Friends in San Antonio

7052 North Vandiver, San Antonio TX78209

April 2009

April 2009 Calendar

Meeting for Worship is held on Sunday at 10 a.m., followed by refreshments and a Forum discussion at 11.30, usually lasting until about 12.45. Children are invited to join worship for the first fifteen minutes, after which they may go to join with the Young Friends program. Child care is available during Forum.

4 Saturday ............ Movie, “Born Into Brothels,” meetingroom 7 pm.
5 Sunday ............... Modern scholarship, Acts of the Apostles, 9 am.
            Potluck lunch at 11.30.
12 Sunday............. South Central Yearly Meeting. No forum.
19, Sunday............. Meeting for Business.
26, Sunday ............ Extended meeting for worship, 7.30 am.
            Forum – Rex Ambler's Experiment with Light

Each Thursday, at 4-5 pm, a silent peace vigil is held at the corners of S. Flores and Commerce, one block west of Main Plaza near City Hall.

Clerk: Bill Wilkinson 210)561-9360 e-mail: billwilk3@att.net

Newsletter Editor: Ken Southwood, (210)828-1513; e-mail: jksouthwood@grandecom.net

Website: www.sanantonioquakers.org

Donations may be made to Friends Meeting of San Antonio, P.O. Box 6127, San Antonio TX 78209.

Meeting telephone for meeting times or to ask for other information: (210) 945-8456

San Antonio Friends Meeting Newsletter

Fourth Month, 2009

A Visit to the War on Drugs

Dear Friends,

I have recently returned home from a foray into the tropical lowlands of Bolivia, with some new perspectives on how the US "War on Drugs" is affecting that nation. . . This region of Bolivia is the ultimate source of about as much cocaine as is consumed every year in the entire United States, though these days most of the local crop is actually processed and consumed in countries closer to Bolivia.

The Bolivian colonel delivers a crisp military briefing, with charts and graphs showing progress in coca eradication. On the surface it looks quite successful, but it is easy to read between the lines to understand what is not being said: despite all of the extensive eradication of coca fields, the Bolivian coca eradication program, a key element of the US government's "War on Drugs," is barely making a dent in the local coca crop.

No surprise here . . .. We have learned the hard way that our schools are flooded with cocaine and indeed an entire cornucopia of illegal drugs. This is a sad and bitter truth for my friends in a dozen agencies who daily put their lives on the line in the continuing attempt to protect our nation's youth by reducing the influx of illegal drugs.

Making war on a supply chain makes perfect sense in the context of military combat, but when the supply chain feeds an underground market, and when the demand for these goods is insensitive to price, then the war becomes self-defeating. . . Three factors greatly complicate the task of the military and police:

Coca is so easily grown that it is better described as a weed than a crop, and it grows well in extremely isolated parts of the world. Illegal coca plantings tend to be small, widely dispersed, and expensive to find.
Coca leaf is a traditional and effective Andean remedy for altitude sickness, so it cannot be fully criminalized. In effect, the only serious penalty for growing illegal coca in Bolivia is destruction of the coca plants. Possession of harvested coca leaf is legal in Bolivia.
The street demand for cocaine is not very sensitive to price — even when the price goes up dramatically, cocaine addicts only slowly curtail their usage.
The increased price that results from eradication of coca not only roughly compensates farmers for their losses, in aggregate, but it also results in more coca plantings elsewhere. This is why I and so many others say that the "War on Drugs" is self-defeating.
The logic driving our efforts seems still to be based on a simple-minded kind of moral reasoning, roughly as follows: "Drugs are Evil, so we must make war on those who manufacture and distribute them."
From an economic point of view this attempt to guide strategy by good-vs-evil morality is worse than silly, it is just dead wrong. The good folks here in Bolivia know this, I know it, the US military has learned it, American think-tanks like RAND Corporation have confirmed it, and a lot of politicians in Washington now know it too. Yet few if any of our political leaders are brave enough to explain this to the American people.
Many people have come to believe that the only viable alternative to a campaign against the supply of narcotics is an equal-sized effort to reduce the demand. How to do this is subject to debate, but at the very least it will require public support for spending billions on an approach based on public health, addict rehabilitation, prison reform, and some degree of decriminalization. A change in strategy along these lines has already begun in some countries of Europe, but what are the chances of this happening in the USA and other consumer nations? Zero to none, in the present political climate.

