August 2005 Archives

Just the quickest of announcements to let everyone know that Baby Francis was born Monday morning. Stats: a boy, 8 lbs, 15 oz., 20 inches long, 14.5 inch head (he was not going to be coming out of Julie the old fashioned way!). Everyone's healthy, Mom's recovery is happening more quickly than last time. Theo's first two visits have been encouraging. Here's the official Baby Francis homepage and here's the Baby Francis Flickr page

I have to run right back to the hospital now to visit Julie. Thanks everyone for all of your prayers! More picture soon.

Update: we're all home!

Quaker Storytelling as Religious Ed: how do you teach a religion that can't be defined?

Howard Brinton's Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience Among Friends

The Nonviolence.org bank account is once more depleted. Please consider donating $20 or more to cover us for the next month's web rent. The Nonviolence.org project will be celebrating its ten-year anniversary this fall. A whole decade of keeping it all patched together month-to month, that's something! The more you give the more I'll be able to focus on the work. Thanks everyone! In peace, Martin Kelley

A few months ago I started keeping a links blog that evolved into the "Quaker Blog Watch" (formally at home at nonviolence.org/quaker though included as a column elsewhere). This is my answer to the aggregation question that a few of us were tossing around in Sixth Month. I've never believed in an uberBlog that would to supercede all of our individual ones and act as gate-keeper to "proper" Quakerism. For all my Quaker Conservativism I'm still a Hicksite and we're into a certain live-and-let live creative disorder in our religious life.

I also don't like technical solutions. It helps to have a human doing this. And it helps (I think) if they have some opinions. When I began my list of annotated Quaker links I called it my "Subjective Guide" and these links are also somewhat subjective. I don't include every post on Quakerism: only the ones that make me think or that challenge me in some way. Mediocrity, good intentions and a famous last name mean less to me than simple faithfulness to one's call.

There's no way to keep stats but it looks like the links are being used (hours after I stumble across a previously-unknown site I see comments from regular Quaker Ranter readers!). Here's the next step: instructions on adding the last seven entries of the Quaker blog watch to your site. I imagine some of you might want to try it out on your sidebar. If so, let me know how it works: I'm open to tweaking it. And do remember I'll be disappearing for a few days sometime soon (still waiting, that kid can't stay in there too long.)

One piece of preparing for the birth of the second child is passing off temporary responsibility for the first child to a relative or close friend. In preparation we've prepared a dictionary of Theo'isms.

Some strange things happening in Julie's belly last night. No labor yet but don't be surprised if the website and Quaker links blog suddently goes quiet for a week! Your prayers are welcome. Until we get a gender and name the little one will be codenamed babybaby.