A status-defiant hero of mine, M.L. Mencken, went from "Happy Days, 1880-1892" to "Heathen Days, 1890-1936" with a two-year overlap of uncertain transition. In imitation, I would say that Quakers have gone from Helping Days to Hurting Days with the only uncertainty being the mode of expression.

For some of us, the hurt of disillusionment has been turned inward in depression or neurosis. Others of us have developed outward signs of affliction on the body or, more likely, in the body's organs. But there are some Friends who are not afraid to express the truth in anger and resistance in these "Hurtin' for Certain Days".

We are not afraid to be angry at the "good girls and boys" tolerating bad situations, the "good spouses" ignoring bad marriages, and the "good citizens" going along with their country's bad policies. Rather than ennui at something too big to address, we reach into our bag of projectiles/boycotts. Like biblical David who was told that Goliath was too big to take down, we know that giant threats to human dignity are too big to miss as targets of economics.

That is why we glory in the Quaker mandate to "speak truth to power". At the same time, however, we forget the sling shot, or mechanism, for impressing truth in the heads of presumptive despoilers, whether in-house, in-hospital or in-society/Society.

Indeed, anger is the Luddite reaction to the dysfunctional/commercial mocking of these hurting days. Resistance(I, for one, will give no more tourist dollars to Florida) is the aim and overlap to be taken toward happy heathens who are out to destroy everything that stands hurting in their way.