Dear Friends: As proof of my notion that Quaker schools are not Quaker, ... our friend Alan gives wonderful testimony.
Now, Alan, I must tranlate for those in America who would get the wrong idea from your post "fags and alcohol" = "cigarettes and booze" - so several million yanks don't think you are anti gay.
I would, however, stick up for booze. As my Catholic wife put it the the other day, with a happy sigh, "Alcohol... (sigh) its yummy and nice...) Of course she works a 20 hour day, and has a glass of wine before bed on rare occations, and I don't advocate waking up in one's own vomit on a park bench, anymore than I advocate a bunch of wealthy liberals calling their school Quaker because they have a pet Meeting house where they, who are any religion or no religion other than Quaker force poor blokes like Alan to violate their faith or lack of it dayly with inforced silence in the belief that like penitenturies (which we invented) it will do the little buggers some good to wait on a lord they reject, in which they don't believe, or whould rather be down in the locker room - in the shower with a few of the 8th grade girls doing that which Alan's parents did not approve (an event from my early teens comes to mind, and no I was not in the shower with... oh never mind... she might tell you all herself should she wish! but that is a longer story and I think puts Quaker schools in ... well... another light... now much more awkward than in the sixties!!!)
Where was I cigarettes and booze, or "Quaker" schools... damned if I can't remember... one or the other.
My appologies to the world for penitenturies, for the fact that my home Meeting uses slave labor to wash the sheets of our homeless shelter (Prisoners wash our sheets, believe it or not - like Elias Hicks, I will not touch them...) my further appologies to Alan for the attempt to push him into a place farther than the place from which he would hear God's voice the loudest.
Oye vey is meer
Lorcan
PS Alan... nice that you would rather be nice than Hitler... there is an odd sort of echo of Hillel in your be nice to others...