Tag Archives ⇒ Inquirer

Early December Links

December 5, 2023
· Martin Kelley

NPR inter­viewed Pales­tin­ian Amer­i­can Quak­er Sa’ed Atshan. He talks about the three stu­dents recent­ly shot last month in New Hamp­shire, two of whom he men­tored, and also Quak­er wor­ship. Very thought­ful and well done.

Quak­er Stud­ies has a spe­cial issue out on John Wool­man. I’ve writ­ten about this well-known Friend, many times, nat­u­ral­ly, includ­ing a three part series back in 2006, but it’s great to have aca­d­e­mics share the lat­est takes. As guest edi­tor Jon Ker­sh­n­er writes in his intro­duc­tion, “The fresh ground cul­ti­vat­ed by these authors demon­strates that there is much still to say about Wool­man.” Best of all, this is open access! I think it’s real­ly trag­ic that so much good aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing today is com­plete­ly inac­ces­si­ble and I’m not sure why, as I don’t think the authors are get­ting much of the mon­ey. I hope new aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lish­ing mod­els start to win out, as it’s impor­tant for lay Friends to think about his­to­ry in a more thought­ful way. I’m a big stan, as the kids say, of Jean Soder­lund, and am devour­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to this spe­cial edi­tion.

I looovvee Goldie’s, the Philly Israeli-American veg­an falafel mini-chain, so I’m not just appalled but per­son­al­ly upset that some pro-Palestinian pro­test­ers accused its own­ers of geno­cide. Once again peo­ple: it is pos­si­ble to be against vio­lence on all sides and also to not scape­goat any side. It sounds like own­er Michael Solomonov’s response has been mut­ed and under­stand­ing: good for him. I do hope this dies down. Pro­test­ers on all sides say stu­pid things in the heat of the moment and it sounds like they were there for less than four min­utes. Can we move on?

Also, chef’s kiss to the writer of The Inquir­er head­line, Berks Coun­ty woman named Time’s 2023 Per­son of the Year.

William Penn’s 12 slaves (a citation mystery)

March 17, 2021
· Martin Kelley

There has been renewed atten­tion in Quak­er cir­cles to William Pen­n’s slave­hold­ing in recent years. Late last year, the board that man­ages the William Penn House in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., decid­ed to embark on a renam­ing process because of the slav­ery, a deci­sion that has spawned a num­ber of seem­ing­ly end­less com­ment threads on Face­book, like this one. One thing that’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that many of the new advo­cates have set­tled on a spe­cif­ic num­ber of slaves. From Friends Com­mit­tee on Nation­al Leg­is­la­tion:

Despite his con­tri­bu­tion to U.S. his­to­ry and his inten­tions of found­ing a colony built on “broth­er­ly love,” William Penn owned 12 slaves in his estate, Pennsbury.

Twelve slaves. As part of my job is fact-checking, I like to double-check num­bers like that. Penns­bury Manor, the muse­um devot­ed to Pen­n’s life in his colony, just refers to a slave com­mu­ni­ty and pro­vides five names (Sam, Sue, Yaff, Jack, and Peter). So how has 12 become a cit­ed num­ber? Let’s go diving.

I don’t know FCN­L’s sources but a recent edi­to­r­i­al sub­mis­sion came to me in recent months cit­ing an August 2020 arti­cle by Michaela Win­berg in the online pub­li­ca­tion Bil­ly Penn, “William Penn kept enslaved peo­ple. These are some of their names”:

The records that exist aren’t total­ly clear, but it seems as if Penn enslaved rough­ly 12 peo­ple at his Penns­bury Manor estate, which was locat­ed in what is now the Philly sub­urbs. These peo­ple were pur­chased off the first slave ship known to have arrived in Philadel­phia, and were of African and Car­ribean [sic] descent.

I’m a fan of Bil­ly Penn but it’s not an aca­d­e­m­ic source. For­tu­nate­ly they gave a link to their asser­tion, a Sep­tem­ber 2012 arti­cle by Jack H. Schick in… oh dear, my own pub­li­ca­tion, Friends Jour­nal!In “Slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia” he wrote:

Quak­ers, though con­cerned and in the fore­front of efforts to end the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery, were not inno­cent. While liv­ing on his estate at Penns­bury Manor, before he returned to Eng­land for­ev­er in 1701, William Penn kept 12 slaves.

