Sciences Po: Sergei Guriev Ekaterina Shulman on conditions in Russia 2 hours
Times Radio on Putin, tactical nukes and Belarus
Jake Broe on impending counteroffensive
Infinity: Petraeus and force generation
Infinity: Ben Hodges talks Crimea
Silicon Curtain: Konstantin Samoilov on war making Russia borders LESS secure
Oh Look! GLORIOUS opportunities for Blindness Tourism with someone besides RantWoman.
Full disclosure. RantWoman does not know which of her blind groupies are performing but guarantees the case will be great.
Mark your calendars. Please join Anything is Possible theater productions for
*Flying Blind* - a musical by, for, and about the Blind/Low Vision community.
We were set to perform the show live when Covid hit, and so like so many other creative groups, found a way to pivot and turned it into an audio play instead. Now thanks to some generous Covid relief money from the City of Seattle, we are happily pivoting back to mounting a live production. Come join us June 2-4 at the Lakewood Seward Park Community Club for an intimate, hilarious and moving evening (or afternoon) of live musical theater.
Admission is free but reservations are required, follow the link below.
We’ll be gratefully accepting donations at the door to help offset the costs of production.
Hope to see (ha ha) you there! And thank you for supporting the creatives in your midst. We’ll all keep on doing what we do no matter what, but it’s way more fun when you come along for the ride.
click here to make your reservations now
<https://www.
Friday, June 2 7:00 pm
Saturday, June 3 2:00 pm
Saturday, June 3 7:00 pm
Sunday, June 4 2:00 pm (Will be ASL interpreted)
Lakewood Seward Park Community Club
4916 S Angeline St, Seattle, WA 98118
If you need assistance making a reservation, please email Sheri Richardson
<r.sheri@icloud.com> r.sheri@icloud.com. If you cannot respond by
e-mail, you may call Sheri at 425-681-5215
If you need additional accommodation at the performance, please email Ellen
Cooper <cooperanythingispossible@
cooperanythingispossible@
Produced by Anything is Possible Theatre Company
<http://
*Flying Blind is made possible by *
*ReVision Arts and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture*
The short version of this post: RantWoman probably is going to change the title of an old blog post, add some headings to improve blind person navigability, and cite thie post to add context acknowledging that the older post could be problematic in a number of ways for different readers. RantWoman is disinclined to edit history, even though the older post like much on this blog could stand some editing. RantWoman INTENDS both this post and the older post as part of many conversations about child safety and individual life journeys.
In fine Quakerly way, RantWoman has seasoned this with two trusted members of the community. Neither of them interacted in depth with RantWoman's willingness to consider whether anything in the post might run afoul of Blogger guidelines. More below.
The slightly longer version:
1. Recently RantWoman received email from Blogger informing her that a years old blog post has been "unpublished," rendered unfit for human consumption. The email comes with links to terms of service and content policy with an invitation to appeal and suggestions about options to address the concerns identified.
Why was your blog post unpublished?
Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy. Please visit
our Community Guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.
Malware?
The technological elements of the post are no different than many other posts, plain text and a couple links either to blogger or to other sites. If the malware issue is another site, RantWoman is happy to hear suggestions about who and how to troubleshoot that.
So that leaves the community guidelines, which RantWoman step by step tackles here.
2. This post contains a lot of Quaker jargon. Non-Quaker readers are invited either to use your own search engines or to leave comments asking RantWoman to explain further. RantWoman only posts comments with the author's permission.
3. The original post was written before RantWoman began her practice of posting really blunt advisories about sensitive content at the beginning of many posts. RantWoman, honestly, also had not thought about content guidelines. RantWoman recognizes that the content of the old post is challenging but believes it needs to remain available in the interest of paths to continued discussion of things that affect many families.
4. RantWoman will leave the original frank title in the text of the post. The title is meant to acknowledge that people may for many reasons have sex offender issues on their minds a lot of the time and there are things that come of that. Despite the title, the old post is NOT an endorsement of sex offenders, an accusation that came RantWoman's way in a recent Twitter conversation about a messy family situation in the news. It is, however, part of one Quaker meeting's walk with questions about community safety, supporting a low-level sex offender, and intending also to walk alongside the complex experiences of individuals impacted personally by related issues. It is a long story. A lot about RantWoman's perspective can be found under the label Safest though that label also contains some other content related to general principles RantWoman considers relevant.
Events all started with a long ago conversation during coffee hour.
The post also contains a link about a Meeting for Business at another Quaker meeting where similar subjects are talked about.
