RIP Bonnie Tinker

[da]

It is still fairly unbelievable that I just wrote that.

Bonnie Tinker, Quaker Rabble-Rouser extraordinare, died yesterday afternoon after a traffic accident. Her bicycle was hit by a dump truck. Her daughter and granddaughter were here at Gathering, as were 150 of her extended family-of-choice.

She was rigid, she was impossibly idealistic, she made people intensely uncomfortable when she felt they were bowing to compromise at the expense of their ideals. She was loved, she was a force of nature, and she made amazing things happen.

Of course I'm very much looking forward to being home, but if I had to be somewhere other than home when something like this happens, it might as well be here with all these folks.

We were going to hold our regularly scheduled Cabaret and silent auction fundraiser last night.

We've done lots of grieving, holding each other, and saying our goodbyes. And now we're going to have the cabaret and silent auction. Not only would it be what she would have wanted, but it's the right thing to do.

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ps- five years ago last week, we were at Virginia Tech also. And I wrote about talking with Bonnie Tinker's mom and hearing stories from her about civil-rights work in the 1960s.