No cita­tion was giv­en but as Jack­’s edi­tor I can affirm he is fond of Wikipedia. I’m fair­ly con­fi­dent that he got his ref­er­ence from this entry, “His­to­ry of slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia”:

William Penn, the pro­pri­etor of the Province of Penn­syl­va­nia, held 12 slaves as work­ers on his estate, Penns­bury. They took part in con­struc­tion of the main house and out­build­ings. Penn left the colony in 1701, and nev­er returned.

If you ask Google “How many slaves did Penn have?” it gives you “12 slaves” as its instant answer and links to this Wikipedia page. Giv­en that the all-knowing search engine thinks this a vet­ted answer wor­thy of a 32-pixel head­line, how much can we trust it?

The imme­di­ate answer is: not much. Wikipedia has no cita­tion (as of this writ­ing; I should prob­a­bly go edit it myself). The trail would go cold there if not for the plat­for­m’s obses­sion with keep­ing its revi­sion his­to­ry. Through that one can find that the claim on Pen­n’s slaves dates to the Octo­ber 2007 cre­ation of the entry.

William Penn, the founder of the Penn­syl­va­nia colony, owned 12 slaves on his estate, Penns­bury; how­ev­er, he grad­u­al­ly became a sup­port­er of the abo­li­tion of the institution.

Thir­teen years of edits has reworked the sen­tence quite a bit but the 12 num­ber remains from the begin­ning and in that first Wikipedia draft there was a cita­tion to a USHis​to​ry​.org page. This is a still-extant web­site pro­duced by the Inde­pen­dence Hall Asso­ci­a­tion, a Penn­syl­va­nia non­prof­it found­ed in 1942. The process of link rot is at work, alas, and Wikipedi­a’s 2007 link gives a “page not found” today. Thank­ful­ly Archive​.org can take us back in the ear­ly aughts and let us read it in all of its early-oughts design glo­ry (it takes me back to see a back­ground image used to cre­ate a col­umn!). The USHis­to­ry post is just a cut-and-paste of a 2003 arti­cle in the Philadel­phia Inquir­er (again, acces­si­ble thanks to Archive​.org). Reporter Melis­sa Dribben’s lede goes right to the point:

William Penn owned at least 12 slaves. Dur­ing his life he grad­u­al­ly came around to advo­cat­ing abo­li­tion, but when he died in 1718, Penn­syl­va­nia was a long way from end­ing the practice.

Fur­ther down she men­tions Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soder­lund and their 1991 book, Free­dom by Degrees: Eman­ci­pa­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia and Its After­math. For the first time in this train of cita­tions we’ve actu­al­ly come to trained his­to­ri­ans! And I’d be hard pressed to think of any two aca­d­e­mics I would trust more to doc­u­ment this era of colo­nial Penn­syl­va­nia than Nash or Soder­lund. It’s long out of print but Google Book­s’s pre­view gives us the moth­er lode:

Quak­er pro­pri­etor and his asso­ciates made no effort to pro­hib­it black slav­ery in the City of Broth­er­ly Love and its envi­rons. Indeed, Penn owned at least twelve slaves him­self and stat­ed at one point that he pre­ferred them to white inden­tured ser­vants because slaves could be held for life. Though in one ear­ly will the pro­pri­etor pro­vid­ed for man­u­mis­sion, slaves worked on his Penns­bury estate in Bucks Coun­ty through­out his tenure. One of these slaves was Black Alice who died in 1802 at age 116. She recalled often light­ing the pro­pri­etor’s pipe.13

The para­graph has a cita­tion [see update, below] but the lim­it­ed Google Books pre­view does­n’t include the cita­tion index and used copies are a bit too pricey for me (by chance I am cur­rent­ly read­ing Nash’s very fas­ci­nat­ing Forg­ing Free­dom, which is avail­able as a used book for a much more rea­son­able price).