5. The post was written at a time when people with titles implying they were prepared to help members of the community season different aspect of the situation were, for RantWoman, less than astute and less than helpful and also obtuse about another change occuring in RantWoman's life. (speaking VERY plainly, in connection with midlife vision loss, RantWoman was dealing both with a lot of generalized ableism and with physical and emotional abuse from one specific member of the community. This walk continues to evolve. Except for the point that any kind of disability can make people particularly vulnerable, RantWoman wants here to stick to questions of how to talk about experiences related to sex offenders) RantWoman very much appreciates currently having a sense of people she can ask to look at such things.
One of RantWoman's advisors mentioned above just said "there are no content warnings for life."
The other said basically the same thing and suggested that people can just absent themselves from triggering material. Um, in RantWoman's experience, that is not necessarily possible. Sometimes job responsibilities require one to walk over the rocky territory of something from the past in order to do better going forward about keeping people and communities safe. In one case, RantWoman was able to add one appropriate line to an insurance policy. Doing more, like topical staff training was beyond RantWoman's light. RantWoman later gratefully ceded many topics to a non-profit much better equipped than RantWoman was, notwithstanding all the experiences connected with questions of worshipping with sex offenders and evolution of awareness about realities in RantWoman's family.
6. In the US national cultural war Zeitgeist both terminology and discussion of hot button issues are all over the place and definitely not in centered, well-seasoned form. RantWoman tries to offer thoughtful prayerful interventions but not to get sucked too far down rabbit holes or electronic time sinks. Some of the time RantWoman succeeds.
 |
| Threads of gratitude, continuity, and querulousness come with this picture |
One of these days RantWoman PROMISES a tirade about how banishing RantWoman from EVERYTHING to do with a certain Monthly Meeting EXCEPT memorials is STILL just ghoulish. Also various other aspects of interaction with the subject of disability not only amount to treating RantWoman WORSE THAN A SEX OFFENDER and, since the banishment is, as RantWoman has experienced it, partly due to RantWoman's failure to kowtow to certain people who feel entitled to be Kowtowed to a really good way to make life MORE dangerous for any person with a disability who needs to speak up.
(RantWoman, why you gotta splatter this all over your blog? Why don't you call us all up individually and let us gaslight you and misinterpret the details of life on Planet RantWoman ..? Uhhh, perhaps you answered your own question... Plus, at this point RantWoman has just accepted the holy call from God that comes with daily need to traverse wormholes between Planet RantWoman and .... RantWoman owes it to herself AND to a lot of other people.)
(RantWoman, why this renewed backbone and adamant energy? The answer is a tag recently added to this blog but that is not getting attached to this post. RantWoman has a sense of "now what" about a recent program she participated in. RantWoman found the program extremely valuable. Now what? remains a question and RantWoman MAY actually manage to be cautious about branding. Maybe.)
(RantWoman, why can't you just let go and forgive? In some cases, RantWoman would like the whole planet to know what is being forgiven so NO ONE ELSE does it either. In other cases, why should RantWoman's forgiveness deprive others she cares about from the opportunity to learn how to Do Better Next Time? There's also that forgive 40x 40 times thing for anyone who reads the Bible. Oh, and make lemonade or at least lemon tea out of ...)
Anyway, RantWoman is SPEAKING for herself, has receipts, and is more than obstreperous enough to keep plugging away at DO BETTER NEXT TIME threads. RantWoman also needs help holding all the players in the circus in the Light.
All that said, this post is a more or less daily opportunity to thank the Safest sex Offender on the Planet for all of his voluntary (putting up with...) and forced ministry of collision with the subject of sex offenders.
RantWoman has two, well, actually more than two centers of comments today.
First, via Twitter, Book banning
This true story came from this article from @BookRiot https://t.co/IQD5vCZrNr
— Society of Secret Library Friends (@sslibfriends) May 20, 2023
"To quote one s*x offender, "Give me a kid who knows nothing about s*x, and you've given me my next victim.""https://t.co/7lkOeB4HuG https://t.co/vN8kHj2Eoc
— Miss T (@MissTomyris) May 22, 2023
What do 8 random strangers know about Quakerism? We asked them.
|
|
|
|
Memo to people new to Quakerism: going to memorials, even for people you barely know, can be a really rich way of learning both about the powerful examples among people one is worshipping with and about the functions of a community in caring for its members.
RantWoman is reflecting on a memorial for Judy K. RantWoman is clear not to use her full name. At the memorial RantWoman learned details of Judy K's biography that probably mean her life will be written up more comprehensively in other fora. What RantWoman has to say here is only partly about Judy K and as much gratitude for people able to care for an support her. RantWoman arrived late and missed the reading of the memorial minute so RantWoman is cautious about the risk of getting things wrong.
