Tag Archives ⇒ paper

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Is our Quaker Peace Testimony an historical artifact or a living witness to our faith?

March 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Is our Quak­er Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny an his­tor­i­cal arti­fact or a liv­ing wit­ness to our faith?

If we aren’t liv­ing our faith, then the 1660 Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny is sim­ply an his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. Like the old musty books in our Meet­ing library that sit behind glass, most­ly unread. They look impres­sive and make us feel good about our­selves, but if we don’t read them and take the words to heart, they might as well be wall paper. 

80s Flashback Time

November 10, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Some of my younger friends are freak­ing out about Trump, won­der­ing how we’ll get through his pres­i­den­cy. For those of us of a cer­tain age though this is deja vu, a return to the days of Ronald Rea­gan. Though many peo­ple lion­ize him in ret­ro­spect, he was a train wreck through and through.

I was young when he came into office and my only mem­o­ry of his first term is being inter­rupt­ed in gym class to an announce­ment he had been shot in an assas­si­na­tion attempt. My first inkling of him as a politi­cian came from a high school social stud­ies teacher Roy Buri who con­stant­ly made fun of Rea­gan’s state­ments and poli­cies. I laughed at Buri’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tions but I also began to inter­nal­ized them. He was a leg­end at the school and had report­ed­ly pro­vid­ed a safe haven in the 1970s for stu­dents orga­niz­ing against the Viet­nam War. Retro bonus: he even looked a bit like Bernie Sanders!

When I grad­u­at­ed and moved onto a most­ly con­ser­v­a­tive col­lege, I would stay late at nights in a base­ment lounge talk­ing with friends in about how we could deal with the era we were liv­ing. I remem­ber an epiphany that even though the media were telling us to believe cer­tain things because that was the main­stream nation­al dis­course, we did­n’t have to. We could be inde­pen­dent in our actions and con­vic­tions. Yes, that seems obvi­ous now but it was a major real­iza­tion then.

So what did we do? We protest­ed. We spoke out. We knew gov­ern­ment was­n’t on our side. For those los­ing friends to AIDS, there was deep mourn­ing and right­eous anger. There was a melan­choly. A lot of my world felt under­ground and grit­ty. I start­ed writ­ing, edit­ing a under­ground week­ly paper on cam­pus (real­ly the start of my career). I fig­ured out that the geog­ra­phy depart­ment was full of left­ies and spent enough time there to earn a minor. Most of all, I worked to de-normalize the Rea­gan and Bush St Admin­is­tra­tions – the deep cor­rup­tion of many of its offi­cials and the heart­less­ness of its policies.

img_1593

“The economy of God is not centered on little rectangles of plastic, little pieces of paper or small…”

February 5, 2013
· Martin Kelley

“The econ­o­my of God is not cen­tered on lit­tle rec­tan­gles of plas­tic, lit­tle pieces of paper or small chunks of round met­al which bear the images and impres­sions of our “Cae­sars”, but on that which bears the image of God.”

 — Extro­vert­ed Quak­er: God’s Econ­o­my http://​bit​.ly/​V​S​1​8mN

Seth Godin on the idea of the “book”

February 17, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Godin tends to be too enam­ored by big ideas for my tastes, but there’s a few ideas in here worth chew­ing over, specif­i­cal­ly how the forced-scarcity of tra­di­tion­al book pub­lish­ing is giv­ing way to near­ly infi­nite elec­tron­ic bookshelves.

The struc­tures of books cer­tain­ly are bound­ed by the forms of their mar­ket­ing. One lim­i­ta­tion Godin does­n’t men­tion is the 64 page min­i­mum – this is what you need to be able to put a spine on the book, am essen­tial fea­ture if it’s to show up book­store shelves. One of my trick­i­est type­set­ting assign­ments back in my non­prof­it pub­lish­ing career was to stretch a 40 page essay to 64 so it could be a book. I used all the tricks of a des­per­ate first year stu­dent with class twen­ty min­utes off (the book went on to become one of our best­sellers, if I could have stretched it 96 pages we might have remained solvent).

This book just exag­ger­at­ed a com­mon phe­nom­e­non. Many of our authors had a few great insights that could be ade­quate­ly shared in the first few chap­ters. The rest of the books would­n’t just be my calorie-free mar­gins. There were enougn words to fill up a book but after 70 or 90 pages the read­er would have read the most orig­i­nal con­tent and could safe­ly put the book down in the “to be fin­ished lat­er” pile.

