You go to a book club for one book, learn of a dozen more…

October 7, 2015

Jane-JacobsI’m just com­ing back from a book club (adult con­ver­sa­tion? But… but… I’m a par­ent… Real­ly?). The top­ic was Jane Jacob’s 1961 clas­sic, The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities. The six of us gath­ered in a Collingswood, N.J., cof­fee shop were all city design geeks and I could bare­ly keep up with the ideas and books that had influ­enced every­one. Here is a very incom­plete list:

Update: And also, from Genevieve’s list:

  • Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy. Dou­glas Adams, for its absur­dist humor around the bureau­cra­cies of planning
  • Green Metrop­o­lis. David Owen,
  • What’s Up With That: Build­ing Big­ger Roads Actu­al­ly Makes Traf­fic Worse,” an arti­cle by Adam Mann in Wired on the phe­nom­e­non of induced demand.
  • Vision Zero Initiative
  • The Pine Bar­rens. John McPhee, the clas­sic which I brought up.
  • The Pow­er Bro­ker. Robert Caro.
  • The Ecol­o­gy of Com­merce. Paul Hawken
  • Orga­niz­ing in the South Bronx. Jim Rooney
  • Re: race: Dal­ton Con­ley’s Being Black, Liv­ing in the Red and When Work Dis­ap­pears by William Julius Wilson.
  • Re: bicy­cles: Urban Bik­ers’ Tricks & Tips. Dave Glowacz

Excuse me for the next six months while I read. 🙂

Unlikely collaborators

September 9, 2015

When Fran­cis real­ized that Theo’s board game based on our home town did­n’t include gas sta­tions, he added them in. Fran­cis also moved the incor­rect­ly locat­ed bicy­cle shop. Theo was briefly mad when he saw these unau­tho­rized changes but when he real­ized the cor­rec­tions were improve­ments he made Fran­cis his offi­cial fact checker.

Mike’s Precision Carpentry

December 3, 2009

Mike's Precision CarpentryMichael Oliv­eras is a long-time union car­pen­ter mak­ing the entre­pre­neur­ial jump and start­ing his own busi­ness: Mike’s Pre­ci­sion Car­pen­try, serv­ing the New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia and Delaware from his shop in Ham­mon­ton, NJ. He came to me look­ing for a web­page to adver­tise his new enterprise.
It’s a sim­ple design, a typ­i­cal small-business site of half-a-dozen pages. The col­or scheme match­es his busi­ness cards for a bit of brand­ing. Oliv­eras faced a prob­lem typ­i­cal for new busi­ness­es: a lack of good pho­tos. The work he’s done for many years is not tech­ni­cal­ly his own (per the employ­ment con­tracts) so for now the pic­tures are a mix of the few jobs he has done on his own and a few stock images. I’m sure he’ll have a well-rounded port­fo­lio before long and we’ll be able to fill out the site with his own work. In the mean­times, he added a cou­ple of great pic­tures of him and his fam­i­ly on the “About Us” page to give it that per­son­al touch.
See it live: www​.mike​s​pre​ci​sion​car​pen​try​.com

Butterfly Love

October 26, 2007

Butterfly Love
The town parade was post­poned by rain again last night but as the but­ter­fly boys were all dressed up we ducked into our favorite piz­za shop for some moz­zarel­la sticks and a slice of bruchetta-topped toma­to pie. We got out with­out inflict­ing any major struc­tur­al dam­age or phys­i­cal injury, though Theo was only a twist or two away from destroy­ing one of their neon signs. Rumor has it that the parade will hap­pen next Tues­day though if the weath­er coop­er­ates we should have pic­tures of the Bat­sto Vil­lage hal­loween before that (last year’s pics).

(Still work­ing on get­ting com­ments and Twit­ter to show up properly.)

Quaker books and self-defeating bargain hunting

May 20, 2004

Got an email in the book­store today from a poten­tial cus­tomer who chose Ama­zon over my employ­er Quaker­books, a niche inde­pen­dent book­store, because of their cheap cheap prices. I got a bit inspired by my reply, includ­ed here.

Sub­ject: book prices

I real­ly want­ed to buy the below book [Why Grace is True], but I checked ama­zon. com. Their prices: new is $16.07, or used from $5.94. Your price is $22.95.

I know how hard it is to be com­pet­i­tive, but I want­ed to let you know that peo­ple do com­par­i­son shop.

Bless­ings, C. 

Dear Friend,

Yes, Ama­zon, Wal­mart and the rest of the glob­al media/distribution jug­ger­naut will always be able to under­price us on the main­stream books.

What we offer is a much wider selec­tion of Quak­er books than any­one else. We don’t just have the more watered-down books aimed at the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion (most­ly with the unsaid premise “what you can learn from those folksy Quak­ers”), but a whole list of books about Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion, Quak­er vision, Quak­er belief, Quak­er his­to­ry and what it means to be a Quak­er today. We don’t just have the Harper­Collins titles, but those from Quak­er pub­lish­ers that Ama­zon’s nev­er heard of. We eas­i­ly beat Ama­zon in selec­tion and we cer­tain­ly match them in speed and cus­tomer service.

We give a more ground­ed con­text to what these books mean to Friends – the reviews on our site’s If Grace is True are writ­ten by Friends for Friends. We try to know our books. When peo­ple call us up we’ll help with their selec­tion. When they’re try­ing to decide, we’ll read the table of con­tents to them. Quak­er pub­lish­ers and book­sellers talk about the “min­istry of the writ­ten word,” which means remem­ber­ing that there’s a pur­pose behind this book­selling. These books aren’t com­modi­ties, they aren’t units, they’re not ISBN num­bers to be packed and shipped. We’d rather not sell a book than sell a book some­one would­n’t val­ue (which is why we’ll include neg­a­tive book descrip­tions & comments).

