Tag Archives ⇒ photos

Tread and Trample

July 26, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Over on Red­dit, a dis­cus­sion try­ing to square our oft-quoted advice to see “that of God” with the arrival of secret police on U.S. streets.

I don’t think Quak­ers’ his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry always serves us very well. In 1656, George Fox wrote a let­ter from Launce­s­ton Gaol, a por­tion of which is quot­ed in every edi­tion of Faith and Prac­tice. It’s been repro­duced as giant posters and the key phrase has become one of the go-to ele­va­tor pitch­es for mod­ern Friends. It tells us to “be pat­terns” and “walk cheer­ful­ly over the world, answer­ing that of God in every one; where­by in them ye may be a bless­ing, and make the wit­ness of God in them to bless you: then to the Lord God you shall be a sweet savour, and a blessing.”

We’ve tak­en one para­graph from one let­ter as a mis­sion state­ment and now we get peo­ple wring­ing their hands try­ing to rec­on­cile this Pollyanna-style nice­ness with the hor­ror we see in the world. You get Friends valiant­ly try­ing (and most­ly fail­ing) to see “that of God” in ICE agents, ter­ror­ists, or author­i­tar­i­an polit­i­cal leaders.

I think a big part of the prob­lem is that Quak­ers have over­all been a com­fort­able, well-off peo­ple for a long time. We’ve spent much of the last 300 years most­ly remem­ber­ing the happy-feeling stuff. Fox and his fel­low ear­ly Friends were wary of “the world,” see­ing it as a fall­en place that we could tran­scend only with the guid­ance and heal­ing pow­ers of the Liv­ing Christ. Yes, he talked about being pat­terns in that let­ter, but way down. The let­ter actu­al­ly start­ed off in a thun­der­ous man­ner that quite frankly, I think per­haps speaks more clear­ly to our time:

Dwell in the pow­er of life and wis­dom, and dread of the Lord of life, and of heav­en and earth, that you may be pre­served in the wis­dom of God over all, and be a ter­ror and a dread to all the adver­saries of God, answer­ing that of God in them all, spread­ing the truth abroad, awak­en­ing the wit­ness, con­found­ing the deceit, gath­er­ing up out of trans­gres­sion into the life, into the covenant of light and peace with God. Let all nations hear the sound by word or by writ­ing. Spare no place, spare no tongue, nor pen; but be obe­di­ent to the Lord God. Go through the work, and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and tram­ple down all that is contrary.

None of this is prac­ti­cal advice for what to do if you see secret police jump out of unmarked van to kid­nap some­one off the street. But what if our edi­tions of Faith and Prac­tice all advised us to a ter­ror and dread and to walk the earth tread­ing and tram­pling on all that is con­trary to divine love? Toward the end of the let­ter, Fox advised us to “be obe­di­ent to the pow­er, for that will save you out of the hands of unrea­son­able men and pre­serve you over the world to him­self.” May it be so.

Oth­er com­men­taries: Simon St. Lau­rent (2007), Stu­art Mas­ters (2016), Mark Wut­ka (2018) and Lewis Ben­son’s bril­liant 1970 essay “ ‘That of God’: What Did George Fox Mean by It?” Also, John Andrew Gallery has a recent Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet on the essay, which I haven’t read but assume is worth reading.

Update: in the Red­dit dis­cus­sion Kei­thB said that he won­dered if there were Quak­ers out there look­ing for jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to tan­gle it up with ICE offi­cers. Pret­ty much as we were talk­ing, word came out that the son of well-known Philly-area Quak­er fam­i­ly being arrest­ed at his home in Port­land, Ore­gon, on sus­pi­cions of par­tic­i­pat­ing in vio­lent anti-ICE protests a few weeks ago.

The pros­e­cu­tors have released a bunch of pic­tures of vio­lent activ­i­ty being per­pe­trat­ed by some­one who looks like the accused, with a sim­i­lar arm tat­too. That pro­tes­tor used a stop sign as a bat­ter­ing ram, and then threw a brick at an ICE agent that hit his head, drew blood, and required med­ical atten­tion. I sure hope it’s not a Quak­er in those pho­tos and that his defense attor­neys can prove it. Tread and tram­pling is not a license for assault.