RantWoman is not sure when Judy K appeared in Seattle. She is a longtime friend of a weighty Friend and has a daughter somewhere near. Judy was a Quaker early in life and then her journey took her other places including being the only woman in her class at the Yale school of Divinity. Judy did not want to talk much of that experience.
RantWoman knew Judy K from Adult Religious Education. RantWoman always had a sense there might be much to draw out but that RantWoman was not succeeding in doing so. For instance, at one point Judy commented that she wished there were more "Religious" in Adult Religious Education. RantWoman had no idea even who to talk to about that concern. Transportation issues also weighed in time available for conversation.
Friends spoke of Judy needing a care committee. Because she did not know many people well, Friends commented about her discernment in identifying people to ask to serve.
Judy lived at first at a retirement community some distance from Meeting. Friends who lived further away picked her up on their way to Meeting; when they moved into the city she paid to have someone else drive her to and from Meeting. Judy later moved to a different facility and the pandemic intervened.
RantWoman learned that even a cordless phone was more technology than Judy had any interest in. Some facilities had staff that helped people make electronic connections during all the lockdowns when almost no one could visit retirement communities except for a tiny number of extreme situations. RantWoman had already spoken when pandemic connections came up. RantWoman celebrates Friends who treasured phone connections. RantWoman also managed to avoid blurting out anything esoteric about ways to include even the most technologically hesitant in Zoom meetings.
RantWoman left the memorial with appreciation for the closer circles of care. Home-baked brownies also mattered.
RantWoman still has Things On Her Mind. They are for another time.
Wait: The Google is a wonderful thing, AND RantWoman is even clearer about care with names.
Times Radio on G7 and how China benefits
Infographics: how Putin though the invasion would end
Anatole Lieven writes for the Quincy Institute about US and cease fire
RantWoman HAS OPINIONS that may yet turn into a blog post about this article but encourages readers to form their own opinions
Readers can go look up the state of Bakhmut and pending military hardware transfer themselves.
Twitter informed RantWoman that today Sasha Obama graduated from USC.
Black Wall Street Times article
Visit the link for the full visual exuberance.
Also while you are there, read about coverage of many current issues.
RantWoman mostly encourages readers to do a little of your own celebrity chasing.
One of the videos RantWoman found talked about the Obama sisters doing a lot of behind the scenes organizing for Black Lives Matter!
Yes!
Full disclosure: RantWoman and the future Mrs. Obama graduated from the same college the same year. What Michelle Obama writes about this in her book Becoming rings true for RantWoman. There is a part about her freshman year roommate's mother throwing a fit and getting her daughter moved second semester to a single. RantWoman wishes that part were not true and sadly is not surprised. Probably that episode lurks along with many others in Michelle's experiences.
RantWoman has been resisting the temptation to post something more public wondering what Michelle remembers of her college graduation.
See, during finals week, that year's incarnation of an anti-apartheid divestment protest had a sit-in. RantWoman does not remember the names of all 89 people who participated; RantWoman imagines that if the future Mrs. Obama had participated she would have written about it in her book. The 30 or so seniors who participated all graduated on disciplinary probation. Some of them, though not RantWoman, also graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
One of the meanings of privilege is when a Black student called RantWoman before the sit-in. He voiced strong support for the event, but could not participate because he had received an ROTC scholarship and did not want to do anything to endanger his commissioning as an officer upon graduation.
(Everyone whose heads might melt on mention of the above combination of circumstances, cope. RantWoman is happy to dialogue further.)
Anyway, by graduation, legal charges had been dropped but people still wore black armbands and carried black balloons to recognize the harm of apartheid.
Ironically, graduates of that year who had all learned to read with Dr. Seuss voted to award him an honorary degree; RantWoman assuredly would not rescind the honorary degree even though much information has emerged about Theodore Seuss Geisel's racist views.
RantWoman does not want all of this to be a downer after graduation buzz. Perhaps the point is there is still so much work to do and the Obama family, all of them are powerful forces to continue to do it.
 |
| Red, white and Blue, by accident |
Look what Youtube dragged in.
CONTENT WARNING: language. Click at your own risk.
Recent
KNoxville Comic Drew Morgan on Drag, TN and ...
3 years ago.
Why are Hipsters Dressing Like Rednecks
There is more. Use your search engines.
What RantWoman was really meaning to research: Seattle Public Library Twitter feed is all about an upcoming appearance by "actor and evangelist" Kirk Cameron. And his publishing company Brave Books.
