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| This bus stop near Meeting was in remarkably good condition today, especially compared to many past visits documented in passing in this blog. RantWomanblames cellphone oopses for lack of a more topical photo |
Today was Asia Bennett's memorial.
Asia Bennett Seattle Times Obituary
Asia Bennett Seattle Times Obituary
Thematic comments:
1. For a faith tradition founded on the equality of Women, (see Margaret Fell) and credited historically with important connections to suffrage movements, only in the 20th century was Asia credited with being "the first woman to..." for a number of different Quaker organizations. Asia spent the early part of her career working in childcare. Her family's bio reported that she at some point noted how much dealing with toddlers--and their parents--prepared her for the many different leadership and personnel roles she took on within various Quaker organizations.
[RantWoman sometimes carries around in her head thoughts such as "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." When RantWoman observes long-lasting marriages where deep love is obvious, though, RantWoman also firmly believes in supporting the partnership behind leaders so special Light and appreciation for Lee, Asia's husband of almost 77 years.]
2. LOTS of people talked about Asia's capacity to listen. RantWoman meant particularly to note Vanessa Julye's comment about Asia's role in supporting Vanessa's early steps in the work of addressing racism within the Society of Friends. These thoughts did not make it out of RantWoman's mouth as a message in worship. They WILL be part of thoughts in another post only hinted at here.
3. LOTS of people commented about how Asia asking a question helped direct them toward or away from different forms of witness: aiming for revolution vs getting married, accepting AFSC staff vote to unionize consideration that the organization had a decades-long commitment to supporting unions, engagement about diversity with out LGBT Friends.
4. RantWoman admits to a little bit of frustration about mention of issues in days of yore with scant thought that some of those same issues are very much still throbbing, sometimes in new, highly mutated forms in the life of the world. One of Asia's gifts to the world is to plant seeds for helping new generations find paths among these challenging realities.
5. Inclosing,possibly weird advice to young people new to Friends: GO TO MEMORIALS. Even if you barely know the deceased and are afraid of not knowing a soul from your own generation, GO TO MEMORIALS. Learn. Okay, Asia famously told someone awed by Quaker weddings "oh wait until you see the memorials."
Techie notes.
1. RantWoman has special tirades related to memorials and visits UFM intermittently. Today aside from the bus shelter in LOVELY condition, . the visit revealed QR codes???? RantWoman loves the pblishers of Truth in whatever is the medium of the day. RantWoman is just not sure about QR codes on info sheets on a bulletin . board.RantWoman hopes the QR codes do what is intended. She also hopes the bar codes do not scare away people annoyed by bar codes or by the implication that one must be fluent in particular technologies to be a good Quaker.
2. Even at in-person events, RantWoman LOVES, LOVES, Loves signing into Zoom on her phone with audio disconnected in order not to interfere with room sound. RantWoman just LOVES knowing who all is on the Zoom. (RantWoman kind of means to experiment about these issues on other video conferencing platforms.
3. RantWoman definitely appreciates evolution and continuing revelation about the world of movable mics and Room amplification in the world of hybrid / blended Zoom meetings. RantWoman also tartly remembers the first incarnation of a UFM committee on disabilities: there was a survey. There were minimal requests of the surveyors in Meeting for Business from anyone, alas including RantWoman. But great success was noted because of the next iteration of efforts to ensure that people, such as Asia, with hearing loss, could hear better. RantWoman has no desire to minimize these efforts. However, RantWoman CONTINUES TO TAKE SERIOUS ISSUE with the limitations of that as an approach to addressing matters of disability.
RantWoman has meant to do SOMETHING to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the launch of Gulf War 2, Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Here is such Light as comes to RantWoman
Video of special compline of lament and remembrance, St Mark's cathedral March 19, 2023
We MUST talk about Donald J. Trump; we MUST also talk about George W Bush.
Mehdi Hasan and Tom Nichols on Iraq / Bush and Putin / Ukraine
RantWoman is not nostalgic about a Friends World Committee on Consultation Section of the Americas gathering whee Arab Americans spoke of "my name is random" when passing through TSA checkpoints and where others said things along the lines of "if war in inevitable, let's get it over with."
