Julia Duin

Blog has a new home

2011-10-05T05:01:00.001-07:00

Hello all, my blog has a new home at:

http://www.juliaduin.com/blog

Please join me there!

School begins- sort of

2011-09-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

Veeka's new school began the third week of August, although one might not have known it as she missed two days of school the first week due to our earthquake and one day the following week because of Hurricane Irene. Not that her school sustained damage either day; the problems were all in the eastern part of the county but the school system automatically shuts down all the schools, making the problem-free ones pay dearly. And thus we've run through 3 of our snow days - in August! Not only that, but Veeka's school has 91 kids squeezed into three kindergarten classes but, due to a technicality, the school system is refusing to free up a fourth teacher. The photo is of Veeka at her desk the first day of school.
Thus it was with little reluctance that I took Veeka out of school yesterday and today (Sept. 2) for a lengthy assignment I have in far, faraway West Virginia covering .... snake handlers! Yes, it's an annual homecoming gathering of pentecostals who practice not only snake handling but they also have a Mason jar up front of strychnine for people - who have enough faith - to drink. All this is based on a passage in Mark 16 about snakes nor poison hurting believers. Now how did I get this assignment?
Well....two months ago, I was with Lauren Pond, the young photographer who shot the PAPA festival for my story which, by the way, is out here this weekend. (This is my fifth story for WaPo's Sunday magazine and I have three more on deck). Lauren had been traveling to Jolo, W.V., which is the southernmost tip of the most out-of-the-way county in West Virginia; you can't get any further south than there. To get there, I had to drive 400 miles way into western Virginia to Grundy (near the Tennessee state line) and then drive north 22 miles up Rt. 83. Which was OK except for the 5-mile backup we got stuck on near Roanoke on I-81.
We stayed in Bluefield, then spent part of the day (on the way to Grundy) at an old volcanic caldera-turned-pretty/scenic valley called Burke's Garden. One has to charge up a steep slope to get there but we had fun wandering about. It was named after one James Burke discovered it in 1748. Not wishing for the local Indians to know his whereabouts, he buried some potatoes he'd been eating. Apparently they sprouted the following year, hence Burke's "garden." The Appalachian Trail goes right by there and we had fun looking at the alpacas (the other photo) and driving past all the farms.
Then it was onto Grundy, where we met Lauren at the Comfort Inn, then drove 22 miles to to Jolo, where we met up with some pastors at the Church of the Lord Jesus which is on a tiny country road. And yes, in the middle of the service, out came the rattle snake, which was apparently in a good mood, as it didn't bite anyone and instead curled itself about peoples' arms as various pastors gingerly passed it around. One of the pastors told me that his dad died of a snake bite -took him 10 hours to die. Photos on the left wall of the church show various homecomings and people handling - you guessed it - serpents.
Stay tuned for more.

Yes, we had an earthquake today

2011-08-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Not that I really felt it. I was walking to Veeka's school to pick her up and had just crossed the street. It was about 1:55 p.m. A bunch of parents were leaning against a brick wall adjoining the school playground. Suddenly I saw all of them dash about 20 feet onto the blacktop of the playground, then turn around to look at the school. (They told me later that the wall started swaying above them). Then they began grabbing for their cell phones.
As for our 5.9 magnitude visitor, I didn't feel the earth shake; heard nothing. Maybe if I'd been inside a building, I'd have felt it more but I was on a sidewalk. I reached the ramp to Veeka's classroom and I saw a group of teachers and kids pouring out of the building, all of them looking perturbed for some reason. A few were crying. The door to Veeka's classroom had opened by this time (all of 2 minutes had passed since the shaking) and kids were gingerly walking out the door there. Again, some looked quite unhappy. As for Veeka - no - all she wanted was to get home and have chocolate chip cookies. By this time I was asking about and one of the parents told me there'd been an earthquake. Really? Couldn't believe I'd missed it.However, several picture frames were hanging from the walls of my home at weird angles and a few things on high shelves cascaded to the floor.
I called up Twitter and found the funniest posts, a few of which I've included here:
eorlins Eliza Orlins
To all those in CA making fun of our reaction to the quake, let's see you handle rationally 2 feet of snow, then we can talk. #earthquake
5 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

bronk Benjy Bronk
F!, its only been like a half hour & I've already finished my 15 day supply of emergency food :( #earthquake
6 minutes ago

RennaW Renna
DARN IT!!!! I was this close to finishing my Etch-a-Sketch masterpiece. #earthquake

mikebarish Mike Barish
#NYC hospitals reporting dramatic spike in dart game-related injuries. #earthquake

KarlFrisch Karl Frisch
Confirmed: #dcquake was in fact an #earthquake. Was hoping it was the rapture so Congress could actually do its job.

sweetshine143 sunshine
oh summer 2011 , just when i thought yu was washed up & over #POW , an #earthquake . && we're back in !!

markos Markos Moulitsas
RT @lizzwinstead: Wall street Looters have taken to the streets. #Earthquake

JazzShaw Jazz Shaw
Breaking: Perry blames Obama for #earthquake. Huntsman blames the rest of the GOP field.

mikebarish Mike Barish
So, where's the good looting happening?

rob_sheridan Rob Sheridan
The collective eye-rolling of everyone in California is probably moving the earth more than the east coast #earthquake.

fbihop Matthew Reichbach
Clearly, Obama could have prevented this #earthquake if he wasn't on vacation.

Photo is of Veeka at a lovely beach in New Brunswick

Three farewells

2011-08-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

Today is Veeka's last day at St. Matthew's, the pre-K and kindergarten school that has been her home since we moved here three years ago this month. It has been one of the bright spots in our sojourn in Maryland, especially after Veeka left last fall to try another school that did not work out. She and I returned to St. Matthew's in late January to reculer pour mieux sauter, as the French would say. Which means to pull back so one can advance again. Today is the good-bye pizza party. What she's doing in the photo is painting a paper mache globe that's currently hanging from our porch. She will very much miss all her teachers, who have really stuck with her through lots of ups and downs. She will also miss the little brown bunny in the hallway cage who is always hungry to be petted.
The second farewell is to Rob Andrea, 27, an awfully nice guy I met while staying with his parents in Blacketts Lake at the eastern end of Nova Scotia. Rob had endured two bouts of cancer but he'd beaten it all. However, he'd found it necessary to adopt a super-organic diet so much of our conversation was about all the cool vegan recipes we were trying. When a mutual friend asked about us staying there, apparently it was Rob who urged his family to host us, as he wanted to meet a live author whose books he'd read. And we got some good conversations in while there although he was tired much of the time, from just having come off chemo, I thought.
Maybe it was something else. About a week after we left, his health took a dramatic turn for the worse when his heart gave out. He died Aug. 1. His dad wrote me to say 1,500 people attended his funeral at which six pastors presided. He left behind a wife and two small sons, one of which Veeka got to play with. The other was almost a newborn. They were so happy, after all that chemo, to even conceive a second child who unfortunately will never remember his dad. Man knows not his time. What a heartbreaker for the folks he left behind.
The third farewell (I am adding this a few days later) is to Mary Smith, a sweet woman living in St. Stephen's, New Brunswick. We stayed with her and her husband Bob the night of July 22. She was not well then. She died last night (Aug. 22), exactly one month later. I am sure glad we got to Canada when we did, for who would have dreamed....

Connecticut nostalgia

2011-08-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

During the three-day drive back from Canada, I made a stop in Waterford, a suburb of New London, Connecticut where I spent ages 6-10. Connecticut, by the way, is a most unfriendly state to travelers. There was no welcome center at the state line; the rest areas were horrible and it was clear that tourist amenities must have been high on the state's list of budget cuts.
We arrived in late afternoon and first pulled up our old house (see Veeka in blue standing in front) at 10 Leary Drive where we accidentally met the current residents who invited us in to see the house. Since our stay there from 1962-1966, a new wing had been added to the back of the house and everything had been remodeled. It was amazing to see the old den, the old fireplace, my old room (where a little boy now lives) that had so many memories to it. The dining room, which is where my mother did all her homework for her master's thesis (we had no home office). The stone wall to one side of the property where I must have sat as a kid. The trees I climbed up so I could find a perch to read. Yes, I literally read up in trees.
I dropped by some old neighbors who, amazingly, still lived across the street and updated myself a bit on who still lived where as I had not seen the place since my family came back for a quick visit in 1970. The man who had owned the blueberry bushes and who had paid us a quarter for each basket of berries we picked on cool early summer mornings had long since died. But the bushes were still there. The house where the mentally ill boy had lived was there but abandoned. The house where a nasty girl had lived who tormented me from first grade through third grade was still there. A lot of the woods where I once wandered alone to watch for birds (remember the days when kids could wander about alone and no one thought anything of it?) had been built up partly but there was still quite a few patches of trees, some of which I swung on as a kid. Veeka and I were amazed to see tons of deer walking about and even a fox.
We drove past my old elementary school which had recently been totally rebuilt and down Nichols Lane to Pleasure Beach where we used to swim. Just for fun, Veeka and I put on our suits and jumped in the water, as we were both pretty sweaty and it was sheer fun sitting in the sand under a summer July sky and remembering back to when I was her age. We moved to Connecticut from Maryland when I was 6. We drove up and down Quarry Road and Great Neck Road, down Shore Road past old haunts like Magonk Point and finally to Harkness Memorial State Park where the trees I'd sat under as a 10-year-old were still there. Unfortunately the restrooms were putrid - more state budget cuts? - and the sun was setting, so we drove to Lisa's Landing on Niantic Bay for the last seafood dinner of the trip.
Our time back here has been more prosaic. Unfortunately I broke my toe the next day as I was unloading the car upon arriving home so it's been a painful few weeks since then while I've been limping about. My little fashion plate daughter in her new red sunglasses given by her cousin Christina is enjoying being back with her little friends. And we've had lots of rain this weekend, which gives some hope to my parched yard and half-dead plants.

Canada reminisces

2011-08-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

We're now into our second week of steaming hot weather and our times running about much cooler eastern Canada seem like a distant memory. It was the hottest July on record here and mercifully, we missed much of it. I drove 4,362 miles in 24 days. Although it was much more expensive than I thought it'd be, I am so glad we did this trip.
No huge news here although today another piece of mine appeared here in the Washington Post Sunday magazine.
Posted here is one of Cape Breton's bilingual English/Gaelic signs plus a few things - good and bad - that made our trip stand out:

1. $4.65/gallon gas
2. Magnetic Hill, a bizarre tourist attraction in Moncton, New Brunswick
3. Tons of peonies everywhere. Never seen so many. They obviously do well up there.
4. Tim Hortons, the omnipresent coffee/doughnut shop
5. St. Hubert's chicken sauce
6. the Canadian 'eh'?
7. how nearly everything in Atlantic Canada is named after a saint
8. rainbow roads: red asphalt in Nova Scotia and green in New Brunswick
9. red-winged blackbirds everywhere. They used to be down here years ago
10. Moose warning signs on the freeways
11. how the annual seal slaughter in the far north is referred to as 'Canada's cultural heritage'
12. 'dinner' there is 'lunch' down here.
13. bright, multi-colored rocking chairs on porches. That trend is making its way down here but the Canadians make theirs own of decent wood; ours are made of plastic or PVC-ugh

Berwick - the last leg

2011-07-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

As our Canada trip wound down, we spent the last few days at a Christian "ashram" in Berwick, one of the small towns in the Annapolis Valley (which is the northern half of Nova Scotia). It's also the apple-growing capital of Canada. The choice of lingering here for a few days was the suggestion of the Anglican priest friend who planned my itinerary and I am so glad I took his advice. After tons of driving, I needed a few days to just relax before the three-day drive home through New England. The second photo shows the camp, where people stayed in cabins much like this. And the first photo is of Miss Veeka in a presentation put on by the youth the last day of the camp. She danced like a pro. Her time at the camp was mainly spent with other kids - instead of me - which was a relief for both of us in that we were not constantly in each other's hair. During one of the afternoon breaks, she and I did repair to a local mountain spot - Aylesford Lake - for a swim, as the hot temps that were cooking the US east coast at the time were bringing weather in the upper 80s to Nova Scotia.
But we stayed 10 miles away in a neighboring town where the Alexas, our host and hostess cooked us lovely breakfasts and treated us like royalty. All too soon we had to push off to catch the ferry from Digby back to St. John, New Brunswick. On the way, we briefly stopped in some lovely gardens in Annapolis Royal (one of many small historic towns along the way), then had a very agreeable 3 hours on this ferry. It cost us a mint ($130) for the ride, but they had a movie, some structured time for kids and decent cafeteria food. Arriving at St. John, it was quite foggy and nasty. St. John is reputed to have the worse weather in the Maritimes - always cold and damp - so we took off for that night's stay in St. Stephen, right on the US border.
The next morning, our hosts, Bob and Mary Smith, took us out to breakfast with friends and then we zoomed back across the border at Calais with only a 15-minute wait; not bad for a Friday morning. It took us all morning to get to Bangor, then the better part of the afternoon to cut across Maine through the Sebago Lake region to get to our destination for the night; a ski area in New Hampshire. Why there? Because the hotel fees up and down the Maine coast were horrible. Nothing was under $175/night. The Best Western in Waterville Valley was only charging $109/night which was cheap, believe it or not. Which is how I got my first glimpse of the White Mountains.
The route we chose to get there was the Kancamagus Highway, a 34-mile route that led us past rivers with nice swimming spots (Veeka and I tried one at Rocky Gorge), lovely views and plenty of national forest. Waterville turned out to be a tiny community in a vale totally enclosed by mountains and we spent all the following morning exploring there before heading south to my childhood haunts in Connecticut.
More of that in another post, but, yes, we are home now and this past Thursday, I appeared with several other authors at a multi-author event at the new Busboys & Poets in Hyattsville, which is part cafe, part concert venue and part art gallery. All of us in Hyattsville are delighted to have something this sophisticated within walking distance. See the link here for a short clip of our readings.