I do wish that this trail of cita­tions did­n’t end at a book that’s cel­e­brat­ing its thir­ty year anniver­sary. I’m sure we’ve had a num­ber of ambi­tious his­to­ri­ans dig­ging through base­ment archives since the ear­ly 90s. Sure­ly they’ve uncov­ered more evi­dence. (For exam­ple, Black Alice, a fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure, seems not to have been Pen­n’s slave at Penns­bury but instead was enslaved by fellow-Quaker Samuel Car­pen­ter, a friend of Penn, and own­er of an oys­ter house where Alice worked from age five.) But at least this one asser­tion — that Penn owned exact­ly or around or over twelve slaves — has a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic source at its root.

Update March 18, 2021:

I emailed Jean R. Soder­lund, who gave me the sources for that para­graph in Free­dom by Degrees!

The cita­tions in note 13 are: Dunn et al., eds, Papers of William Penn, 3:66 – 67; 4:113 – 14; Han­nah Penn to James Logan June 6, 1720, and Logan to Han­nah Penn, May 11, 1721, Penn Papers, Offi­cial Cor­re­spon­dence, 1:95, 97, HSP; Samuel P. Jan­ney, The Life of William Penn (reprint 1970), 421; Nash, Forg­ing Free­dom, 12.

She did quite a bit of work dig­ging through the records con­cern­ing Pennbury after pub­lish­ing the book and says “I don’t remem­ber being con­cerned about the ref­er­ence to ‘at least twelve’ in Free­dom by Degrees.”

I’ve also edit­ed Wikipedia. Thirteen-plus years after their stat showed up on the “His­to­ry of slav­ery in Penn­syl­va­nia” page, Nash and Soder­lund final­ly get the citation.

Digging into the first selfie, from Philly!

June 10, 2014
· Martin Kelley

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This guy in Streetview is stand­ing near the spot where the world’s first #self­ie por­trait was tak­en in 1839.

Robert Cor­nelius was one of the first peo­ple to try to repro­duce Louis Daguer­re’s pho­to­graph­ic tech­nique after news of the break­through reach Philadel­phia. A chemist work­ing at his fam­i­ly’s gas light­ing com­pa­ny, Cor­nelius start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal com­bi­na­tions until he found a way to reduce expo­sure times so that a per­son to sit still long enough for a por­trait. In Octo­ber 1839 he took a pic­ture him­self “in the yard back of his store and res­i­dence, (old) 176 Chest­nut Street, above Sev­enth (now num­ber 710), in Philadel­phia,” accord­ing to an oral his­to­ry pub­lished half a cen­tu­ry lat­er (PDF). Cor­nelius recounts:

It was our busi­ness to make a great vari­ety of arti­cles of plat­ed met­al. Very soon after­wards, I made in the fac­to­ry a tin box, and bought from McAl­lis­ter, 48 Chest­nut Street, a lens about two inch­es in diam­e­ter, such as was used for opera pur­pos­es. With these instru­ments I made the first like­ness of myself and anoth­er one of some of my chil­dren, in the open yard of my dwelling, sun­light bright upon us, and I am ful­ly of the impres­sion that I was the first to obtain a like­ness of the human face.

Remark­ably, in 2014, the Cor­nelius and Co. build­ing is still there on Chest­nut Street, though bare­ly rec­og­niz­able, with an extra floor on top and exten­sive facade changes. It’s a dis­count drug store. The back is the nar­row alley named Ion­ic Street, home to dump­sters and peo­ple want­i­ng to stay out of sight. The yard is to the right of these dump­sters. With #self­ie such a pop­u­lar hash­tag, Cor­nelius’s pic­ture has cir­cu­lat­ed on a lot of inter­net lists as the “world’s first self­ie.” But it’s his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance is far greater: it is the first pho­to­graph­ic por­trait of our species. I’m not typ­i­cal­ly one for hyper­bole, but we humans start­ed see­ing our­selves dif­fer­ent­ly after that portrait.

I orig­i­nal­ly assumed the build­ing on the right of the alley stood where the yard had been but a satel­lites turns up a sur­prise: the yard is still there! Look­ing at the 710 prop­er­ty from above, the build­ings fac­ing Chest­nut and Ion­ic are sep­a­rate – with a large open space in between! There are two sec­tions that look almost to be gar­den beds.

