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  • Martin Kelley, Ranter

    Martin runs the Nonviolence Web and works for Friends General Conference. I originally met him through my friend Barbara and New Society Publishers. He has a blog that includes writings on Quakerism. Here’s a great post: The Younger Evangelicals and the Younger Quakers

    Unfortunately most Friends in leadership positions don’t really understand the problems facing Quakerism. Well, that’s not true: they do, but they don’t understand the larger shifts behind them and think that they just need to redouble their efforts using the old methods and models. The Baby Boom generation in charge knows the challenge is to reach out to seekers in their twenties or thirties, but they do this by developing programs that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The current crop of outreach projects and peace initiatives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recognition that the secular peace community that drew seekers in twenty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seekers are looking for something deeper, something more personal and more real.

  • The state of critical reviewing

    Poets & Writers Magazine has a great article on literary criticism.

    Clearly, critics and authors share a deep desire to maintain a culture that values reading and writing. “In the best of all possible worlds,” says Caldwell, “we’re all on the same side–toward the greater good of the novel or the cultural dialogue, or whatever you want to call it. “And while, as many admit, they sometimes fall short, critics, like all writers, seem to take their vocation seriously.

  • News & Features | Map it!

    Map it!

    Very funny writing from the Boston Phoenix. (That is, if, like the author, you pay attention to where you are, where you came from, and where you’re going.)

  • Joseph Wu’s Origami Page

    Joseph Wu’s Origami Page is a cool origami site with some great links.

  • The Brick Testament

    The Brick Testament is just too much! Don’t miss the instructions on marriage in the Epistles of Paul. (WARNING: adult content!)

  • Winter’s Heart

    Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time Series, Book 9.
    Why do I do this to myself? At least I won’t be buying number 10–I checked it out of the Medford Public Library.

  • Rejection letters

    Telegraph | Arts | However, thank you for your interest

    But a book called Rotten Rejections, edited by Andr%uFF8E Bernard, makes you feel some pity for the people who sit in offices and make livings out of writers. For example, what is the correct response, on first looking into Gertrude Stein’s Ida? However lyrical and lapidary the work, you have to applaud the publisher who wrote back in Stein’s own voice: “Having only one life, I cannot read your MS three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.”

  • Mars

    Last night I went to the Museum of Science with my friends Paul and Alanna, who have a telescope that they set up on the roof. Thousands of people were there in lines for the observatory and for the other telescopes. Early in the evening, all I could see (through the telescope) was an orange disk. By the end of the evening, when Mars was higher in the sky and it was darker, I could see the south polar ice cap as a tiny spot of brightness. Very exciting.

  • Eating Well For Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Bringing Health and Pleasure Back to Eating

    By Andrew Weil. Typically genial and radical opinions on healthy living.

  • Eat More, Weigh Less

    By Dean Ornish. Sigh. My weight really is just too much. This is one of the low-to-no fat diets. Very badly written (and/or edited), with repetitive paragraphs as well as chapters. I’ve lent it out already.