Cape Breton

2011-07-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

A week ago, I was on one of the prettiest parts of our continent; the portion of Nova Scotia that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Known as Cape Breton, it feels like part of the Scottish highlands and indeed, as I learned from visiting the Highland Village in Iona one day, a ton of Scots migrated to Canada when things got kind of bad in the old country. Not that Canada was all that much to their liking; the snow and the mosquitoes were quite a downer but the land is so reminiscent of Scotland. As I drove to my host's place just south of Sydney, I felt like I was driving along a firth. Everything was foggy, misty and green. I was quite taken by all the place signs having English/Gaelic translations.
We had scheduled two days there but that turned into 3 because the weather was awful and there was so much to see. Our second day there, we went to Louisbourg, a huge fort on the southern coast of the cape that was built by the French but taken over by the British in the mid-18th century. The place is larger than Williamsburg and frozen in time in 1744 which is how all the people are dressed there. One is confronted by soldiers asking if you speak French or English; given carding and spinning lessons and shown the dances of the day. One of the photos shows Veeka being very taken by a young man dressed in colonial garb in one of the homes who showed her how to play cards. She and I also found ourselves eating lunch at a restaurant where the only utensil was a spoon.
I bundled Veeka up quite a bit, as the weather was windy and about 50 degrees - and this was mid-July. Louisbourg has horrific weather all the time and one wonders why the French built a fort in such a nasty locale. It's true the harbor was quite handy but friendly ships as well as unfriendly ones crashed on the rocks just outside the harbor.
On our third day on the cape, the bad weather finally broke and the sun poured down. We bade good-bye to our kind hosts and started on a 400-mile trek (yes in one day) around the famed Cabot Trail, that goes around the northern-most part of Cape Breton. This isolated peninsula is mostly a national park; it's also the Big Sur of the Far North with similar views, crashing waves against cliffs, etc. So on a bright, sunny Sunday morning, we headed up St. Ann's Bay past numerous stores selling Gaelic books and music, past some gorgeous coves, then braved 12 percent inclines (US highways have 9 percent inclines at the most) up the Cape Smokey mount for even better views. Throngs of motorcyclists were out that day as well. We then descended to Ingonish, a resort town with a tiny ski area that is the major lodging place for summer visitors. It's situated around a pretty harbor and again, I would have stopped there in a minute had I two, instead of one, days, to explore the region.
Then we entered the national park portion of the cape, stopped at Green Cove, where Veeka adored clambering around all the rocks, then ended up at Neil's Harbour, a fishing port, for lunch at the Chowder House, a place with killer views of the ocean. A local fisherman showed me the piles of lobster and crab traps they use (bottom photo) and said there's so much crab, a fisherman can catch a whole year's allotment in the first two days of the season. I met a bunch of people throughout my trip who make a living fishing and my host in PEI even got up at 4 a.m. daily to fish for oysters. That kind of lifestyle is becoming quite rare in the US but it's not hard to find folks who live off of it in Atlantic Canada. As my hosts near Sydney told me, there are very few jobs in their region, so many of the young people have left Cape Breton to move to the States or to western Canada where there's plenty of work mining oil sands.
I would have liked to have headed further north towards Meat Cove or at least driven by White Point, just north of Neil's Harbour where the views are said to be the best, but we had to push inland through two huge valleys where I was constantly putting my Subaru in second gear to get up and down the grades. Atop one of the mountains, everyone (including about 100 motorcyclists) were stopped, ogling a large moose in a nearby field. (There are lots of highway signs in Canada telling you to beware of moose who wander onto the roads). It was at this point we were the furthest east of our trip and the slant of the sunlight and the pine trees and rocks and birches and sparse vegetation was almost boreal - very northern woods at high altitudes. Purple and yellow flowers everywhere.
Finally we popped out on the western side of the trail at Pleasant Bay and the views from there and for the next 40 or so miles going south were truly spectacular. Soaring vistas of blue sea and green mountains; many gulls. There were so many pleasant towns such as Inverness and Mabou that I wanted to linger in. Near Cap le Moine there was the funniest road-side display of dozens of scarecrows. Apparently Joe's Scarecrow is quite famous and we were asked to leave a donation for the upkeep of this display. Veeka liked wandering around giving hugs to the 'crows. We spent the afternoon coasting down the route leading back to the Corso Causeway - got there at 6 pm as I'd wished but then I had a 3-hour trip to Halifax to get to where we were supposed to spend the night. Got there at 9 pm and collapsed. Thank God for lingering light during long summer evenings.

Prince Edward Island

2011-07-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Just before we drove over the LONG causeway to Prince Edward Island (PEI for short), the royals (William and Kate) had visited the place because Kate, I heard, had read Anne of Green Gables and wanted to see the place. I found it a little weird that a whole island could make an industry out of a fictional character but sure enough, on the north side, there are blocks and blocks of real estate connected to Anne, including a sort of village where characters from the book mill about. We did not go there as the story meant nothing to Veeka and I wasn't going to drop a ton of money visiting such a spot.
We were also dogged by bad weather. We stayed with David and Dianne - a lovely couple who lived just outside of Charlottetown, the major city in the area. Our second day there, I took Veeka to see the annual Anne of Green Gables musical downtown which she liked a lot. The pace is geared toward young children as the scenes move very quickly. Our first day there, the weather was likewise awful and so I just started driving about, trying to find pretty sights. Then quite late in the afternoon, the sun came out and we headed for some of the beaches on the island's northern coast. I finally began to see why people like this island. We walked through long grasses on the sand dunes to get to the Dalway beach, which had red sand and blue-white seashells. I snapped a photo of Veeka posing at Cavendish, another of the beaches, next to some kind of Stonehenge set-up someone had made in the sand. Veeka is such a beach bum; it's such a shame we didn't get more time at them.
On Thursday the 14th, we took a ferry from PEI to Nova Scotia, then set out for Cape Breton, the most isolated part of the Maritimes. Will say more about this in a future post but we ended up spending 3 nights - instead of 2 - there as there was so much to see and do, despite the awful weather. One of the first things I noticed were road signs in English and Gaelic. Now that was a switch from English/French. I left Veeka for the day with some kids who were at the host's house and went to the Highland Village in Iona, a reconstruction of what a typical Scottish/Gaelic settlement looked like in the 19th century, which is when the Scots were leaving the Old World to move here. The folks at the village told me that the much colder weather and the bugs really put off the Scots but like the folks in the Emigrants books, they had little choice but to move to the New World as conditions back home were impossible.
And Cape Breton is so like Scotland. As I was driving to where our hosts lived - in the mist and rain - I felt like I was driving down a firth. The landscape looked so similar.

Celebrating the Bay of Fundy

2011-07-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

When we left the Bay of Fundy on Monday, I could hardly tear myself away. There was that last drive along the pretty coast through the Fundy National Park, up to the gorgeous Cape Enrage (360-degree view of the bay), then down to a winery, then dropped by an art gallery specializing in the work of Lars Larsen, then over to a coffee place for one last cup of java which allowed me to stay awake for a long drive to our next port of call. And then there's Tim Hortens, Canada's answer to Starbucks. Must say the coffee at TH is not nearly as decent as S'bucks and the food choices are mainly doughnuts. Which Veeka likes but then she goes on a sugar high.
After leaving the Gaspe, we took a leisurely drive south through New Brunswick, stopping at a beach at Kouchibouguac National Park before arriving at the rectory of Eric Phinney, who pastors St. James the Less Anglican Church in St. John. I spoke there last Sunday, sold some books and met lots of nice people. Spent the afternoon at Irving Nature Park which was donated by the local resident oil company. It was lovely, breezy weather although the beach was kind of rocky and too dangerous for me to let Veeka wander far.
I was with 2 friends at that point and Veeka was getting a bit cross at getting no attention so we drove to a MacDonalds where she played to her heart's content in the playground while we ate lobster sandwiches, which they serve up there!
Photos here are of Cape Hopewell and the cool "flower pot" rocks on the ocean floor which we walked around. And of a lovely trail (Veeka is in the background) in the Fundy national park.

Gaspe - Les Oiseaux

2011-07-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

Les oiseaux means "the birds" of course and that's what we saw a few days ago when we visited Bonaventure island, a little strip of land off Perce, which is the eastern tip of the Gaspe peninsula. Veeka and I jumped on the 11 a.m. boat out to this place, which was criss-crossed by trails. My little hiker took the lead and actually set the pace for her slower (and loaded down with heavy purse) mommy as she jogged about 3 kilometers to the other end of the island where we saw the most amazing sight: 60,000 pairs of nesting birds all perched on dirt mounds (nests) and making a huge racket. Their poop emitted enough methane to supply Jupiter for a year and, most fascinating to Veeka, many of their eggs had hatched so if you looked closely enough underneath the sitting bird, you could see a baby chick. It was like something right out of the penguin movie "Happy Feet."
And Veeka, who has watched "Happy Feet" 9.2 million times, quickly understood what these birds were doing in terms of protecting their young from predators. I think this rookery is one of the world's largest such places and the whole northern half of this island was covered with white gannets and their nests. The photo shows a boat with people looking up at the hillside of nests where we were standing.
The next day we took off for the southern half of the island, which was less spectacular by far than the northern coast. Did notice some Anglican churches appearing here and there - aren't any on the northern coast. We stopped mid-way at a very nice zoo here which we liked immensely as the habitats were very natural and there was everything from cougars to seals to moose - a Canadian specialty. V especially took to the two baby moose. Then we zoomed west along the Bay of Chaleurs in the late afternoon driving INTO the sun which was actually the best way to see the area. The light illumined the surrounding foothills and capes surrounding this large bay making the scenery look quite beautiful. Unfortunately late afternoon has become the time my body wants a nap so we've taken to turning on whatever local rock station we can find and blasting the music so the chauffeur can stay awake! Veeka adores anything with a beat, so she bounces around in her car seat.
We have encountered some very nice B&Bs which are cheaper than most hotels. La Maison Verte, pictured here, was where we stayed Thursday night. Really liked the hosts who were helpful to us and I'd definitely come back here again. Would love to try their cool cabin down by the river. This was the first lodging place in several days where I spoke English as we were moving towards English-speaking areas. Had dinner in Campbellton at a Vietnamese restaurant that was closed when we got there but I managed to talk the management into serving us anyway as we were starving. Would have loved to have known how any Vietnamese got to that part of the world.
The Campbellton area was very rural and heavily wooded - lots of salmon fishing and hiking locally - and I left there with some reluctance but I had more than 250 miles to drive to the southern coast of New Brunswick for a stay here right by the Bay of Fundy. We arrived quite late and the hosts had rhubarb and apple crisp waiting for us. Which was lovely after having to fight industrial-strength gnats to get in the door there.