Digression relevant to this visit: Libraries are heroes, especially the ones standing up to the wave of book banning sweeping the country faster than an omicron variant of COVID. RantWoman includes the Seattle Public Library for reasons she will elaborate elsewhere. If you live someplace with book bans just look up Seattle Public library.
And libraries allowing drag queen story hours but not allowing Kirk cameron to talk about God.
OK, READ Publicola Article about May 27 book event at Seattle Public Library
And follow the links with statements about SPL policies.
USA Today: People show up ARMED to Protect DRAG QUEENS at Roanoke event
RantWoman is just going to leave this here while considering what can be done to show up in a light-hearted, respectful AND CHALLENGING way.
One of those "holidays" that should be every day.
May 5th is a Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered #INDIGENOUS Women, Girls and Two spirits
— AnonOpsUnited (@AnonOpsUnited2) May 5, 2023
Please wear red in solidarity#MMIW ⁰#MMIWG ⁰#MMIW2S ⁰#DayOfAwareness #NoMoreStolenSisters pic.twitter.com/8X2ZBUBC2W
Tomorrow is May 5th, the National Day of Action / National Day of Awareness for #MMIW
— National Indigenous Women's Resource Center (@niwrc) May 4, 2023
Join us by wearing red: shirts, scarves, earrings, dresses, shoes, lipstick, hats, etc.
Tag @niwrc while using the hashtags #MMIWActionNow and #NoMoreStolenSisters.https://t.co/XEVlNyNgUc pic.twitter.com/QGBeWYNtXG
RantWoman wants to thank everyone who interacted with her invitation to come to an online graduation event for the Third Cohort of the AFB Blind Leadership Development Program. RantWoman asked for a formal agenda and got a Word document with the "run of show."
RantWoman's initial reaction: "ugh. I thought the participants were going to be a bigger part of the presentation." Some of the presentation even made RantWoman grumpy. So RantWoman is really glad to know some of the entourage she invited found all that other talking very meaningful.
RantWoman is deeply amused: she herself got interrupted during both segments of the program where participants graduation videos played and literally no one RantWoman knows can tell RantWoman whether her own video was included. (Ugh. RantWoman should have checked before submitting. There are good technical reasons RantWoman expects better of herself.)
In any case, RantWoman thinks there will be a link to a video soon. Many other participants spoke eloquently to what the program meant to themselves and also RantWoman. RantWoman is either going to re-record her graduation video or just post the text as part of a series of reflections.
In the meantime, RantWoman needs to talk about Ladies and Germs Guy, pronoun wars and what to say when RantWoman's brain does not need any help wandering down all sorts of mental rabbit holes from the outset of an event.
This BLDP cohort all gathered in person in Louisville KY in August. We got started working our way through a program called The Leadership Challenge. We got to know one another. RantWoman was the only one who mentioned pronouns and "non-binary" would have been a completely alien concept. RantWoman does not remember precisely where Ladies and Germs Guy is from. This is probably just as well. Over the program he proved himself insightful, outspoken and willing to take initiative. And in Louisville, almost every time he spoke he addressed the room as "Ladies and Germs."
RantWoman notes that none of the other guys in the room took offense at this out loud. RantWoman also decided to tend to matters with her fellow and others on her table team. Then everyone returned home, continued various strands of work. The first time Ladies and Germs Guy posted in our electronic classroom, he also opened with "Ladies and Germs." At this point, RantWoman posted something about not knowing whether any of the guys were offended but that RantWoman herself does not need any help about her mind wandering off all sorts of directions.
Other people in the group emailed and thanked RantWoman. Ladies and Germs guy shifted to a less distracting greeting, for most of the program. But on graduation day he again addressed us as Ladies and Germs when posting a thank you.
At this point, RantWoman offered the following comments.
"Hi (Ladies and Germs Guy)
"You do you.
"People say that to me when they wonder about me persisting in some of my quirks. The interesting thing about 'germs,' in an age where I let one of my twitter feeds fill with pronoun wars, is that in this context it may or may not be gender specific.
"Anyway, thanks for the update about a work issue. I have so many situations where I basically get to build the next step on a ladder or across a bridge. Interesting that ChatGPT was helpful.
"(in response to another part of the comment) Lyft is definitely not the only tech co where layoffs are being done REALLY crudely with those who remain overworked and demoralized.
"Meanwhile, I also wish I would stop hearing about Lyft drivers who try to get out of picking up passengers with guide dogs. The most recent case involved a federal appellate court judge in Washington DC. And we won't even talk about travelers with wheelchairs, walkers, strollers..
"Anyway, I hope we will all stay in touch and keep growing..." (English to Quakerese translation would perhaps mention continuing revelation."
Posts
All Comments
