Tag Archives ⇒ pamphlet

Philadelphia YM on pamphlet series archive

April 14, 2022
· Martin Kelley

I’ve already writ­ten about the dig­i­tal repub­li­ca­tion of the clas­sic William Penn Lec­ture series. But Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s post con­tained this great quote from Jim Rose:

Pen­dle Hill had a prac­tice of ask­ing week-long stu­dents to take on a job on Wednes­day after­noon. One week my task was to clean/dust and arrange the books in the Upmeads library and in the process I found, high on an upper shelf, a whole series of dusty pam­phlets called the William Penn Lec­tures. Inac­ces­si­ble? You bet. A few months lat­er I sojourned at Pen­dle Hill while my late wife was tak­ing a week-long course. Dur­ing that week I sat with my com­put­er and scanned the text of those pam­phlets. My intent was to make that body of lit­er­a­ture more acces­si­ble to Quak­ers and oth­ers through­out the world on the inter­net. And recent­ly that goal has been achieved. 

I know Jim well from his time on Friends Jour­nal’s board of trustees and mak­ing Quak­er archives acces­si­ble is a great pas­sion of his. He helped us tremen­dous­ly in get­ting old­er arti­cles indexed. That com­bined with the Haver­ford Col­lege Library’s dig­i­tal­iza­tion of every­thing going back to 1955 means we’re rel­a­tive­ly acces­si­ble.

Speak­ing of archives, it looks like I’ve been remiss shar­ing anoth­er amaz­ing resource: the Salem (NJ) Quar­ter Tape Archive. Start­ing in the late 1970s, peo­ple start­ed tap­ing long inter­views with Friends. They’ve sat gath­er­ing dust until they were pulled out an dig­i­tized. Reg­u­lar read­ers will know I’m a huge fan of Rachel Davis DuBois and her inter­view by Charles Crabbe Thomas (num­ber 13) is absolute gold.

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. 

Who are we part one (just what pamphlet do I give the tattooed ex-con?)

November 10, 2007
· Martin Kelley

If you cycle through my last few months of com­ments, you’ll see that I’ve been spend­ing a lot of time think­ing about who “we” Friends are and who we serve and the con­se­quent ques­tion of why we orga­nize into local meet­ings, nation­al affil­i­a­tions, blogs, etc.

Essen­tial to this think­ing has been Jeanne B’s Social Class and Quak­ers blog. There are many ways to tease out the way cul­ture and faith work to rein­force and sab­o­tage one anoth­er, but class is a good one. If you trav­el from one the­o­log­i­cal brand of Friends to anoth­er, from one cul­tur­al zone to anoth­er (e.g, urban vs ex-urban vs rur­al) you’ll see marked cul­ture dif­fer­ences. Just take a look at the potluck array if you doubt me. Jeanne talks about the urban lib­er­al Quak­er stig­ma against Cool Whip and a great link she turned me on to talks about some of the ways the alterna-lefty cul­ture can unwit­ting­ly sep­a­rate itself from poten­tial allies in social change over tofu (update: more recent work from this orga­ni­za­tion can be found at clas​sism​.org).

Since falling out of the rar­efied world of pro­fes­sion­al Quak­erism a year ago, I’ve become more local. I live in a small, large­ly agri­cul­tur­al town in rur­al South Jer­sey rough­ly equidis­tant from the region’s sky­scraper metropoli (I don’t give its name for pri­va­cy rea­sons) and res­i­dents range from multi-generational fam­i­lies to Mex­i­can farm­work­ers to peo­ple who got in trou­ble up north in NYC and are look­ing for a qui­eter place to come clean. I don’t see Quak­ers in my day-to-day life any­more but I do inter­act with a more rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling of Amer­i­ca, peo­ple who are all try­ing to get some­where oth­er than where they are. Jesus would have been here. Fox would have preached here. But what do mod­ern lib­er­al Friends have to say about this world? As Bill Samuel wrote on Jean­ne’s blog issues of safety-net pub­lic assis­tance that seem like do-gooder caus­es for most well-off lib­er­al Friends are mat­ters of per­son­al prac­ti­cal­i­ty for more eco­nom­i­cal­ly diverse reli­gious bod­ies (the child care pro­gram that Pres­i­dent Bush vetoed last month is the same one that let me take my fevered two year old to the doc­tor last Friday).

Last First Day I heard a good ortho­dox piece of Quak­er min­istry couched in a learned lan­guage, all talk of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion ver­sus sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, with a bit of insid­er Quak­er acronyms thrown in for good effect. 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. What do our tofu cov­ered dish­es and vanil­la soy chai’s (I’m so addict­ed) have to do with liv­ing under Christ’s instruc­tion? And just which FGC out­reach pam­phlet should I be hand­ing my new friend?

Enough for now. More soon.

Betsy Cazden’s new site

January 5, 2007
· Martin Kelley

I’m pleased to announce that my lat­est free­lance project has just launched: Betsy​Caz​den​.com. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary about the tech­nol­o­gy behind the site or its design, but the Quak­er geek in me is so hap­py to see it. Long-term read­ers will remem­ber my excit­ed post Fel­low­ship Mod­el of Lib­er­al Quak­ers, writ­ten after read­ing Bet­sy’s Bea­con Hill Friends pam­phlet Fel­low­ships, Con­fer­ences, and Asso­ci­a­tions. Bet­sy is one of the small num­ber of Quak­er his­to­ri­ans will­ing to take on con­tem­po­rary his­to­ry and her obser­va­tions can be quite insight­ful. I hope she’ll find an even wider audi­ence with this site and the blog that she plans to add soon.