Trip to Harper’s Ferry

May 1, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Last week my son Gre­go­ry’s scout troop head­ed to south­ern Penn­syl­va­nia to start a 50-mile back­pack­ing trip south, to cov­er all of Mary­land’s por­tion of the Appalachi­an Trail and end up in Harper’s Fer­ry, West Vir­ginia. I was asked to dri­ve them, and as it seemed a lit­tle too far to com­mute back to South Jer­sey I spent four days by myself down there and had a great time. I thought I’d share var­i­ous thoughts:

Hos­tels are great. I haven’t stayed in a hos­tel in for­ev­er but at $35/night, the price was right. I’m so glad I did. Every night was a new cast of peo­ple to get to meet, quirky and fun and delight­ful­ly weird. This was the week­end of the Flip-Flop Kick­off fes­ti­val put on by the Appalachi­an Trail Con­ser­van­cy. As I under­stand it, the “flip flop” is an alter­nate way of doing a through-hike on the Appalachi­an Trail (“the AT”). Instead of start­ing in Geor­gia and head­ing north along with hun­dreds of oth­ers, you start in Harper’s Fer­ry (the hon­orary halfway point) and go south, then find a ride back to Harper’s Fer­ry and go north. The fes­ti­val brought a lot of hik­ers to Cross Trails hos­tel, where I stayed, and I even par­tic­i­pat­ed in a few events; I felt myself an hon­orary AT hiker!

I loved the ambiance and the char­ac­ters at Cross Trails Hos­tel. The staff were great.

I love my bike. I put my bike rack on my old econobox car and used it every day to com­mute the five miles or so from the hos­tel to Harper’s Fer­ry. The C&O Canal Tow­path is a most­ly flat, beau­ti­ful trail that winds 180 miles along­side the Potomac Riv­er. One day I con­tin­ued north from Harper’s Fer­ry and rode it to Shep­ard­stown: a beau­ti­ful ride apart from the calf-breaking bluffs on either side of the trip.1 Also a lot of out­door fun is white­wa­ter raft­ing. There’s three com­pa­nies in the area offer­ing it and I had a good time with Harper’s Fer­ry Adven­ture Cen­ter.

The C&O Canal Tow­path trail is wonderful.

Don’t for­get the non-vegan restau­rants. I was excit­ed by a veg­an option in Harper’s Fer­ry but my favorite meal by far was at a reg­u­lar cafe in Shep­herd­stown. I had an amaz­ing home­made black bean veg­gie burg­er, a sesame noo­dles appe­tiz­er, decent fries, and a tall cold glass of hard apple cider. Five stars to the Blue Moon Cafe. Extra bonus: there’s an actu­al creek flow­ing through the back patio.

Five stars to Shep­herd­stown’s Blue Moon Cafe.

There is so much his­to­ry atop itself in Harper’s Fer­ry. It’s a tiny town and yet every time you turn around there’s some­thing mon­u­men­tal going on. John’s Brown raid is per­haps the most famous but it was also the site of mul­ti­ple Civ­il War engage­ments, a pro­vi­sion­ing stop for Meri­wether Lewis, and a place where Thomas Jef­fer­son waxed poet­ic.

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The Odd­fel­lows Hall. One of their mem­bers was tak­en hostage by John Brown. As if that’s not enough his­to­ry, famed Civ­il War pho­tog­ra­ph­er Matthew Brady set up his cam­era here and took lots of pic­tures of sol­diers from this van­tage point.

