Sue Orfield wields her saxophone in the way that the pied piper played his pipe, mesmerizing all people, great & small, and leading them on a joyful, haunting, dancing, enthralling journey to the center. A part of dozens of groups of performers of numerous genres of music, Sue magically brings out the best in the artists and the audiences she showers her abundant gifts upon.
While James Spartz currently makes music with Dogtown Hollow, he has sometimes been onstage as part of Jim James & The Damn Shames and under other names. While songwriting & performing call to him deeply, his Clark Kent alter ego has worked in fields related to Environmental Communication, Social Work, and Poverty Research. Sometimes self-described as performing roots-rock music, his tastes sometimes have been honky-tonky, country, folk, and jazzy.
Bianca van Heydoorn spoke at this year's FGC Gathering, held this year at Haverford College, just outside of Philadelphia, which made it much easier to have Bianca here for Spirit In Action. Bianca is Executive Director of YSRP, the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, working in multiple ways to limit the damage that our prison-industrial system does, and has done, to youth who are threatened with adult penalties, from ages as young as 10 in the unusually harsh system in PA. YSRP also supports the youth during and after incarceration.
Gretta Stone became a musician because she loved being part of all the folk music that many Quakers shared together when she became part of Doylestown Friends Meeting, and at one point was part of a band called Faith and Practice. Gretta's path led to various travels, including her evolution into instrumental music and sacred harp singing. The Faith and Practice band no longer exists as it has morphed, with new members, into the band Fools and Prophets.
Jonathan Kuttab was born & raised in Jerusalem, and he helped found Nonviolence International and the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, and is the author of Beyond the Two-State Solution and The Truth Shall Set You Free.
ISMAY is a musical experience wrapped around Avery Hellman. Without trying to limit ISMAY by any of the boxes we often put musicians in, their music is bluegrass, or country, or Americana, or folk, or something completely new. And Avery, a.k.a ISMAY, is a farmer, a singer-songwriter, an environmentalist, a cowburl, or some kind of person you're just going to be astonished by.
Peterson Toscano first appeared on Spirit In Action in 2007, talking about his work to support and heal ex-gay survivors, men who, like him, spent years trying to be cured from being gay, and being seriously, sometimes lethally injured by that treatment. I then observed Peterson as he dove deeply into Biblical study around non-conforming sexual roles, in the Bible, and transforming ways of seeing the lessons of that book. Finally, since 2012, I've seen Peterson's dedicated and creative work on Climate Change, and I've been delighted to feature his podcast contents on Spirit In Action quarterly, to enlarge his listenership and enrich the ears, hearts, and souls of my listeners.
Glen Retief grew up in South Africa, a story he captured in his book The Jack Bank, and he writes periodically for the South African publication, The Daily Maverick. Glen's perspective, a gay man poised between the US and South Africa is eye-opening, in particular his writings on historical events and landmarks to which we are often blind. Glen is an Associate Professor of creative nonfiction writing at Susquehanna University.
Humbird is a musical experience with Siri Undlin at its center. Her music has been described with terms like contemplative folk musings and resigned tenacity, but I would simply call it heart and soul stirring combined with instrumental genius. Siri lives in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, while the rotating band membership of Humbird reaches further afield. With 3 albums to her name, there's lots of variety and depth to be explored, with decades of richness yet ahead for this young and accomplished singer/songwriter.
Past/present religious/spiritual influences: Lutheran, Earth-based Spirituality, Unaffiliated
