Introduction

Here’s a little homemade video (I have no idea how to edit) taken on my iPad. The sound is faulty for the first few seconds, but don’t despair – it turns out all right. I seem to have coined a new word –“fastly.” Listen for it. Note the elephant in the room.

Thanks to daughter Tammy for holding up the books.

I begin with books by teachers and then go through a random sample of works of alums from the 40’s to the 90’s. So far I’ve read only one book by a graduate after 2000. It is Daring Democracy by Adam Eichen ’11 written with Frances Lappé. I feel sure there are more, but I don’t know about them.

I just reread Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, where these terms appear. (Someone asked me if Vonnegut went to Friends. No, he did not. Steeped as I am in this project, I do nonetheless occasionally read other things). As I read about a karass, which consists of people with some kind of true spiritual bond, and a granfaloon, which is a false karass, a feeling of kinship based on nothing but happenstance (like all people who live in the East Village or all people from Indiana), I wondered if these Friends writers, and readers like me, form a karass or a granfaloon.

This is a bit tricky since these terms originate in a religion which is both false and fictional. But I am fine with suspending disbelief. New Yorkers or graduates of Cornell or Sweet Adelines might think they are part of a karass (and maybe they are) but the…

Friends Seminary Writers

1.         Abrahams, Fred ? A Village Destroyed, War Crimes in Kosovo   with Eric Stover and Gilles Peress  (Edited book)

Here’s how I spent the summer of 2017 (and on into the fall): reading the volumes of former students and colleagues. Now it looks as though this is how I will spend the rest of my life! The books just keep coming. I enjoyed the experience so much, I’m recommending it to you. I’ve discovered that it does add something to read works by people I know (or almost know, after all, some people did take Spanish or were before or after my time). I would love to hear thoughts of other people.

Tracking down these works has been haphazard. I know that there are many more books to find out about, and I would love to know about them.

At first, I limited myself to one book per author, but now I have begun to read second works and third works, so I guess I’ll just keep going. I…