La Gaspesie

2011-07-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

Supposedly the National Geographic Society has designated Quebec's Gaspe peninsula as the world's third most beautiful destination (after the Norwegian fjords and the Kootenay and Yoho national parks in British Columbia). And so here we are, one step ahead of the trend-setters, having spent the past four days driving about this huge place.
We pushed off from Montreal on July 4, crossed the bridge over to the southern bank of the St. Lawrence and began heading north, only to encounter crisis #1 when my engine light went on. Great. Stopped at one of those information touriste places and got the helpful clerk to phone ahead to a Subaru dealer just south of Quebec city who agreed to take us late in the afternoon. Nothing beats spending one's vacation in a Subaru showroom. Fortunately they ran the car through the diagnostic machine tres vite and came up with some pretty minor stuff that they fixed within the hour.
We sped out of there, as we had another 200 miles to go before getting to where we were spending the night. Not knowing the area, I chose a B&B in Sainte Luce, a coastal town just east of Rimouski, which is a major city on the peninsula. I was already noticing how steep the highways were in contrast to a typical US freeway and how each small town along the way had tons of free parking and picnic tables along its beaches. We pulled up at Maison Gallant at around 8:30 pm and then I dragged a sleepy Veeka to a restaurant where the service was slow at best. The town was a dream; a half-moon beach filled with cottages with a large Catholic church at the head. Nearly every town we went through had these churches, along with a cemetery and light house. The B&B turned out well; was situated on the ocean, so I strolled out to the beach early the next morning and sat down to think and pray, only to jump up again when I got attacked by bugs. Yes, we're definitely in the north here. The place we stayed at was lovely although the owners weren't too crazy about Veeka continually letting their kitty out the door.
First thing that morning, we stopped at the Jardins de Metis, an incredible series of gardens set in a micro-climate on the Gaspe peninsula that somehow manage to weather the cold winters there. Veeka and I had a fabulous 2 hours there looking at all the blue-tinted poppies, Japanese gardens, wild meadows filled with lupin and cool contraptions for Veeka to clamber on. There was an exhibit there of radical 'secret' gardens; one was a forest of blue-tinted sticks; another was a mountain of sea salt. Veeka loved climbing on that. Another was a series of circles leading to the sea.
Finally we jumped back in the Subaru as I had 7 hours to drive on Tuesday. Every scene was lovely; gorgeous blue sea, tiny towns like Matane, where we ate lunch at the Cafe du Monde, a creperie on Rue St. Jerome; or Grande Vallee with its exquisite church and homes; or Mont-St. Pierre, a town that's the hang glider capital of eastern Canada because of the perfectly sculpted mountains surrounding it; the lighthouse at Sainte Madeleine (have enclosed photo of Veeka at the lighthouse playground) or the enormous collection of 76 windmills at Cap Chat - am wondering if it's one of the world's largest wind farms. It's got to be. Also makes me wonder how cold and windy this place gets in the winter.
We really were fortunate as to weather which was in the low 70s tor upper 60s all day. The following day, it rained (I heard from some tourists who followed us) so we lucked out as to timing. By the end of Tuesday, I had driven 1,300 miles in four days and needed a rest. Which we did at the Auberge les Trois Soeurs, which has views to die for. Hope to include a photo showing the incredible view of rocks at Perce, the coastal town where we spent two nights.
The area is filled with rivers stocked with salmon, camping spots and places with a view. Will say that during this trek, it really helped to know French as many folks were not conversant - or barely so - in English. There are NO signs in English, either, which I find galling in that the Quebecois were pretty insistent that the rest of Canada include English on their signs. Am not sure how they get away with French-only signs here but that attitude works against them. There were many things I would have stopped and seen but I wasn't sure what they were or the terms were not familiar to me, so I just drove by. Like "casse-croute" means "snack bar" here. Had an enterprising owner just THOUGHT to have posted an English subtitle explaining what a casse-croute was, we might have stopped by one for lunch. After having been here for a few days, I still wonder if Quebec wants the rest of the world to come visit.

O Canada

2011-07-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

Veeka and I are on a journey - one to the north and the first time I've taken her out of the country. Why now and why here? Well...it's so hard to get three weeks away when one is working at a regular job and something told me to take this time now. And so on Friday, she and I set off for Canada. I can only drive about 350 miles per day - after 7 hours at the wheel I turn into a pumpkin. So the first day, we stopped by a friend's place on Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes in New York. We pulled up early in the evening (after getting caught in rush hours in Scranton and Harrisburg) to find Anto and Roberta Parseghian and their extended family having a picnic. I'd met Anto years ago through his prophetic art that took on topics ranging from abortion to daycare. It was wildly interesting stuff but no one was buying it, so he's since gone into furniture-making. Samples of his gorgeous workmanship are here. So I got a tour of his studio and saw the incredible things he does with birch and other northern woods. Later that evening next to a campfire, we had such fun discussing theology; Anto is very Reformed and I am not so we had some great talks. The lights on the lake glittered in the distance. It was a beautiful night.
The next day we drove another 7 hours into Canada, ending up in Montreal by late afternoon and greeted by my friends Laurie and Grace Vuoto. They live in the Laval area north of town. All the signs here are in French with no translations. Which is fine for someone like me who has lived in France but it does give off the impression that the locals wish English-speakers would stay away. Today we attended Mass at St. Patrick's downtown, then drove atop Mont Royal (in French Mont Real which the city is named after). One of my photos shows Veeka with Grace (in jeans) and Laurie all squinting at me. The temps are in the 90s at this point. We repaired to Laurier Street to grab a bite at Juliette & Chocolate, then headed to another large church: St. Joseph's Oratory which is the resting place of Andre, a newly minted Catholic saint. I'm not into relics, so the display of the deceased's actual heart turned my stomach. Better was the excellent view over the city from one of the balconies. Veeka really got into saying a prayer, then lighting all the votive candles.
We tried dropping by Notre Dame's downtown but there was a service going on, so we ended up at the Vieux Port, which is all old Montreal and new shops that have sprung up on the city docks. By this time we were quite droopy and hot while Veeka was still dashing about, spritely as ever. So we picked up some chicken at St. Hubert's (the secret sauce is some kind of Quebecois specialty), then went home and collapsed. I dove into the family pool.

Wild Goose festival

2011-06-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

As if Veeka and I hadn't endured enough camping in the rough at the Papa festival, last weekend we headed south to North Carolina to cover yet another Christian music festival (although the term 'Christian' applies quite loosely here); the Wild Goose Festival in Shakori Hills about 30 miles from Chapel Hill, NC.
I had talked the Economist into letting me cover this gathering of 1,500 people because it was a copy of the UK’s longstanding and successful Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham, which premiered in 1974. Some 20,000 attendees show up at Greenbelt and the American organizers seeking to copy Greenbelt hope the numbers will get that large here too.
I dunno. It was America’s first-ever such gathering for theological liberals from June 23-26, on 72 wooded acres in Bible Belt eastern North Carolina. To get more to attend, the conference was open to all manner of post-Christians, non-Christians, disaffected evangelicals, the usual musician-and-artist cohort, gays and lesbians and a liberal evangelical subset known as the “emergent” church. I had thought the emergent folk faded out about five years ago but no, they were in full flower here. A lot of older liberals: Jim Wallis, Richard Rohr and Phyllis Tickle, the high priestess of the emergent movement, were quite present at this conference and most were pushing their books. I did find Tickle's assertion - that the present emergent movement is up there with the Reformation and the Great Schism of 1054 in terms of importance to Christianity - to be quite a reach. Then again, she calls John Wimber emergent so her boundaries include basically anything that's occurred in the world of religion in the past 30 years.
Others, such as gay San Francisco Episcopal rector Paul Fromberg, were on several panels and I'll say this up front; I was quite unprepared as to how homosexual rights ended up as such an obsession at Wild Goose. Panels on sexuality and justice compared America's fight against racism to the current struggle for gay marriage et al to be legal. Interestingly, there weren't any panels on racism that I knew about. Ditto for abortion. For all the talk on justice, etc., the crowd was overwhelmingly white which goes to show that liberal religion doesn't necessarily play well in the minds of black Christians.
My favorite speaker was Nadia Bolz-Weber, an ELCA cleric out of Denver who pastors House for All Sinners and Saints there. See the tatooed person in the photo of people celebrating Holy Communion? Yep, that is a Lutheran minister. She had some fresh insights and she didn't speak in cliches as did folks like Frank Schaeffer (who makes a living dumping on his dead and famous father) and Jay Bakker. Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye, appeared as a fashion plate with a black vest over a white T-shirt (the temps were in the 90s), a chain draped over one hip, a scarf artfully arranged out of a front pocket and another coming out of a back pocket topped by a beret - it was a bit much. His rambling speech was so disorganized and self-centered, I snuck out after a half-hour.
Big regret is I didn't get to hear the musicians more but Wild Goose erred in putting the Psalters up on Thursday night, before many of us had gotten there. And then there was the Ethiopian-born singer who was leading folks in singing "Hallelujah Hare Krishna." Double take when I heard that one. Was wondering if I was going to even see a Bible at this conference; finally saw someone sporting one but things like Bible studies and praise/worship music did not happen there. There was a beer garden, however.
I was told conference organizers had wanted to invite Chuck Colson in to talk about prison reform so I'm not saying they aimed to have an unbalanced conference but most of the panels were clearly stacked towards a liberal point of view. The kids ministry portion was very well done and Veeka was very happy to be making all manner of knitted stuff out of yarn. Note the purple cat painted on one of her cheeks in our photo here. And the little blue thing on her head that she knit. Also notice how hot we both look. I pinned up my hair the entire weekend.
The last night of the festival, people were so noisy, I was up til well past 2:30 a.m. I walked outside the tent and saw the loveliest sky with a sliver of bright moon hanging amongst the stars. The night was warm and the crickets were chirping loudly. The volunteers who kept the conference running were a most gracious group of people and I didn't meet one grouchy one, which is amazing considering how steamy and buggy it was. The site had been used for bluegrass festivals so it wasn't totally virgin land like we had at Papa. Thus ends Veeka's and my camping experiments for this summer. We are done with tents, bumpy grass, critters that crawl about the tent and poison ivy.
Here is the link to my piece in the Economist.

PAPA fest

2011-06-23T08:38:00.001-07:00

I had one of my more unusual journalistic experiences last week when I accepted an assignment from the Washington Post Sunday magazine to cover a Christian music festival about 90 miles away NE of Baltimore. In a soybean field in SE Pennsylvania, as a matter of fact.
The venue was the PAPA (People Against Poverty and Apathy) Festival, “a convergence of communities and movements,” it called itself. It was a zoo of causes and off-beat personalities. It featured the stars of the "new monastic" movement of under-35 Christians. These were the spiritual descendants of the 1970s Jesus movement hippies who lived in communes and shared everything in common. Their kids seek to live in quasi-communes, are non-violent, eat organic and are fixated on social justice issues. Among them are groups with names like 'Young Anabaptist Radicals;' the Psalters, an indie experimental Christian band out of Philly. I really liked the Psalters, by the way. They are kind of like a klezmer band ran amok.
Veeka loved running about and dancing to all the drums while I did things like standing in this sweltering tent minding a book table where I got into this discussion with a Christian anarchist. His name was Andy Lewis, he was part of Theillalogicalspoon, a band from Jackson, Mich., he lives with like-minded friends in a “decrepit old farm house” and he was typical of the young Christian I was encountering at this event. He was trying to explain to me that the book of Genesis is a political text.
“It’s political in that Genesis is remembering the fall into civilization,” he said. Paradise, he added was mankind’s original status as hunter-gatherers; the advent of agriculture, symbolized by Cain, the grower of fruits and vegetables, is what drove mankind toward technology, division of labor and hierarchy, which is anathema to anarchists.
Finally I’d had enough.
“Do you use city water?” I asked, starting on my list of technology’s benefits. “Public roads? Sewage disposal?” He nodded, but it was clear these were temporary necessary evils. He pointed me towards his blog, Land of the Living, powered, unfortunately for him, by unrighteous electricity.
Over the next few days, I met so many upper 20-somethings like him; generic Christians often of the Mennonite or Anabaptist variety with some Pentecostals, Episcopalians and Catholics thrown in, who were reluctantly in the world but seeking not to be of it and who spent the weekend agitating, planning, singing and talking about a better world.
Even though this gathering was 99 percent Christian, one could often not discern that. It was as if they worked hard not to emphasize the Jesus part of their spirituality except at high points like the photo I have here of the Sunday morning Communion service. Workshops had descriptions like “How can the church in the ‘first world’ shed its fear of indigenous traditions and join in the sounds of liberation (that) the elder cultures are singing without committing cultural theft or reinforcing false stereotypes”? Which is really different from Christian music festivals of yesteryear where one could not walk five steps without encountering an open Bible or a “One Way: Jesus” T-shirt.
I saw a grand total of one Bible at PAPA.
I was part reporter, part speaker, as I was leading a workshop on what can go wrong in community and all camper, as Veeka, myself and about 400-500 other souls subsisted for 2+ days in some hot and rainy weather in a borrowed tent. The highlight was a thunderstorm that nearly flooded the tent.
Camped nearby was Maria Kenney, who helped organize workshops for the event and drove 11 miles to get there from Kentucky. She lives in Communality, a 13-year-old community of about 50 souls in inner-city Lexington. While our two daughters played together, I took refuge from the sun under a tarp Maria thoughtfully put up. We chatted about living common purse; the most intense form of community whereby one contributes all one’s earnings to the community pot. I’d lived common purse during two years I spent in an intentional community in Portland, Ore., 30 years ago. Communality doesn’t go that far “but we have lots of idealists per square inch in Lexington,” she tells me.
A few tent spaces away was Joshua Swartwood, a black-bearded fellow with black earrings. He had driven down from Ithaca, N.Y., and has “Moses,” “Joshua” and a menorah tattooed on his arms. His mother was 31 when she had him, he told me, and she’d been told he had died in the womb. Then an ultra-sound showed he was alive and well; thus he was named Joshua, meaning ‘God saves.’
“It’s a reminder of God’s interactions with people in a supernatural kind of crazy way,” he said of the tattoos. Not only was his birth miraculous, each one of the births of his six children was connected to a dream or prophecy, he said.
I think you get the idea of how eclectic this event was. Now I have to write it up next week as THIS weekend (June 25-26), am heading to North Carolina to cover a similar festival - called the Wild Goose - for the Economist.
Don't want to turn those freelance assignments down.