Don’t defend Harper’s Fer­ry. There’s much one could say about John Brown’s moti­va­tions, tac­tics, etc., but real­ly dude, how dumb do you have to be to try to force-start the Civ­il War there of all places? As soon as word got out about what was hap­pen­ing, mili­tias from three states and fed­er­al troops poured in from the hills on all sides of the town and trapped him. It was over almost as soon as it began. The Civ­il War engage­ments were like that too. It’s a fish­bowl with moun­tain ridges on all sides: you just set up your muni­tions on Mary­land or Loudoun Heights and lob can­non balls down on the town until you get a sur­ren­der. A quote attrib­uted to a Union lieu­tenant in an exhib­it real­ly summed it up for me: “Gen. Jack­son and Gen. Hill told me per­son­al­ly, they had rather take it [Harper’s Fer­ry] forty times than to under­take to defend it once.”

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These are the lit­tle hills behind Harper’s Fer­ry. On either side are much taller ones.

Vis­it­ing new meet­ings is great. On Sun­day morn­ing I had church time so I motored south to vis­it Goose Creek Meet­ing in Lin­coln, Vir­ginia. 2 It’s an old meet­ing, steeped in its own his­to­ry. It’s aways fun to see a new meet­ing. They have honest-to-God pews with hym­nal racks along the back, each care­ful­ly stocked with a Bible, an FGC hym­nal, and Bal­ti­more’s Faith and Prac­tice. They have a loud clock, which I’ve always heard was a Hick­site mark­er and indeed I lat­er learned the Hick­sites held the meet­ing­house in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry schisms.3 There were only two mes­sages and one was a fake Gand­hi quote (you all will be hap­py that I did­n’t fact-check it in real time and just let the sen­ti­ment behind it stand for itself). It seemed like a real­ly ground­ed meet­ing. I was impressed that peo­ple got there ear­ly and sat qui­et­ly prepar­ing for wor­ship. Every­one was very friend­ly for the few min­utes of cof­fee hour I could squeeze out before head­ing back north to pick up scouts.

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Nice light in the main room before wor­ship. Note the hym­nal racks on the back of bench­es and also the promi­nent clock.

And a big thanks to Troop 48 Berlin NJ for get­ting me out of the house. Scout­mas­ter Mike has a post about their trip up on the web­site. It’s a great troop and Gre­go­ry’s real­ly thriv­ing there.

Generational strategies for Quaker outreach

August 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Emi­ly Provance:

An under-45 com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, in con­trast, would most­ly involve social media (Face­book, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, pos­si­bly Tum­blr or Pin­ter­est). Arti­cles would be short and would con­tain most­ly con­tent direct­ly rel­e­vant to the read­er — or, if the con­tent were not direct­ly rel­e­vant, it would be single-story nar­ra­tives with an empha­sis on per­son­al impact. Announce­ments would come out through mes­sen­ger apps or text mes­sages, with a strong ele­ment of user con­trol about which announce­ments to receive and which not. Pho­tos and videos would be used frequently.

I’m always a bit wary of gen­er­a­tional deter­min­ism. I think gen­er­a­tional ideas are more like under­ly­ing trends that get more or less trac­tion over time. And Quak­er dig­i­tal out­reach in par­tic­u­lar has been a thing for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry now. But the under­ly­ing mes­sage — that some peo­ple need to be reached dig­i­tal­ly while oth­ers are still best served by print — is a sound one and I’m glad Emi­ly’s bring­ing it up.

But it’s still kind of sad that we still need to make this kind of argu­ment. I remem­ber hav­ing these dis­cus­sions around an FGC out­reach com­mit­tee table fif­teen years ago: sure­ly we’re all on board about the need for dig­i­tal out­reach in 2018?

The 45-Yard Line

Early “photo of summer” candidate

July 6, 2017
· Martin Kelley

I writ­ten many times before that I like to find fam­i­ly pho­tos that encap­su­late a feel­ing — a time and place, a moment in our col­lec­tive lives. A few weeks ago I caught this shot, which I think will be one of my favorite pho­tos of this summer.

