This Week at Newtown Meeting

ANNOUNCING
Monthly service projects become a part of our Children’s Religious Education.

The kick-off will be on February 5th and continuing each first Sunday of the month at 11am. The children will gather upstairs to work on a service project important to them. In February, they will be assembling Weekend Breakfast Bags for TASK (Trenton Area Soup Kitchen) and they will be counting on your support. See below for more details.

Donations can be placed in the 2nd large wicker basket in the lobby. Look for the sign!

While they accept cereal, pasta, and canned goods, they are most grateful for items high in protein, such as, canned tuna or salmon and peanut butter.

An Overview of
These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class

"From an author of the best-selling women’s health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves comes a bracingly forthright memoir about a life-long friendship across racial and class divides. A white woman’s necessary learning, and a Black woman’s complex evolution, make These Walls Between Us a “tender, honest, cringeworthy and powerful read.” (Debby Irving, author, Waking Up White.)

In the mid-1950s, a fifteen-year-old African American teenager named Mary White (now Mary Norman) traveled north from Virginia to work for twelve-year-old Wendy Sanford’s family as a live-in domestic for their summer vacation by a remote New England beach. Over the years, Wendy's family came to depend on Mary’s skilled service—and each summer, Mary endured the extreme loneliness of their elite white beachside retreat in order to support her family. As the Black “help” and the privileged white daughter, Mary and Wendy were not slated for friendship. But years later—each divorced, each a single parent, Mary now a rising officer in corrections and Wendy a feminist health activist—they began to walk the beach together after dark, talking about their children and their work, and a friendship began to grow.

Based on decades’ worth of visits, phone calls, letters, and texts between Mary and Wendy, These Walls Between Us chronicles the two women’s friendship, with a focus on what Wendy characterizes as her “oft-stumbling efforts, as a white woman, to see Mary more fully and to become a more dependable friend.” The book examines obstacles created by Wendy’s upbringing in a narrow, white, upper-class world; reveals realities of domestic service rarely acknowledged by white employers; and draws on classic works by the African American writers whose work informed and challenged Wendy along the way. Though Wendy is the work’s primary author, Mary read and commented on every draft—and together, the two friends hope their story will incite and support white readers to become more informed and accountable friends across the racial divides created by white supremacy and to become active in the ongoing movement for racial justice.

This overview is from the barnesandnoble.com website. Author unknown.

Brad Sheeks, clerk of the Inreach/Outreach Committee is organizing the Friendly 8's program! For those unfamiliar with this term, Friendly 8’s is when Quakers arrange a potluck dinner with other people in the Meeting. The idea is to have an occasional dinner in the home of someone in the group until everyone has hosted. It’s a great opportunity to get better acquainted with each other and share stories about the Meeting and each other. Usually there is a nice mix of folks who are new to the Meeting with those who have been around for a while longer.
Complete the Friendly 8s SignUp Form right away and they’ll get back to you with the names of others who are in your group of eight. Your answers will help them form groups of participants with similar COVID risk tolerances and account for other accommodations that may be needed. Each group can work out the details of when and how they meet.

Feel free to contact Brad at 267-205-0444 or via email sheeksbrad@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class by Wendy Sanford

These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class
by Wendy Sanford