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Essential Mac Apps 2017

November 1, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Oh dear: a few weeks ago Wess Daniels start­ed a Twit­ter dis­cus­sion about the new Mac app Card­hop. In the thread he asked me about oth­er apps which apps I find essen­tial. I thought I’d type up some­thing in ten min­utes but then the draft post kept grow­ing. I’m sure I still missed some. I guess I didn’t real­ize how par­tic­u­lar I am about my com­put­ing environment. 🙂

Bartender

Okay, maybe it’s a bit OCD but I hate clut­tered Mac menubars run­ning along the top of my screen. This app was just rebuilt for High Sier­ra and is an essen­tial tool. I have most every­thing hid­den and have set up a key­board short­cut (the little-used right “option” key) to tog­gle the full menubar icon set.

Fantastical

This is my favorite cal­en­dar app. It sits in the menubar, ready to give a beau­ti­ful agen­da view with just a sin­gle tap. It can open up to a full view. Man­age cal­en­dars is easy and the nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing is suburb.

Cardhop

Just released, this is Fantastical’s newest cousin, an app for man­ag­ing con­tacts from Flex­ibits. It works with what­ev­er you have set up for con­tacts on your Mac (I use Google but iCloud is fine too). Giv­en Flexibit’s track record, and Cardhop’s resem­blance to the dis­con­tin­ued Cobook, this is like­ly to be a win­ner for me.

Favioconographer

I’ve been a Chrome user since the week it debuted but late­ly I’ve been try­ing to switch to Safari, want­i­ng its supe­ri­or bat­tery man­age­ment and sync­ing of book­marks and tabs with iOS. Many of Safari’s annoy­ances have lessoned as Apple itin­er­at­ed with each release. There are enough exten­sions now that I can get by. I am, though, one of those weird peo­ple whom John Gru­ber iden­ti­fied: wannabee Safari users who real­ly like Fav­i­cons in tabs. For­tu­nate­ly, Fav­i­cono­g­ra­ph­er has come along. There are occa­sion­al odd­i­ties (float­ing icons, icons that don’t match site) but over­all it improves the Safari expe­ri­ence enough to make it a win over Chrome.

1Blocker for Mac

Uses the built-in con­tent fil­ter­ing sys­tem built into Mac Safari. Good sync­ing with the iOS app. “Con­tent fil­ter­ing” (aka block­ing) has become an impor­tant secu­ri­ty con­cern and let’s face it: the web runs so much bet­ter with­out all the crap that some sites throw in along with their con­tent. You can whitelist sites that respect read­ers. Hon­or­able men­tion in Chrome or as an alter­na­tive for Safari is uBlock Ori­gin, a great block­er (and dis­tinct from stan­dard uBlock, which I don’t recommend).

Karabiner-Elements

Lets you remap the gen­er­al­ly use­less Caps Lock key. I have it mapped Brett-Terpstra style so that a sin­gle click opens Spot­light search and a hold and click acts as a hyper key (imag­ine a shift key that you can use for any keystroke).

BetterTouchTool

Remap keys and key com­bi­na­tions. With Kara­bin­er, I can use it to have Capslock‑C open a par­tic­u­lar app, for instance.

Tunnelbear

I used to think VPNs were a lux­u­ry but with peo­ple hack­ing in on pub­lic Wi-Fi accounts and the loss of pri­va­cy, I’ve signed up for this easy-to-use VPN ser­vice. One account can pow­er mul­ti­ple devices so my lap­top and phone are secured.

Evernote

It’s been around for years. I cur­rent­ly have 13,000 notes stored in Ever­note, includ­ing every issue of the mag­a­zine I work for going back to the mid-1950s. There was a time a few years ago when I was wor­ried for Ever­note, as it kept chas­ing quirky side projects as its main app got bug­gi­er and bug­gi­er. But they’ve had a shake-up, ditched the dis­trac­tions and have built the ser­vice back up. Most of my projects are orga­nized with Evernote.

