Quaker books and self-defeating bargain hunting

May 20, 2004
· Martin Kelley

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

The Berg questions few are asking

May 11, 2004
· Martin Kelley

I am shocked and hor­ri­fied by the decap­i­ta­tion of Nicholas Berg in Iraq, but not for the chest-puffing rea­sons the folks at Fox News are. U.S. mil­i­tary prox­ies held Berg with­out charges for an extend­ed peri­od of time and there are too many ques­tions about when he was released and who he might have been released to. I’m not one for con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries but there are real ques­tions as to how Berg end­ed up in front of those anony­mous, hood­ed butch­ers. What­ev­er the answers, the U.S. mil­i­tary is involved in his deten­tion, as is the FBI (who made him miss a plane that was sup­posed to take him out of Iraq last month), as is the U.S. gov­ern­ment back home who did­n’t coop­er­ate with his fam­i­ly to get him out of there.
My major piece on this is over on the main Non​vi​o​lence​.org site: “US mil­i­tary prox­ies held Berg before decap­ti­a­tion; who were his executioners?”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000340.php
I’m sure to get even more hate mail than usu­al for this but I’ll also be watch­ing the main­stream media cov­er­age. I only know of many of these details because Berg was local and Chan­nel 10 News gave back­ground to Berg’s deten­tion. Here’s my pre­dic­tion from past expe­ri­ence: this sto­ry will be too hot for the main­stream media to ques­tion for a few days and then it will only be to report that there are some nut­cas­es ask­ing ques­tions. Only after a few days of this kind of second-hand ques­tion will the nation­al media drop the fas­cade and start ask­ing the ques­tions them­selves. It should be a fun week ahead.

Exporting Prison Abuse to the World?

May 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

An arti­cle on “abuse of pris­on­ers in the U.S.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/national/08PRIS.html?hp in the _NY Times_ shows that Lane McCot­ter, the man who over­saw the reopen­ing of the Abu Ghraib prison in iraq, was forced to resign a U.S. prison post “after an inmate died while shack­led to a restrain­ing chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia, was kept naked the whole time.” It was Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft who hand-picked the offi­cials who went to iraq.
As an Amer­i­can I’m ashamed but not ter­ri­bly sur­prised to see what hap­pened in the U.S.-run pris­ons in iraq. Mil­i­taries are insti­tu­tions designed to com­mand with force and only civil­ian over­sight will ulti­mate­ly keep any mil­i­tary insi­tu­tion free from this sort of abuse. The “Red Cross had warned of pris­on­er mistreatment”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040508/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_prisoner_abuse but was large­ly ignored. Abu Ghraib is in the news in part because of a leaked Pen­ta­gon report, yet it’s only after CBS News aired the pic­tures and the New York­er quot­ed parts of the reports and turned it into a scan­dal that Pres­i­dent Bush or Defense Sec­re­tary Rums­feld admit­ted to the prob­lems and gave their half-hearted apologies.
_This is not to say all sol­diers are abu­sive or all prison guards are abusive_. Most sol­diers and most guards are good, decent peo­ple, serv­ing out of call to duty and (often) because of eco­nom­ic neces­si­ties. But when the sys­tem is pri­va­tized and kept secret, we allow for cor­rup­tion that put even the good peo­ple in posi­tions where they are pres­sured to do wrong.
It is pre­cise­ly because the Pen­ta­gon instinc­tive­ly keeps reports like the one on the abuse con­di­tions inside the Abu Ghraib prison secret that con­di­tions are allowed to get this bad. That prison, along with the one at Guan­tanamo Bay remain large­ly off-limits to inter­na­tion­al law. It was prob­a­bly only a few Amer­i­cans that gave the orders for the abuse but it was many more who fol­lowed and many many more – all of us in one way or anoth­er – who have gave the go-ahead with our inat­ten­tion to issues of jus­tice in prisons.

