Peace Threat
Sojourners staff intern Michele Deramo recently sent an origami peace crane to a prisoner in Texas with whom she corresponds. The folded paper crane was confiscated by prison officials. Michele later received a form from the prison warden explaining that the correspondence she sent "contains contraband in violation of Rule 3.9.1.8. ... one folded handmade bird denied, UNINSPECTABEL [sic]." Just how many folds can an origami bird have?
Isn't It Ironic?
Days after a congressional committee and scientific experts declared that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") would be a technical disaster, the House of Representatives passed a bill providing $3.5 billion for its development. The vote had to be taken by verbal roll call. The House voting computer had malfunctioned.
Saints and Martyrs
Our most frequent "H'rumphs" contributor, Jim Levinson of the Noonday Farm community in Massachusetts, has done it again. This month's story took place at a support gathering in Boston for participants in the Transfiguration Plowshares disarmament action.
At one point in the evening, those gathered were invited to call out the names of people who were to be remembered for their contributions of faith and courage. A litany of martyrs, saints, and prisoners of conscience followed. "Gandhi," "Dietrich Bonhoeffer," and "Dorothy Day" were being called out as 4-year-old Justin Schaeffer-Duffy, son of former Sojourners receptionists Claire Schaeffer and Scott Duffy, entered the room. Quickly taking account of the proceedings and hearing a recitation of familiar names, Justin stood up on a bench and yelled with all his might, Pee Wee Herman!"
Shelf Life
At Sojourners we spend a great deal of our time putting words together. But there are four words that were very hard to come by. They're the ones just under our logo on the cover: "An independent Christian monthly."
For years we have struggled to describe ourselves to the multitudes of people who have asked at one time or another, "Just what is Sojourners?" Most people can get by without having to categorize us, but we have recently been alerted to the particular difficulty that one segment of the population endures: the plight of the bookstore/newsstand owner.
One newsstand has us pegged as a travel magazine (makes sense, doesn't it?), so we share a shelf with all the vacation guides. Those that display magazines alphabetically regularly give us a berth next to Soldier of Fortune.
Timothy J.C. O'Shea, a doctoral student at Columbia University and friend of assistant editor Joe Lynch, has been a longtime reader, if not subscriber, of Sojourners. Over the years he has given us running commentary on the placement of Sojourners on the shelves at the Columbia Newsstand.
For months we sat next to Guns & Ammo (you explain it). But Tim recently wrote that on his last visit G & A had moved to "a more prominent place near the cash register with the body building and First Person Reflective Magazines (Self, Myself, Yourself, New Self, etc.)," leaving us selflessly in the dust.
Not seeing the independent Christian monthly that he always peruses in its usual location, Tim asked where Sojourners had moved. The newsstand owner replied, "That some kind of Catholic magazine or something? Every month these nuns buy it out." Then he pointed to the spot between Nicaraguan Resistance and Modern Breastfeeding.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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