Myself as brand

2011-06-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

June is certainly 'bustin out all over' with steamy hot days, which mean we've had the air on for several days straight. It has to be pretty hot for me to resort to AC all day but even the kids in Veeka's day school are kept in during the afternoons because of the temps.
These days I'm going through boxes of old files from work, realizing that I'll not be doing stories again on most of these items. It's kind of bittersweet to go through years of documents over the Episcopal/Anglican breakup, which I chronicled as much - if not more - than any other US religion reporter for the secular media. Then there are the files on sexually abusive priests; also gay priests, gay bishops who hid the activities of their gay priests and sooo much material on church officials whom I - and many other reporters - knew were corrupt but we didn't quite have enough to go on for a story. Re-reading some of those files made me sad that so many bad people got away with ruining the careers of good priests who dared to speak out against them.
It's so sad to see the evisceration of the religion beat. So many friends have fled to academia to teach or get doctorates or take refuge in fellowships that allow them to travel the globe. So few hires are happening these days and the stories are as important as ever. Many of these same bishops and cardinals remain in power. The Episcopalians and the Anglicans are still fighting it out in court.
I've been working around the house a bit, painting the stone border around the crape myrtle in the back yard. Pictured is Veeka posing atop the stones which took forever to get done. The week I applied the primer was when there was a thunderstorm every afternoon mean that my paint job would get wiped out. Am working on other stuff; just started a "social media boot camp" where you learn how to analyze traffic and demographics on various web sites. Today was my first day and it was sure interesting hearing the lecturers say you can't just have a presence on the web; you need to stand out. More sobering for my occupation; social media such as Twitter and Facebook have leveled the information-sharing play field that journalists once owned. Now everyone can and does provide information. Whether or not it's accurate is another thing altogether but the presence of so many citizen-journalists has decimated the ranks of the professionals.
I tried measuring how many people read this site and the number was so low, the counting mechanism showed nothing. Hmmm - I have signed onto a different web site host so hopefully within a new months I'll have a refurbished site that I'll have a hand in designing. Guess I'll recreate myself as a brand, right?

More parties

2011-06-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

If I ever get morose over the job situation out there, I can always meditate on one thing: how everyone likes my daughter! I have lost count as to how many birthday parties Miss Veeka had this spring. Am including a video from one of many held at an Italian restaurant last month. The woman holding Veeka is Grace Vuoto and the rest of us are caroling away the familiar birthday song.

Well, it's been a year

2011-06-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

June 1 will long be a day of infamy for me as that was when, a year ago, when I walked into my office with one foot in a cast and one hand holding onto a sickly Veeka. I had planned to be at work merely an hour to gather up some papers and work out of my home so as to be with my little girl. I found myself getting hauled into the editor's office and informed I was being laid off. Being that it was five months after everyone else got laid off, I knew this was a hostile action directed at me. Still, I had to pack up 14+ years worth of effects in about four hours while Veeka languished about the office. Fortunately, a WaPo photographer caught the whole mess on film as I was packing my car and a few days later, news of my leavetaking appeared atop the Style section.
So much has happened since then, including the fact that the yoyo who executed this decision himself got tossed out the door by the Washington Times a few months later. I decided that I'd spend enough years working at 3600 New York Avenue and it was time to turn my energies elsewhere and so I have, with my best work appearing in the Economist and in various places around the Washington Post.
Naturally all this happened simultaneously with an epic downgrading of the religion beat nationwide meaning that those of us who have reams of experience, clips, awards and contacts in denominational offices and religious groups everywhere are having a tough time selling our wares. Nearly everyone is hiring political reporters faster than they can say "2012" even though the average American is already sick of the thought of Obama running against Mitt, Newt, or Sarah. But bring on someone who explain what kind of theology made Osama bin Laden tick or why the Arab Spring has turned into a winter of discontent for religious minorities? Not on your life. One hears all the excuses from news organizations: the budget, the economy, hiring freezes. And yes, the economy has been horrible to my occupation. But doggone it if they don't go and hire another political writer.
In all this, I must give thanks to my parents who have supported me throughout all this and without whom I'd be on my way to losing my home. You really learn who your friends are when you're down and I certainly have made some surprising discoveries. People who I thought would stand with me have disappeared into the ether. Others have cone in out of the fog. Being unemployed or rather underemployed is not glamorous and let's just say the phone is not ringing off the hook with offers to bankroll my next book. Which is why I really appreciate folks (and you know who you are) who have tossed freelance assignments my way because that is truly putting food on the table for me and my 6-year-old.
Speaking of her, these photos are from her kindergarten graduation ceremony last week and a pizza dinner she had beforehand with Raffie, her little boyfriend. After that, we went to Pittsburgh for the weekend, she to spend time with some old family friends who have a little girl her age. As for me, I got to go on a retreat for the first time in four years. It was only two nights but at least it was something. And now we're gasping through multi days of 95-degree weather. And now I am back to sending out job application after job application....

New York, New York

2011-05-26T10:04:00.001-07:00

Mika Brzezinski

Wafa Sultan

I spent a few days in the Big Apple last weekend taking a course in HTML and web site management plus - yes - doing a bit of jobhunting. Summer is approaching and with it, opportunities to speak in various places. In fact, I'll be talking about intentional community and my book at 7 p.m. this coming Monday (Memorial Day) in Pittsburgh; specifically in Squirrel Hill at the Upper Room at 5828 Forward Ave. at Murray St.
New York, as it turns out, was freezing (while it was in the 80s in DC) but I sure enjoyed the consignment shops and incredibly rich culinary offerings in the East Village, which is where my friend, Betsy Pisik, was lodging me. We ate everything from Korean to western Chinese to Ukrainian fare - in 2 days!
While riding up (and back) on the majestic-but-cheap Boltbus, I got some really interesting reading done. One was "A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam," by Wafa Sultan, a Syrian psychiatrist who says Islam's problems are due to Islam's God. Read about it here and here. A lot of people find fault with Wafa but she brings up the hard questions that I've not seen Muslims answer very well. Questions about Mohammed's treatment and acquisition of his 13 or so wives, especially Aisha, with whom he had sex when she was a 9-year-old. Just the very thought of that - as he was 50 years old at the time - makes me want to lose my lunch.
I whipped through that book fast enough that I ended up at the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble buying Mika Brzezinski's "Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You're Worth" which *really* got me going! She talked about being lowballed at MSNBC in terms of her salary being grossly disproportionate with that of her male co-host. Read about it here. IMHO, MSNBC does not come out well in her book, being that they were only too happy to offer her peanuts compared with men in the same positions who were raking in far more. One wonders: What *is* it about work places that see offering women less money than a man as second nature? What is it about work places that make the woman have to fight like crazy to get something close to parity? And any woman trying to get equal pay is labeled as 'difficult' and other words I will not use here.
Obviously the book struck a nerve with me, who has been underpaid all my career. Many of us in the Washington Times newsroom were beyond disgusted when we found out how top execs were making over $150,000 and, as far as we could tell, they were doing less work than we were. One top editor, who was rarely ever there, was raking in $225K. All this while we were upbraided by our bosses for asking for an extra $1,000 a year. I'd better not get started except to advise women who care about what they'd like to be paid for the rest of their lives to read this book. I would love to write something similar for the Christian market but I can just imagine the battles I'd fight getting that published.

David Wilkerson and the reporter

2011-05-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday. Today is - or was - also David Wilkerson's birthday, he being the world-famous author of "The Cross and the Switchblade," founder of Times Square Church, Teen Challenge, you-name-it. He would have been 80 years old today had he not died in a car accident in east Texas three weeks ago.
I was born 25 years after Wilkerson, so do the math. I had two fateful encounters with this man, one in 1989 when I was interviewing him for The Houston Chronicle. Here is a snipped from the chapter "Annunciation" about our meeting:
That same month I was back in New York, on my way to catch the flight to Israel that landed me in that meadow overlooking the Sea of Galilee. I snagged an interview with David Wilkerson in his 2-year-old Times Square Church in the former Mark Hellinger Theater at 51st and Broadway. He was definitely not the showbiz type. He did not like being interviewed, he was uncomfortable posing for photos and low on media savvy. This artlessness made him easier to talk with, especially about his warnings to Jimmy Swaggart before the evangelist’s well-publicized fall in 1988.
"I don't think sex brings any man down," he mused. "I think it's pride." I asked him what had kept him out of sexual sin. Suffering, he replied. He looked a bit gaunt and obviously tired from having been up since early that morning leading Sunday services. I tried to pry something out of him about Redeemer and Graham. I had heard rumors that he was most unhappy with the turn that events had taken, especially since he was so publicly linked with Graham's spiritual baptism. Wilkerson was very vague, as if he had long since lost touch with both. As I was packing away my notes, he looked at me,.
"Graham came to me with a problem, you know,” he said. “He didn't only come for power." And as far as he knew, Wilkerson added, Graham had had victory over it.
"The only way to stay righteous," he then said, "is to expose your heart to God every day."
What is he hinting at? I wondered. It's either money or sex.
The next time I met Wilkerson was in December 1998 when everyone was worrying about Y2K and I was in New York doing a story for The Washington Times. By then, the news about Graham had long since come out. I went to lunch with David and his wife, Gwen and it was there that David told me more about his fateful - that word again - meeting with Graham in 1963 when he prayed over Graham to be baptized in the Spirit. Graham, David told me, was so tortured by homosexual longings that he was stopping in every rest area between North Carolina (where he was on vacation) and New York. As a former police reporter, I knew exactly what he was talking about; before the Internet, rest areas were where gay men solicited sex. In fact, there was a certain rest area just inside the Texas state line along Interstate 10 where, it was said, one dared not hang out after dark.
I sent a copy of "Days of Fire and Glory" to David's office a long time ago but never got any indication that he had received it, much less read it. A shame, because he played a crucial role in my narrative. I am on the mailing list for David's once-every-3-weeks pulpit series and I just got the latest one, penned by him no doubt several months in advance, encouraging Christians not to despair during hard times. He was one of the few well-known preachers out there who got it in terms of how crazed many of us feel. I, for instance, have been out of work almost one year.
His last words to people were to tell them to persevere during these dark nights of the soul, even when you physically don't feel you have the strength to do so. I can understand that; I often don't have the heart to sing the hymns I used to but I am still able to play worship music on the harp. That is the best I can do at this point. Discouragement does deaden things. Hope deferred - and deferred and deferred - makes the heart sick, as Scripture says.
At the end of my days whenever they may be, if I have even a portion of the good influence that this great man had on this troubled world, I shall be glad.

Oma turns 83

2011-05-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Oma! I wish we could have a cake at the ready but the best I could do was send her a spiffy new version of "The Red Shoes" on DVD. Included here is a photo of Oma singing Veeka to sleep with her famous "There is a boarding house" lullaby.
Also shown here is Veeka looking cute as usual. Other stuff; my travel piece finally ran here on Friday in the WPost. Am casting about now for assignments to do in June.
Yours truly has a birthday coming up on Thursday but I've little planned other than a trip to New York this coming weekend to take a class on web site construction and maintenance. So many - almost all - of the jobs out there in the PR field want people to maintain a site.
As for jobs in the media - those are disappearing by the day. I've not given up on those but it'll take a major angelic visitation to bring one about. Speaking of angelic visitations, isn't the Rapture or Second Coming supposed to happen May 21? Just wondered...
I took Veeka to see "Coppelia" yesterday as that's one of the easier story lines to follow in the ballet world. Trying to explain the Odette/Odile duplicity in "Swan Lake" or the whole thing about ghosts and spirits of women disappointed in love ("Giselle") is a lot. Veeka was entranced by all the dancing and by the girl playing the lead role, who was all of 16 years old. When I asked her if she wanted to dance like that, "But I can't sing," she said. I explained that one had to mime actions instead of speak them but she thought that was pretty boring.