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Yo Philly, how has 710 Chest­nut Street not been snatched up and turned into a muse­um of pho­to­graph­ic his­to­ry? The first floor could focus on nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Philadel­phia inno­va­tion, with the still-existent inner court­yard turned into a tourist des­ti­na­tion? It would be like cat­nip. What self-respecting mod­ern tourist would­n’t walk the few blocks from Inde­pen­dence Hall to take their pic­ture at the very site of the world’s first self­ie? I know Philly typ­i­cal­ly does­n’t respect any his­to­ry past 1776 but come on!

Update March 2021: Katie Park in the Inquir­er report­ing an all-too-predictable sto­ry: Philly L&I approves demo­li­tion of Chest­nut Street prop­er­ties that preser­va­tion­ists had tried to pro­tect. It’s not Cor­nelius’s house at 710 but it’s just a few doors down the block at 730 – 732. The arti­cle has some great info from Justin Brooks, a lawyer who’s been try­ing to orga­nize his­toric recog­ni­tion for the 600, 700, and 800 blocks of Chest­nut. One tid­bit: in 1891 Chest­nut Street was widened by the city, requir­ing “build­ing own­ers to tear down their own facades to move far­ther back.” (You could write a tome on Philly his­to­ry that’s been lost to road widen­ing projects but at least this was “just” the 700 block facades.)

Philadelphia Metropolis

January 13, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Metropolis - Philadelphia News and Journalism

Metrop­o­lis is a “news, analy­sis and com­men­tary” site from vet­er­an Philadel­phia reporter Tom Fer­rick (Wikipedia). An alum of The Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Tom’s spent the last half-dozen years talk­ing to every­one who will lis­ten about the future of print and Philly news. He’s done talk­ing and is show­ing what can be done on a bud­get bud­get. From “This is Metrop­o­lis,” the lead article:

Local news­pa­pers, TV and radio sta­tions are retreat­ing from in-depth cov­er­age of region­al news either due to eco­nom­ic or audi­ence considerations.

The retreat has been grad­ual, but no one expects it to stop. The com­pa­ny that owns the region’s largest news­pa­pers — the Inquir­er and Dai­ly News — is in bank­rupt­cy. The size of the edi­to­r­i­al staffs at the papers con­tin­ues to shrink. The prog­no­sis for metro dailies here and else­where is not good. The jour­nal­ism prac­ticed by these papers is still robust, but the eco­nom­ic mod­el that has sus­tained it is erod­ing. If these tra­di­tion­al sources of news fal­ter or fail what will take their place?

The site was built in Mov­able Type. The most promi­nent fea­ture is the slideshow dis­play of fea­tured arti­cles. Tom has seen a sim­i­lar effect on anoth­er jour­nal­ism site and a search found the “Slid­ing Hor­i­zon­tal Ban­ner Rota­tor” at Active Den, a great site to pur­chase pre-built Flash files. Mov­able Type entries are out­fit­ted with cus­tom fields to enter images and links. Mov­able Type then cre­ates a cus­tom XML file for the “Main Sto­ries” feed, which is then picked up and dis­played by the Flash ban­ner. In addi­tion, the site uses Google Adsense to pro­vide income.

Vis­it: Philadel­phia Metropolis

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Making New Factions

August 22, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Strange­ly enough, the Philadel­phia Inquir­er has pub­lished a front-page arti­cle on lead­er­ship in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, “Friends frus­trate some of their flock, Quak­ers bogged down by process, two lead­ers say”. To me it comes off as an extend­ed whine from the for­mer PhYM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Thomas Jeav­ons. His cri­tiques around Philadel­phia Quak­er cul­ture are well-made (and well known among those who have seen his much-forwarded emails) but he does­n’t seem as insight­ful about his own fail­ings as a leader, pri­mar­i­ly his inabil­i­ty to forge con­sen­sus and build trust. He fre­quent­ly came off as too ready to bypass rightly-ordered decision-making process­es in the name of strong lead­er­ship. The more this hap­pened, the more dis­trust the body felt toward him and the more intractible and politi­cized the sit­u­a­tion became. He was the wrong leader for the wrong time. How is this wor­thy of the front-page news­pa­per status?