Sincerely your friend, Loren Cobb

This is Letter Number 129 of The Quaker Economist, a website, www.quaker.org/tqe/, started by Jack Powelson, of Boulder Meeting, who felt that Friends needed more professional input about economic policy.

There is an aspect of this which goes beyond the simplicity of good-versus-evil. The drug problem and the source of money and arms are ours, not Bolivia’s, not Mexico’s, as Hillary Clnton has now acknowledged. Yet the “war” is conducted principally by Bolivians and Mexicans, who suffer the casualties of war. For information on drug policy reform, go to www.drugpolicy.org. Next month will contain North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s 2008 minute on this subject.

Personal News

Val has been preparing for a speaking trip to Iowa, to at least 12 classes and groups. Then, FPT meetings in LA, at least 3 more presentations at Friends Meetings, and AVP groups returning home April 5th or 6th.

In April she will do a workshop at South Central Yearly Meeting, then to the Philadelphia area for a meeting, and a presentation at Ocean City Friends Meeting, . After that, she plans to attend a trauma healing workshop in NYC. In late April she will go for a 3 day Advanced AVP workshop in Guatemala City, two mornings of education for AVP facilitators there, and then on to El Salvador for July – October.

In mid-May she plans to go on to Colombia to train facilitators of community based trauma healing and mentor the new facilitators in their first workshops.

In early July she plans to participate in a 3-day Trauma Management conference and to meet with Nicaraguans to discuss PLA’s work with AVP there. Then she hopes to settle in in Suchitoto, El Salvador, from which she can travel to Guatemala and Nicaragua for workshops, and to meet with Quakers in those countries.

Janet and Ken’s daughter, Rebecca, died on March 3. She was their adopted daughter, 41, Native American, and left a son, Jose, 5. Over the last years she found a loving community among Mexican Americans in Chicago, where she joined the Catholic church. Following her wish, Jose will be under the guardianship of a dear friend of hers in Bolingbrook, outside Chicago. One woman at the visitation said, “She had a beautiful heart.”

Bill O’s father suffers from a brain tumor. Under chemotherapy it shrank during March, easing the pain. Bill and Karen returned to San Antonio at his father’s wish. Both were able to return to their jobs.

A photo of Frances and Von, peeping out of a tent, appeared in the Express-News in an article about San Antonio mothers who spoke of the joys of breast-feeding their babies. Frances spoke of the difficulties of continuing to do this after returning to work. But it “was something I could do for him that nobody else could.” Frances is expecting her second baby later this year.

Asked, Julie B said, “Sure, you can publish something about me if you think anyone will really be interested.... I am almost through with the first phase (of three) of my chemo. I am currently on an every two week phase--I get treatment on Monday, and then I'm nauseous as all get out for about a week after. So I have one good week and one bad week-right now it's going good (just slightly queasy). All my hair fell out, so I'm sporting a hair hat (wig)--folks say it looks "natural" but I'm sure they are just being nice, all I can think is, "I have something on my head, I have something on my head." The good news is, I don't have to shave my legs anymore, that hair stopped growing too-weird huh? Still have eyebrows and eyelashes for now though, so I don't look like a complete alien from outer space. The kids are hanging in there just fine, they seem to be calm about my situation and they actually try to behave during the weeks that I am sick--wish that could be extended to a full time thing, but no luck yet.

Other news, Thomas proposed to me last Friday, so it looks like we're engaged and we plan to wed next summer in June–(let's hear a collective "Awwww"....). You have to know a guy really loves you when he shaves your head, and then gets down on one knee two weeks later.

That's all about me – whohoo!”

Julie’s spirits seem to be high. We’re interested, Julie, and we have to love Thomas too.