A pleasant Mother's Day

2011-05-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I was at a gathering yesterday with several friends and I was the only mother in the whole bunch! Two of the women there had been trying to get pregnant or adopt for some time; the other folks there were singles who'd like to marry and *then* have a child. Yours truly did this backward. Miss Veeka keeps on telling me she wants a daddy so who knows what I'll end up pulling off someday.
It's almost a year since I left the Washington Times and there have been benefits to it all. I have enjoyed doing things like sitting in the back yard today and dreamily eating my lunch while the birds flitted about and the sunny weather was in the 70s. This working-out-of-one's-home thing is very addictive. Veeka and I visited the Amish market last Saturday and bought our customary pile of cheap plants (the prices are the best anywhere) and flowers plus odd jellies. I really like some of the flavors like elderberry and zucchini/orange that the Plain Folk come up with.
Jobwise...sigh. So many false alarms. For instance, I've had officials at two major web sites call me up about working for them but the moment I asked them what they were thinking of in terms of pay, they got unhappy that I'd bring up the question. Like, I'm not supposed to eat? The low-balling out there is unreal. I continue to sell articles and my newest travel piece will be out this coming weekend in the Washington Post. Am about to shoot another piece off to the Economist tomorrow morning. Just this afternoon I got a phone call saying I made the first cut for yet another job possibility. The audacity of hope, as one famous person puts it.
The photo is of Veeka standing in a Holland America tulip field that we discovered in Woodland, Wash. a few weeks ago. It was just that time of year when the blossoms were out and I was so hoping for one of those vision-like fields with rows of beautiful colors. And voila, not far off the interstate, we found one.

Two weddings

2011-05-01T20:01:00.000-07:00

We all know, of course, about the royal wedding that occurred last Friday for which some of us rose at 5 a.m. for a lovely few hours of watching TV fairyland where the prince and the princess marry each other in Westminster Abbey and take a carriage to Buckingham Palace.
A week before, we had our own little wedding; my brother Rob, who got remarried the night of April 23. He'd been dating Jan Conner - who he knew from his days at Severna Park High School 40 years ago - only since last October and by late November, he'd proposed. And so Steve flew in for the affair and we all drove there together. It was on the Eastern Shore just across Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis. The hotel was on an inlet off the bay and the wedding was in a large glass gazebo behind the hotel.
What started as a cool, misty day burst into sunshine, so it was a lovely evening. About a dozen of us were on hand for the wedding itself, which was at 7 pm and fairly short. The minister, a Baptist, knew Jan's family. I told him later he must be one of the few clergymen in the DC area who is not committed the night before Easter.
Then the reception started at 7:30. There were little cupcakes in the wedding colors of electric blue and white and the bride and groom wore outfits that pretty much matched the colors. We all drank champagne and munched off a huge pile of shrimp and hors d'oeuvres such as mushrooms and crab cakes. But the big surprise was Miss Veeka, who did some great dancing on the dance floor. Once the music started, she just danced and danced and danced. And so there are photos of her with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Duin Jr. and with a champagne glass looking like a vamp. Hmmmm.
The next day, Easter, was very warm and lovely. The bright point of our day as a huge Easter party hosted by a friend which involved an egg hunt for dozens of children. I hardly saw Veeka for several hours as all she did was play with the other kiddos. She's shown here with a bow in her hair with another little girl (Gloria Bowman), both showing off their eggs.

Good Friday and our lovely trip

2011-04-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

First, a news flash from the present: Today is Good Friday and so at noon, Veeka and I repaired to a local Hispanic Catholic parish that each year stages a Via Crucis procession. That is, the church has actors acting out each station of the cross along a mile-long route through the neighborhood. We missed it last year and it was gorgeous weather then so I was anxious to do it this year. Well....it was 46 degrees and raining. Veeka lasted all of 20 minutes before she begged to return to the car. And so the photo of her in the purple jacket is of her gamely holding the gladiolas that are handed out out to members of the crowd.
OK, now about this past week. It was so nice to get back to the Pacific NW again even though we got rained on most days. Figures. It was April, right? Of course I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to but I did get to see more folks than I'd planned on. We first flew to Seattle where Veeka had her usual rapturous airport reunion with Oma and Opa (who was hobbling about with sciatica - ouch) and then the next day we headed for Portland. In the rain, of course. Arriving early afternoon, we rendezvoused with Mary Jensen, an L&C friend and we would have chatted longer in Albina Press (the name of the cafe in SE Portland) but Veeka decided it was time to shriek and carry on. So off we went to the home of another good friend, Karen Jackson, who fortuitously had her 2 young grand-daughters visiting so Miss Veeka cheered up considerably. Then off to my brother Steve's and sister-in-law Nancy's digs in Lake Oswego where we got to eat Italian and admire all the remodeling.
The next morning, we dropped by the SE Portland home of Laura Paul, another friend from college years, who loaded Veeka down with all sorts of crafty cool things, like black and purple paper to write on and enough stickers to fill a small suitcase. Veeka adored all the new art ideas she picked up there and I was left wishing I was a lot more clever with my hands than I am.
Lunch was at a downtown brewery with my cousin Geoff and wife Yuko and we spent time wandering about the nearby massive Powell's bookstore which is a true Portland institution. Then off to my friend Gail Dall's, where we picked up sleeping bags and other things we needed for a weekend retreat at Good Samaritan Ministries spring family gathering at the Christian Renewal Center about 50 miles to the SE near Silverton. Gail, unfortunately, was too sick to go, but we picked up Christine Forsyth and the four of us headed past Silverton to the center, which is near the massive Silver Falls State Park.
It was a real pleasure of a weekend, not the least remarkable in that Veeka turned 6 while we were there and so we celebrated with a lovely chocolate cake (provided by Gail). The rain never stopped, so we were all sequestered inside but it was so interesting meeting many of the families there. Most of them were getting some sort of family therapy with GSM (which does a lot of counseling state-side and in the Third World). Everyone was required to do skits on how their families deal with the weekend's theme: "Never give up." A very apt theme for these times, I think. Sunday morning, Bettie Mitchell, the foundress of GSM, showed up to say hi and afterwards Veeka and I dashed off to see some of the state park (see Veeka with the South Falls in the background) before I headed into NE Portland to give a talk on my book.
The group that hosted me was very friendly and we enjoyed the visit at Metanoia Peace Community, which is an 8,000-square-foot mansion with numerous people living there. Dinner was Iranian food and then I was the evening's entertainment. The good part: seeing some old friends from Bethlehem and community days. The bad part: I dragged 12 books along with me in a suitcase on this trip. Number of books sold? Two. Not long ago, someone told me there was a rumor among the Redeemer diaspora that I had made tons of money off "Fire and Glory." Soooo wish that were the truth!
More on the trip later...

Veeka is turning 6

2011-04-11T21:30:00.001-07:00

The cupcakes are baked, the birthday crown is ready because Our Princessa is going to be 6 this Saturday. I was in Safeway today shopping for cupcakes for her classroom but was so disgusted to see the same old Dora-the-Explorer ones I got her last year that I bought some batter and icing and baked them myself. She now has pink cupcakes with white and green icing with white marshmallows atop these confections that spell out a V for you-know-who.
When I asked her the other day what she likes, she listed in this order: Ice cream, raisin bread, soup, marshmallows, crackers, cheese, Cheerios, oatmeal, butter, French fries, apples, juice, milk, tomatoes, red bell peppers, cucumbers and grape fruit.
So I will drop off everything later on today for her classmates to eat while I head downtown to be on NPR very briefly to tout my latest WaPo story about how classical education got started in a local Catholic school. Read all about it here. It came out this past Sunday, the 10th. The folks at St. Jerome's were happy to say the least. And so that is story #3 for the Sunday mag and I've already started work on story #4. And this will be my first appearance on NPR. Maybe not my last. (Later note: the NPR link is here. Then click on 'Old Traditions Not Outdated in Modern Education').
Monday evening, Veeka and I went to the hairdresser to get some badly-needed trims because we are flying to Seattle on Wednesday. Yes, I needed a break, so a few weeks ago decided to spend my last frequent flier miles on Delta and wing it home to Oma and Opa. However, after only a day there, we're heading down to Portland for a few days to see friends and more family and to relax at a Christian family camp over Palm Sunday weekend. Am hoping the weather is not Portland drab as it has been in the lovely 80s here. And so Veeka - seen here posing by my weeping cherry tree out back - will get another party at the retreat center on Saturday and yet another party back in Seattle when we drive back up there. Yes, one must celebrate turning 6.
In case you have wondered, yes, I have already started reading her the Pooh books although they are better read silently than outloud; most kids these days can't sit through the interior conversations the characters have so I have to skip portions of the narrative to keep Veeka interested.
While in Portland, I will have one public appearance speaking about my book. An old friend, John Schwiebert, is having me at his church/private home on a Sunday evening. Specifically:

Sunday, April 17 at:

Metanoia Peace CommunityMetanoia Peace Community

2116 Northeast 18th Avenue
Portland, OR 97212-4609
(503) 281-3697. Time: 6:45 p.m.

It's open to the public so y'all come.

Eternal March

2011-03-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

Really, this month has dragged on and on and on. The cherry blossoms are out but few people are walking about looking at them because the weather has been so impossibly awful and cold. This is the coldest end-of-March in my memory and I've been here 15 years.
Just got something pleasant in the mail today; a copy of Iceland Review with one of my articles in it! Unfortunately the magazine does not allow one to link to articles therein, but you can get a feel for the publication here. One may be able to purchase the publication on the streets of Reykjavik but here it is subscription only. Iceland is one of my favorite countries and I am always wishing to go back there.
During my second visit exactly 10 years ago this April, a friend of mine who works for the local morning newspaper took me to this amazing Good Friday service where actors were reading from an amazing group of "passion hymns" by one 17th century poet named Hallgrimur Petursson. The 50 poems, which Icelanders usually read one per day during Lent, dwell on the passion of Christ, starting with the Garden of Gethsemane. The poems are like meditations but they are in verse. The church service I attended was packed with people who sat for hours listening to these poems. Iceland is a very secular nation but here is one instance where people actually were rapt in worship. For one day out of the year, they go back to their Lutheran roots.
I was so fascinated with this man - and fortunately someone in Iceland gave me a copy of his poems before I flew back here - that I wrote 2 columns about Petursson for the Washington Times way back when (they are here and here). A few months ago, I began asking the Iceland Review folks why they never carried anything about religion and one thing led to another and I got this assignment to write about this amazing poet. I ended up interviewing 2 scholars in Iceland (by email) and one who lives in Pennsylvania. And so here we are. It's not often I get stuff in foreign publications.
Life is uneventful in a fashion; wish I had good news to share but at least there is no bad news. Today - which I was supposed to spend in preparing my taxes - was spent in taking my kitty to the vet. And the little vixen in the photo is Miss Veeka at her ballet/tap dance lesson.

Jonah and the ides of March

2011-03-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

Finally my story on Metropolitan Jonah, the head of the Orthodox Church in America, is out in this Sunday's Washington Post magazine. You can see it here. And the print edition, which most people will see Saturday, is gorgeous with some really great photos by a Russian-speaking photographer who belongs to the local Orthodox cathedral where a lot of the action in the story takes place. I've learned more about Orthodox church politics during the past 10 weeks than I've known in a lifetime, especially after the story took a dramatic turn in late February when Jonah's bishops revolted against him and he came perilously close to losing his job. Long story why. Had he resigned, the story would have had to be killed and I would have been one unhappy camper. Fortunately Jonah hung on and just this week, a high Russian church official from Moscow - Archbishop Hilarion - breezed into New York and apparently gave pretty much everyone involved a dressing down and told the OCA'ers to get their act together. Note: the drawing in red/blue is Jonah, not Hilarion.

Our lives here are quiet and the second photo is of Veeka and some friends on a bridge in the Shenandoah Valley where I went a few weeks ago just to get away. The crocuses and forsythia are finally out here and the danger of snow is past, for which I'm grateful. I'm working on more freelance stories but - alas - none of them are enough to pay the bills and so I'm also trolling for full-time work. I was talking with a lawyer friend tonight who was remarking as to how many firms are using contract help so they don't have to pay benefits, much less salaries. This is deadly for folks like me. Another friend remarked that the only way that anyone who writes books, blogs and magazine articles can survive is to be married to someone who *is* making a salary.

Which all goes to say the world of blogging and freelancing is lovely in a fashion but economically it is not working and has not been working for me in my now-nine months of being out of work. So when the Subaru dealer informed me yesterday I was paying $618 for car repairs, that was again a reminder that my days of working out of my home cannot last much longer.

Veeka is doing better in her new school and is gaining some serious weight, making it much harder for me to lift her. She's become a desert-aholic like me; a meal is not complete unless there's something sweet at the end. We were at a friend's home for dinner tonight and sure enough, she was whispering to me afterwards whether I could quietly sneak her my last piece of candy in my purse.

Redeemer part 3

2011-03-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

These lovely beings to my left are the Redeemer dancers who never stopped moving during the closing service. I am not sure how many folks in the congregation (which overflowed into the balcony) realized the stunning amount of work those dancers put into performing one dance after another during the whole 2-hour-45-minute length of the service. Here they are dancing "Glory Be to Jesus" and using the choreography, I am happy to say, that I created for that dance 20-some years ago.

