Great Plains Yearly Meeting this year gave me much to think about, especially with regards to how our Quaker Christian faith plays out in different cultural contexts. What makes us Friends? Must we adhere to the British cultural heritage of most North American Quakers, or can the gospel as understood by Friends be adapted authentically to non-British, non-Western contexts and cultures?

New York is such a rich laboratory for languages on the decline that the City University Graduate Center is organizing an endangered languages program. “The quickening pace of language endangerment and extinction is viewed by many linguists as a direct consequence of globalization, said Juliette Blevins, a distinguished linguist hired by City University to start the program.