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Tech­ni­cal note: this was only pos­si­ble with a water resis­tant phone, as I would not have dared wade out into a pool with pre­vi­ous phones. The 3D bokeh effect is cour­tesy of the iPhone 7 Plus “Por­trait” mode. It’s not per­fect: zoom in and there’s some dis­tor­tion around his left arm, both at the top where it fuzzes around the mid back­ground of the slide and on bot­tom where there are arti­facts in the con­trast with the far back­ground of the fence line. But I’m still pleased and amazed at how well the 3D imag­ing works.

The bandwidth of memories

April 20, 2017
· Martin Kelley

blankAnoth­er fam­i­ly vaca­tion is com­ing up, which for me means think­ing once more about the pre-nostalgia of fam­i­ly pho­tos. While blog posts are osten­si­bly for vis­i­tors, the audi­ence I care more about is actu­al­ly future me.

Just before a 2013 trip, I wrote “Nos­tal­gia Comes Ear­ly,” a post about mem­o­ries and why I go to the trou­ble to share these posts — as much with my future self as with read­ers (I con­tin­ued this thought lat­er with Recov­er­ing the Past Through Pho­tos).

Every suc­ces­sive fam­i­ly trip cre­ates a mag­ni­tude more data than the one pre­ced­ing it. I have exact­ly 10 pho­tos from the first time I vis­it­ed Walt Dis­ney World, with my then-fiancée in 2001. I have only fuzzy mem­o­ries of the trip. A year or so lat­er I returned back to Flori­da (Key West this time) for a hon­ey­moon with her, a trip that has zero pho­tos. I remem­ber maybe a half dozen things we did but few locales visited.

Con­trast this with a 2013 Dis­ney World trip, for which we made a whole blog, A Spe­cial WDW Fam­i­ly. The focus was trav­el­ing Dis­ney with autis­tic kids. There’s a lot of infor­ma­tion in there. We wrote about meals and rides, small vic­to­ries, and child melt­downs. The band­width of mem­o­ries isn’t just in the num­ber of jpeg files but in the dis­tinct mem­o­ries I have of the events of that week-plus.

We took many hun­dreds of pho­tos over our most recent fam­i­ly vaca­tion in Decem­ber 2015, only a small frac­tion of which went online. In addi­tion, I have Google Loca­tion data for the trip and Foursquare check­ins logged in Ever­note. I know how many steps I took each day. I know whether I had a good sleep. We didn’t make a pub­lic blog but we have a long anno­tate log of each restau­rant and stop, with anno­ta­tion tips to remind our future selves about how we could do things bet­ter in the future. The meta­da­ta is in itself not so impor­tant, but it’s use­ful to be able to drop into a day and remem­ber what we did and see the smiles (and tired­ness) on faces each day.

Trying out Google PhotoScan

November 15, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Today Google came out with a new app called Pho­to­Scan that will scan your old pho­to col­lec­tion. Like just every­one, I have stash­es of shoe­box­es inher­it­ed from par­ents full of pic­tures. Some were scanned in a scan­ner, back when I had one that was com­pat­i­ble with a com­put­er. More recent­ly, I’ve used scan­ning apps like Read­dle’s Scan­ner Pro and Scan­bot. These de-skew the pho­tographs of the pho­tos that your phone takes but the res­o­lu­tion’s is not always the best and there can be some glare from over­head lights, espe­cial­ly when you’re work­ing with a glossy orig­i­nal pictures.

Google’s approach clev­er­ly stitch­es togeth­er mul­ti­ple pho­tos. It uses a process much like their 360-degree pho­to app: you start with a overview pho­to. Once tak­en, you see four cir­cles hov­er­ing to the sides of the pic­ture. Move the cam­era to each and it takes more pic­tures. Once you’ve gone over all four cir­cles, Google stitch­es these five pho­tos togeth­er in such a way that there’s no per­spec­tive distortion.

What’s remark­able is the speed. I scanned 15 pho­tos in while also mak­ing din­ner for the kids. The dimen­sions of all looked good and the res­o­lu­tion looks about as good as the orig­i­nal. These are good results for some­thing so easy.

Check out Google’s announce­ment blog post for details.

Quick scans from an envelope inherited from my mom.