Issue 21-10-2011
Featured story
The world of Joseph Wood
The publication this month of a full and unedited transcription of the large and small notebooks of Joseph Wood, a Yorkshire Quaker, will provide a significant new resource for those with an interest in Quaker history and genealogy. The hundred notebooks, written between 1773 and 1821, together with 647 letters and miscellaneous printed...
Top stories
Thought for the Week: United Nations Day
I have never had any difficulty with remembering United Nations Day, 24 October, since it coincides with my mother’s birthday! This huge organisation rambles like a rose bush over the globe, with its many offshoots involved in almost every aspect of human life in every corner of the world. Some,...
Death shall not prevail
On 22 July, exactly three months ago, Anders Behring Breivik, a thirty-two year old Norwegian, set off a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo. It killed eight of his fellow countrymen. An hour and a half later, dressed as a policeman, he landed on the small island of Utøya...
Experiment with Light: Sink down to the seed
When Cockermouth, in Cumbria, was flooded in 2009, our house was one of the first to be filled with silty water. I was flooded at the same time with emotional muddle and confusion. At first it was simple and we all got on with coping. After a bit, the casual destruction...
A moment in time
It is Monday, 3 October, at 8.30 in the morning, and I am hanging out my laundry. I have a small whirligig line placed in a bed of low-growing alpines – plantaholics like me don’t have room for a lawn – and I am surrounded by apples, some still on the trees, others...
Quaker presence at financial protests
Quakers held a Meeting for Worship near the London Stock Exchange on Saturday as nonviolent protests began at financial centres around the world. The police refused to allow demonstrators to approach the exchange, confining thousands of them outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Several other Friends turned up on Sunday...
All articles
Quakers to help ‘hidden homeless’
Friends have been urged to rent out their spare rooms to single people at risk of homelessness. Quaker Social Action (QSA), who made the appeal, say there are thousands of people who are ‘vulnerably housed’ but not technically labelled as homeless. Single people are often at the bottom of...
Michael Lyons loses appeal
A member of the Navy who changed his views on war has lost an appeal against his conviction for ‘wilful disobedience.’ Michael Lyons is serving nine months in an armed forces detention centre because he refused to use a rifle. The appeal court last week decided to uphold the...
Christmas shelters begin preparations
Quaker Homeless Action (QHA) have begun to recruit volunteers for their annual Christmas shelters. A number of charities and campaigning groups, including QSA and QHA, have warned that the economic policies of the coalition government could result in a considerable increase in homelessness. QHA said in August that they...
Anti-biofuel protest
The campaign group Biofuelwatch is launching a demonstration on 22 October to call on the UK government to stop subsidising biomass and bioliquids. The demonstration will be held outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change in London.
In everyone
I don’t believe we are a sick society I don’t believe we are a broken society. I believe we are a complex society, a fragile society, a beautiful society.
Letters - 21 October 2011
Swarthmore Lecture 2011 There is an intimate correlation between Pam Lunn’s thought-provoking book and our economic situation. National debts, and ours in particular, represent an inordinate addition to the destruction of the earth’s resources and, in particular, fossil fuels with carbon emissions and resultant global warming. Thus, paying off...
Eye - 21 October 2011
Ben Okafor at Sidcot School One of the liveliest events in Quaker Week was the visit to Sidcot School in Somerset of the singer and activist Ben Okafor. Quaker Week is one of the biggest collaborative events in the school’s calendar. It not only brings the school together, but...