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SUMMER
2001 
Gloria Horvay
Clerk, Salem Quarterly MeetingDear Friends,
Now that I am over fifty and my sons are grown, I seem to be enjoying things I haven’t done for years. Last fall I had my piano tuned and enjoy playing songs from the FGC hymnal. A recent joy in my life is Catharine Carey Logan, a charming Quaker doll. She is based on the main character in Standing in the Light, by Mary Pope Osborne, which is one of the titles in Scholastic’s Dear America diary series. I found Catharine in a Scholastic catalog, and when she arrived I was surprised to discover the Madame Alexander Doll Company made her.
Standing in the Light was carefully researched and gives our children good insight into both the Quaker and the Lenape Indian way of life in the Delaware Valley in the 1760’s. Many outreach opportunities are possible using this book and doll. Catharine would be an ideal gift for those of you with special young people on your shopping list. The book should be in all our meeting libraries, Friends School libraries, fourth grade classrooms, and public school libraries in the Delaware Valley. I’m checking into whether Mary Pope Osborne does author visits. It would be quite an event to hear her describe her research and how she came to write this book.
In the story, twelve-year-old Catharine and her younger brother were captured by the Lenape. During the months she is with them, Catharine’s rage at being forced to live with “savages” gradually melts into a great appreciation for the Lenape way of life.
Catharine’s story brings home a topic that has been very much on my mind of late — tolerance for those different from ourselves. It is a lifelong challenge for all of us to get along peacefully with our co-workers, neighbors, committee members, meeting members, and everyone else we come into contact with daily. Query 4 on Care for the Meeting Community was read at our Meeting last week, and I was surprised to hear how closely the questions were related to tolerance and overcoming conflict.
Over spring break I returned to our old neighborhood for a visit, and was reminded how out of place I felt all the years we lived there, a farm girl from Illinois in a housing development surrounded by Italians. But we all got along and helped one another when a need arose. One key to tolerance is accepting others and listening to them in an attempt to understand why they speak and act the way they do.
See you in Mullica Hill for Quarterly Meeting on June 10.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
