Eye - 17 March 2023

From A blank canvas to On this day

A blank canvas

After Annon-a-mouse’s idea for making notepaper from the wrapper of the Friend (10 February), Kate Hale, of Bedminster Meeting, got in touch to share how her family uses it as a springboard for creativity!

She told Eye: ‘My granddaughter and I use the envelope for painting and drawing. Every week a new envelope arrives and we see what we can create on it. A great size A3 enables fun and messy learning. I wonder what we’ll produce next.’

Ticklish compositions concluded

Roy Payne, of Polegate Meeting, concludes his musings with the marking of a milestone: ‘When the moment came… after years of discussion and planning, when the unwieldy Hereford and Mid-Wales Monthly Meeting split into Southern Marches Area Meeting and Mid-Wales Area Meeting, the mainly English former minuted loving greetings to our more musical Welsh Friends, which I transformed into:

A loving and Quakerly greeting
To the new Mid-Wales Area Meeting.
We could try it in song,
But would, no doubt, go wrong
And end in cacophonous bleating!’

Quaker notes

You’ll find no porridge here,
Or men in funny hats.
No rote, no robes, no ‘Thou Shall Nots’,
Nor steeples filled with bats.
No sermons to instruct. No rules you must obey,
And though it might sound strange to some,
We’re not told what to pray.

You’ll find no porridge here,
Or bells, or holy smoke.
Just earnest, soulful gatherings,
Of earnest, soulful folk.
Our meeting house is plain,
It lacks both priest and choir,
But gives us silence, friendship, calm,
And all that we require.

You’ll find no porridge here,
If that’s what you expect.
We meet in peace: for peace we pray,
In stillness and respect.
Our ways may be diverse,
But one thing’s very clear,
Although we don’t serve bread and wine,
You’ll find no porridge here.

Alaric (Jim) Bond

On this day

Eye found two surprising but once-regular segments in an edition dated 17th March 1899: ‘Science Notes’ and ‘Football’.

‘Science Notes’ was written by J Edmund Clark, who had a BA and BSc. The first snippet of news that appeared was of ‘a comet visible without telescopes’, along with an estimate of where Friends could look to spy it for themselves… but in this case the delay between putting pen to paper and the magazine landing on doormats caused some consternation in directing Friends to the landmark constellations.

J Edmund Clark is not only concerned with the heavens, as he shares news of ‘another American skyscraper’ in New York. He reflects: ‘Close by it stands St. Paul’s Church, opened in 1776, outside the then city limits. Croakers found great fault with the location, and “scrupled not to comment with just severity upon the folly” of placing it “in a place so remote and sequestered, so difficult of access, and to which the population could never extend.”’
Below these scientific notes, Eye discovered that there were enough Quaker-linked football teams for the results of their matches to be posted on the notices page. In 1899 the Foxes played Friends’ School, Saffron Walden, and won 4-2. Eye wonders, do any teams today maintain a Quaker link?

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