The “Mak­ing New Friends” out­reach cam­paign is a cen­tral exam­ple in the arti­cle. It might have been more suc­cess­ful if it had been giv­en more sea­son­ing and if out­sider Friends had been invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate. The cam­paign was kicked off by a sur­vey that con­firmed that the great­est threat to the future of the year­ly meet­ing was “our grey­ing mem­ber­ship” and that out­reach cam­paigns “should tar­get young adult seek­ers.” I attend­ed the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion where the sur­vey was pre­sent­ed and the cam­paign approved and while every Friend under forty had their hands raised for com­ments, none were rec­og­nized by the clerk. “Mak­ing New Friends” was the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to tap younger Friends but the work seemed designed and under­tak­en by the usu­al sus­pects in year­ly meeting.

Like a lot of Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing has spent the last fif­teen years large­ly rely­ing on a small pool of estab­lished lead­er­ship. There’s lit­tle atten­tion to lead­er­ship devel­op­ment or tap­ping the large pool of tal­ent that exists out­side of the few dozen insid­ers. This Spring Jeav­ons had an arti­cle in PYM News that talked about younger Friends that were the “future” of PYM and put the cut-off line of youthfulness/relevance at fifty! The recent polit­i­cal bat­tles with­in PYM seemed to be over who would be includ­ed in the insid­er’s club, while our real prob­lems have been a lack of trans­paren­cy, inclu­sion and patience in our deci­sion mak­ing process.

Philadel­phia Friends cer­tain­ly have their lead­er­ship and author­i­ty prob­lems and I under­stand Jeav­ons’ frus­tra­tions. Much of his analy­sis is right. I appre­ci­at­ed his reg­u­lar­ly col­umn in PYM News, which was often the only place Christ and faith was ever seri­ous­ly dis­cussed. But his approach was too heavy hand­ed and cor­po­rate to fit year­ly meet­ing cul­ture and did lit­tle to address the long-term issues that are lap­ping up on the year­ly meet­ing doorsteps.

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard some very good things about the just-concluded year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. I sus­pect the year­ly meet­ing is actu­al­ly begin­ning a kind of turn-around. That would be welcome.

 

Don’t miss:

Of Theo, threats and selective press quoting

November 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The Baby Theo blog got a men­tion in today’s Philadel­phia Inquir­er, It’s almost as good as being there, by Kathy Boc­cel­la. They missed out on a huge rat­ings bonan­za by not pick­ing Theo for their pic­tures. Stranger was that two inter­views pro­duced only one off-topic sub­stan­tive line: “Mar­tin Kel­ly [sic] expe­ri­enced the worst of it when some­one threat­ened his infant son on his Baby Theo Web page [via Archive​.org, as it appeared around the time this arti­cle was written].

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Above: Theo on learn­ing he was­n’t going to be the fea­tured baby pho­to in the Inquir­er piece… Real pho­to cap­tion: This week­end Julie Theo and I took a mini vaca­tion to the Penn­syl­va­nia coal regions. One of the stops was the beau­ti­ful­ly restored Tamaqua train sta­tion, where Theo’s great great grand­fa­ther, the first Mar­tin John Kel­ley, worked as a Read­ing Rail­road con­duc­tor. We woke the lit­tle guy up from a car nap to see the sta­tion and snap this pic­ture, cru­el par­ents that we are.

The Baby Theo site has been a lot of fun and it’s had great com­ments and emails of sup­port. It’s real­ly a shame that the arti­cle only used it to strike that tired old refrain about the pos­si­ble dan­ger lurk­ing on the internet.

The threat had noth­ing to do with Theo or with the baby blog. I’ve run a promi­nent anti­war web­site (closed, was at non​vi​o​lence​.org) through two wars now, and in the nine years of its exis­tence I’ve amassed quite a col­lec­tion of abu­sive emails. I try not to take them too seri­ous­ly: most come from sol­diers or from the fam­i­lies of solid­ers, peo­ple desparate­ly afraid of the future and sure­ly torn by the acts they’re being asked to com­mit. The inter­net pro­vides the psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance for oth­er­wise good peo­ple to demo­nize the “com­mie Saddam-loving peacenik cow­ard.” You could get mad at a Pres­i­dent that active­ly mis­leads the coun­try into war but it’s eas­i­er to turn your anger on some schmuck who runs an anti­war web­site in his spare time. Send­ing threat­en­ing emails is itself cow­ard­ly and anti-democratic, of course, and as I’ve writ­ten on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s ter­ri­bly inap­pro­pri­ate for “mil­i­tary per­son­nel to use gov­ern­ment com­put­ers to threat­en the free speech” of a dis­sent­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. But it hap­pens. And because it hap­pens and because South Jer­sey has its share of pro-war hot­heads, you won’t see our spe­cif­ic town men­tioned any­where on the site. When I asked the Inquir­er reporter if they could not men­tion our town, she asked why, which led to the threat­en­ing emails, which led to the ques­tion whether Theo specif­i­cal­ly had been threatened.