RantWoman remembers MASSIVE antiwar demonstrations all over the world, although there is crickets about any mention of that in most restrospectives RantWoman has encountered..
And today RantWoman was remembering in a email exchange about a law student with PTSD and issues with VA benefits he should be entitled to: RantWoman recalls the cost of pensions and benefits for US troops not even being figured in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's calculations of war costs.
Example story: former US Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley and her husband scotty
[Correction and Blindness related digression The story above is factually inaccurate though about Scotty being the first blinded veteran to return to active duty. There is at least one other one from the Iraq era. He became a campus recruiter which to RantWoman seems like a tough sell for people considering signing up. More importantly after WWII the military specifically kept some blinded troops on active duty so they could be ordered to do mobility training and other rehabilitation.]
And we will not even discuss the truly SHITTY treatment and bureaucratic mazes that interpreters the US depended on had to try to hack through to achieve the refugee status their sacrifices entitled them to.
RantWoman is thinking off all this contemplating the current frightening layers of the war in Ukraine, but more on that in another post.
Happy #GAAD #GAAD2021
Accessibility is a big and complex topic. Plus for RantWoman in true early Quaker no respecter of days fashion, Global Accessibility Awareness Day is every day. RantWoman definitely recommends EVERYONE be open to continuing revelation. In the meantime, in celebration... some ups and downs
Giant kudos to the organizers of the most recent FWCC Section of the Americas virtual gathering. Accessibility is never perfect. For RantWoman though simply using Google products and using them well was a godsend. So RantWoman imagines are virtual meetings in general for many people.
RantWoman's mind can muddle in many directions about libraries, The Bible in large print and / or in apps, archives, what to archive... There are more accessibility stories here than RantWoman wants to write.
On the other hand, with some degree of apology for being utterly charm-challenged in the delivery:
Suppose a person is dyslexic and does not read print. Suppose the person who is dyslexic writes a book. What is getting in the way of immediately making available not only the printed version, but also an audio version.
Suppose Friends A and B retire from different branches of the government but somehow manage to retire withouth ever colliding with questions of accessible content and reasonable accommodations. Are they open to continuing revelation?
RantWoman is (Check all that apply)
--Observing Holy Week with the custom of leave room for Elijah
--Taking another nip at her involuntary accessibility testing habit.
--Crash landing after an accessibility tour de force, okay not hitting every possible button but PLENTY at the recent virtual session of the FWCC Section of the Americas.
--Terrorizing the technologically reluctant with way too much tortuous detail about the accessibility vexations always besetting her interactions with space, time, and community life?
--Trying to find a spiritual spray can to graffiti in something about, contrary to the proclaimings after a certain survey about disability, "it's NOT only about accessibility because there are things no one can fix, but ya know there have been stampedes of people (NOT) visiting RantWoman's workshops trying to explore themes like spiritual accompaniment." And we will not even discuss spiritually fortifying experiences such as vocational rehabilitation and skills and technologies and accommodation needs that are the same whether we are talking about a volunteer activity or a workplace.
--Offering mass baptism of points that matter to RantWoman about accessibility that when people have to wash their hair or tend to a bad back or stay within the time they want to offer Meeting or... that many hands can carry the work and the world will not blow apart because one person is indisposed for whatever reason. Geez. Ya know there is no Good time to have to deal ... and yet...
--Channeling Gogol (yes, the19th century Russian author, not the search engine) about either The Overcoat or The Nose and meandering around Absurdistan, cluttering her version of Blog as Quaker journal with WAY too many metaphors for people to want to hang around with?
--Seeking acceptable Quakerese translations for "pearls before swine" and '...eyes to see and ears to hear..." every time one of the offerings from RantWoman's soul falls to the floor of the forest without so much as a whisper of interaction. One exchange sticks in RantWoman's mind: two members of pastoral care committees approached RantWoman about messages they did not find God in, right after two other people spoke of great regard for the messages. It would have been entirely appropriate to say "Friends, have you considered that maybe the messages were not for you and your task was to sit in worship?" Had RantWoman opened her mouth at the time though, there might have been too many pearls before swine.
--Handling with great care some other uncomposted deposits that could still either catch fire or fuel fascinating transformations.
