Tag Archives ⇒ week

Early Quaker “Yearly meetings”

March 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is look­ing at an ear­ly form of pub­lic Quak­er wor­ship, who’s var­i­ous names (includ­ing “year­ly meet­ings”) have per­haps hid­den them from mod­ern Quak­er con­scious­ness: From the Quak­er tool­box: “Year­ly meet­ings” and related

These meet­ings often includ­ed gath­er­ings of min­is­ters, and of elders (and some­times the two togeth­er), and meet­ings most­ly for Friends. But the pub­lic wor­ship was care­ful­ly pre­pared for — usu­al­ly more than one ses­sion, often over more than one day, with lots of pub­lic­i­ty ahead of time. Tem­po­rary meet­ing places were erect­ed for large crowds (the word “booth” is used, these clear­ly held hun­dreds of people.

Bri­an’s sto­ry reminds me of when I was a tourist in the “1652 Coun­try” where Quak­erism was born. One of the stops is Fir­bank Fell, where George Fox preached to thou­sands. Most his­to­ries call that ser­mon the offi­cial start of the Quak­er movement.

But Fir­bank Fell itself is a des­o­late hill­side miles from any­where. There was a small ancient church there and then noth­ing but graz­ing fields off to the hori­zon. A thou­sand peo­ple in such a remote spot would have the feel of a music fes­ti­val. And that’s kind of what was hap­pen­ing the week the unknown George Fox walked into that part of Eng­land. There was a orga­nized move­ment that held inde­pen­dent reli­gious preach­ing fes­ti­vals. Fox was no doubt very mov­ing and he might have giv­en the seek­ers there a new way of think­ing about their spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion, but the move­ment was already there. I won­der if the gen­er­al meet­ings of pub­lic wor­ship that Dray­ton is track­ing down is an echo of those ear­li­er pub­lic festivals.

One of my Fir­bank Fell photos:

What does normalization mean for Quaker process?

March 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The March issue of Friends Jour­nal dropped online last week (and will soon hit mail­box­es) and the first fea­tured arti­cle is from Mike Merryman-Lotze, AFSC’s Mid­dle East Pro­gram direc­tor, and looks at the Pales­tin­ian use of the con­cept of nor­mal­iza­tion. I first came across this term in a Max Carter book review in 2011 and have been want­i­ng to run an arti­cle ever since because it real­ly ques­tions some Quak­er ortho­dox­ies. Mike writes:

So as Quak­ers com­mit­ted to peace and engage­ment with all peo­ple, what should we take from this con­ver­sa­tion? First, we should rec­og­nize that Pales­tini­ans and Israelis are get­ting togeth­er and coop­er­at­ing but on their own terms. One of the key prob­lems with many past people-to-people pro­grams is that they were ini­ti­at­ed and led by out­side actors who imposed their own goals and terms on inter­ac­tions. The nor­mal­iza­tion frame­work pushed for­ward by Pales­tini­ans is a reasser­tion of own­er­ship of the terms of inter­ac­tion by those most impact­ed by the sys­tem­at­ic injus­tice of Israel’s occu­pa­tion and inequality.

I’ve won­dered how the para­dox of nor­mal­iza­tion plays into some of the issues that seem to reg­u­lar­ly stymie Quak­er process. From my intro­duc­to­ry Friends Jour­nal col­umn:

 As Friends, our first instinct has been to think of con­flicts as mis­un­der­stand­ings: if only every­one got to know each oth­er bet­ter, love and coop­er­a­tion would replace fear and con­fu­sion. It’s a charm­ing and some­times true sen­ti­ment, but many Pales­tin­ian activists charge that this process ignores pow­er dif­fer­en­tials and “nor­mal­izes” the sta­tus quo.

(if you have thoughts, feel leave them in the com­ments or reply to the dai­ly email).


When Dialogue Stands in the Way of Peace - Friends Journal

When Dia­logue Stands in the Way of Peace — Friends Journal 

People-to-people pro­grams can cause harm when they don’t address struc­tur­al issues.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Daily quotes

March 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

What’s an email newslet­ter with­out a dai­ly inspi­ra­tional quote, right? I’ve put togeth­er a lit­tle hack that should put one front and cen­ter every morn­ing. I’ve primed it with a hand­ful of clas­sics — Fox, the Pen­ing­tons, Jones. But as it gets going I’ll start includ­ing some of the great modern-day quotes that show up every week on the web. And rather than just quote a ran­dom 300-some-year-old quote out of con­text, I hope to find it embed­ded and dis­cussed in cur­rent blog posts. We’re a liv­ing tradition.

Can Quakerism Survive?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Some­times I’m remiss at actu­al­ly shar­ing arti­cles I’ve worked on as part of my duties as Friends Jour­nal’s edi­tor. It’s espe­cial­ly iron­ic this week giv­en that one of the most talked-about recent Quak­er arti­cles comes from the Feb­ru­ary FJ issue.

Don McCormick­’s piece has a bold title: Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? He talks about thr decline that many Friends geoups have been expe­rien­ing and won­ders who it is that might have. vision for twenty-first cen­tu­ry Friends.

