An Update for Our Readers

Dear Reader,

You may have noticed a slow-down in the essays, poems, and reviews that we normally offer here at Second Nature over the past several months. For those of you who looked forward to our material, I am sorry to have disappointed you. For those of you who submitted content for publication, I am sorry to have held it for so long.

Over the past year, we have experienced some changes in personnel. My co-founder, Brantly, moved on early in the year to focus on his very successful venture, ChurchPOP. He remains an executive director for the International Institute for the Study of Technology and Christianity (IISTC), the non-profit organization that publishes Second Nature.

We were joined this year by James Ogden Sharpe, who you may have noticed posting the occasional blog post and whose excellent essay we published in March: God is Not Spectacular. Besides his writing, James helps us by developing relationships with new contributors and working with them to edit and prepare their contributions for publication.

All of this work and all the work you see on Second Nature is done on a volunteer basis. All content that we publish is donated, all the editing work we do is unpaid, all of the website updates and server maintenance, etc. We would love to be able pay our writers and our editors and grow our effort here into a stronger, more sustainable model. However, for now we remain a volunteer organization. If you enjoy the work we do here and want to join the volunteer effort with your time or ideas, please send me an email (contact at secondnaturejournal dot com). I am always looking for new writers. You can send essays, book reviews, film reviews, poetry, music, or even just pitch an idea for an essay. Have a suggestion for the site? Send it along. Disagree with something we’ve published? Write a response and send it to us for publication. Found a book you’d like to review or see reviewed? Let us know and we’ll get a copy.

You can also donate money to cover the costs of hosting and help us maintain the site. If you like, you can click here to donate.

Lastly, I am proud to say that starting today we will be returning to our regular bi-weekly publishing schedule for featured essays, poems and reviews. We hope you enjoy Howard Wetzel’s latest essay, The Percept of Witness, as well as the rest of the content we have prepared for this quarter. We have a full schedule for the first quarter of 2017, and are looking to fill the schedule for the rest of the year. If you are thinking about contributing your writing, don’t be afraid to contribute early and often as they say.

Thank you for your support and interest over the past 4 years. Here’s to 2017.

Sincerely,

Ben Robertson

Founding Editor

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About the Contributor

Benjamin Robertson

Benjamin Robertson
Benjamin Robertson is a founding editor at Second Nature. He has worked in advertising for the Chicago Tribune and Gannett, and now is a web developer at Mediacurrent. He studied Communications and Media Studies under Dr. Read Schuchardt at Wheaton College in Illinois. He has presented papers on Marshall McLuhan, media ecology, and Christianity at the Media Ecology Association, National Communication Association, and the McLuhan's Philosophy of Media Centennial Conference in Brussels. He lives with his wife, Ruth, in Greenville, SC. His personal website is benrobertson.io

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