--Ding. Ding. Ding! Trying to step through the process for reserving a seat at the slowly relaunching Meeting for Worship. (Please note there are of course other topics to tend to along this line.)
The reservation process involves a platform called RSVPify. The website flunks RantWoman's default first-pass accessibility test: does it say something about accessibility linked from the homepage? No, but the page is navigable enough for RantWoman to find a bunch of gushy reviews which also say nothing about accessibility. High volumes of gushy marketing text seems to be a hallmark of the site in general and RantWoman is definitely not as into idle grazing with screen reader as when she officially could see or at least could see a lot better than now.
So onward. RantWoman will come back to tests on the PC. Let's just say, after RantWoman had two rotten experiences on the PC, she decided to try on her Android phone. RantWoman got all the way through the process, including lots of text about complying with public health, management of the data collected for contact tracing, and even the checkbox for the required waiver of liability. The Google map takes up too much space at the top of the form on both the phone and the PC, but the visual experience overall with all the limitations of RantWoman's wonky eyeballs was better on the phone.
RantWoman did notice that there is no option for editing the number of people unless one cancels the whole reservation and starts over.
Wait. It's Passover. People leave room for Elijah. Stray relatives, COVID-safe, fully vaccinated, of course, wander into the picture and maybe one would like to add a new person. Again, no edit. Cancel and start over?
RantWoman, the contact tracers are not going to care about Elijah. Or the service python. But try one more time about the PC.
The service python needed to register on the PC with a separate email address. Screen reader navigation was a nightmare. Lots of unlabeled buttons which meant RantWoman had to guess about a number of points. RantWoman did not make it to the waiver of liability checkbox, inconveniently both unlabeled and inoperable withthe screen reader. RantWoman does not think the Service Python got registered because there should have been a confirmation email. But the service python did an email about his reservation being cancelled. Go figure.
The visual experience on the PC was surreal, bad contrast, text getting written over a busy background, things coming and going from view way more erratically than average with what RantWoman calls screen scrolling, moving around to see different parts of a screen not visible on the screen because of how screen magnification handles what is displayed. RantWoman figured out that some of the text on busy background effect had to do with screen magnification: when RantWoman lowered the level of screen magnification, some of the effects went away.
RantWoman, what do you want us to do with this screed?
Hold it in the Light, ALL of it.
RantWoman is interested in hearing whether others are having the same difficulties. For example, RantWoman could probably replicate some of the PC issues trying the right things within browsers even without the screen magnification software.
RantWoman has a couple database nerd questions she will ask. RantWoman will try to grow enough patience to report the problems to the developers but will probably try to cope with the phone version of the app.
RantWoman, on a different topic, it's Holy Week. Maybe you should try footwashing, like the pastor at RantMom's church does.
Footwashing? How many people would have no idea what that's about.
Hello Friends,
Fourth Saturday Worship continues. My practice of getting the invitations out unpardonably late also continues. I hope that spring is bringing new light as well as continued COVID vigilance. I would love to see the faces of anyone interested in attending. I will start the meeting early at 2 pm Pacific time in response to comments i have received.
As usual unprogrammed worship for about an hour followed by worship
sharing and social time.
RantWoman's capacity to inflame the internet--or to amplify other important content continues.
DRW Statement about offensive language in the WA State Senate
FWCC Section of the Americas Interest Group
Themes on my mind: what rises for Friends from either of these blog posts?
I checked the library website for what they call Road to Reopening. The short answer: not yet
Seattle Public Library COVID services
I have not adjusted the time this month. I heard one suggestion to meet at 2 pm rather than 3:30 and would appreciate feedback about that idea.
Our April worship time falls during Quarterly meeting. Expect further thoughts in the announcement for next month.
Zoom link Below
in Light and faithfulness.
RantWoman
Join Zoom Meeting Fourth Saturday Worship
FWCC Section of the
Americas Virtual Session March 19, 2021
Descapacidad,
Diferencia, y dificultades en
comunidades espirituales
Disability, Difference,
Difficulty and Spiritual Communities
Jeff
Keith and Dorene Cornwell
Welcome and a few
minutes of worship
Intros
Name, where you are from
Choose at least one
of:
Pronouns
What
you are wearing
Who else is with you: Pet? Roommate?
