From our email newsletter:

“We have themes mapped out for our (most­ly) month­ly issues through the end of 2025, and we’re already think­ing about what comes next. What top­ics would you like to see cov­ered from a Quak­er perspective?

“Here’s a list of themes since 2012. Maybe you’ve got a sub­ject we’ve nev­er addressed. Maybe you see some­thing we cov­ered a decade ago and could look at with fresh eyes. Email us with your suggestions!”

I’m actu­al­ly the one who is com­pil­ing sug­ges­tions so if you’re get­ting this as part of the Quak­er­Ran­ter newslet­ter you can just hit reply with your ideas.

I don’t share every new Quak­er­S­peak video (you can sub­scribe on the web­site or direct­ly on its YouTube chan­nel). But this new one on Quak­er rabble-rouser and abo­li­tion­ist Ben­jamin Lay is par­tic­u­lar­ly well-done. Its base is an inter­view with Mar­cus Redik­er, the his­to­ri­an who has done more than any­one to pop­u­lar­ize the seventeenth-century Friend. But it also splices in cool ani­ma­tions and inter­views with some mod­ern Friends. It came out real­ly well. Con­grats to Christo­pher Cuthrell.

I’m excit­ed to see that The Quak­er World is final­ly avail­able as a paper­back at a more afford­able $50. Pub­lished in 2022, this is a rich tome put togeth­er by my friends (and fre­quent Friends Jour­nal col­lab­o­ra­tors) Wess Daniels and Rhi­an­non Grant. Clock­ing in at over 500 pages, there are a lot of great con­trib­u­tors. I’ve been excit­ed about it even though I’ve not been able to read it — the hard­cov­er was $250. Ear­li­er this year I whined about the exor­bi­tant cost of the new Quak­er his­to­ries and am glad that some com­bi­na­tion of prod­ding and eco­nom­ic forces has made this one more acces­si­ble. You can read Windy Cool­er’s FJ review of The Quak­er World and order it from the pub­lish­er.

The Friends meet­ing in San­ta Rosa has appar­ent­ly been let­ting unhoused peo­ple use its park­ing lot overnight as part of a “Safe Hous­ing Pro­gram.” Appar­ent­ly that’s end­ing, at least tem­porar­i­ly, and you might not be sur­prised at why: the meet­ing’s insur­ance com­pa­ny has threat­ened to can­cel cov­er­age if the meet­ing does­n’t stop. What a crock of horse poop but then I assume I’m preach­ing to the choir. All reports are that Cal­i­for­nia has some of the worst hous­ing short­ages around and while long-term solu­tions are need­ed, peo­ple right here right now need a place to park a car and get some sleep. An update is that some “Good Samar­i­tans” are putting some of new­ly (re)displaced peo­ple up; yes, that’s what neigh­bor­li­ness is. Also, kudos where due: it was a plea­sure work­ing with Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s insur­ance com­pa­ny and its var­i­ous sub­con­trac­tors this sum­mer in get­ting help for Crop­well Meet­ing’s porch roof, which had a big chunk tak­en out (we assume by some FedEx or Ama­zon deliv­ery van). 

Geek alert: I’ve been using the note­tak­ing app Ever­note for 15 years, amass­ing over 18,000 notes. There was such a long peri­od in which the app was going down­hill. The chase for ven­ture cap­i­tal mon­ey led it to try imple­ment­ing all sorts of trendy non­sense; for exam­ple, when Slack explod­ed, the Ever­note peo­ple tried to build a half-assed clone inside their app. It was very depress­ing when an Ital­ian ven­ture cap­i­tal firm bought it and laid off the entire U.S. staff but a very sur­pris­ing thing has hap­pened. They invest­ed in rebuild­ing the back­ground source code (a huge task) and have been imple­ment­ing so many small-but-wonderful fea­tures (real-time col­lab­o­ra­tive edit­ing! col­lapsi­ble sub-menus! task man­age­ment that real­ly works!) that the app is fun to use again. The Verge’s David Pierce inter­viewed Ever­note’s Fed­eri­co Simion­a­to about The Great Ever­note Reboot. I like both these guys and it was a joy lis­ten­ing to them geek out about a favorite app hav­ing a sur­pris­ing renaissance.