iraqi Prisoner Abuse and the Simulacra of Leadership

May 4, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The Gut­less Paci­fist talks about the abuse of iraqi pris­on­ers and asks How high up does it go?
bq. There are many trou­bling polit­i­cal issues com­ing out of both the reports of abuse in iraq and ear­li­er reports of abuse at Guan­tanamo Bay (which are look­ing increas­ing­ly accu­rate). But what is even more trou­bling to me is the larg­er moral issue that each of us who are Amer­i­cans may be in part respon­si­ble for these atroc­i­ties. For it is we who have allowed a cul­ture of death and vio­lence to develop.
Mean­while, a report on the abus­es by “Maj. Gen. Anto­nio M. Taguba”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/ is chill­ing in its detail­ing of phys­i­cal and psy­cholo­gial tor­ture report­ed­ly tak­ing place at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.
Joshua Mic­ah Mar­shal­l’s “Talk­ing Points Memo”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002909 is keep­ing close tabs on devel­op­ments and reac­tions in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing the President’s:
bq. The dis­as­ters now fac­ing the coun­try in iraq — some in slow motion, oth­ers by quick vio­lence — aren’t just hap­pen­ing on the pres­i­den­t’s watch. They are hap­pen­ing in a real sense, real­ly in the deep­est sense, because of him — because of his atten­tion to the sim­u­lacra of lead­er­ship rather than the real thing, which is more dif­fi­cult and demand­ing, both per­son­al­ly and morally.
Don’t miss Mar­shal­l’s thought­ful com­par­i­son of “Pres­i­dent Bush to a bad C.E.O.”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002906.
The oth­er essen­tial read­ing on all this is Sey­mour Her­sh’s “New York­er arti­cle on the tor­ture at Abu Ghraib”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/.

Quaker Emergent Church Planting

May 4, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Over on the Evan­gel­i­cal side of Friends is “Sim­ple Churches”:www.simplechurches.net, a move­ment of “organ­ic” church plant­i­ng. It’s a project of Harold and Wendy Behr, record­ed by North­west Year­ly Meet­ing and now work­ing with Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west. The core val­ues are ones I could cer­tain­ly sign off on: Lead­er­ship over Loca­tion, Min­istry over Mon­ey, Con­verts over Chris­tians, Dis­ci­ples over Deci­sions, Peo­ple over Prop­er­ty, Spir­it over Self, His King­dom over Ours. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like their site’s disclaimer:
bq. As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a “prophet­ic edge”, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out “curs­ing the dark­ness” and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the “can­dle” to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you. In Body life, often the most pow­er­ful oppo­nent of the “best” is the “good”.
They’re lead­ing a con­fer­ence next month in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, with mem­bers of Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. How tempt­ing is this?

h3. See also:
* “Emer­gent Church Move­ment: The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and Quak­er Renewal”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php

How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net

May 3, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Every once in awhile I get an indi­ca­tion that var­i­ous “weighty” Quak­ers come to my “Quak­er Ranter” site, usu­al­ly because of a group email that some­one sends around or a post on some list­serve. What’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that few of the insid­er Friends ever spend much time look­ing around: they go to the one page that’s been ref­er­enced and then – swoosh, they’re gone, pre­sum­ably back to their email or list­serve. There’s a pro­found lack of curios­i­ty about what else I might be writ­ing about. These insti­tu­tion­al Friends nev­er post com­ments and they rarely even send any feed­back by email.

This con­trasts very sharply with the bulk of traf­fic to my site. Dozens of peo­ple a day come in off a Google search. Unless it’s a bad match, these seek­ers spend time on the site, click­ing all around, fol­low­ing links to oth­er sites, com­ing back, read­ing some more. Not every­one comes in via search engines: some fol­low links from else­where while oth­ers read the RSS Feed or just come in ever few days to see what’s new.

Part of the dif­fer­ence between “insti­tu­tion­al” and “seek­ing” users is in their use of search engines. Many estab­lish­ment Quak­ers don’t know how to use them or don’t think to use them. A web­site mar­ket­ing pro­pos­al of mine was almost nixed recent­ly when a com­mit­tee mem­ber learned that search engines bypass a site’s home­page to return results from inside pages. I just assumed that every­one knew by now how a search engine works. I use Google dozens of times a day; it’s hard for me to imag­ine any­one nav­i­gat­ing the net with­out it. It must almost be like they’re using a sep­a­rate medi­um. Both of us are using the inter­net as trans­mis­sion con­duit, but that’s like say­ing both a news­pa­per and a per­son­al let­ter use paper and ink for tran­si­tion: while this is indis­putably true, it does­n’t begin to speak to the dif­fer­ent use and the depth of audience.