Pay­ing a few extra dol­lars to sup­port us means your also sup­port­ing the out­reach and Quak­er self-identity our cat­a­log pro­vides for many Friends. Plus you can be assured our employ­ees get liv­ing wages and health care (for which I’m per­son­al­ly thankful).

So yes, cus­tomers can save a few bucks at Ama­zon. Always will be able to. But your pur­chas­ing deci­sions are also deci­sions about who you sup­port and what you val­ue. There’s a price to dis­tinc­tive­ness, whether it’s cul­tur­al, reli­gious, region­al, or culi­nary. By buy­ing from Ama­zon you’re financ­ing a Wall Street-run com­mod­i­ty sell­er that does­n’t give a jot about Quak­erism or even whether grace might be true. If enough Friends choose price over con­tent, then Quak­er book­stores and pub­lish­ers will dis­ap­pear, our only rep­re­sen­ta­tion being main­stream books sold at gener­ic shops. That will cost us a lot more than sev­en bucks.

Well, I hope you enjoy the book. I’m sure Ama­zon appre­ci­ates your patronage.

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kelley

Post-Liberals & Post-Evangelicals?

October 15, 2003

Obser­va­tions on the first Philadel­phia Indie Allies Meet­up. “Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all ‘post’ some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church communities.”

The infor­mal net­work of younger Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians cen­tered around web­sites like theooze​.com and Jor​dan​Coop​er​.sk​.ca has start­ed spon­sor­ing a month­ly Indie Allies Meet­up of “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers.” Unlike pre­vi­ous months, there were enough peo­ple signed up for the Octo­ber meet­ing in the Philadel­phia area to hold a “meet­up,” so two days ago Julie & I found our­selves in a Cen­ter City piz­za shop with five oth­er “Indie Allies.”

Accord­ing to Robert E. Web­ber’s The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals, I fall pret­ty square­ly into the “Post Lib­er­al” cat­e­go­ry, a la Stan­ley Hauer­was. While it’s always dan­ger­ous label­ing oth­ers, I think at least some of the oth­er par­tic­i­pants would be com­fort­able enough with the “Post Evan­gel­i­cal” label (the one pas­tor among us said that if I read Web­ber’s book I’d know where he’s com­ing from). One par­tic­i­pant was from the Cir­cle church Julie & I attend­ed last First Day.

Just about each of us at the table were com­ing from dif­fer­ent the­o­log­i­cal start­ing points, but it’s safe to say we are all “post” some­thing or oth­er. There was a shared sense that the stock answers our church­es have been pro­vid­ing aren’t work­ing for us. We are all try­ing to find new ways to relate to our faith, to Christ and to one anoth­er in our church com­mu­ni­ties. There’s some­thing about build­ing rela­tion­ships that are deep­er, more down-to-earth and real. Per­haps it’s find­ing a way to be less dog­mat­ic at the same time that we’re more dis­ci­plined. For Friends, that means ques­tion­ing the con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al ortho­doxy of liberal-think (get­ting beyond the cliched catch phras­es bor­rowed from lib­er­al Protes­tantism and sixties-style activism) while being less afraid of being pec­u­lar­i­ly Quaker.

The con­ver­sa­tion was real­ly inter­est­ing. After all my Quak­er work, it’s always amaz­ing to find oth­er peo­ple my age who actu­al­ly think hard about faith and who are will­ing to build their life around it. There were times where I think we need­ed to trans­late our­selves and times where we tried to map out shared con­nec­tions (i.e., Richard Fos­ter was the known famous Quak­er, I should read him if only to be able to dis­cuss his rela­tion­ship to Con­ser­v­a­tive and Lib­er­al Friends).

It was real­ly good to get out­side of Quak­erism and to hear the lan­guage and issues of oth­ers. One impor­tant les­son is that some of the strong opin­ions I’ve devel­oped in response to Quak­er cul­ture need to be unlearned. The best exam­ple was social action. As I’ve writ­ten before on the web­site, I think the Friends peace tes­ti­mo­ny has become large­ly sec­u­lar­ized and that social action has become a sub­sti­tute for expressed and lived com­mu­nal faith. Yet my Meet­up cohorts were excit­ed to become involved in social action. Their Evan­gel­i­cal back­ground had dis­missed good works as unnec­es­sary – faith being the be-all – and now they want­ed to get involved in the world. But I very much sus­pect that their good works would be root­ed in faith to a degree that a lot of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er activist projects aren’t. I need to remind myself that social wit­ness (even my own) can be fine if tru­ly spirit-led.

Com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple switch­ing church­es often bring with them the bag­gage of their frus­tra­tions with the first church and this unre­solved anger often gets in the way of keep­ing true to God’s call. Even though I’m not leav­ing Quak­erism I have to iden­ti­fy and name my own frus­tra­tions so that they don’t get in the way. Hang­ing out with oth­er “Inde­pen­dent Chris­t­ian Thinkers” is a way of keep­ing some per­spec­tive, of remem­ber­ing that Post-Liberal is not exact­ly anti-Liberal.

Rec­om­mend­ed I check out: N.T. Wright, at allelon​.net. I just saw him ref­er­enced as a per­son­al friend of some of the Repub­li­can par­ty lead­er­ship in Con­gress, so this should be interesting.