A scene from 'A Foxy Selfie'. Photo: Courtesy of Chris Lawson.
Eye - 28 October 2016
From selfies to seats
A Foxy selfie
The first performance of a play called ‘George Fox takes a selfie’ was put on at Taunton Meeting in September. The play was written by Avril Silk, of Wellington Meeting, and gave a few familiar names some unusual experiences.
Chris Lawson, of West Somerset Area Meeting, explained: ‘Whilst at Swarthmoor Hall in 1676, George Fox has a dream of the future and finds himself younger and in the present day, learning to Tweet to spread his message thanks to Margaret Fell (“Foxy Lady” on Facebook), who’s already very savvy online. Then he’s back in 1676 and Swarthmoor Hall, married to Margaret, and reflecting on Friends of the future. Throughout he’s also reviewing his treatment of James Nayler.’
The sixty-strong audience on 7 September saw parts being read by local Friends. It marked the last in a series of special meetings, featuring visiting speakers, to celebrate the rebuilding of the Meeting house.
Quaking in Springfield
An eagle-eyed Friend has spied Quakers putting in a brief appearance during the Simpsons.
In an episode where Bart Simpson and his best friend Millhouse discover an abandoned subway system, Christine Downes-Grainger, of Epping Meeting, was surprised to see that: ‘The old train they gleefully drive around causes a lot of damage to the roads and buildings of Springfield above. A sign outside the Town Hall reads: EMERGENCY EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE MEETING. It quickly sheds letters to become EMERGENCY QUAKE R MEETING and a group of soberly dressed citizens scurry in.’
The episode, originally broadcast in 2010, isn’t the only reference to Friends that has cropped up over the years. Eye has discovered that the animated town’s favourite ‘Hollywood has-been’, Troy McClure, donned plain dress back in 1992 when he quipped to Marge Simpson: ‘As I said to Dolores Montenegro in Calling All Quakers!, “have it your way, baby”.’
A superabundance of seats
Having caught sight of the ‘George Fox chair’ in Eye (9 September), Gerald Drewett, of Hertford Meeting, wrote about a similar seat in his Meeting: ‘Well, of course, you’d expect the oldest purpose-built Meeting house in the world still in use to have something to say, wouldn’t you?… George Fox first visited Hertford in 1655, some six months after James Nayler had established a Meeting here.’
According to Meeting legend, this seat did not just provide a resting place for its namesake but was given to the Meeting by the man himself.
Unfortunately, there is a problem: ‘George Fox was never enamoured of Hertford Meeting. We were too pro-Perrot and involved in the Wilkinson-Storey controversy in a way that George Fox could not tolerate, and it’s very hard to imagine he ever offered Hertford Meeting an olive branch by way of a Commonwealth chair!
‘The fact that over the years some thirty members of our area were sentenced to transportation to the colonies might be indicative of that highly valued independence of spirit.’
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