Ulysses

There are a gazil­lion writ­ing apps out there that com­bine Mark­down writ­ing syn­tax with min­i­mal­ist inter­faces (Bear, IaWriter, Byword) but Ulysses has edged its way to being my favorite, with quick sync­ing and abil­i­ty to post direct­ly to WordPress.

Todoist

There are also a gazil­lion task man­agers. Todoist does a good job of keep­ing projects that need due dates in order.

1Password

You should be using a pass­word man­ag­er. Repeat: you should be using a pass­word man­ag­er. 1Password is rock sol­id. They’ve recent­ly changed their eco­nom­ic mod­el and strong­ly favor sub­scrip­tion accounts. While I’ve tried to lim­it just how many auto-pulling sub­scrip­tions I have, I under­stand the ratio­nale and have switched.

Airmail

A great email app for Mac and iOS that can dis­play and sort your Gmail accounts (and oth­ers too). Almost too many options if you’re the kind to fid­dle with that sort of thing but easy to get start­ed and great with just the defaults.

 

Google and Apple and clouds

The Big‑G should get a shoutout: it pow­ers the data­bas­es for my email, cal­en­dar, con­tacts, and pho­tos. All my hard­ware has migrat­ed over to Apple, helped in large part by the open­ing up of its ecosys­tem to third-party apps.

What’s also use­ful to note is that all of the data-storing ser­vices are cloud based. If my phone or lap­top dis­ap­peared, I could bor­row a new one and be up to speed almost imme­di­ate­ly. Since many of these apps run on data­bas­es run by Google, I can also switch apps or even have mul­ti­ple apps access­ing the same infor­ma­tion for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. There’s a real free­dom to the app ecosys­tem these days.

In praise of an editor past

April 24, 2017
· Martin Kelley
Frances William Browin from the Sep­tem­ber 15, 1968 Friends Journal.

When I became an edi­tor at Friends Jour­nal in 2011, I inher­it­ed an insti­tu­tion with some rather strong opin­ions. Some of them are sourced from the pre­dictable well­springs: William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White’s foun­da­tion­al mid-century style guide and the edi­to­r­i­al offices of the Chica­go Man­u­al of Style. But some are all our own, log­i­cal­ly test­ed for con­sis­ten­cy with Chica­go but adapt­ed to Quak­er idiosyncrasies.

One of our most invari­able (and con­test­ed) for­mats comes from the way we list con­gre­ga­tions. Quick aside for non-Quakers: you will often see a Quak­er meet­ing var­i­ous­ly named as “Town Month­ly Meet­ing,” “Town Friends Meet­ing,” “Town Quak­er Meet­ing,” etc. Peo­ple often have strong opin­ions about the cor­rect form. Occa­sion­al­ly an author will insist to me that their meet­ing has an offi­cial name (“Spring­field Friends Meet­ing”), used con­sis­tent­ly across their pub­li­ca­tions and busi­ness min­utes. But after a few min­utes with Google I can usu­al­ly find enough counter-examples (“Spring­field Month­ly Meet­ing”) to prove their inconsistency.

To cut through this, Friends Jour­nal uses “Town (State) Meet­ing” every­where and always, with spe­cif­ic excep­tions only for cas­es where that doesn’t work — for exam­ple, the meet­ing is named after a street or a tree or isn’t in the town it’s named for (after 300 years iden­ti­ties some­times get messy). This for­mat­ting is unique to Friends Jour­nal—even oth­er Philadelphia-based Quak­er style sheets don’t fol­low it. We’ve been doing it this dis­tinc­tive­ly and this con­sis­tent­ly for as long as I’ve been read­ing the mag­a­zine. Where does our stub­born nam­ing con­ven­tion come from?