Free of book lim­i­ta­tions – and book sell­ing lim­i­ta­tions – most of these works would habe been far dif­fer­ent. some of the more basic ques­tions will remain with us: how do we get our works into the hands of read­ers, and how we pay the rent while doing it?

Embed­ded Link

The end of paper changes every­thing — The Domi­no Project
Not just a few things, but every­thing about the book and the book busi­ness is trans­formed by the end of paper. Those that would pre­fer to deny this obvi­ous truth are going to find the busi­ness they lo… 

Two Theories of Change and Liberal Friends

May 25, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Over in the NYTimes colum­nist David Brooks talks about Two The­o­ries of Change. He’s talk­ing about mod­ern Amer­i­can pol­i­tics but it seems rel­e­vant to Friends. Here’s his sum­ma­ry of a new paper by Yuval Levin of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago:

paineburke

[Thomas] Paine believed that soci­eties exist in an “eter­nal now.” That some­thing has exist­ed for ages tells us noth­ing about its val­ue. The past is dead and the liv­ing should use their pow­ers of analy­sis to sweep away exist­ing arrange­ments when nec­es­sary, and begin the world anew. He even sug­gest­ed that laws should expire after 30 years so each new gen­er­a­tion could begin again

[Edmund] Burke, a par­tic­i­pant in the British Enlight­en­ment, had a dif­fer­ent vision of change. He believed that each gen­er­a­tion is a small part of a long chain of his­to­ry. We serve as trustees for the wis­dom of the ages and are oblig­ed to pass it down, a lit­tle improved, to our descen­dents. That wis­dom fills the gaps in our own rea­son, as age-old insti­tu­tions implic­it­ly con­tain more wis­dom than any indi­vid­ual could have.

For Brooks, the Paine fol­l­low­ers are Tea Par­ty activists who think it’s fine to “sweep away 100 years of his­to­ry and return gov­ern­ment to its prein­dus­tri­al role.” 

But for Friends, espe­cial­ly Lib­er­al Friends, this touch­es on the nature of “Con­tin­u­al Rev­e­la­tion” that has been at the cen­ter of much of our delib­er­a­tions for about a hun­dred years now. Are we in an “eter­nal now,” ready to rein­vent lib­er­al Quak­erism every thir­ty years and only will­ing to read old Friends to pull quotes out of con­text? Or are we tin­ker­ers of tra­di­tion, trustees keep­ing the parts oiled for the next generation? 
I can think of par­tic­u­lar Friends who fol­low Paine’s con­tin­u­al rev­o­lu­tion mod­el and oth­ers who fol­low Burke’s long chain mod­el. Some­how both feel lim­it­ed. To sub­scribe strong­ly to either is a kind of fun­da­men­tal­ism. We are in an eter­nal now (Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self) but we have 350 of expe­ri­ences and tech­niques that have taught us how to be ready to act in that now. Insist­ing on both seems important.

Blunt assertions, no evidence, no investigation

July 21, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The Wash­ing­ton Post has an arti­cle about the Bush White House­’s com­mon prac­tice of mak­ing unat­trib­uted state­ments about Iraq with­out get­ting CIA feed­back. Some of the whop­pers include:

Sept 26: Iraq “could launch a bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal attack 45 min­utes after the order is given.“Sept 28: “there are al Qae­da ter­ror­ists inside Iraq”

Oct 7: “Sad­dam Hus­sein aids and pro­tects ter­ror­ists, includ­ing mem­bers of al Qaeda.”

All of these claims were strong­ly dis­put­ed by intel­li­gence experts at the time and only the most die-heart Adminstration-booster would want to claim now that any of them are true.

The 45 minute claim has got­ten a thor­ough rebuk­ing in the U.K.

This is the sec­ond time in as many weeks where a Bush quote has sud­den­ly tak­en me back to the Rea­gan years. That 45 minute claim just echos in my head of Rea­gan’s “the San­din­istas are just two days dri­ve from Har­lin­gen, Texas.” They both have that “oh my god, the bar­bar­ians are at the door” urgency. Both also posit an arch-enemy that turned out to be a paper tiger when all the pro­pa­gan­da was peeled back. (For the young’ins out there, Rea­gan respond­ed to the two-drive fear by min­ing Nicaragua’s har­bors, an act which was lat­er declared ille­gal by the World Court).