interesting articles Posts

I occasionally go back to my blogging archives to pick out interesting articles from one, five and ten years ago.

ONE YEAR AGO: The Not-Quite-So Young Quakers

It was five years ago this week that I sat down and wrote about a cool
new movement I had been reading about. It would have been Jordan Cooper's blog that turned me onto Robert E Webber's The Younger Evangelicals, a look at generational shifts among American Evangelicals. In retrospect, it's fair to say that the QuakerQuaker community gathered around this essay (here's Robin M's account of first reading it) and it's follow-up We're All Ranters Now (Wess talking about it).

And yet? All of this is still a small demographic scattered all around. If I wanted to have a good two-hour caffeine-fueled bull session about the future of Friends at some local coffeeshop this afternoon, I can't think of anyone even vaguely local who I could call up. I'm really sad to say we're still largely on our own. According to actuarial tables, I've recently crossed my life's halfway point and here I am still referencing generational change. How I wish I could honestly say that I could get involved with any committee in my yearly meeting and get to work on the issues raised in "Younger Evangelicals and Younger Quakers". Someone recently sent me an email thread between members of an outreach committee for another large East Coast yearly meeting and they were debating whether the internet was an appropriate place to do outreach work--in 2008?!?

Published 9/14/2008.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Vanity Googling of Causes

A poster to an obscure discussion board recently described typing a particular search phrase into Google and finding nothing but bad information. Reproducing the search I determined two things: 1) that my site topped the list and 2) that the results were actually quite accurate. I've been hearing an increasing number of stories like this. "Cause Googling," a variation on "vanity googling," is suddenly becoming quite popular. But the interesting thing is that these new searchers don't actually seem curious about the results. Has Google become our new proof text?

Published 10/2/2004 in The Quaker Ranter.

TEN'ISH YEARS AGO: War Time Again
This piece is about the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia (Wikipedia). It's strange to see I was feeling war fatigue even before 9/11 and the "real" wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There's a great danger in all this. A danger to the soul of America. This is the fourth country the U.S. has gone to war against in the last six months. War is becoming routine. It is sandwiched between the soap operas and the sitcoms, between the traffic and weather reports. Intense cruise missile bombardments are carried out but have no effect on the psyche or even imagination of the U.S. citizens.

It's as if war itself has become another consumer good. Another event to be packaged for commercial television. Given a theme song. We're at war with a country we don't know over a region we don't really care about. I'm not be facetious, I'm simply stating a fact. The United States can and should play an active peacemaking role in the region, but only after we've done our homework and have basic knowledge of the players and situation. Isolationism is dangerous, yes, but not nearly as dangerous as the emerging culture of these dilettante made-for-TV wars.

Published March 25, 1999, Nonviolence.org

• Interview w/Chris Lehmann, principal of Philadelphia's "School 2.0" experiment
  "School 2.0" goes beyond technology. Likewise, a school that truly is designed for the future may also go beyond the literal building itself. Sometimes it shows up in small choices that allow kids and teachers to connect, collaborate, and create.
  (tags: tech tech.internetculture)
• Practical Theory
  Chris Lehman's blog. He's principle of PHiladelphia's new'ish Science Leadership Academy. Interesting stuff going on there.
  (tags: tech tech.internetculture)

For those who love real-live conspiracies, there's the case of this week's three cut undersea cables.

On Wednesday the anchor of a ship off of Alexandria, Egypt, sliced through two important fiber optic internet cables that serve critical traffic between Western Europe and the Middle East and India. On Friday, a cable off Dubai was cut for still undetermined reasons, one proffered explanation being (yes) an errant anchor. One commentator called it "a national disaster," citing the almost complete loss of communication in Egypt; about 20-30% of Indian's traffic is affected. Here's a cool map of the undersea world from the Guardian.

Apparently some aren't calling these closely-time cuts such a coinkydink. The USS Jimmy Carter nuclear submarine (named after a US Navy submarine officer who later went into politics) is a spy sub specially designed with a kind of underwater "shuttle craft" perfect for installing taps. Can we add large-scale internet failure to the cost of war?

When I was about seven I wrote a school report on the Glomar Explorer, a hugely-expensive deep-sea drilling ship built by eccentric gazillionaire Howard Hughes to extract minerals from the ocean floor. Well, at least that was the cover story. Shortly after my report, the Los Angeles Times uncovered the real story: the Glomar Explorer was a CIA ship built to recover a sunken Soviet sub off of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean (I myself didn't learn about this until only a few years ago).

