the earthwitness journal - Comments

Angela Manno comments on Angela Manno Speaks Out Against Nuclear Power

Angela Manno — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:19:10 +0000

Dear Friends,

I want to call us back to the commitment to a Third Way, and to the patience and faith that it will be revealed. The choice for nuclear is not a third way, it is the lesser of two evils, because it is an evil, with severe, toxic side effects. One accident, as Marshall wrote early in this thread, is simply unacceptable. Do we need more examples-- more Chernobyls and Fukushimas to remind us?

Patient waiting and searching for a Third Way should include a close examination of the Cornell Study, A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030, by Jacobson and Delucchi. If Friends would stop subsidizing nuclear energy with their own psychic energy, and energize Wind, Water and Solar energy with the same commitment, perhaps we could mobilize the vast potential of Quakers not only to make a monumental difference in the life of the world, but to our own society, which is split, confused and beset with proposals for means that are not consonant with our goals. Peace with Earth cannot be attained by violence towards it. These are our own understandings. Are we now ready to throw them out the window because we are in a panic? Some Quakers dismiss this study as naiive, so I warm the reader in advance: Read the study with your heart and if you find the vision worthy, fight for it with all your heart. In my heart, I know the only way humans will live in harmony with the Earth is to adopt means that are consonant with the Earth's technologies. That means Wind, Water and Solar. To read the study, go to: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030

Houses Colorado springs comments on The First Friends and Slavery

Houses Colorado springs — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:12:21 +0000

Implicit in your discussion about slavery in the ancient world is the fact that slaves were often better off than poor non-slaves. Owners had obligations towards slaves.There was no welfare in the ancient world, or in the slavery/indentured servant world of England. Slavery was also a means of ensuring that poor people would be fed.Which means those dismissing the first Friends out of hand just don't want to do the work of sifting out the wheat from the chaff.

Francis O'Hara comments on A Christianity with Drums and Feathers

Francis O'Hara — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 09:15:30 +0000

Here in the Northeast USA , New York Yearly Meeting this thursday is the annual honoring of the Canadaigua Treaty among the Haudaushaunee People (aka Six Nations or People Of the Longhouse). As a Euro-American as I'm able I attend. Part of the special annual event is the honoring of Quakers and the role they played in making this treaty long ago. This is a treaty which apparently remains unbroken.Note It may also be known as the "Pickering Treaty".
Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Ian Davis comments on Angela Manno Speaks Out Against Nuclear Power

Ian Davis — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:30:54 +0000

I'd have to say that the alternative to nuclear is coal and oil at present, and given what oil is currently doing to the gulf, nuclear seems the cleaner option. Anyone concerned about global warming is also going to be forced to conclude that nuclear has a much smaller carbon footprint. Nuclear energy is rated to have a risk of one serious accident every 14,000 years.. that we've had several in the last 50 says worse things about our own carelessness than it does about the technology itself. Testing a nuclear reactors behaviour when all the fail safes are disabled (as happened at Chernobyl) is akin to testing the crumple zone of a car by reversing at high speed into a truck.

Marshall Massey comments on Tender Mercies

Marshall Massey — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:46:04 +0000

Tyrone, my health is fine; my blogging's on hold while I finish writing a book. I do intend to return to blogging eventually.

I appreciate your concern.

tyrone ferrara comments on Tender Mercies

tyrone ferrara — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:08:32 +0000

Dear Friend

Looks like Marsha Freeman is getting her wish.

I noticed that you no long blog. I pray that all is well with you.

Marshall Massey comments on Images from Iowa (Conservative)

Marshall Massey — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:36:50 +0000

Actually, our yearly meeting gathers every summer at Hickory Grove Meeting, on the grounds of Scattergood School, just a few miles east of West Branch. That's yet another of the old nineteenth-century meetinghouses. Richard Nixon's grandmother is buried there.

Hoover, though, belonged to the Five Years Meeting branch of Friends, not to our Conservative branch. The Five Years Meeting branch had gotten caught up in the Holiness Revival movement during the late nineteenth century, and was, by Hoover's day, a world of hymn singing, altar calls, and come-to-Jesus sermons. Despite the old-fashioned look of Hoover's meetinghouse, it was a world closer to what people nowadays call evangelical Protestantism than to traditional Quakerism.

Marshall Massey comments on Across the Hocking Hills

Marshall Massey — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:26:12 +0000

Thank you for the bits of background, Ellen!

Ellen Martin comments on To the Spoon River

Ellen Martin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:43:02 +0000

Oh, Michael and Newman aren't in mine, either, certainly not Newman, but they furnish good allusions. Anyway, I couldn't risk teasing you at this point, even though I half expected clarification "down the road." I had a little fun, and I hope not too much fun, commenting from time to time As I Read, and not After. I am relieved that your feet and ankles and everything healed at all! We ask so much of them, and think of them so rarely. I think your working compromise with the car was very sound. You saw what you could and kept to fairly slow speeds and frequent stops throughout. And your eye for geology helped you see the land more readily than many of us would be able to.

Ellen Martin comments on Images from Iowa (Conservative)

Ellen Martin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:33:39 +0000

At Hoover's Birthplace in West Branch near Iowa City, one finds, not only the spacious beginnings of restored native prairie, but also the old Meeting House that Hoover's family went to, preserved near the homestead cabin he was born in. A beautiful piece of carpentry, like the one pictured above. If only Hoover had had the openness or imagination to discern that all the strategies that had worked so well for him before, whether making money or feeding Belgium, were not working after 1929. Not that I would want to exchange FDR for Hoover, but that one knows a great deal of needless suffering, and a sad period of depression for Hoover himself, ensued. (Which didn't stop him from retiring to the Waldorf Astoria.)