Service animal including service python? Elijah?
Any
access needs
A
Fun Fact about you, maybe disability-related
Something
you hope to take away from this interest group
Discapacidad,
diferencia, dificultad y comunidades espirituales. Este grupo explorará los
temas del tÃtulo reflexionando sobre las siguientes interrogantes:
Milagros
- ¿Qué son? ¿Existen?
Cuando
hablamos de discapacidades y dones, ¿a qué nos referimos?
Disability,
Difference, Difficulty and Spiritual Communities. This group will explore
the themes in the title reflecting on the following queries: Miracles? Are they
a thing? Are they not a thing?
When we talk about disabilities and gifts, what do we mean?
Closing worship
Miscellaneous
notes
Zoom and flow of
Interest group.
If you have video, please turn it on while
speaking
Please use Raise hand
which is *9 on phone
Please be sparing about chat to everyone.
Suggesting resources is
cool
If there is someone who
can only use the chat, listen.
Brave Space /
Confidentiality / Narrative Theology
Dorene’s Access needs:
Pay
attention to others’ access needs. For example,
People who lip-read can leave Zoom in active speaker mode.
Please
remember to turn video on before speaking if possible.
I cannot see faces very
well especially in Gallery View. So let’s all watch for each other and help
hold moments of distress.
Screen share
visual accessibility is very limited for me so I always like or files shared in
the chat.
I am unlikely to use
screen share myself. I use 4x screen magnification which I can turn down if
needed. However, even at 2x, me moving around on the screen can give other
people vertigo. But I am happy to email people before or after with what I have
presented.
Why do I ask what people
are wearing?
I have been going to a series of webinars c
alled CripCamp. Crip Camp is about the intersection of
disability and BIPoC issues. All sessions have both ASL interpretation and a
live transcript. They now use a model for chat of write in questions, someone
reads and then presenters answer.
I
have discovered that one of the most fun things about the panel intros at the
beginning of the session is when people describe what they are wearing. So as
another way to connect, let’s try it. I only want to know that you are zooming in your sleepwear if
there is something really interesting about your sleepwear.
RantWoman, you want to get one last #BlackHistoryMonth post out of your system. You want to post a link and just exclaim "Isn't it cool that NBC News has evolved enough to run this story. Why ya gotta go to South Africa first?
RantWoman's knowledge of the nuances of South African society in different eras is defined remembrances when Nelson Mandela died, by South African Quaker leader Dudu Mtshazo, and by Trevor Noah, his Book Born a Crime, and his comedy. Don't forget Paul Simon and LadysmithBlack Mbazo and Diamonds on the Souls of their shoes or one book on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In other words, RantWoman has enough for some metaphors to illustrate her points and other than that much to maintain lifelong learning and endless curiosity about.
Early in Mandela's career, he and others in the African National Congress, ANC did a great deal of diplomacy, reaching out to other African countries at a time when popular culture commentary in the US focused a lot on Cold War terms, much less on countering colonialism or listening to the needs and priorities of different African countries. RantWoman thinks this level of diplomacy is much to be admired. Period. Query: why would RantWoman possibly be bringing up this kind of diplomacy, reaching across boundaries?
Nelson Mandela was still on the US terrorist watch list when he was released after 26 years in prison for opposing the South African regime. The evolution of this image and of US policy is only one part of the recent history of post-apartheid South Africa. Query to justify this digression: what relationships might need to grow or evolve?
Dudu Mtshazo, when she was NPYM Friend in Residence in the late 1990's spoke of 3 categories of people in post-apartheid South Africa, people who went into exile, people who got sent to prison, and people who managed to stay and stay out of prison. Dudu's form of resistance was to violate pass laws so that people of different races could pray together.
Query: Where do readers suppose RantWoman might be going with this?
Now to the article, with special note to look up more about the Black Panthers involvement in the disability rights movement leading up to enacting of the ADA.
NBC News item about Black History and Disability
Queries: do readers suppose that some of the erasures and ableism and closetedness mentioned are unique to people of color? RantWoman does not want to minimize or erase; RantWoman does want readers to consider what needs and emotions might be at work in different situations touched on in the article.
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