I was just fixing to write back to the Clerk of Quarterly Meeting about how I wanted Friday night's activities listed as a part of the program, not just in the cover letter.
I may not have sufficient clout to have my preferences acted upon however, as she outranks me. I'm just a continuing member of Quarterly Meeting Planning committee, having served under co-clerks Jane and Diane last year (I was "theme czar", organized that Future of Friends panel).
Nancy Irving sent me some info on where to buy a "Quaker guts" (or "entrails") poster from FGC. This poster traces some of the forks in our lineage, a complicated pattern.
Earlier today, I checked some of Lindsey's draft video blogs regarding neighborhood urban farming projects, including her own. These look promising as they contain a lot of practical information in a form accessible to public school students.
Before that, I did a free vehicle test at DEQ. The "maxi taxi" runs clean as a whistle, but has a longstanding computer and/or sensor issue, meaning prayers to the Nissan gods are in order.
I have the check from Farmer's already, for my totaled Razz. The back office in Oklahoma was quick with the paperwork, using FedEx in both directions.
I have this concern that Quaker schools won't be able to keep pace with our counterparts on the reservations or wherever, if our "casino math" is forbidden. We might call it "probability studies" but the fact remains, we model decks of cards, dice, roulette wheels... all the claptrap of gambling.
Some puritanical factions may have a problem with mixing randomness with money somehow. Actually, I'm not sure what the theological roots of the problem might be (I'm investigating). I know Catholic churches usually have no problem with bingo. Quakers play mahjong, board games, some card games around here, though usually not for money.
Of course there's nothing to stop us from making the rez schools be Quaker, provided there's no proselytizing or imposition of alien templates against the will of the people. As the Warm Springs museum makes clear, the boarding school model was at one time deliberately misapplied with an intent to eradicate native cultures, by separating youngsters from elders within the same tribe (an internment camp or strategic hamlet approach).
The Diversity initiative within Python Nation seems to be chugging along nicely, thanks to Carl and some others (Tag has been helping me tune in the Arabic pages). There's some statement in the works, maybe some blogs. I contributed some provocative comments before giving it a rest, like:
Anyway, as a Swedish Asian Quaker using Python to bridge to Native American casino culture, I'm a poster boy for diversity and deserve a place in the sun as much as anyone. Treat me as disabled if that helps. [ Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:31 PM ]I sided with Aahz against the ombudsman idea and proposed snakepit@python.org instead, a free wheeling, archived list where Pythonistas might indulge in pirate talk (including various forms of invective) without bending over backwards to appear inoffensive (often just a way of being phony baloney about stuff).
Every viable society needs some back rooms for this purpose no?
Mirroring the docs in multiple languages will be helpful to those not granted access to elite academies, where English tends to be a preferred language of instruction. The Standard Library will continue in Latin-1 as a shared lingua franca or characters set, basically ASCII, although author names could be in whatever native glyphs.