Then of course there's the true stories of the secret White House, secret Pentagon and secret Congress, three separate underground mini-cities carved inside Appalachian ridges in the 1950s to be used in case of Ruskie attack. The locations are well known now. Interesting Fact #1: if you study maps you'll see underused interstate highways leading from Washington to the secret White House and secret Pentagon, ready for quick escape. Interesting Fact #2: the secret Congress is much further away, has no mysteriously-placed highway and was unknown to most if not all members of Congress; whoops!, no legislative branch! I can't find the websites listing all this very quickly but they're there and it's all pretty much out in the open now. When looking I found Interesting Fact #3: the White House East Wing was built in WWII to hide construction of a underground bunker, the famous "War Room" fictionalized in Doctor Strangelove. Veeery interestink, mein fuhrer, I mean mein President.

For those thinking I'm just busting on the U.S., rest assured. I have one client in a Far East Asian country I won't name who can't access this website, my design site, her internet bank, or any Blogspot-hosted site because the country's leaders have put a firewall around the whole frigging country, blocking off sites they don't like!

MONDAY UPDATE: From Egypt's Ministry of Communication: "A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time." (via Jesse Robbins @ O'Reilly)

Over on Nontheist Friends website, there's an article looking back at ten years of FGC Gathering workshops on their concern. There was also a post somewhere on the blogosphere (sorry I don't remember where) by a Pagan Friend excited that this year's Gathering would have a workshop focused on their concerns.

It's kind of interesting to look at the process by which new theologies are being added into Liberal Quakerism at an ever-increasing rate.

• Membership of individuals in meetings. There are hundreds of meetings in liberal Quakerism that range all over the theological map. Add to that the widespread agreement that theological unity with the meeting is not required and just about anyone believing anything could be admitted somewhere (or "grandfathered in" as a birthright member).

• A workshop at the Friends General Conference Gathering and especially a regular workshop at successive Gatherings. Yet as the very informed comments on a post a few years ago showed, theology is not something the planning workshop committee is allowed to look at and at least one proponent of a new theology has gotten themselves on the deciding committee. The Gathering is essentially built on the nondenominational Chautaqua model and FGC is perfectly happy to sponsor workshops that are in apparent conflict with its own mission statement.

• An article published in Friends Journal. When the the Quaker Sweat Lodge was struggling to claim legitimacy it all but changed its name to the "Quaker Sweat Lodge as featured in the February 2002 Friends Journal." It's a good magazine's job to publish articles that make people think and a smart magazine will know that articles that provoke a little controversy is good for circulation. I very much doubt the editorial team at the Journal considers its agreement to publish to be an inoculation against critique.

• A website and listserv. Fifteen dollars at GoDaddy.com and you've got the web address of your dreams. Yahoo Group is free.

There are probably other mechanisms of legitimacy. My point is not to give comprehensive guidelines to would-be campaigners. I simply want to note that none of the actors in these decisions is consciously thinking "hey, I think I'll expand the definition of liberal Quaker theology today." In fact I expect they're mostly passing the buck, thinking "hey, who am I to decide anything like that."

None of these decision-making processes are meant to serve as tools to dismiss opposition. The organizations involved are not handing out Imprimaturs and would be quite horrified if they realized their agreements were being seen that way. Amy Clark, a commenter on my last post, on this summer's reunion and camp for the once-young members of Young Friends North America, had a very interesting comment:

I agree that YFNA has become FGC: those previously involved in YFNA have taken leadership with FGC … with both positive and negative results. Well … now we have a chance to look at the legacy we are creating: do we like it?

I have the feeling that the current generation of liberal Quaker leadership doesn't quite believe it's leading liberal Quakerism. By "leadership" I don't mean the small skim of the professional Quaker bureaucracy (whose members can get too self-inflated on the leadership issue) but the committees, clerks and volunteers that get most of the work done from the local to national levels. We are the inheritors of a proud and sometimes foolish tradition and our actions are shaping its future but I don't think we really know that. I have no clever solution to the issues I've outlined here but I think becoming conscious that we're creating our own legacy is an important first step.

There's been some head-scratching going on about QuakerQuaker over the last few weeks. In the service of transparency I've posted my contributor guidelines on the About QuakerQuaker page. Here they are:

Post should be explicitly Quaker: Any thoughtful posts from any branch of Friends that wrestles in some way with what it means to be a Quaker is fair game. While we all have our own issues that connect deeply with our understanding of our faith, the Blogwatch only seems to work if it keeps focused on Quakerism, on how we our faith and lives interact. Back when this was just a links list on my personal site I would get complaints when I added something that seemed related to my understanding of Quakerism but that wasn't specifically written from a Quaker standpoint (when we want to make this kind of link we should do so on our personal blogs where we can put it in better context).

