To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience.

She attended a Friends (Quaker) school up through her high school years. Verlaine painted did figure drawings and illustrated several books written by Deming. During the time that they were together Meigs and Deming moved to Wellfleet Massachusetts where Barbara Deming befriended the writer and critic Edmund Wilson and his circle of friends.