March Business meeting

Meeting opened with silent worship followed by the First Rule of St. Benedict:

“Live this life and do whatever is done in a spirit of thanksgiving.
"Abandon attempts to achieve security, they are futile.
"Give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning.
"Quit the search for salvation, it is selfish.
"Come to comfortable rest in the certainty that those who participate in this life with an attitude of thanksgiving will receive its full promise.”

Questioned, the Treasurer agreed to review the wording of our listings in Friends Journal and Quaker Life to include more information about the Meeting.

M&O agreed that financial assistance regarding helping others attend South Central Yearly Meeting will be coordinated by email. The committee prefers that assistance for SCYM be made to families with children and new SCYM attenders.

The revised State of the Meeting Report was approved as read.

The treasurer reported that two unusual expenses occurred this month: we paid the insurance premium of $2,725 and we had to replace the toilet in the handicapped bathroom, at a cost of $450, which had run during the week.. SAWS will refund part of our excessive water use, because we could show them we had corrected the problem. Our income since January 1 was over $2,847 less than our expenses for the same period. Adjustments may need to be made in the budget after the Finance Committee meets at the end of March.

Meeting approved the appointment of Bill O’Connell to serve as the Clerk of the Building Committee for 2009 and the appointment of Amy Whitworth to serve on the First Day School Committee.

The Clerk asked anyone willing to serve on South Central Yearly Meeting Nominating Committee to contact him.

The First Day School Committee report was approved with thanks to Denise for becoming clerk. Friends noted the rejuvenation of the educational aspects of our Meeting.

The Meeting has submitted a letter of intent for purchasing the adjoining property.

A Friend inquired about the archiving of Meeting Committee reports, Minutes, and other documents. Another Friend will research archival processes and will report back to Meeting on a comprehensive Archival Document Plan in fall.

A Discriminating Society

Paramount Records was the company that “discovered” the blues and profited greatly. But “although its stars kept Paramount afloat, they weren't treated any better than other black Americans under the colour bar. They were forbidden to enter the offices by the normal staircase and had to use a freight elevator at the back. They also had to find their own accommodation, normally the floors of black family homes nearby.”

Owen Adams, guardian.co.uk

In the sixties our department had a black typist who had grown up in the only black family a small town in Michigan. One day a telephone crew turned up to work on the lines. It included a large black man. She saw him and ran home to tell her mother that a gorilla had come to town. That evening the front door bell rang and she answered it. Overawed, she ran and told her mother that the gorilla was at the front door. He needed overnight accommodation and had been directed there. Ken

Meeting Events

Gary W will present his final forum on British Friend Rex Ambler’s “Experiment with Light” on April 26. On Sunday April 5 at 9 am a group will meet to learn from Sharon of modern scholarship on the Acts of the Apostles, which involves critical comparison of the gospels taking account of the time and setting when each was written.

April Movie

On Saturday, April 4, at 7 pm, Sharon will show the movie “Born Into Brothels” in the meetingroom. The movie won numerous awards for documentaries. Zara Briski went to Calcutta to photograph the lives of prostitutes. She befriended their children, teaching them photography and giving them cameras. The children filmed daily life in Sonagachi, the Red Light area.

Roger Ebert said, “The kids in "Born Into Brothels" (which was an Oscar nominee) take photos with zest and imagination, squint at the contact sheets to choose their favorite shots, and mark them with crayons. Their pictures capture life, and a kind of beauty and squalor that depend on each other. One child, Avijit, is so gifted he wins a week's trip to Amsterdam for an exhibition of photography by children.”

His retraction has been praised as an example of the ‘noblest tradition of science,” as compared with dogma.

Yearly Meeting

The 2009 South Central Yearly Meeting will be held at the Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, TX on April 10-12, 2009. Chuck Fager, whose book Without Apology was read by San Antonio Friends in a book study two years ago, will be the keynote speaker. Yearly Meeting will focus on the theme of Refining Our Witness: Peace, the Military, and Us. Information about SCYM is at www.scym.org.

* “In the long run the people who only do that for which they get paid will also never get paid for more than for that which they really do.”