* * *

I won­der if the inter­net divide rep­re­sents an even more sig­nif­i­cant divide between insti­tu­tion­al insid­ers and the rest of us. The insid­ers might be staff, com­mit­tee clerks or just very involved Friends but they share a cer­tain way of under­stand­ing their world. First off, they have their ideas all fig­ured out already. There’s a lack of curios­i­ty here. They aren’t search­ing for new writ­ers or new ideas. They will only con­sid­er some­thing after some oth­er Quak­er insti­tu­tion has rec­og­nized it, a Catch-22 sit­u­a­tion that the mil­i­tary refers to as “inces­tu­ous amplification.” 

Any project out­side of the estab­lished recog­ni­tion zone is invis­i­ble. Even ones that have become dom­i­nant in their field are acknowl­edged only begrudg­ing­ly. In the last ten years, Quak​er​.org has done more for out­reach than just about any institutionally-sponsored pro­gram or com­mit­tee. Yet I know of estab­lish­ment Quak­ers who still think of it as an upstart, and tru­ly believe their put­ter­ing about is more impor­tant, sim­ply because their orga­ni­za­tion has been around longer. In truth, many Quak­er web­sites get so lit­tle traf­fic as to be next to non-existent.

The insid­er’s pri­ma­ry point of ref­er­ence is insti­tu­tions. Pow­er comes from know­ing how ideas, pro­pos­als and deci­sions flow through these orga­ni­za­tions. A good idea is only good if it’s made by the right per­son and vet­ted by the right small group first. Some­times I’ll hear of the gos­sip of some group schem­ing with­in some Quak­er insti­tu­tion and I always have to laugh: like, WHO CARES? It’s a small bunch of peo­ple scram­bling over crumbs while the world ignores them. There’s a whole oth­er world of Friends and seek­ers out there build­ing their own cul­ture and con­nec­tions, or try­ing to.

This Quak­er Ranter site is pri­mar­i­ly for those still curi­ous, for those still inter­est­ing in build­ing some­thing real, for those want­i­ng engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion and sto­ries. I actu­al­ly pre­fer it to be a lit­tle bit “under­ground,” unknown or for­got­ten by insti­tu­tion­al­ists, for I think there’s dis­cus­sions we need to have and the open inter­net is a good place for that.

More

I’ll be edit­ing and adding to this post over time as I see more pat­terns of site use. I’m curi­ous if oth­ers have seen sur­pris­ing pat­terns of inter­net use. Oh, and by the way I should cop to being a Quak­er insid­er myself, though I always try to keep the big pic­ture (i.e., God and the Spir­it’s com­mands) foremost.

Conscientious Objection, After You’re In

April 30, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a web­site of “Jere­my Hinz­man, a U.S. Army sol­dier who became a a con­sci­en­tious objector”:http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/faq.html in the course of his ser­vice. His appli­ca­tions denied, he moved to Cana­da and is seek­ing polit­i­cal asy­lum there.
I find I can under­stand the issues all too well. In only a slightly-parallel uni­verse, I’d be in iraq myself instead of pub­lish­ing Non​vi​o​lence​.org. My father, a vet­er­an who fought in the South Pacif­ic in World War II, real­ly want­ed me to join the U.S. Navy and attend the Naval Acad­e­my at Annapo­lis. For quite some time, I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered it. I am attract­ed to the idea of ser­vice and duty and putting in hard work for some­thing I believe in.
Hinz­man’s sto­ry is get­ting a lot of main­stream cov­er­age, I sus­pect because the “escape to Cana­da” angle has so many Vietnam-era echoes that res­onate with that gen­er­a­tion. I wish Hinz­man would flesh out his web­site sto­ry though. His Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions leaves out some impor­tant details that could real­ly make the sto­ry – why did he join the Army in the first place, what were some of the expe­ri­ences that led him to rethink his duty, etc. I’d rec­om­mend Jeff Pater­son­’s “Gulf War Refusenik”:http://jeff.paterson.net/ site, which includes lots of sto­ries includ­ing his own:
bq. “What am I going to do with my life?” has always been huge ques­tion of youth, and today in the wake of the hor­ror and tragedy of New York Sep­tem­ber 11th this ques­tion has increased impor­tance for mil­lions of young peo­ple. No one who has seen the images will ever for­get… If I had­n’t spent those four years in the Marine Corps, I might be inclined to fall into line now. Most of the time my unit trained to fight a war against peas­ants who dared to strug­gle against “Amer­i­can inter­ests” in their homelands-specifically Nicaragua, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala… Faced with this real­i­ty, I began the process of becom­ing un-American-meaning that the inter­ests of the peo­ple of the world began to weigh heav­ier than my self-interest. I real­ized that the world did not need or want anoth­er U.S. troop…
There are bound to be more sto­ries all the time of service-people who find a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty when they land on for­eign shores. How many will rethink their rela­tion­ship to the U.S. mil­i­tary. How many will fol­low Pater­son­’s exam­ple of becom­ing “un-American”?

Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana

April 28, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions, bet­ter known as “QUIP,” is a col­lec­tion of 50 Quak­er pub­lish­ers, book­sellers and authors com­mit­ted to the “min­istry of the writ­ten word.” I often think of QUIP as a sup­port group of sorts for those of us who real­ly believe that pub­lish­ing can make a dif­fer­ence. It’s also one of those places where dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends come togeth­er to work and tell sto­ries. QUIP ses­sions strike a nice bal­ance between work and unstruc­tured time. It has its own nice cul­ture of friend­li­ness and coop­er­a­tion that are the real rea­son many of us go every year.

Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Richmond Indiana 2004.
Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions annu­al meet­ing in Rich­mond Indi­ana 2004.
The theme of the 2004 annu­al ses­sion was “New Ways to Reach Our Mar­kets in a Chang­ing World” and our guest pre­sen­ters were pub­li­cists Doug and Kate Ban­dos of KSB Pro­mo­tions: http://​www​.ksbpro​mo​tions​.com
The Evans House, built 1855: Gur­neyite high style back in the day… It’s now the home of the Quak­er Hill Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, where we met. The Gur­neyites evolved into Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and I had some good con­ver­sa­tions with Friends about some of the vision­ing FUM is doing. Pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff, like many Friends they too are try­ing to fig­ure out how to wres­tle more ful­ly with Quak­er tradition. 
Our hosts were the staff of “Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. The FUM cam­pus in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, is very pret­ty in April, with flow­ers and the crabap­ple trees 
Even pret­tier is the refor­ested trail down to the White­wa­ter Riv­er Falls. 
We wouldn’t be Quak­ers if we didn’t have lots of meet­ings. Left: QUIP clerks Lucy Dun­can, Bar­bara Mays, Eliz­a­beth Cave. 
Philip Arnold from the Quak­er Book­shop in Lon­don, Ann Rap­er of North Car­olina YM (FUM) pub­li­ca­tions com­mit­tee and Liz Yeats, a for­mer FGC employ­ee and long­time QUIP stal­wart (Ann and Liz are also both board mem­bers of “Friends Journal). 
QUIP meet­ings are real­ly all about the con­ver­sa­tions in between ses­sions. Bar­bara Mays of Friends Unit­ed Press talks with the new FUM web­mas­ter Cur­tis Her­mann (who lat­er showed me the secret FUM cof­fee sup­ply and chat­ted about col­lar­less shirt vendors). 
Mar­jorie Ewbank holds up QUIP’s “Quak­er Tapestry”:http://www.Quaker-tapestry.co.uk pan­el, which should be fin­ished by the end of the century. 
Oblig­a­tory pic­ture of Simon, some­times referred to as the “QUIP baby“since his par­ents met at an annu­al QUIP meeting. 
A field trip to the Levi Cof­fin house in Foun­tain City. Run entire­ly by very ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers, it’s the only home still stand­ing of Levi and Catharine Cof­fin, Friends who helped thou­sands of escaped slaves get to Cana­da through the Under­ground Railroad. 
How many cam­eras does it take to make a group shot? That’s Trish Carn (the UK’s Quak­er Month­ly), Antho­ny Manousos (West­ern US’s Friends Bul­letin) and our very gra­cious photo-taker (who I think might be Ann’s son?). 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing char­ac­ter par excel­lence. Sal­ly spent part of the week­end chal­leng­ing me about my plain dress­ing — okay, polite­ly ask­ing me a ques­tion and then fol­low­ing up my answer with her opin­ions. Sal­ly also brought along a par­o­dy she once put togeth­er, a fly­er for an orga­ni­za­tion called some­thing like “The Soci­ety of Sen­ti­men­tal Friends” for all those who want to be Quak­er because their great great grand­par­ents were Quak­er and they like antiques like old musty meetinghouses. 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (2)
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (3)
Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz in front of the falls. I think Friends Gen­eral Con­fer­ence should put in a nature trail near our office too (I vote for bull­doz­ing the “Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Center”).