I feel Anil is kind of always bullishly optimistic that we’re on the cusp of a new wave of alt publishing and believe me I share his hope, but I’d love to see some examples. Distribution is hard these days.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
www.anildash.comChoosing to thrive
March 11, 2025
Craig Barnett on UK meetings that are attracting newcomers: “Newcomers need to be made welcome, including children. They need to find people who enjoy spending time together, who are open about their spiritual experience, and willing to share the riches of the Quaker way with them. They need to experience Quaker worship that is expectant and gathered, where people take the risk of openness to the Spirit that leads to deep and vulnerable spoken ministry.”
quakerrenewal.substack.comStill looking for articles on the 400th anniversary of George Fox’s birth
March 11, 2025
The June/July _Friends Journal_ will look at Quaker founder George Fox at 400. We haven’t gotten a lot of articles yet so we’ve extended the deadline and are beating the bushes (well, the socials) for prospective writers. Maybe I have only myself to blame, as my call for submissions wondered whether this was an appropriate topic:
> Still, there’s a very good question to be asked (and perhaps an article to be written) about whether we should be making this kind of a fuss for George Fox.
Despite that, I think there’s a good purpose to looking back like this and hope there’s some articles in their pipeline to send to us by March 25th.
How do we use money?
March 11, 2025
The newest Friends Journal issue is out, looking at how we use money. It’s perhaps not the sexiest topic but it speaks to what we value as a body of believers. Are we focused on our internal group or on the world outside our walls? Sometimes the discussions around money are tedious and our decisions self-evident. I think it’s possible for a meeting to spend too much time focused on its own self-management. But there are times when discussions of resource use brings out surprising inspiration.
John Woolman to visit Cropwell Meeting
March 11, 2025
Philly/South Jersey locals might want to come to Cropwell Meeting this Sunday to meet “John Woolman” on a religious visit to the meeting.
Claire Flourish examines a Quaker anti-trans campaign
March 11, 2025
Fascinating and disturbing account of an outspoken Quaker* UK anti-trans activist who has started a video podcast interviewing prominent Friends. Most of the episodes have nothing to do with gender and sexuality but some do.
The asterisk up is there because the podcaster apparently renounced their membership in the Society of Friends when Britain Yearly Meeting passed a minute on trans inclusion. I appreciate someone disagreeing with a yearly meeting resolution and even staying in the fold despite the opposition. But when an affirming minute that doesn’t actually affect you (just your ideology) is such a burden that you leave… well then the question is why you would put such effort into a podcast of your ex-religion. it doesn’t seem like a project borne in good faith.
Claire does a great job bringing the receipts and explaining the context (the details of which I haven’t been following).
Nilay Patel on why blogs are still great
March 11, 2025
The Verge’s Decoder turns the table on its host, Nilay Patel, to talk about blogs. I often appreciate Patel’s take on the modern web. And while I run a few websites, I appreciate his joke that The Verge is “the last website on earth.” There was a certain kind of website back in the day that you’d visit directly to see what they were saying. Their reporters were funny and snarky and opinionated and even when I disagreed with their take, I was usually glad I had taken the time to read it. There’s a few individual bloggers like that left, folks like Jason Kottke and John Gruber, but few sites still like The Verge, in my opinion. So much of the conversation today happens on social media, where it’s fractured (Mastodon? Facebook? Threads? Bluesky?) and ephemeral.
About a year ago, The Verge went for a more old-school blogging model, based on appealing to people visiting the site directly rather than Google algorithms. I’m glad they did that.
There’s also good stuff in her about brands: “But you know what? All the celebrities still want to be on the cover of magazines. They want the validation that the big brand, the institution, can provide. And there’s a reason for that because the brand stands for more than just an individual opinion — or at least at its best it does.” I think that’s true for my work with Friends Journal. Anyone can write something and post it anywhere, yet there still seems to be a yearning for a place that’s still a common-ground watering hole, a conversation-starter.
NASA’s Eyes
March 11, 2025
Very cool interactive site from NASA showing planets, asteroids, etc.