The arti­cle has gar­nered over eighty com­ments. The range and depth of that con­ver­sa­tion has been hum­bling as as edi­tor. But this is a good cross-section of visions of Quak­erism. An excerpt from McCormick:

Over the past 40 years, I have been part of and seen orga­ni­za­tions that had high ideals and did good work but were focused on inter­nal dynam­ics and paid lit­tle atten­tion to threats to their exis­tence. As a result, they went under. I wor­ry that our year­ly, quar­ter­ly, and month­ly meet­ings will also.

Does our continued existence matter?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m always hap­py when Johan Mau­r­er wades into an online dis­cus­sion, as he can often gives a steady­ing long-term view of pan­ics. He’s jumped in with per­spec­tive on the viral arti­cle of the week, Don McCormick­’s Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? from the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal.

Johan reminds us that alarms about the future of Quak­erism has long been ring­ing and draws on Joshua Brown’s warn­ings about New York Year­ly Meet­ing from 30 years ago! Lest we chalk all this up an inces­sant alarmism, Johan gives some stats about that year­ly meet­ing. Uh-oh:

7,070 (in 1955)
5,124 (in 1985)
3,241 (in 2015)

But Johan goes beyond that to ask some ques­tions that we real­ly need to sit with. For exam­ple, he asks:

Giv­en that we are a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the world Chris­t­ian move­ment, do we have an inflat­ed sense of our own impor­tance? Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly, could we rest con­tent­ed that our influ­ence on Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship will last beyond our insti­tu­tion­al survival?

This is a must-read blog for any­one any­where on the Quak­er spectrum

The Quaker movement: decline and persistence
The Quak­er move­ment: decline and persistence 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er dis­ci­ple­ship. Recur­ring themes: Rus­sia, peace, evan­ge­lism, blues.

blog.canyoubelieve.me blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me

November Flashbacks

November 4, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Once a month I’m doing flash­backs to past eras in my blog. 

One Year Ago: November 2016

A year ago the shock to the sys­tem was Trump’s elec­tion. One reac­tion of mine was a promise to blog more; I set up the sys­tem but I’m still not as fric­tion­less about it as I’d like. 

Wak­ing Up to Pres­i­dent Trump: We do not get to choose our era or the chal­lenges it throws at us. Only some­one with his­tor­i­cal amne­sia would say this is unprece­dent­ed in our his­to­ry. The enslave­ment of mil­lions and the geno­cide of mil­lions more are dark stains indeli­bly soaked into the very found­ing of the nation. But much will change, par­tic­u­lar­ly our naiv­i­ty and false opti­mism in an inevitable for­ward progress of our nation­al story. 

Five Years Ago: November 2012

Five years ago I wrote about how I had been blog­ging for fif­teen years. Do the math: it’s now 20 frig­ging years since I start­ed blogging.

Fif­teen Years of Blog­ging: I keep double-checking the math but it keeps adding up. In Novem­ber 1997 I added a fea­ture to my two-year-old peace web­site. I called this new enti­ty Non­vi­o­lence Web Upfront and updat­ed it week­ly with orig­i­nal fea­tures and curat­ed links to the best online paci­fist writ­ing. I wrote a ret­ro­spec­tive of the “ear­ly blog­ging days” in 2005 that talks about how it came about and gives some con­text about the proto-blogs hap­pen­ing back in 1997. 

Ten Years Ago: November 2007

Free­lanc­ing and work­ing the overnight shift at Shoprite, I won­dered if my Quak­er­ness was hope­less­ly use­less to my new circumstances.

Who are we part one (just what pam­phlet do I give the tat­tooed ex-con?): I love the fel­low who gave the mes­sage and I appre­ci­at­ed his min­istry. But the whole time I won­dered how this would sound to peo­ple I know now, like the friend­ly but hot-tempered Puer­to Rican ex-con less than a year out of a eight-year stint in fed­er­al prison, now work­ing two eight hour shifts at almost-minimum wage jobs and try­ing to stay out of trou­ble. How does the the­o­ry of our the­ol­o­gy fit into a code of con­duct that doesn’t start off assum­ing mid­dle class norms. 

Twenty Years Ago: November 1997

Four years before 9/11, I was ask­ing how we could break the cycle of terrorism.

How Come the U.S. Trains All the Ter­ror­ists?: It would seem a sim­ple case of U.S. mil­i­tarism com­ing home to roost, but it is not so sim­ple and it is not uncom­mon. Fol­low most trails of ter­ror­ism and you’ll find Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment fund­ing some­where in the recent past. 

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.

Chris Christie, meme muse

July 5, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Chris Christie is always good for inspir­ing memes but he out­did him­self this week when NJ Advanced Media staked him out and found him enjoy­ing a emp­ty beach on a closed state park with his fam­i­ly. The sto­ry behind the get is won­der­ful and all kudos to Andrew Mills and the team.

Here in no order and with no attri­bu­tion (sor­ry future meme researchers) are some of my favorite re-workings. The Bird­cage ver­sion made us laugh out loud so much that we knew we had to rewatch it that night.

And final­ly, a sand sculp­ture made on Island Beach State Park after the bud­get stand­off end­ed and the beach reopened: blank