Six seasons of the awesomest video series about Friends. There’s also a newly reenergized podcast version so subscribe to that if audio is your favorite medium!
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
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‘My ministry is the jokes and kittens’ | The Friend
January 31, 2019
The Friend editor Joseph Jones interviews best-selling Quaker author Bridget Collins. One of my favorite part is the balance between discipline and waiting inspiration:
On a day-to-day basis my biggest struggle – if I’m finding it hard to find the words – is over whether I need to wait for inspiration to come, or whether I’m just being lazy and underprepared. Whether I’m letting fear or procrastination stop me. The Quaker method has a lot to say to that. You know, you wait in silence and if it doesn’t come then it doesn’t come. But also you have to be disciplined, and prepared, for that to work
https://thefriend.org/article/my-ministry-is-the-jokes-and-kittens
Unlocking the commons
January 4, 2019
I really like Tim Carmody and Kottke.org is one of my favorite blogs. This isn’t Quaker but it feels really relevant for those of us trying to save independent publishing from being subsumed by the Facebook Borg and so maintain countercultural, non-corporate spaces like Quaker communities.
This is a prediction for 2019 and beyond: The most powerful and interesting media model will remain raising money from members who don’t just permit but insist that the product be given away for free. The value comes not just what they’re buying, but who they’re buying it from and who gets to enjoy it.
QuakerSpeak Staff Picks
December 18, 2018
What’s your favorite QuakerSpeak? To celebrate the QuakerSpeak video series’ fifth anniversary, project director Jon Watts asked the Friends Journal staff to pick their favorite videos. What would be your favorite QuakerSpeak?
Upcoming Friends Journal themes
October 26, 2018
This week we unveiled the next slate of themes for Friends Journal, one which takes us all the way through the end of 2020 (I can’t get over how much further away this feels than the calendar says it is). This is the sixth round of themes since we introduced the format back in the beginning of 2012. We’ve kept the pattern the same – nine themed issues a year, with two non-themed issues for more eclectic material we get (
Before 2012, the mix had been flipped for years: two annual special issues, with the rest a catch-all from the incoming submission slush pile. I feel that more frequent themes have helped us steer clear of the rut of repeating the same articles on a too-frequent basis. We’re also seeing more articles consciously written for us (as opposed to be shopped around to various progressive publications). Most importantly from an editorial perspective, the process also forces us to reach out to people, directly and on social media, to encourage them to write. One of my never-ending, never- reachable goals, is to always be encouraging new voices in the magazine. This is one tool to help get there.
We’ve already started getting feedback from individuals that their favorite cause isn’t covered in this latest list. I’m okay with that. We don’t cover everything every round. Core concerns of Friends get covered on a regular basis in the non-themed issues. Some authors are also really creative in finding a hook to bring their cause into seemingly unrelated topic. Also, I think we’ve covered all of the major topics in the last seven years — sometimes multiple times — and those articles are still be read and shared and commented on.
Many of these themes come from reader suggestions. Others come from more random conversations we have. One of my favorite this time is the issue on Gambling. That was inspired one late-January 2018 morning when a new Friend called in to ask us if we had any articles on the topic. Apparently, she had been chastised at meeting that weekend for suggesting there should be a prize for whoever guessed the correct number of valentine candy hearts in a jar. She wanted to understand the Quaker testimonies. Much to my surprise there hadn’t been much in recent Friends Journal articles. I randomly asked on Facebook whether we had “essentially dropped” our testimony on gambling. The resultant Facebook thread quickly made it obvious that Friends have an issue-worthy amount of feelings on the topic.
Have fun looking over the list. If you have suggestions, let me know (I will write them down and remember). If you want to encourage people to write, please please do. Also, send me a message if you want to get on a monthly email list in which I promote an upcoming writing deadline. The next coming up in for March’s issue, Outside the Meetinghouse.
QuakerSpeak on old Quaker records
July 12, 2018
I must admit to loving old libraries and geeking out on histories. In this week’s installment of QuakerSpeak, Mary Crauderueff, curator at Haverford College’s Quaker Collection, talks about some of the favorite parts of her work:
You have things like membership records, marriage records, and marriage certificates. You have minutes of the business meetings and you have committee minutes. Other cool things that we have are deeds for meetings and meetinghouses. People will sometimes come to various Quaker archives and say, “Our meeting is in this dispute with the township. We need to find the original deed to the meetinghouse and we think that you have it. Can we look at it?”
http://Quakerspeak.com/working-in-a-historical-quaker-library/
Norval Reece interviewed on MLK Jr anniversary
April 5, 2018
To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Philadelphia TV station interviewed Quaker Norval Reece: Bucks County Quaker, Civil Rights Activist Reflects On Time With MLK
Reece is a proud Quaker and believes it’s his Quaker roots that sent him to Dr. King’s side. “I was raised to believe all people are equal, are born equal, created equal,” he said. Reece met King in 1967 at the old Robert Morris Hotel in Philadelphia. He spent several hours with the civil rights icon. Reece says that night he, King and a few others planned a poverty march for the following spring, but King never made it.
Norval was an activist with AFSC back in his youth, served as a Pennsylvania secretary of commerce, and became a cable television entrepreneur. He’s pretty ubiquitous in Quaker circles these days, linking the activist and entrepreneurial in interesting ways. My favorite part of the video is when they casually redisplay a picture they had blurred out near the beginning (the one in the preview) and don’t bother naming the guy walking just ahead of him.