Mark Atwood

I've been to New Jersey many times, but never outside of this airport...

Sitting here at EWB (Newark) COA gate C138, from Boston, to Seattle.

Maximum annoyance factor. Five minutes after paying AT&T NNU.com four bucks for half an hour of wireless internet access, the background noise level rises to overwhelm the signal, and the packet rate drops to zero.

I was just barely able to load my email and one page of LJ before service cut out.

Ah, looks like it's back, lets see if I can post this...

My parents and family might be pleased to learn that I went to church today.

Just not an LDS church.


My friend JudyG that I've been visiting in Boston, is a Friend, i.e. a Quaker. Her parents are Jewish and Catholic, and after her Catholic Communion classes in her early teens (it was fun compare our memories of the LDS Articles of Faith with the Catholic equivalent childhood memorization exercise), she learned about the Friends, visited a Meeting, and been a member ever since.

But, for all these times I've visited her, I've not attended a Meeting with her. Until today. She goes to the Beacon Hill Meeting, just above the Boston Common. It's in this fun creaky old historical building.

For my LDS readers, a Quaker "service" is very much like a Testimony meeting, without the bracketing of an Invocation, Benediction, or Sacrament. And the humorouse 14th Article of Faith, "We believe in meetings..". Well, the Friends, they do. Everything that the LDS do with a calling, the Friends do with a committee. It seems to work approximately as well as the LDS system of lay service and callings.