For­tu­nate­ly, thanks to Haver­ford Col­lege’s Quak­er and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions we have dig­i­tal archives going back to the mid-1950s. A few months ago I dug into our archives and used key­word search­es to see how far back the for­mat goes. Trav­el­ing the years back it time it’s held remark­ably steady as “Town (State) Meet­ing” until we get back to the fall of 1962. The Octo­ber 15 issue doesn’t have con­sis­tent meet­ing list­ings but it does announce that long­time Friends Jour­nal edi­tor William Hubben was to begin a six-month sab­bat­i­cal and that Frances Williams Browin was to fill in as act­ing editor.

It did­n’t take her long to make her mark. Friends Jour­nal came out twice a month in the 1960s and the next issue sees a few paren­the­ses uneven­ly applied to meet­ing list­ings. But by the Novem­ber 15th issue, nine­teen meet­ings are ref­er­enced using our famil­iar for­mat! There’s the “mem­ber of Berke­ley (Calif.) Meet­ing” who had just pub­lished a pam­phlet of Christ­mas songs for chil­dren, an FCNL event fea­tur­ing skits and a covered-dish sup­per at “Swarth­more (Pa.) Meet­ing” and the announce­ment of a promi­nent arti­cle by “Ken­neth E. Bould­ing, a mem­ber of Ann Arbor (Michi­gan) Meeting.”

I’ve tried to imag­ine the scene… Browin sit­u­at­ed in her new tem­po­rary office… going back and forth, forth and back on some list­ing… then final­ly sur­pris­ing her­self by shout­ing “enough!” so loud­ly she had to apol­o­gize to near­by col­leagues. At the end of the six months, Hubben came back, but only as a con­tribut­ing edi­tor, and Browin was named as full edi­tor. Friends Jour­nal board mem­ber Eliz­a­beth B Wells wrote a pro­file of her upon her retire­ment from that posi­tion in 1968:

Her remarks usu­al­ly made sparks, whether she was express­ing an opin­ion (always pos­i­tive), exert­ing pres­sure (not always gen­tle), or mak­ing a humor­ous aside (often dis­turb­ing). For in her ami­able way she can be tart, unex­pect­ed, even prej­u­diced (in the right direc­tion), then as sud­den­ly dis­arm­ing­ly warm and sensitive.

This sounds like the kind of per­son who would stan­dard­ize a for­mat with such resolve it would be going strong 55 years later:

She was so entire­ly com­mit­ted to putting out the best pos­si­ble mag­a­zine, such a per­fec­tion­ist, even such a dri­ver, that her clos­est col­leagues often felt that we knew the spir­it­ed edi­tor far bet­ter than the Quak­er lady.

It’s a won­der­ful­ly writ­ten pro­file. And today, every time an author rewrites their meeting’s name on a copy­edit­ed man­u­script I’ve sent them for review, I say a qui­et thanks to the dri­ven per­fec­tion­ist who gives me per­mis­sion to be “prej­u­diced in the right direc­tion.” Well­s’s pro­file is a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse into a smart woman of a dif­fer­ent era and well worth a read.

And for uber word geeks, yes our Friends Jour­nal style guide is a pub­lic doc­u­ment. While parts of its pro­scrip­tions go back to the ear­ly 1960s, it is very much a liv­ing doc­u­ment and we make small changes to it on an almost week­ly basis.

The Quaker Art of Dying?

March 22, 2017
· Martin Kelley
Hopewell Ceme­tery, Winslow Town­ship N.J. One of the many South Jer­sey Quak­er bur­ial grounds on long-bypassed coun­try roads. The meet­ing­house that was here is long gone.

We’re now cast­ing about for arti­cles for a Friends Jour­nal issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life.” I’m inter­est­ed to see what we’ll get. Every so often some­one will ask me about Quak­er belief in the after­life. I’ve always found it rather remark­able that I don’t have any sat­is­fy­ing canon­i­cal answer to give them. While indi­vid­u­als Friends might have var­i­ous the­o­ries, I don’t see the issue come up all that often in ear­ly Friends theology.