Halford Reddish.

* “I know everything there is to know about law and politics. Now I should like to know something about real life.”

Sir Hartley Shawcross
From Friends Journal July 13 1957

Other Events

On April 16th, 6:30PM. Texas Climate Emergency Campaign will host the showing of a film entitled "Sisters on the Planet," which tells the story of four women from very different backgrounds--including one managing to survive Katrina--who are coping with the effects of Climate Change in their lives. The four women in the film come from Bangladesh, Brazil, Uganda, and the US. A compelling short documentary from Oxfam USA at SAAPAC Headquarters, 7122 San Pedro, Ste 114 in the back of the building with Ocean Dental.

On November 5-8, the 6th Quaker Women’s Conference on Faith and Spirituality will take place at Heart O’ Hills Conference Center, Welling, Oklahoma, 60 miles East of Tulsa, a comfortable and beautiful retreat center in the wooded hills of Eastern Oklahoma. The subject will be “Speaking to All Conditions: The Infinite Love of God”

This is a working conference for women who seek to:

• Draw closer to God and to each other

• Build bridges across the spectrum of Quakerism

• Strengthen the Quaker witness through women’s voices

• Trust that the Inward Teacher, the Christ Within, the Inner Light, the Holy Spirit, will be present to guide us.

“… I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness: and in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings.” --George Fox, 1647

Contact these Friends for more information:

Lorraine Boyd, Sue Wine, Beth Green Nagle, Gladys Tiffany at 316-263-5414; 785-246-0950; 405-275-6702; 479-973-9049, paddylo1943@yahoo.com; jwine2@cox.net; beth.green.nagle@okbu.edu; gladystiffany@yahoo.com.

The Color of Truth

“Mother,” said young Obadiah, “why is it that some of thy hairs are white?”

“Well, said his mother, wanting to be both serious and facetious, “Every time thee does something bad or that makes me cross, one of my hairs turns white.”

Obadiah pondered this for a moment. Then, "Mother,” he said, at last, “how come ALL of grandmother’s hairs are white?”

Responding to Mass Suffering

Research of Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon, suggests that the human mind responds in perverse ways to large-scale suffering. In humanitarian disasters and genocide, "The first life lost is very precious, but," Slovic said, "you don't feel worse about 88 than you do about 87." In experiments he showed that people choose a disaster with a smaller number of victims, even though their resources can save the same number of people in each case. Faced with the choice of spending precious resources getting water to 4,500 people in one of two camps in Zaire, they chose the one with 11,000 refugees rather than one with 100,000. Slovic has also shown that the amount of compassion humans feel can diminish as the number of victims increases. "When we trust our feelings in these cases, we are led down the path of turning our backs on the suffering of many people," Slovic said. "Even though we don't think of ourselves as uncaring, if we trust our moral intuition, it is not designed by evolution to respond accurately to these types of situations of mass tragedy."

From Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, January 5, 2009

Nicholas Kristof on the Wealthy and the Poor
Extracts from his article in the NYT, 4.2.09:

1. The global economic crisis will cause an additional 45 children to die per hour.

2. The increase in child mortality during economic downturns is five times higher for girls than for boys. Impoverished parents try to keep their sons alive by taking food from their daughters.

3. Wall Street plutocrats display a sense of entitlement when they demand billions for bailouts... the poor typically suffer invisibly and silently.

4. The 500 richest people in the world (UN figure) earned more a few years ago than the 416 million poorest people.

5. That first group bears a measure of responsibility for the global economic mess but will get by just fine, while the latter group has no responsibility and will suffer the worst consequences.

6. A week’s worth of interest on the $8.4 trillion in bailouts would save the half-million women who die in childbirth each year in poor countries.

A Listening Ministry

A family came to visit an elder Quaker minister who was renowned for his powers of discernment. They were surprised to find him in the road in front of his farm, stretched out on the pavement, his ear firmly pressed to the blacktop.

The father of the visiting family asked the elder what he was doing.