I wish I could say the diocese sent one of its bishops to be at the closing ceremony but no, they sent Ann Normand, a canon priest who was nice enough and who tried not to get in the way of what was going on but considering Redeemer's historical place in the city, the diocese could have freed up someone of much higher rank. But she was also there to do the "deconsecration ceremony" soon after we all filed out of the church after the recessional. That, for those of you who don't know it, effectively un-sanctifies the church in terms of allowing Communion - or any other sacrament - to be celebrated there. Deconsecration today, changing the locks tomorrow, wrecking ball to come - yep, we can see where this is going.

Anyway, they really put on the dog for the closing service. The 2 front rows were taken up by members of the Tellepsen family (their grandfather Torjus is who built the place in 1932) and I was amazed by how many people came in using walkers! Hmmm. George Mims and Max Dyer did a lovely prelude improvising on cello and organ variations of songs such as "Psalm 27" and "Alleluyahweh" (or however it's spelled) before the processional, at which point everyone sang "Jesus is Our King" in parts. Only Redeemer has a congregation that can do this. Banners were waving everywhere with yeoman work being done by the choir and small orchestra.

A bunch of congregants joined in the next dance, "God Make Us Your Family" as well as many of my friends (I stayed put) and I felt I was transported into the future, watching some heavenly procession of all the people I knew dancing away. The sermon, by Redeemer's youth minister, Mark Ball, was quite good. I wrote down this quote: "Everything we love about Redeemer will be kept safe. It is at the end of a a thing that we see clearly that all the good was from God and all the ill was from men."

Eventually came the "prayers of the people" in which the intercessions went on and ON. Leading these prayers was (I think) the senior warden (he never introduced himself) and at one point the prayers segued into naming the Redeemerites who had died which was quite moving. People were crying as they prayed. After all, we were at a funeral; the funeral of a church. One person did mention Graham Pulkingham's name during this time for which I was glad; Graham had not even been mentioned this whole weekend, which I felt was a bit bizarre considering none of us would have been here were it not for what happened to Graham in 1964 and the resulting events that catapulted Redeemer on national and international stages.

Then Tom Tellepsen II, grandson of Torjus, made a few remarks, saying the land for the church was bought in 1919, a church was started in 1920 (and added to later) and he pointed out people in the congregation who were descendants of the original people for whom the parish hall and downstairs chapel had been named. He also pointed out June Tellepsen, 95, the daughter-in-law of Torjus and Ingeborg and wife of Howard (who I think I interviewed in 1990. He has since died).

Tom's closing prayer: "May God continue to look over you, invigorate you and shine his light on a church opening a new frontier in its journey of faith. It is time. Amen."

For Communion, waves and waves of people walked down the aisle, many whom I'd not seen in decades. Again, there was this feeling that we were all in some heavenly procession and this was a dim foretaste of when the roll is called up yonder. Paul Felton showed up to assist at the altar and it was so good to see a familiar clergy face up there.

Well, I loved being there. Mark and Elise Ashey (and son Sam) showed up - all of whom I'd not seen in ages, so we all went outside for the Last Redeemer Church Photo and then ate lunch together at a giant potluck in the parish hall. There were some bittersweet moments; a number of people at this gathering couldn't stand my book and either refused to talk to me or turned away when I approached them or looked past me. But there were others who came up and thanked me for writing it. Some had just ordered it (being quoted in the Houston Chronicle 2 days before had helped) like one woman who came up to say, "I was one of the women in the book who was raped!" Wasn't sure how to respond there but she was grateful, in fact, that that part of Redeemer history (about how dangerous the neighborhood was) had not been forgotten. Others came up to buy a copy.

But all too soon the dream ended and off to the airport I went. My plane was delayed 2 hours; we didn't even land til close to 1:30 a.m. and then (for fear of lightning) Dulles airport made our plane sit and sit on the tarmac. I didn't get home til nearly 4 a.m. I know the church is more than the building but it's the saddest feeling to know that in future trips to Houston, I won't be able to enter that church and wander down its hallways and about the sanctuary nor sit there in the dim evening light gazing at that wonderful mural. I've never attended another church like it; in fact I never officially transferred my membership out of there so a piece of me is gone and that's so very sad.

Redeemer part 2

2011-02-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

So much happened this past weekend, that I am splitting it into 3 parts. Saturday morning, I was off to see Karin, an old roommate who's relocated to far northwest Houston. I got back to the church in time for the closing moments of a "walk through" where people visited the Church of the Redeemer and went through the rooms, remembering the things that had happened in each one and giving thanks. Like the choir room, which was also where we on the dance team used to practice. That sure brought back memories. Here is the segment KHOU-TV ran on the closing.

Todd Woodruff - an old friend - and I were wandering about the church and he showed me an area underneath the front part of the nave that I'd never seen before. Then we segued toward the back of the basement where we ran into the old downstairs chapel, now stripped of its pews. A guitarist was in the chapel playing worship music and a few people were standing there singing. Todd and I stood by the door and the music drew us all in as we sang harmonies for 20-25 minutes; just lost in space and time, as it were. So many spiritual breakthroughs happened in that chapel over the decades and it was sad to see only some flowers on the altar left.

That evening there were a few of the old community houses open for people to visit and see where some of the households used to be. I'd planned to visit several but I only got to two: the Broussards and Maria Devlin's new place which used to be inhabited by the Schiffmayers and then the Wilsons. Maria had done an unbelievable job of remodeling this home on McKinney at Fashion in dark-stained cedar woodwork and I'm guessing she easily added $100K to its value by doing so.

As I walked about talking with folks, I picked up quite a bit of bewilderment and anger among people as to how the local Episcopal diocese had pulled a fast one on Redeemer by deciding to shut down the place. The surface reasons were somewhat believable: the congregation was down to about 70 persons; they could not afford a priest much less afford several million dollars to repair the wiring, broken AC and so on. But to literally demolish the church just because no one could lay their hands on $10K or so? Hadn't Christ Church Cathedral downtown cost far more 20 years ago to upgrade?

What came out in conversations was that the church was in a marginal, quasi-industrial area that the diocese didn't want to sink any more money or staff into. Redeemer was seen as a liability and a money drain. Clergy had come and gone in recent years and more and more of the congregation had drifted off. It didn't help that Redeemer was charismatic; a spirituality no one in diocesan leadership identified with nor cared to nurture.

I was told that last fall, Redeemer had approached the diocese about getting help to repair the facility to the point where members could meet in one of the classrooms, as they could not afford the AC - which is broken - for the giant nave. (There was a huge fan this weekend blowing air into the nave. Fortunately it was February, not July, else everyone would have perished from the heat). The congregation never dreamed the diocese would order a feasibility study, then decide to bring the wrecking ball in.

People wondered if the sad condition of the physical plant had provided an excuse for the diocese to do what it had wanted to do for age: raze the place and send the congregation packing to guest quarters where it will be a superhuman feat to retain members. There was talk of how or whether the Tellepsens - the Norwegian family of builders whose grandfather built the church in 1932 - had offered to foot some of the repair bill had the diocese agreed to save the church. There are rumors to that effect but I was not able to linger in Houston long enough to look into them. (I will say members of the Tellepsen family bought 3 of my books so maybe I'll be hearing from them).

One person I talked with kept asking if anyone had presented to the bishop a case for keeping the church and organizing a capital campaign. Redeemer has a large enough diaspora that surely people would have contributed. Did anyone ask Bishop Andy Doyle what he intends to do with Redeemer's property once the land is cleared? The thought is that sooner or later the diocese will sell the land if the East End ever looks like it might revive but there's no possibility the diocese will ever allow another church to be built there.

Was the diocese actively working against Redeemer, slowly doing things here and there over the years to undermine the place? One priest I talked with thought so and gave me two major examples as to how that was done. It seems like the leaders of Redeemer, who were severely weakened by not having a rector to fight for them, just weren't able to fight off the seemingly inexorable conclusions of the feasibility study which concluded that the church was too dangerous to operate in. In fact, the diocese had built two porch-like coverings for 2 of the church entrances, supposedly to protect parishioners from falling concrete. Lots of jokes were made about those structures over the weekend, in that everyone knew the vision of chunks of concrete falling through the air was a farce. The place looked incredibly sturdy to those of us who spent the weekend there, yet the diocese acted as though it were condemned property. The very locks were supposed to be changed today even though the vast majority of the congregation's belongings are still sitting inside.

And so, did the diocese finally find a hole in Redeemer's shield and drive a truck through it? Or was closing the church a severe mercy for a congregation that for years had existed in a time warp dating back 30-40 years and could not draw even 100 people while at the same time the Catholic Charismatic Center one mile away brings in large crowds every week?

What was most haunting were the people who still lived in the Houston area who showed up for services this past weekend. Many still lived close enough to Eastwood but had long since gone to other churches. Had this large group stuck around, Redeemer would be chock full of leaders and far from being closed down. During my era there, however, the visionaries and the prophetic types - whose presence is vital to keeping a church healthy - were largely run off by a ruling junta at Redeemer that I too found nearly impossible to crack. From the mid-80s to the mid-90s, there were layers of gifted people drawn to Redeemer. So many were stymied and ended up drifting off while the leadership did nothing.

And 20 years later, there we were, closing the church.

Redeemer part 1

2011-02-26T08:32:00.000-08:00

Was up at 2:45 a.m. to catch a flight to Houston - no problem getting there but then a late breakfast with Stevie Sawyer was a comedy of errors as we kept on missing each other at whatever Denny's we were supposed to meet at on I-45. Then my cell phone was buzzing with emails about the possible resignation (which turned out not to be true) of Metropolitan Jonah, someone I had JUST finished doing a huge profile on for the Washington Post Sunday magazine. So here I was having deep conversations with Stevie while trying to follow breaking news.
After that ran by one of the only classical Catholic schools in the country - cool place in Sugarland just SW of Houston - was gathering info for yet another WaPo Sunday mag piece. Then found out that I was quoted in a Houston Chronicle article that came out Friday about Redeemer's closing. Dropped off my things at the Hornbostels and caught up with Margaret - old friend and former community buddy - then off to potluck at the church where I met lots of old legends wandering the hallways such as Bob Eckert and of course Jerry and Alison Barker - those 2 men being 2 of the original 5 elders.
A cool worship service followed - the highlight being Wiley Beveridge (that wonderful voice is as golden as ever) playing "A Larger Place" on the piano while Max Dyer did cello. You could just see the faces of all the people going back 40 years to another era when all was young and fresh and hopeful. People slowly stood and lifted their hands and worshipped as we melted into one chorus after another. Max called the crowd "a river of people who've come through this place" and then Wiley did "Great and Wonderful" as an encore. Then the 8-fold Alleluia as many of wondered HOW could the diocese be tearing this building down? Sure the congregation can meet elsewhere but buildings have meaning. Worship is different in a cathedral than in a box. The new place they are going to won't have the expansive aisles, soaring mural of Jesus - the majestic interior that can't be copied. It feels like a bitter slap from the diocese which has slated - believe it or not - a deconsecration service Sunday right after the closing words of the main service. Great timing.
Near the end, we all sang "Jesus, How Lovely You Are," that old 70s chestnut, in parts. We had such better music back then. All is bitter-sweet; Jerry Barker is 86 now and he has decided not to do kidney dialysis which, barring a miracle, means his days are quite numbered. "I've had a good run," he told me. "I have no regrets." Would that we could all end like that.

Going to Houston

2011-02-23T18:43:00.000-08:00

See this photo of me (kind of blurry in a black sweater) speaking in front of an enormous mural of Jesus and His modern-day apostles? That was at Church of the Redeemer in Houston where I spoke a year ago about my "Days of Fire and Glory" book. Well...this Sunday the 27th, hundreds of people will pour into Redeemer for what will be the last service in that 90-something-year-old church.

Funds have been sparse at Redeemer for a long time and when their rector left last fall, there was not the funds to replace her. The church was costing tons in utility bills. The congregation when I visited was about 60 people. Then the diocese did some sort of study of the physical plant and concluded that it was no longer safe to occupy. Below is an explanation I am cutting and pasting from a letter from the senior warden:

The need to vacate the building comes from the fact that the building is no longer safe to occupy. According to Tellepsen Construction and Studio Red Architects, the existing condition of the electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems, the chunks of concrete separating and falling from our buildings (“spalling”), the lack of a fire alarm system, and the inadequacy of emergency exit signs and lights is more than enough to revoke our Certificate of Occupancy, if the Fire Marshall inspected the buildings. The cost of addressing just these issues would be $5 – 7 million. Neither our congregation nor our Diocese can afford that; and even if all those things were repaired, our congregation can no longer afford to maintain the building. Nevertheless, the Bishop told us that “the temptation you must resist is to say that it’s all over now.” It’s not all over now, unless we choose that, and we have the freedom to choose otherwise.

I've heard of churches being closed but....being demolished?? This is enormous news for a church that was considered architecturally quite radical when it was built. Why? Because it had no windows when it was built around the time of the Depression (I believe there was an earlier church in that spot before the present one was built but I gave away all my newspaper clips about this back to the folks at Redeemer so can't check the exact facts). The windowless part was to conserve on air-conditioning (which was a much newer invention back then) and to draw attention to the stunning mural of the Ascension painted by John Orth. That's the mural that everyone hopes to save when the demo crews arrive.