As extreme­ly atten­tive Chris­tians they would have signed off on the idea of eter­nal life through Christ. Since they thought of them­selves as liv­ing in end times, they total­ly emu­lat­ed New Tes­ta­ment mir­a­cles. George Fox him­self brought a man back from the dead in a town off Exit 109 of the Gar­den State Express­way. Strange things afoot at the Cir­cle K!

Fox’s biog­ra­phers quick­ly scaled back the whole mir­a­cle thing. Appar­ent­ly that was an odd­ness too far. The cut-out parts of his biog­ra­phy have been repub­lished but even the repub­lish­ing now appears out of print (nev­er fear: Ama­zon has it used for not too much).

But Friends has folk cus­toms and beliefs too. The deceased body wasn’t undu­ly ven­er­at­ed. They recy­cled grave plots with­out much con­cern. I can think of a cou­ple of his­toric Quak­er bur­ial grounds in Philly that have been repur­posed for activ­i­ties deemed more prac­ti­cal to the liv­ing. The phi­los­o­phy of green bur­ial is catch­ing up with Quak­ers’ prac­tice, a fas­ci­nat­ing coming-around.

It also seems there’s a strong old Quak­er cul­ture of face imped­ing death with equa­nim­i­ty. That makes sense giv­en Friends’ mod­esty around indi­vid­ual achieve­ments. There’s a prac­ti­cal­i­ty that I see in many old­er Friends as they age. I’d be curi­ous to hear from Friends who have had insights on aging as they age and also care­tak­ers and fam­i­lies and hos­pice chap­lains who have accom­pa­nied Friends though death.

Writ­ing sub­mis­sions for our issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life” are due May 8. You can learn about writ­ing for us at:

https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​s​u​b​m​i​s​s​i​o​ns/

How do Friends approach the end of life? We’re liv­ing longer and dying longer. How do we make deci­sions on end-of-life care for our­selves and our loved ones? Do Quak­ers have insight into what hap­pens after we die? Sub­mis­sions due 5/8/2017.

ps: But of course we’re not just a dead tra­di­tion. There are many heal­ers who have revived ideas of Quak­er heal­ing. We have a high pro­por­tion of main­stream med­ical heal­ers as well as those fol­low­ing more mys­ti­cal heal­ing paths. If that’s of inter­est to you, nev­er fear: Octo­ber 2017 will be an issue on healing!).

Writing Opp: Race and Anti-Racism

December 2, 2016
· Martin Kelley

We’re less than two weeks from the dead­line for writ­ing about “Race and Anti-Racism” for Friends Jour­nal and I’d love to see more sub­mis­sions. It was two years ago that we put out the much-talked-about issue on Expe­ri­ences of Friends of Col­or. That felt like a really-needed issue: no tri­umphal­ism about how white Friends some­times did the right thing as Abo­li­tion­ists or pos­tur­ing about how great we are, for­get­ting the ways we some­times aren’t: just a col­lec­tion of mod­ern Friends talk­ing about what they’ve expe­ri­enced first-hand.

I think it’s a good time to talk now about how Friends are orga­niz­ing to unlearn and sub­vert insti­tu­tion­al racism. It was an impor­tant issue before Novem­ber – ongo­ing mass incar­cer­a­tion, Stand­ing Rock, and the dis­en­fran­chise­ment of mil­lions of African Amer­i­cans was all tak­ing place before the elec­tion. But with racial back­lash­es, talk of a reli­gious or nationality-based reg­istries, and the cozi­ness of “alt-right” white nation­al­ists with mem­bers of the Trump cam­paign it all seems time to go into overdrive.


Write For Friends Journal - Submit Writing For Quaker Publication

Write For Friends Jour­nal — Sub­mit Writ­ing For Quak­er Publication 

Friends Jour­nal is an inde­pen­dent mag­a­zine serv­ing the entire Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. We wel­come arti­cles, poet­ry, art,…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Friends on Giving

December 1, 2016
· Martin Kelley

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The new issue of Friends Jour­nal is avail­able online. This month looks at Giv­ing and Phil­an­thropy. There’s some good reflec­tions from Friends on why they give to the caus­es and insti­tu­tions they do. There’s also a nice piece from Quak­er fundrais­er Hen­ry Free­man on the “lan­guage of Quak­er val­ues.” If you’re try­ing to unpack what it means to be Quak­er, this on-the-ground per­spec­tive is one way to parse out the real­i­ty of Quak­er testimonies.


