Giving up the pamphlet

Spent all week musing about writing a post that says, basically: Quaker printer wanted. Someone who will take over the actual printing of the Maurine Pyle pamphlet, since I am somewhat suspended in quicksand over it.

For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to write it. I've become a little shy of all things Facebook, since I occasionally get reprimanded for facebook promotional posts, but that's not it. In the bitter cold, windy, bleak weather here, I just didn't want to start up with anyone.

So if that second one is the reason, I should have that post out tomorrow, or as soon as the weather breaks. Often mulling it over in a place like this is enough for me to get my things going.

I won't be giving it up entirely. I'll supervise the care of the document, in whatever form it's in, and work with any new printer until we have something we like. It shouldn't be as complicated as it has been. It's mostly complicated by the fact that I am not a printer, and, I have way too many other things to do.

Stay posted.

Quaker play ideas

As readers of this blog, you know I write Quaker plays. I should say that as time goes by I am more aware of my shortcomings as a playwrite, but still conscious of my role as one of the only Quaker playwrites in the generation. So, I'm thinking of yet another volume and using this post to explore possibilities of things I could write about. There are a few left over from last time that never were realized; I'll try to put them here too.

Thomas Paine - (biography here) - an interesting guy, father was a Quaker - found himself in the middle of the Revolution and wrote accordingly.

Wetherill brothers - these guys were part of a Colorado ranching family, and stumbled on Anasazi ruins; they had to decide what to do with them, and whether it was ethical to take them to a museum or sell them. Of course the people around them worried much less about ethics. Somewhere in there is a Quaker play on a topic that is very interesting to me.

Here are some from before:

Quakers in the World: Interaction with Tsarist Russia

Elizabeth Vining & the Crown Prince Akihito

Mary Fisher - (not to be confused with the AIDS activist) - wikipedia article

Josh Humphries - a modern character, died recently, had trouble with his Virginia meeting. I have friends who are bold, honest, truthful, and assertive - and sometimes don't get along well with their Quaker meetings. It's not always clear who's at fault when they fall out. The reference for this is somewhere in Chuck Fager's blog; I will have to search for it. I knew him only casually.

More? write me.

pamphlets & spiritual wholeness

Good and bad news on the pamphlets. The printer broke down about 24 pamphlets in on an order of 100 which I'd already made about a dozen (have to look that up) so there's both - the good is that I had 24 to send, and sent them right away; the bad is that I have to get my old printer back up and running and this may be easier said than done. The other bad thing is that I take this as a sign of spiritual disharmony.

The printing, cutting, collating, and stapling are my meditation, in a way. I'd spent about 40 minutes a day doing a batch of four - ten minutes apiece, a pretty steep price to pay - but I had 40 minutes, enjoyed it, looked forward to it, etc. I don't feel the same way about actually fixing a printer, or going about figuring out why it would be "not connected" - who knows? It's not connected because it's not connected. I can turn it off and turn it back on again until the sun goes down, unplug and plug in the router, I've tried all that. The wifi is supposed to just connect. But it doesn't. Is there spiritual disharmony in my life?

There are so many other things in my life that it's too easy to just put off fixing (?) one printer or starting up another (it should at least start up, figuring out how to actually use it might be a different matter)....so I've gone through a couple of mananas putting it off.

Meanwhile, inside, I'm hurting. Spiritually missing a meditation. Losing out on quiet time, making my pamphlets. My epistellary silence.

Another year has come and gone, and I missed anotehr ILYM. I have never actually seen the place, and it is only about an hour and a half away, through Peoria and up or snaking along country roads straight east, crossing the Illinois river at Lacon. No, I passed again, too tired from door dashhing, needing to work and rest on a Saturday and unprepared really for the Quaker social whirl.

I think we can do a lot more as a group than we can alone, so I totally support the gathering of Quakers and the mechanics of having meetings, teaching each other how to help out the world, and getting actively involved in our world. The world needs us, no question. Our voice does make a difference. The world of religion also needs us. Imagine this: A huge number of churches not only supporting Trump but also working actively to get him elected. What does that say for the state of religion in the USA today? Young people are avoiding it in droves. A church like that is not speaking for modern American youth, or even paying attention to it. And it will pay, its structures fading back to the earth from whence they came.

A huge, beautiful church is for sale on my street; it was a Christian Scientist church. Its organ alone is supposedly worth over $100,000 and can't easily be removed from it. It's a grand old thing with elegant gardening around it and stained glass, I believe, kind of dominating a corner that I go through maybe a hundred times a day. I always laugh at the "spirituality.com" electric sign as I sense a little desperation in watching them come online looking for anyone young, knnwing full well that an app might reach them but very little else will. They're not flocking to Christian science, that's for sure, but they're not flocking anywhere else either. The megachurch leaders keep going down in scandal, and the Catholics are notorious.

But the Quakers need a little more before people will actually flock to us. Childcare, for example. We need something for our kids to do.

Then we can buy that church on the corner, and use the organ for our own kinds of music.

More pamphlets

I'm trying to get a supply of pamphlets printed and done so that when I put it out on social media, I'll have a back supply. Things have been busy around here, though, and it's hard to do them when there's no immediate demand.

Part of the problem is that they're very labor intensive anyway. We looked into shipping them out and they would be way more than $1 apiece that way, as far as we know. But the way I'm doing it takes a lot of my time which I no longer have. I'm mulling over alternatives.

The big printer works and is actually more efficient. It has the wrong kind of ink and seems to be stuck on that even though it worked fine for a long time with that. Now I need to find non-continuous, or something like that. I write this down here as a way of motivating myself to do something unpleasant that I really don't have time for.

I do have time for keeping my puppy on my lap; the puppy has a raspy cough or something caught in his throat, and we're afraid of taking him in and finding out bad news. He doesn't however appear to be sick or failing in health, as he sits here. But the plumber came and he couldn't even bark; he just rasped. Made me worry. I'd rather sit here and worry than run around dealing with printing issues. Meanwhile the plumbers have found very rusty pipes.

I vow here to get the Maureen Pyle pamphlets organized. You however have heard this before.

pamphlets

Lately I've become afraid that if I don't get the pamphlets going they might fall by the wayside altogether.

I've become extremely busy and have, at the age of almost 70, gone back to work. This has been due to a number of financial calamities involved in making a disabled teen independent, and I'm not afraid of the work, just pressed for time. It doesn't have that much to do with the pamphlets; I make a little money from them but they are a huge outlay of time and attention, and the money does not really compensate. I am selling them for about $.80 each plus postage, which comes out to about a dollar apiece to the consumer, and old timers think that's a pretty high price for a pamphlet. But commercially they would be almost $2 each and I've about given up that option. I can make them myself. Materials, like ink, paper, and card stock use up most of that 80 cents. And I figure each one takes me about ten minutes to make.

My fear is that if I advertise in Facebook before I have a supply, I'll get backlogged with orders and no time to produce. If I produce a lot now, hoping they'll sell, then what? That was my plan, to tell you the truth, just make a lot. I need to get this show on the road. The only downside of making a lot is the wear and tear on our pitiful little home printer. And my time.

Here's my resolution: the Maurine Pyle pamphlet won't die. They will be widely available.