And so the congregation (and it's not a large one) is having this huge good-bye party this weekend for the diaspora (all the folks who passed through Redeemer in the past 50-some years) to visit and say good-bye. I got a call this afternoon from a Houston Chronicle reporter who wanted to interview me and she told me 400 guests were expected. That's just the ones who've RSVP'ed, I assume, so who knows how many will really show. There are events Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I have been wondering for 2 weeks whether to fly down or not. Being unemployed for nearly 9 months kind of puts a crimp in one's ability to travel about. Fortunately I had enough frequent flier miles for a direct flight on United; sitters for the kitties and for Veeka were free this weekend so I figured the doors were open. And it appears I made the right choice. An added bonus: while there's snow on the ground here, it is in the mid-70s down there.

The photo, by the way, was taken by Eric Sawyer.

The ides of February

2011-02-16T18:34:00.000-08:00

I wanted to include a photo of the lovely pink blooms on my epiphyllum orchid cactus - actually it's Veeka's that I gave her as a birthday present 2 Aprils ago. The idea is that it'd always bloom on or near her birthday; well, the blooms are coming out NOW during the ides of February. Winter is not my favorite time as all sorts of nasty things happen, such as the awful cold-flu-whatever combo I came down with Jan. 31 after visiting the health club. I think I picked it up there. It lasted two weeks and then Veeka got sick in the middle of it so both of us were down. Meanwhile, other crises (most of which I am not going to go into) were erupting and it was beyond difficult trying to deal with life-as-hell outside the home while feeling like Godzilla. I'm still on antibiotics trying to get well.

One of many difficulties was Veeka was not doing well at her new school so I had to pull her out at the end of January and send her back to her old school. She's happy there and doing much better but it was traumatic (at least for me) to go through all the parent-teacher conferences that went into my decision. Also in January, I decided I needed to learn how to build a web site so I signed up for a class at the local community college. It took many, many hours of sitting in lines to register, talk to a counselor, etc., and then when I started reading the syllabus online, I quickly learned the class was structured only for PCs, not Macs. I could not believe a computer class at a college would have such a gap but it did (there were no warnings posted on any of the registration materials) so I withdrew. So many hours wasted there.

Writing for the WaPo blog went well but ate up way many more hours than I had budgeted. Meanwhile, several freelance assignments (including one for an Icelandic magazine) came in so it was a war trying to find the time to write. And then I got sick. Sigh.

Because of these and other things, I've been driven to seeking the Guy Upstairs for help and one day I noticed Veeka (see photo) spreading out a blanket on the floor and gathering a notebook and pencils and various books beside her. What was she doing, I asked. Well, she answered, she wanted to pray like Mommy. Well...guess there are a lot worse things the kid could imitate.

February blues

2011-02-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

We're both home sick today; Veeka with a sore throat that doesn't go away (she was tested for strep Friday but it came out negative) and me with a cold that has dragged on nearly a week. I had slated a quickie out-of-town trip to Pittsburgh for some R&R but had to cancel Friday morning when Veeka sounded especially awful. And so the steam machine in puffing away in her room.

I have four (!) collections of cold sores on my lips so I am not venturing out in public much. Am guessing I picked this little gem up at the health club because I was fine when I went in last Monday morning but by Monday night I was feeling awful. I washed my hands after touching various surfaces there but something must have latched onto me.

Things are about the same here. Have had this Post gig four weeks now and the site seems to be getting a decent amount of hits. As for the rest of the month, January was (for reasons I won't go into here) a month of false starts, cancellations and start-overs on several fronts. And the weather was awful. But at least I was not stuck on the Beltway (as was my brother Rob) during the Mother of All Traffic Jams on Jan. 26.

I did get a camera for Christmas but am still trying to figure out how to use it so until then, here's a stock photo of Miss Veeka singing in the rain.

Time marcheth on

2011-01-24T18:52:00.000-08:00

Two weeks into my entry into blogdom at the Washington Post, and things are going pretty well. Am getting more web page hits from what looks like a more and more diverse group; got a load of comment here today from Seventh-day Adventists over why their worldwide network of 170 hospitals allow abortions while at the same time they present themselves as evangelical Protestants.

I spent today on the Mall during the annual March for Life following some Orthodox bishops around for my Metropolitan Jonah piece. The weather was frigid and I wanted to deck some of the Knights of Columbus guards who were manning the barricades in back of the speaker's platform. They were nasty last year about allowing media into the speakers area (which is where I needed to be to do interviews) and they were just as nasty this year, sending me to a non-existent press tent after barring my way. I finally managed to talk my way through at another gate but covering this march is not for the faint-hearted. Last year, I called and called the phone number I had for the march organizers asking for press credentials. What a joke; there wasn't any such thing and no one even returned my calls. Certain groups could get a lot further with the media if basic courtesies were followed.

Posted here is a video of Dancing Veeka taken with my iPhone as I was showing my dad how it worked.

One week in

2011-01-18T04:50:00.000-08:00

So far, so good, in terms of producing blogs for the Post's On Faith forum. I've gotten more than 200 comments so far, most notably on entries about the Arizona shootings and Pope John Paul II getting beatified May 1. Am learning what produces lots of hits and what doesn't. For those of you wanting to bookmark my posts, the best URL I've found so far is: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/. For instance, here is where you'll see my Ted Haggard post. Was up late doing that one.

I also want to thank a number of people who've stood with me for the past seven months; who checked in with me from time to time to see how I was doing and who didn't drop me once I was laid off. Mike McManus, Linda Perry, Harold Johnson, Nancy and Rick Pearcey, David Virtue, Doug LeBlanc, Terry Mattingly, Cal Thomas, Mark Kellner, Kathy Thompson, Jason Method, John Phillips, Tony Carnes, Gail Dall, the Kuhner/Vuoto clan and Chris Currie are some of the folks who stand out. The Pearceys, by the way, are leaving the DC area after more than 20 years to teach in Minneapolis. Their press release is here. I'll miss them.

The photo is of Veeka and me at the National Cathedral the day after Christmas.

My debut as a WPost blogger

2011-01-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy to finally announce something I've been sitting on for many weeks; that on Monday (Jan. 10), I began blogging for The Washington Post's On Faith page. Specifically I post daily entries on the "Under God" blog. This is the nice intro with my photo and a short description of my writing career and this was my first blog - on why the newest Narnia movie is doing so badly at the box office.

Every week day I'm supposed to post something that reflects a religion story in the daily news flow or do some additional reporting on a certain topic. This is a very part-time job; hopefully I'll get so many page views that the Powers That Be at the Post want me to work more hours a week. I was gratified that the founder of the On Faith site, Sally Quinn, sought me out in late October to contribute in some way to the blog and that finally it's happening less than three months later.

I also wanted to post a photo of me standing in a local Orthodox cathedral talking with Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America. Yuri Gripas, the photographer I am working with, shot it. I am working on a magazine story about Jonah and it's been so much fun going out on interviews. I was at his church on Thursday, wrapped in clouds of incense set to Slavonic chant, and I dragged Veeka there on Sunday. She really liked all the icons and priests walking about in long, gold brocade robes. She liked it even better than the Smithsonian exhibit I dragged her to a few hours later. This child often talks about how she loves Jesus and church; again I am blessed.

So, seven months after being laid off, I am somewhat back in the saddle; not full-time as I hope to be but at least working in my specialty. This cuts the final tie to The Washington Times which is said to be hiring back a lot of people it laid off. But not me - I am happy to have moved upward and onward.

Out with the old...

2010-12-31T19:04:00.000-08:00

I can't say I'll miss 2010 for many reasons, some of which I can post in this blog and others I can't. But being unemployed seven months and counting has meant a dent in the finances and has put the kabosh on any traveling. Which is why it was so nice for Oma and Opa to fly *here* and experience their first East Coast Christmas in more than 30 years. A huge snow storm dumped snow all around us but it completely skipped us in the DC area which delighted us to no end, being that shoveling snow gets very old very fast.
So....for Christmas Eve, we repaired to St. Andrew's in College Park, which had a no-rehearsal kiddie pageant in which Veeka dressed as an angel. I remembered that I was exactly her age (5 1/2) when I too dressed as an angel at St. John's, an Episcopal church in Bethesda that we were attending back in 1961. How odd that nearly 50 years later about 20 miles away my own little girl would be dressed as an angel on Christmas Eve. As shown here, Veeka had to wait in a pew, her halo a tad askew, with some other little angels, before they trooped up to admire the baby Jesus.
On Christmas Day, Uncle Rob showed up (see family photo) for the morning as Veeka opened the lion's share of all the gifts. A kind friend of mine sent a large box of gifts for her as I was not in a position to spend much at all. So Veeka splurged on puzzles, videos and other goodies. I'd hoped to take the family for a walk but it was so cold that day, we didn't leave the house. We did get to the Washington cathedral the next day and then out to lunch with Rob and his new fiance. Yes, you read that right; he and Jan announced their engagement Christmas Day. This was the first time I'd met Jan; ditto for my parents. We're all hoping 2011 will be a much better year for us all.

Oma & Opa arrive

2010-12-23T10:32:00.000-08:00

This is a photo of Veeka playing in the snow we got last week. Fortunately most of it had melted away by the time Oma and Opa flew in yesterday on Alaska Airlines. In fact the weather here is very breezy but quite sunny; probably a relief to pilots everywhere.

Wish I could say there was more news on the job front but a decision on one of the positions I was counting on has been delayed until next month. The last weeks of December are useless in this regard; simply no one is in the office anywhere to take calls. Which is fine for now; it's nice to just hibernate away for now. Veeka is thrilled at having so many people around the house to talk with and last night Opa helped me install a new router, albeit with a bit of guidance from Verizon operators. Now if he can help me get my fireplace to work...

Here is one more Economist blog that I wrote on Nancy Pearcey's new book "Saving Leonardo" which has gotten very little notice in the evangelical press. Nancy's the closest heir to Francis Schaeffer there is right now. The sexism in the major evangelical publications continues to amaze and confound me, as this book would have gotten major billing had the author been a man.

The stack of Christmas gifts (90% for Veeka) continues to pile up in the hallway. I'm very indebted to Joey Marguerite, a friend from Seattle, who sent me a large box of things for Veeka, as she knew I'm basically not doing gifts this Christmas. Being 6 1/2 months out of work takes a toll.

For those of you anticipating Christmas cards, those will be a tad delayed as well but hopefully they will be out before Lent!

Avoiding St. Nicholas

2010-12-09T21:52:00.000-08:00

Finally some of my articles are finally seeing the light of day - the latest being this piece coming out in Sunday's Washington Post magazine. The story is about all the folks who took the Huffington Post buses down to the Stewart/Colbert "sanity rally" on Oct. 30 and ended up getting there so late, they missed most of it.

A week ago, this piece came out in the Economist along with a nice photo.

On the home front, the other photo shows my reluctant child at a St. Nicholas Day brunch. She was clearly overwhelmed by this huge person in a miter and red suit and beard and refused to sit on his lap or either look at him. When I snapped this, she was about to let out a protesting screech. So much for all the money I shelled out for that event. Actually it was a cheapy brunch; it was in a local historic mansion but we got food on paper plates; the waffles were from some store-bought package and the goody bags the kids got were minimal. A day later I took her to an exhibit of cool gingerbread houses which she liked a lot better.

Things are finally percolating on the job front. Can't reveal what's up but there's some movement after all these long months. In fact today I was presented with two opportunities; the latter which showed up in my in-box later this afternoon. I spent part of my day exploring the other of these opportunities plus giving a lecture on the history of the Episcopal charismatic renewal to a class at Virginia Theological Seminary. Fortunately I'd kept a lot of old magazines, photos and conference brochures from the 1970s, ie the first Anglican charismatic event in 1978 in Canterbury, England. I passed a lot of stuff around the class show-and-tell style. One person who came to listen was Mark Dyer, the former Episcopal bishop of Bethlehem, Pa., with whom I compared notes about why so many of the communities went off the theological tracks.

Giving thanks

2010-11-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

We spent Thanksgiving this week at the home of Canadian friends who were trying their hand at their first American Thanksgiving meal ever. The cooking was superb and I loved simply driving there and relaxing and not having to cook myself. Quelle relief.
Every Thanksgiving morning I take out a certain blue notebook that I only write in one day a year. It's an informal Thanksgiving diary where I note all that went on the past year and what happened to give thanks for. Like, not getting laid off last December when 110 other Washington Times staffers were getting the boot. The five-month reprieve I got was vital in that I got a three-part series into the paper (in April) that I'm hoping will be a contest winner.
This is not the first time I've lost a job over the years and each time the switch has ultimately proved to my benefit which is how I hope this experience will work out. This time is the first time, however, that massive amounts of people have also been without work alongside me, plus I am quite a bit older than I was last time I jobhunted. Which is not helpful in today's job climate.
Pictured here is a photo of Veeka and I at Sun Mountain Lodge, a gorgeous resort in Winthrop, Wash. Which was one of our nicer experiences of 2010.