Giving and Philanthropy Archives - Friends Journal

Giv­ing and Phil­an­thropy Archives — Friends Journal 

Decem­ber 2016: Giv­ing and Phil­an­thropy Speak­ing the Lan­guage of Quak­er Val­ues by Hen­ry Free­man Giv­ing from a Peace­ful Place by Lisa…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

What do you love about your Quaker space?

April 29, 2016
· Martin Kelley

We’re extend­ing the dead­line for the August issue on Quak­er Spaces. We’ve got  some real­ly inter­est arti­cles com­ing in – espe­cial­ly geeky things in archi­tec­ture and the the­ol­o­gy of our clas­sic meetinghouses.

So far our prospec­tive pieces are  weight­ed toward East Coast and clas­sic meet­ing­house archi­tec­ture. I’d love to see pieces on non-traditional wor­ship spaces. I know there new­ly purpose-built meet­ing­hous­es, adap­ta­tions of pre-existing struc­tures, and new takes on the Quak­er impulse to not be churchy. And wor­ship is where we’re gath­ered, not nec­es­sar­i­ly where we’re mort­gaged: tell us about your the rent­ed library room, the chairs set up on the beach, the room in the prison wor­ship group…

Sub­mis­sion guide­lines are at friend​sjour​nal​.org/​s​u​b​m​i​s​s​i​ons. The new dead­line is Mon­day, May 16. My last post about this issue is here.

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Upcoming FJ submission: “Quaker Spaces”

April 4, 2016
· Martin Kelley

I’ve been mean­ing to get more into the habit of shar­ing upcom­ing Friends Jour­nal issue themes. We start­ed focus­ing on themed issues back around 2012 as a way to bring some diver­si­ty to our sub­ject mat­ter and help encour­age Friends to talk about top­ics that weren’t as regularly-covered.

One of the Greenwich, N.J., Meetinghouses.

One of the Green­wich, N.J., meet­ing­hous­es, Sept 2009

The next issue we’re look­ing to fill is a top­ic I find inter­est­ing: Quak­er Spaces. I’ve joked inter­nal­ly that we could call it “Meet­ing­house Porn,” and while we already have some beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions lined up, I think there’s a real chance at juicy Quak­er the­ol­o­gy in this issue as well.

One of my pet the­o­ries is that since we down­play creeds, we talk the­ol­o­gy in the minu­tia of our meet­ing­hous­es. Not offi­cial­ly of course — our wor­ship spaces are neu­tral, uncon­se­crat­ed, emp­ty build­ings. But as Helen Kobek wrote in our March issue on “Dis­abil­i­ties and Inclu­sion,” we all need phys­i­cal accom­mo­da­tions and these pro­vide tem­plates to express our val­ues. Ear­li­er Friends expressed a the­ol­o­gy that dis­trust­ed forms by devel­op­ing an archi­tec­tur­al style devoid of cross­es, steeples. The clas­sic meet­ing­house looks like a barn, the most down-to-early hum­ble archi­tec­tur­al form a north­ern Eng­lish sheep­herders could imagine.

But the­olo­gies shift. As Friends assim­i­lat­ed, some start­ed tak­ing on oth­er forms and Methodist-like meet­ing­house (even some­times dar­ing­ly called church­es) start­ed pop­ping up. Mod­ern meet­ing­hous­es might have big plate glass win­dows look­ing out over a for­est, a nod to our con­tem­po­rary wor­ship of nature or they might be in a con­vert­ed house in a down-and-out neigh­bor­hood to show our love of social justice.