Post should be timely: I’ve billed QuakerQuaker as "a guide to the Quaker conversation” and links should go to recently-written articles with strong voices. We’re not trying to create a comprehensive list of Quaker websites, so no linking to organizational homepages. While most links should go to blog posts, it’s fine to include good articles from Quaker publications. A link to something like a press release or new book announcement should only be made if it’s extraordinary. Remember that QuakerQuaker posts will only appear on the main site for a few days (if the initial setup goes well I can start work on some ideas to giave a more timeless element to the site).

Post should be Interesting: Don’t bookmark everything you find. If the post feels predictable or snoozy, just ignore it (even if the writer or topic is important). The Quaker bloggers all have their audiences and we don’t need to highlight every post of every blogger. Only make the link if the post speaks out to you in some way (it’s quite possible that one of the other contributors will pick up, finding something you didn’t and highlighting it in their description). That said, the posts you link to don’t have to be masterpieces; they can have grammatical and logical mistakes. What’s important is that there’s some idea in there that’s interesting. It might be a good discipline for each of us not to add our the posts from our own personal blogs but to let one of the other contributors do it for us.

That's it. While there are some vague assumptions in all this about the role of tradition and community, discipline and individualism, there's nothing about theology or who gets linked. This is a publication, with something of an editorial voice in that I've chosen who gets to add links and asked them to be subjective, but its very mellow and I've been happy to see contributors range far afield. Google tells us that this is one of 18.7 million "Quaker" websites and $10/month will get you your own so let's not do too much navel-gazing about what's linked or not linked. If you don't find it interesting, there are plenty of non-subjective Quaker blogs lists out there. I do listen to feedback and am always twiddling with the site so feel free to send email to me at martink-at-nonviolence-dot-org.

Just a quick note to everyone that I haven't posted more lately. It's a busy time of the year. I've had my hands full keeping up with articles and links to the Christian Peacemakers.

I've also been doing some freelance sites. One is launched: Quakersong.org, the new online home of Annie Patterson and Peter Blood of Rise Up Singing fame. It's just the start to what should soon be an interesting site.

Geek-wise I've been interested in the Web 2.0 stuff (see this Best Of list of sites, link courtesy C Wess Daniels). I've talked about some of this back in June but it's getting more exciting. In the Fall I was asked to submit a proposal for redoing the website of a Quaker conference center near Philadelphia and it was all Web 2.0-centric--maybe too much so as I didn't get the job! I'll post an edited version of the proposal soon for the geeks out there. Some of the new tech stuff will undergird a fabulous new Quakerfinder.org feature that will allow isolated Friends to connect to form new worship groups (to launch soon) and even more is behind the dreams of a new Quakerbooks.org site.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to order On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry, the new book by New England Yearly Meeting's Brian Drayton (it arrived from the printers yesterday). It's being billed as a modern day version of "A Description of the Qualifications" and if it lives up the hype it should be an important book for the stirrings of deepening faithfulness we've been seeing among Quakers lately. While you're waiting for the book to arrive in your mailbox, check out Brooklyn Rich's Testing Leadings post.

An early edition of "Nonviolence Web Upfront," which debuted December 29, 1997.

I started Nonviolence.org in late 1995 as a place to publicize the work of the US peace movement which was not getting out to a wide (or a young) audience. I built and maintained the websites of a few dozen hosted groups (including the War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation and Pax Christi USA) but I quickly realized that the Nonviolence.org homepage itself could be used for more than just as a place to put links to member groups. I realized I could highlight the articles I thought should get more publicity, whether on or off the Nonviolence.org domain. The homepage adapted into what is now a recognizable blog format on December 29, 1997 when I re-named the homepage "Nonviolence Web Upfront" and started posting links to interesting articles from Nonviolence.org member groups. In response to a comment the other day I wondered how that fit in with the evolution of blogging. I was shocked to learn from Wikipedia's article on weblog that the first use of the term occured on December 29, 1997--yes, the same day!

I think is less a coincidence than a confirmation that many of us were trying to figure out a format for sharing the web with others. Below is an excerpt from the email announcement for "Nonviolence Web Upfront." The reliable Archive.org has index of Upfront's second week, whose feature was a guest piece by John Steitz, Is the Nonviolence Web a Movement Half-Way House that sounds eerily similar to recent discussions on Quaker Ranter.