both have bookkeeping skills and have the clarity to stand and asked to be recognized when small corrections need to be made.

 

Another moment: a board meeting for a blindness nonprofit. RantWoman was THRILLED by the precision with which the young blind treasurer articulated the different bookkeeping issues coming up in the discussion. It’s not just that the treasurer is competent and articulate. This thrill is also because RantWoman is REALLY bad at “clerical speed and accuracy.” Being a good bookkeeper requires a lot of both of those things. RantWoman is permitting herself to be awed though by the work being done by a blind person. RantWoman imagines that good skills of blindness and experience with screen reader technology are part of the picture.

 

Another Moment: a b was a Meeting for Worship for Business. Matters of bookkeeping and process were coming up. The clerk was thinking of moving forward with the initiative. RantWoman is articulate, overeducated and certain she is entitled to offer her opinion. From the discussion, it was clear that the matter needed to be held over. As RantWoman considers issues, though, the POINT of the discussion was to arrive at some sense of the concerns from those present and either implicit or explicit instructions from Business Meeting to the committees following up. RantWoman realized she had already spoken many times. RantWoman decided instead of speaking, she just needed the rest of the room to articulate its concerns, but another infamous RantWoman email was born. RantWoman spoke of some experiences. When exasperated feedback came back, RantWoman APPRECIATED the immediacy and basically told the two people she addressed that she trusted them to use her words as they were led.

Digression No. 2. Care of Community. Is RantWoman just over the top again?

The last Business meeting referenced above was also considering revising the community email policy. RantWoman has two twitches and she has little basis for having an opinion specifically about this Meeting. 

First, RantWoman restated her concern that for notices like announcements of death or pastoral care moments such as medical issues, tolerating reply/all can help people see how the community is connected. RantWoman especially appreciates this because it is so hard for her to connect with people in the first place. RantWoman remembers a moment when the Clerk decided RantWoman's concern was covered by one piece of wording. RantWoman can live with that thought but is now wondering whether she should have pushed a little harder to have her point documented in minutes. For now, RantWoman can live with articulating her concern herself in her own words and feeling disappointed at the lack of enthusiastic embrace from others but grateful at least to be heard by several people instead of being told that one person decided on her behalf.. 

Second, RantWoman expressed a wish that there be explicit mention in the email policy that the clerk would follow up on troubling things that might come up in email. Examples in RantWoman's weirdo mind including indications of family trouble or reactions to, say, weird messages in worship  Again, at least RantWoman said her piece and people seemed to get it, but RantWoman's wish for more explicit wording did not happen. RantWoman will live with that.

Clerking

Once upon a time, long long ago, maybe around the time of RantWoman's midlife vision meltdown in 2004, RantWoman was sitting in a meeting for an NPYM body. Discussion arose about the annual practice of picking two people from the Yearly Meeting to Philadelphia to learn clerking from a weighty Friend. RantWoman realized that round trip airfare and lodging cost about the same no matter which direction one starts out. RantWoman suggested that perhaps the budget could be used to fly the weighty Friend west and that it would go further if many people could learn clerking skills at once. 

Lo, the idea took root and perhaps the next summer Weighty Friend came to WA and held a clerking workshop before Annual Session. Interest was considerable. RantWoman of course was interested but was not selected to participate. RantWoman half minded / half did not mind. RantWoman had not acquired some needed technology. Nor had RantWoman fully learned skills such as asking for reasonable accommodations such as having copies of handouts in advance. Finally, RantWoman had not really begun to think specifically either about a whole basket of "blind person in meetings issues or about what the term "reasonable accommodations:: needs to mean around her. 

In the next while, RantWoman served as co-clerk of Hospitality Committee, a role RantWoman was not really suited for. Plus RantWoman's co-clerk did a good chunk of the work, and recruiting people to make coffee after worship turned out to happen even if it would have gone better with more attention.

Comes along 2012 and two Weighty Friends from RantWoman's meeting offer a clerking workshop. RantWoman attended. After the workshop, RantWoman emailed the Weighty Friend who flewin from the East the last time a clerking workshop occurred. RantWoman asked whether to his knowledge he had ever clerked a meeting with a blind present. He wrote back "No." RantWoman did not think to ask about any other disability!

between 2011 and 2019 RantWoman has thought a lot about blind person in meetings issues because of going to many different meetings. RantWoman repeatedly invited members of the Care and Accountability committee to go with her to blindness events and to talk about blind person in meetings issues. The Care and Accountability committee declined this invitation. Two people who had roleson the Ad-Hoc Committee on Disability also went to blindness community events and had helpful observations but RantWoman was kicked out of Meeting before people got around to having a focused discussion about this topic!

RantWoman also requested electronic copies of handouts. RantWoman still has the handouts in her email archive. RantWoman looked them up when considering attending the most recent clerking workshop in fall of 2019. The handouts include a bibliography with a lot of materials that are either available only in print or out of print entirely. RantWoman's understanding of continuing revelation in the age of internet and apps would suggest maybe time to update the resource list! For instance, RantWoman herself owns a couple of topica ebooks.

In fall of 2019, another clerking workshop was held jointly sponsored by University Meeting and Salmon Bay meeting. RantWoman asked to attend. RantWoman asked to attend both out of a spirit of encouraging people to venture into this role and in hopes of educating people about blind people in meetings issues all at once. RantWoman's request was denied. So now, as RantWoman has written elsewhere, the workshop trained 50 new clerks. Awesome. Now every time RantWoman encounters a new clerk, RantWoman will have to educate them, one after another. RantWoman could easily find her way to the term "undue burden," EXCEPT what if...RantWoman really wants some less interested outsiders to clerk a couple threshing sessions about different topics. What if, what if, some of the new clerks get asked and part of the work process is figuring out how ot work with everyone's access needs...?