And yes, there was a retired Lieu­tenant Colonel who sent a par­tic­u­lar­ly creepy set of emails (more on him below). The first email did­n’t men­tion Theo. It was just one of those every­day emails wish­ing that my fam­i­ly would be gang-raped, tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in front of me. I usu­al­ly ignore these but respond­ed to him, upon which I received a sec­ond email explain­ing that he was mak­ing a point with his threat (“You, your orga­ni­za­tion and oth­ers like you rep­re­sent the ‘flab­by soft white under­bel­ly’ of our Nation. This is the tis­sue of an ani­mal that is the tar­get of preda­tors.” Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah). This time he searched the Non​vi​o​lence​.org site more thor­ough­ly and specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned Theo in his what-if sce­nario. This was one email out of the thou­sands I receive every month. It was an inap­pro­pri­ate rhetor­i­cal argu­ment against a political/religious stance I’ve tak­en as a pub­lic wit­ness. It was not a cred­i­ble threat to my son.

Still, pre­cau­tion is in order. I men­tioned this sto­ry to the Inquir­er reporter only to explain why I did­n’t want the town list­ed. When I talked about the blog, I talked about old friends and dis­tant rel­a­tives keep­ing up with us and shar­ing our joys via the web­site. I talked about how the act of putting togeth­er entries helped Julie & I see Theo’s changes. I told Kathy how it was fun that friends who we had met via the inter­net were able to see some­thing beyond the Quak­er essays or polit­i­cal essays. None of that made it through to the arti­cle, which is a shame. A request to not pub­lish our home town became a sen­sa­tion­al­ist cau­tion­ary tale that is now being repeat­ed as a rea­son not to blog. How stupid.

The cau­tion­ary les­son is only applic­a­ble for those who both run a baby blog and a heav­i­ly used polit­i­cal web­site. When your web­site tops 50,000 vis­i­tors a day, you might want to switch to a P.O. Box. End of lesson.

For­tu­nate­ly with the inter­net we don’t have to rely on the fil­ter of a main­stream press reporters. Vis­i­tors from the Inquir­er arti­cle have been look­ing around the site and pre­sum­ably see­ing it’s not all about inter­net dan­gers. Since the Inquir­er arti­cle went up I’ve had twice as many vis­its from Google as I have from Philly​.com. Viva the web!

More:
For those inter­est­ed, the freaky retired Lieu­tenant Colonel is the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of a pri­vate avi­a­tion com­pa­ny based in Flori­da, with con­tracts in three African nations that just hap­pen to be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the U.S. State Depart­ment. Although the com­pa­ny is named after him, his full name has been care­ful­ly excised from his web­site. I don’t sus­pect that he real­ly is retired from U.S.-sponsored mil­i­tary ser­vice, if you know what I mean… Here’s your tax dol­lars at work.

A few news­pa­per web­sites have repub­lished up the Inky arti­cle and two blog­ging news sites have picked up on it:

  • Yet Anoth­er Baby Blog­ging sto­ry uncov­ers dan­ger — but it’s not true ran in Blog​ging​Ba​by​.com: “When some­one threat­ened his son on his Baby Theo Web page, he took the site down; but left up a pic on his home page. Well, that is, accord­ing to the arti­cle, which some­how man­aged to not check its facts (maybe, ummm – go to the link you includ­ed in your arti­cle?) and dis­cov­er that, in fact, Baby Theo’s page is alive and well. We’re glad, Theo’s a cutie.”
  • Baby blog­gers ran in Net­fam­i­lynews. “The $64,000 question(s) is: Is this a shift of think­ing and behav­ior or, basi­cal­ly, a mis­take?.. Mar­tin Kel­ly, whose baby was threat­ened by some­one who vis­it­ed his baby page, would lean toward the mis­take side of the ques­tion.” (No I would­n’t, as I explained to the web­mas­ter later)