Socio: kaulsu

Hi, Susan. I just checked my profile page for the first time in a couple of years, and there was your note of 2007. In answer to your question about Perth Quakers: We have three small local meetings. One of them usually has attendance of about 5, another about 15, and ours about 20. Several years ago, Australia Yearly Meeting changed Quarterly Meeting to Regional Meeting, probably because the distances here are so vast that there weren't any quarterly meetings. The Regional Meetings mostly follow the boundaries of the individual states. Our Perth meetings (Mount Lawley, Fremantle, Hills) are among the seven meetings that constitute the West Australia Regional Meeting, which covers all of the state of Western Australia (one-third of the entire area of the continent of Australia). There are 200 members in Western Australia and about the same number of attenders. The Regional Meeting House is in Mount Lawley and is located only a block from where I live, and that's where the Mount Lawley Meeting meets. It is also the home of our wonderful little library, where I do my volunteer work for the meeting. (I also tend the Hospitality Room, where visiting Quakers can stay when in Perth.)

There are a lot of old roots in our Meeting. One of our members is a great grandson (or great, great?) of Elizabeth Fry, and others are descended from the British Hodgkin Quakers, whose family tree is full of many other early Quakers. Though I am only an attender, I have learned that I have Quaker roots in Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana dating back to the 1700s. Don't know if any of them were Quakers before hitting American shores.

Like most meetings these days, most of the membership in Western Australia came to Quakerism as mature adults. Though Australian Quakers are all of the unprogrammed variety, a few years ago Australia welcomed Burundians from refugee camps in Tanzania. Many of them are birthright Quakers from churches founded by Ohio Conservative Quaker missionaries. They were quite adamant about wanting their own church with all-day singing and lots of preaching and bible reading, so one of our members who owns a private school gives them use of one of their buildings, a small church that they bought from the Presbyterians some years back. They also give them use of the school's mini-buses for bringing people to church.

There was one Burundian family and two other Burundian men who attended Mt Lawley meeting regularly before they got their own church. Our members occasionally visit the Burundian services to show continued support. In Queensland, I understand the Burundian Quakers have joined the unprogrammed meeting. Here in Perth the decision was that several different Burundian churches (mostly Quakers and Pentecostals) would combine to create their own in order to emphasize peaceful coexistence between the tribes that are enemies in Africa. In some of the eastern states, African tribes from various countries establish themselves in certain suburbs and continue to wage war.

I lived most of my life in Texas and am enjoying these later years in this beautiful and exotic locale, where people drive on the other side of the road, water swirls in the opposite direction down the toilet, and light switches on/off positions are the reverse of what I am accustomed to.

In friendship,

Janice

enviado por bookcrazed a las 11:54 pm (EST) del Sep 2, 2009

Thank you for your note! Our monthly meeting covers all of Wayne, Pike, Lackawanna, and Luzerne Counties in Pennsylvania, as well as most of Susquehanna County and a bit of Monroe--in other words, most of the northeastern corner of the state. (There's an interesting bit of history explaining the scarcity of Quakers in this part of Pennsylvania, which I'm happy to share if you're curious or to avoid if you're not.) We are indeed part of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and of Upper Susquehanna Quarterly Meeting.

I met Arthur Larrabee last summer when he came to visit us to offer guidance in our efforts to secure a meeting house for ourselves. I liked him, and was glad to hear he was helpful for you as well. I can easily see where he'd make the herding-cats task of clerking a meeting seem simple!

One of our current members came to us from a meeting somewhere near Baltimore. It sounds like you have a pretty good group of people out there!

Thank you again for your note. Stay in touch!

In Friendship,
Weavre

enviado por NorthBranchFriends a las 2:25 pm (EST) del Feb 28, 2009

Hey, just thought I'd let you know that I'm in total agreement with your pick of The Reluctant Widow as a favorite Georgette Heyer. Most people divide her stuff into romances and mysteries (ie the 1920's stuff)--but I love her romances that have adventure or mystery thrown in. Have you read The Talisman Ring? It's (in my opinion) just as good as The Reluctant Widow. These Old Shades does too, and...I forget the name of it...The Toll Gate? Ah well.

enviado por uncultured a las 3:55 am (EST) del Apr 25, 2008