:: clerk of the meeting ::
I'm exercising my privilege as a key holder today, arriving at the meetinghouse during clerk office hours and dragging Skyblue into the social hall, parking her unobtrusively in the corner.
After Rick wrapped up his duties he ambled over and opted in on a photo op. We're commemorating about one year of active collaboration with Food Not Bombs.
About a year ago, I took an outdoor picture with then clerk Betsey Kenworthy, just yesterday returned from Managua as a part of our meeting away team.
When I say "our meeting" I'm speaking loosely as technically I joined the Bridge City Worship Group and helped shepherd it to monthly meeting status. Then, having only attender status in both meetings (by choice of new Quaker nomenclature), I continued most of my activities with Multnomah, given it's within easy walking distance and I was practicing strict ascetics where peak oil was concerned.
I continue to drive way less than had been my habit, even though I work as a chauffeur in various capacities (per my Director of Open Source application to Reed College).
Since Rick's background is journalism, Columbia University and so on (reminds me of my friend the Keunsel editor in Thimphu), I thought he'd enjoy a brief human interest story from FnB and recounted about my losing David's expensive knife set overboard, off the back of my bicycle.
Rick expressed surprise the replacement price tag was under $200 (I have the boxes here today). There's something to be said for shopping eBay, and knowing exactly what you want (going mainly by price as an indication of quality: not necessarily a good idea). He took my picture as well.
Speaking of pricing, one of the sad stories from Managua involves this co-op for ladies who had bet the farm, their life savings, and gone into debt, to purchase cotton milling equipment. They'd already built the factory building to take delivery, but the equipment that showed up was definitely not the equipment they had selected, inspected and trained on. What they got was junk. Some swindler from Venezuela they say.
But that story pales next to what's happening in Honduras.
Business meeting approved my experiment post facto, after we had some data points to go by (we tested cooking a couple times). Our equipment is not as robust as what they've got in many churches. However, for the vegan style FnB uses, it's quite adequate. We're not deep fat fryers.
Those early Vegans Not Pigs episodes, with optional meat entres from Emily, including cat fish, were more of a Duke's Landing co-production.
I was to report back to business meeting within a year. I might be using a URI to this write-up in committee emails shortly, as well as on Facebook, where I manage some of my Quaker stuff.