Top photo is a framed picture of the Lancaster U.K. Meetinghouse from the early 20th century--long benches lined up end to end, balcony. By the time of my visit, there were cushioned independent chairs arranged in a circle.
Top pho­to is of a framed pic­ture of the Lan­cast­er UK Meet­ing­house from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry – long bench­es lined up the length of the space. By the time of my vis­it in 2003, the bal­cony was gone and the few remain­ing bench­es were rel­e­gat­ed to an out­er ring out­side of cush­ioned chairs arranged in a cir­cle sur­round­ing a round table with flow­ers and copies of Faith and Prac­tice.

But it’s not just the out­sides where the­ol­o­gy shows up. All of the clas­sic North­east­ern U.S. meet­ing­hous­es had rows of bench­es fac­ing for­ward, with ele­vat­ed fenc­ing bench­es reserved for the Quak­er elders. A theologically-infused dis­trust of this mod­el has led many a meet­ing to rearrange the pews into a more cir­cu­lar arrange­ment. Some­times some­one will sneak some­thing into the mid­dle of the space — flow­ers, or a Bible or hym­nal — as if in recog­ni­tion that they don’t find the empti­ness of the Quak­er form suf­fi­cient. If asked, most of these deci­sions will be explained away in a light-hearted man­ner but it’s hard for me to believe there isn’t at least an uncon­scious nod to the­ol­o­gy in some of the choices.

I’d love to hear sto­ries of Friends nego­ti­at­ing the meet­ing space. Has the desire to build or move a meet­ing­house solid­i­fied or divid­ed your meet­ing? Do you share the space with oth­er groups, or rent it out dur­ing the week? If so, how have you decid­ed on the groups that can use it? Have you bick­ered over the details of a space. Here in the North­east, there are many tales of meet­ings com­ing close to schism over the ques­tion of replac­ing ancient horse­hair bench cush­ions, but I’m sure there are con­sid­er­a­tions and debates to be had over the form of fold­ing chairs.

You can find out more about sub­mit­ting to this or any oth­er upcom­ing issue our the Friends Jour­nal Sub­mis­sions page. Oth­er upcom­ing issues are “Cross­ing Cul­tures” and “Social Media and Technology.”

Aug 2016: Quaker Spaces

What do our archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or design, and meet­ing­house loca­tions say about our the­ol­o­gy and our work in the world? Quak­ers don’t con­se­crate our wor­ship spaces but there’s a strong pull of nos­tal­gia that brings peo­ple into our his­toric build­ings and an unde­ni­able ener­gy to inno­v­a­tive Quak­er spaces. How do our phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions keep us ground­ed or keep us from shar­ing the “Quak­er gospel” more wide­ly? Sub­mis­sions due 5/2/2016.

Quakers and the ethics of fixed pricing

June 22, 2015
· Martin Kelley

From a 1956 issue of the then-newly rebrand­ed Friends Jour­nal, an expla­na­tion of the ethics behind pro­vid­ing a fixed price for goods:

Whether the ear­ly Quak­ers were con­scious­ly try­ing to start a social move­ment or not is a moot point. Most like­ly they were not. They were mere­ly seek­ing to give con­sis­tent expres­sion to their belief in the equal­i­ty of all men as spir­i­tu­al sons of God. The Quak­er cus­tom of mark­ing a fixed price on mer­chan­dise so that all men would pay the same price is anoth­er case in point. Most prob­a­bly Friends did this sim­ply because they want­ed to be fair to all who fre­quent­ed their shops and give the sharp bar­gain­er no advan­tage at the expense of his less skilled broth­er. It is unlike­ly that many Quak­ers adopt­ed fixed prices in the hope of forc­ing their sys­tem on a busi­ness world inter­est­ed only in prof­it. That part was just coin­ci­dence, the coin­ci­dence being that Friends hit upon it because of their con­vic­tions; the sys­tem itself was a nat­ur­al success.
 — Bruce L Pear­son, Feb 4 1956