In response, the minister said, “... a woman, late thirties, two kids, one barking dog, in a late model Toyota wagon, traveling about 60 miles an hour.”

The visitor was astonished. “You can tell that just by listening to the ground?”

“No,” the minister answered, “they just ran over me three minutes ago.”

Urban Environment Report: How Does Your City Rank?
San Antonio Vulnerable Population Estimates

Poverty rate 19.8% ranked 53 out of 72 American cities.

Disability Status 14.4%

Emphysema 1.10%

Cardiovascular Disease 22.46%

Diabetes 4.71%

Pediatric Asthma 8.52%

Adult Asthma 7.39%

Adult Obesity 23.8%

People Without Health Insurance 24.5%

Age: Children under 5 years 8.4%

Age: 65 years and over 10.2%

Not Literate (Adult Level 1 Literacy) 27.0%

Adults with less than High School 22.3%

High School Drop-Out Rate 48.0%

Unemployed (Civilian Labor Force) 6.9%

Individuals Below Poverty Level 19.8%

Children (under 18 years) below Poverty 24.3%

Free or Reduced Lunch 51.5%

Other Languages Spoken at Home (primary language is not English) 42.4%

Earth Day Network, www.earthday.net

Reflections on Islam and the Current World Situation
by Anthony Manousos, friendsbul@aol.com

A Quaker named Thomas Lurting successfully used non-violent means to avoid being sold into slavery when he and his crew were captured by Turks in the year 1663. Since this extraordinary story is not widely known, even among Quakers, it is worth retelling in some detail.

Instead of resisting his Turkish captors, Lurting responded with friendliness and cooperation. He was so courteous, and so fearless, that the Turks were lulled into a false sense of security. When an opportunity presented itself, Lurting's men wanted to attack and kill the Turks, but Lurting replied, "If I knew any one of them that offered to touch a Turk, I would tell the Turk myself." A convinced Quaker, Lurting resolved to overcome the Turks without shedding one drop of blood.

On the second night, after the Turkish captain had retired, it began to rain. Lurting persuaded each of the Turkish guards to go to sleep. When they were all asleep, he took their weapons. At this point, the Christian crew again wanted to butcher the Turks, but Lurting insisted that no blood be spilled. They then sailed to Majorca in Spain. When the Turks realized what had happened, they were afraid that they would be sold into slavery and begged for mercy. Lurting assured the Turks that he would hide them so they would not be found by the Spaniards.

When the Turks realized that these peculiar English Christians would not hurt or enslave them, they became willing to help. Lurting gave them free run of the ship, which caused some of the English sailors to grumble. The Quaker replied, "They are strangers. I must treat them well."

When the ship reached a place near a Muslim town about fifty miles from Algiers, Lurting let the Turks loose on shore and even provided them with bread and other necessities. On shore, Lurting wrote, "the Turks all embraced me very kindly."

Getting the Picture

One morning at New Hope Friends School, teacher Sarah Makepeace gave her kindergartners a drawing lesson, and then directed them to draw something from the natural world. As possible models she had flowers, rocks, a shiny piece of weathered driftwood, and other items set around the room.

As the children leaned into their desks, pencils and crayons moving, Teacher Sarah moved among them, observing their work. When she saw Charity Scattergood working with fierce concentration, the pedagogue paused to inquire what the drawing was.

“Oh, thank thee for asking,” said Charity, “I’m drawing God.”

“Really,” said the teacher, “but don’t thee remember at meeting last week I told thee that no one knows what God looks like?”

Undeterred, the child turned back to her drawing. “Thee just wait,” she said, “They will in a minute.”

Chips off the Old Block

And at New Hope Friends School, it was lunch time. At the head of the cafeteria line was a large bowl of apples. Teacher Sarah wrote a note and put it next to the bowl. “Please take only one. God is watching.”

At the other end of the lunch line there was a plate piled with chocolate chip cookies. When Charity Scattergood got there, she saw another note in a child’s hand: “Take all thee wants. God is watching the apples..”

"Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in other people."

— Marian Wright Edelman 1992

Last Updated 4/22/09.
Colby Glass