Here's a new song about the loss of windows from the 1850's in our meeting house, discarded after objections in Business Meetings were just shoved aside in a campaign of fear, typical of US political campaigns, wherein images of Friend's School children being killed by falling glass or poisoned by toxic paint. It was a matter of money, simple money, while our school is among the most expensive in the nation ... the meeting could not find a way to restore the windows, though, at the schools behest, scores of identical windows were replaced in the school building, No attempt was made to cull good wood from the old school windows to replace the rotted parts of the Meeting House windows. These glass pains which cast light on Fredrick Douglas and Rufus Jones, which cast patterns of light around the room, are now replaced by double pane glass, with heavy frames, replacing the feather light -- now extinct long leaf pine of America's virgin forests... Ah hell.
Cheers Larry
Tune... low lands of Holland.

Come all ye Friends that worship here, a warning take by me
Ne'r mistake a compromise, for a meeting's unity
And if you do, just cast your gaze, on the flat and plastic frost
Of the new meeting house windows, and recall the light now lost

How many an early meeting, I would watch the sparkling light
cast upon the walls, by ancient glass, and wonder at the sight
For in that dancing image, I would call back from days gone by
the amused glint, and gentle wit, in Friend Ruth Embesi's eye

Or like ripples on the water, I would see a summer's day
When Quaker children upon retreat, would pass the time away
drifting on some sun lit lake, and dream of stories of our past
of Indian's and pioneers, in stories Anna Curtis cast

The shimmering light could paint a form, and a vision come to mind
Of Peter Fingesten's rowdy wit, his wisdom to unwind
Or gentle strength, as in the day, when soldier's on the run
would find a haven and a path away from the abandoned gun

What ever could replace the loss of so many a crystal sprite
Each passing year, a chapter here, in dancing shade and light
The living glass was etched or shaped by passing joy or pain
The river of our meetings past in those specters would remain

There were those who saw reflected here a far off dangerous day
When abolition's gallant few, stood here their piece to say
They passed their memories on to us, to pass on to other days
How oft I'd see those things they saw in a morning's splendid rays

As metaphor of the modern age, these windows are now lost
The artificial light now shines on all that we have lost
In passing down new memories to the children we may say
Not all that's new is better don't let treasures slip away