Requiem for St. Luke's

2010-11-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

In the last day or so, news has come out that the venerable St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Seattle is splitting and that 3/4 of the parish is leaving to form a new congregation that will join up with CANA, one of the new Anglican jurisdictions hoping to supplant the US Episcopal Church. I knew of this six weeks ago when I spoke at St. Luke's one Sunday morning, then had lunch with the rector and his wife: John and Holly Roddam, at a local Thai restaurant.

It was a most enlightening repast for we compared notes about all sorts of things. I found it really odd that when I was in high school in the early 70s, St. Luke's was packed with people. John said 700 were members back then; nearly a megachurch by Episcopal standards. When I showed up there Oct. 3, there were less than 50 people there. It was a sad contrast to Mars Hill, a church barely a mile away, which has multiple branches and last I heard was at about 7,000 people. It's probably larger than that now. But 30 years ago, St. Luke's was packing them in.

St. Lukes, for those of you who do not know it, was one of three major charismatic Episcopal parishes in the country. The other two were Redeemer in Houston and St. Paul's Darien in Connecticut. I've been at 2 of the 3 churches this year. Redeemer had barely 60 people at a Sunday morning service and their rector left at the end of the summer. The parish is barely able to pay its bills much less afford a new priest. In fact, St. Luke's will revert to mission status to serve the handful of people left there. John told me he guesses the financially strapped Diocese of Olympia will soon sell it. The real estate in downtown Ballard is just worth too much money.

I have not visited St. Paul's, but a friend who knows the place well says it too has reverted to barely-making-it status although at least it -unlike the other 2 churches - at least has a rector. I can't help but wonder if there is a sign in all this; that 3 of the liveliest parishes in the denomination have been or are being snuffed out.

Not much personal news; jobhunting has been fruitless and I just finished doing the WPost magazine article after the deadline was moved up one month. Am including a photo of Veeka at her new gym class. My little Olga Korbut just loves to flip about.

Covering the HuffPost bus tour

2010-11-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

"A half moon is shining over a crowd of 20-somethings, clumped together like so many penguins in a futile effort to avoid the chilly wind. Clad in all manner of Halloween costumes, hoodies, jeans and woolen scarves and clasping signs, they stand in a long line at the vast parking lot surrounding Citi Field, home of the New York Mets just south of LaGuardia Airport in Queens. But nothing is too big a sacrifice for the cause: in this case a massive meeting 209 miles away on the Mall in Washington with the odd title of “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” starring Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, most known for their late-night antics on “The Daily Show.”

To add to the drama, internet diva Arianna Huffington had announced Sept. 28 on The Daily Show she personally would fund “as many buses as people to fill them” from New York to help fans get to the Oct. 30 rally. After well over 10,000 people enlisted, her web site, Huffingtonpost.com, closed registrations Oct. 24. And so here we are, about 10,000 strong in pre-dawn 42-degree weather. ....

That is the beginning of a Washington Post Sunday magazine piece I am writing about one of the weirder adventures I've had recently. The night of Oct. 27, one of the editors messaged me via Facebook, asking if I'd care to take an unusual assignment. They'd had a liberal journalist follow some Tea Partiers around at the August Glenn Beck rally. The Post was looking for a conservative journalist (me!) to follow tons of left-of-center folks as they boarded one of 200 free buses - courtesy of Huffington Post - at the crack of dawn in Queens. The only problem is I had to be up in New York Friday night to do this thing.

Now I was spending all day Friday in Baltimore as a panelist at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion pushing the "Fire and Glory" book. Plus there was the small detail of who'd take care of Veeka. But on Thursday I decided to take the assignment after I found friends willing to watch her (bless you!) until I could get back home late Saturday afternoon. And thus began the strangest adventure beginning with my catching a train to New York from Baltimore, then taking another train to Queens and staying in the same hotel I did when covering the 2005 Billy Graham crusade.

The next morning, I was up at 4 and within an hour, I was in Citi Field interviewing tons of shivering people who were waiting for these free buses to Washington. It was 42 degrees, I later learned and my hands were so cold, I could barely write. A nice photographer called Robert Woudenberg took this photo of me interviewing some college students who were dressed up as - and spoofing - the Chilean miners. It's about 5:15 a.m. at this point. I ended up on the same bus as the "miners" and when we pulled into RFK Stadium around noon, a Post photographer was there to meet us. Together we followed the "miners" about this huge rally which we saw almost nothing of. The organizers didn't know that actual attendance would be quadruple their projections; there were far too few jumbotrons and the speaker system was totally inadequate. All those wonderful HuffPost buses ended up bringing some 10,000 New Yorkers there hours too late. All the good seats were taken hours before.

But the signs! So many people were hoisting about the most clever signs and the weather was gorgeous. I was being paid for being there but I felt sorry for the poor folks - some who'd flown in from California - who were crowded out of the rally. As a local resident for almost 15 years now, I've learned one does not attend rallies on the Mall because of the sheer misery of getting there and standing there so chances are I would have never been there on my own. So it was a real kick to see this close up.

When does the article run? Either December or January, so stay tuned.

The joys of the Methow

2010-10-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

Wanted to say the last part of my sweep through Washington state involved a 3-day visit to the Methow valley, a fertile green finger of land sandwiched between the dry hills of Washington's arid center. We got there over the North Cascades Highway and the middle photo is of Veeka shivering at the Diablo Lake overlook. Mountain lakes are emerald green in that part of the world just south of the Mt. Baker wilderness.
We swept through Washington Pass and ended up in Winthrop, a small town in the eastern foothills of the North Cascades where my friends Dick and Pam Ewing have lived for 25 years. They moved there in the mid-1980s and built a gorgeous log home there which Veeka and I adored running about in, especially the new and gorgeous spiral staircase connected the 2nd and 3rd floors. We spent the first day driving up through a pine forest to Sun Mountain Lodge, the local posh resort, which is surrounded by all manner of paths that turn into cross-country trails in the winter. We wandered down one ringed by aspens (see photo of Veeka and Dick) to a beaver pond although we unfortunately did not spot a beaver. Veeka hiked nearly 3 miles that day, a record for her.
The next day, we repaired to Rainy Lake, a hike up in the Cascades to another gorgeous mountain lake and through typical moist Northwesty forests complete with tons of firs, pines, mushrooms, ferns and other opulent flora. Back at the house, Veeka loved running around the property and petting the kitties and exploring the two large gardens that Pam kept up.
It was a lovely reprieve for all too soon we were back in the Washington area, facing an October of no job possibilities and a complete dry-up of even freelance work. Turns out I'd slated some work to be done on my bathroom (it's a wreck) so I've been more than busy running back and forth to Home Depot for supplies. And then this past weekend, a church kindly helped Veeka and I attend - for free - a gathering at the lovely diocesan retreat center of Shrinemont in the foothills west of the Shenendoah Valley. The fall weather could not have been more perfect - and we visited wineries (a national sport in Virginia) on the way home, only to run into a 9-mile backup on I-81 going home and a Beltway with the nastiest traffic. And then someone thoughtlessly rearended me as I was exiting said Beltway.
So this morning was spent with a chiropractor. Back to earth, we are.

My little flower girl

2010-10-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

There are times when Veeka can surpass all expectations and yesterday was one of them. Dressed in a deep purple flouncy dress with black shoes, she was absolutely perfect as she marched up the aisle with her purple flowers and stood by her older cousin Lindsay as Carley and Jed said their vows. ALL the other flower girls - and ringbearer - wandered off during the ceremony but Veeka was the only one who stood there in place during the sermon, vows, songs, you-name-it. She loved being up front, wearing lavender eyeshadow and lipstick and being a little star. She thought that seeing Uncle Rob in a tux - attire one must have when giving one's daughter away - was pretty cool.
Unfortunately the sun hardly broke through the clouds the entire day, making it a cloudy Saturday but that didn't dampen peoples' spirits as we all gathered in North Bend for the church ceremony, then drove nearly an hour away for a reception in a farmhouse that gave new meaning to the word "isolated." We were deep in the woods east of Duvall in territory even my parents had never driven about.
Am including some photos here of Miss Veeka in her finery, Carley and Jed saying their vows and the happy couple holding my little darling.
It's been a fun few days in Seattle where I've either been at a wedding shower, rehearsal or the event itself. Today (Sunday), I spoke at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on my newest book and tomorrow Veeka and I head to the Methow Valley for a few days. Veeka is enjoying her time with Oma and Opa and all the other relatives.

Aspens

2010-09-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

It really was a foretaste of heaven; driving south on Highway 67 from Divide, Colo., toward the tiny town of Victor, the highway became like a golden tunnel, full of the famous "quaking aspens" that high-altitudes in this state are known for. I had to drive to 9,600 feet to see them and it was delightful jumping out of the car and clinging onto those birch-like trees whose leaves rustle in the mountain breeze like nothing else I've ever heard.

Seeing the aspens was one of my goals for the two full days we've spent in Colorado Springs. I first tried ascending to the heights via Gold Camp Road, a very old route through the mountains that takes you through canyons with dizzying drop-offs with no guard rails. I made it up the first few miles of this road - in sheer terror in my rental car - before finding out that the rest of the bottom half of this road had been closed for years due to a cave-in; somehow this vital point was not included in my tourist literature. So we returned to the Springs and drove up the much wider Highway 24 to Woodland Park, then headed over to Divide and then south.

Just north of Victor, I discovered the western half of Gold Camp Road and drove down it a half-mile and the beauty of that route through a high mountain valley cannot be described. Again - didn't want to get caught somewhere with a flat tire and no cell phone service so drove back toward civilization which - in the case of the nearby gold mining town of Cripple Creek - has meant being given over to casinos. Veeka napped part of this time as I hopped in and out of the car snapping photos of the aspens. The weather could not have been warmer and brighter which was a real gift considering how cold it can be at those altitudes.

On the way back, had a strange experience visiting the site of what was once the Colorado branch of the Community of Celebration which I wrote about in my "Fire and Glory" book. I was last there 30 years ago in 1980 - in late September in fact - attending a conference on Christian communities that was at an old Episcopal church camp that the Celebration folks fixed up. The site has since been sold to a company that rents out cabins there; the same cabins I'm guessing that were built or refurbished several decades ago. It was the oddest thing walking about on that property, feeling the ghosts there. The only thing left that hinted that a religious community had been there was St. Martin's Chapel, pictured here, a quaint wood structure way back then but now in much disrepair with junk piled high inside of it. Let's hope it's been deconsecrated. So many trees have grown on that acreage that it no longer has the fabulous views of Pike's Peak that I remembered from back then as a 24-year-old who drove 3 days from Oregon to get there.

Today, Veeka and I visited Garden of the Gods, a fabulous park of bizarre red rock formations with cool trails everywhere. Veeka saw one man rappelling down one of the sheer faces and she was fascinated as to why someone would do such a thing. Her little world has been much broadened in the past few days with all the things she's seen, such as the big-horned sheep that casually walk about where we're staying. That's at Glen Eyrie, a conference center and hotel owned by the Navigators that is in a canyon next door to Garden of the Gods. Veeka has been much taken by the lovely castle where we eat our daily breakfast. The grounds are fabulous and it's a site where Billy Graham almost relocated his ministry to before deciding to stay put in North Carolina. His loss, I think; what a place to base a ministry.

Veeka and I went on a hike this morning and in spite of all the wailing about being 'too tired' to make it to the top of a very short peak known as Dawson's Grave, she actually enjoyed it once she got on the trail. We also enjoy the magpies about the grounds and other cool wildlife not seen back east.

Off to Seattle on Wednesday for Carley's wedding. Also want to say the Economist ran my first blog post today here which was a triumph in that my first two attempts didn't fare as well. Small victories.

Three days in Denver

2010-09-26T22:15:00.001-07:00

So far, so good; gorgeous weather in the 80s and sunny. We spent 3 days at the Westin Tabor Center in Denver for the RNA conference where Miss Veeka got ahold of a notepad and practiced interviewing friendly people. She's been at 2 meetings of religion reporters - at least - and has become like a little mascot there. Everyone seems to love her - even people who I'm not sure like ME - and the Little One has a way of talking her way into peoples' hearts and onto their laps.
Today we headed south to Colorado Springs, stopping at a lovely home for lunch with friends near Monument, Colo., then continuing on to the Garden of the Gods area where we tried doing some late-afternoon hiking before heading north to Castle Rock for dinner with yet another friend. This state is so lovely; the highways so clean, the weather so perfect - I wonder if the locals know how good they have it. I understand they do have lots of snow but they also have skiing! Would move here in a minute if I could.
Today my father turned 86!

Off to Colorado

2010-09-22T18:39:00.000-07:00

Finally a long-awaited vacation in the Rockies followed by a trip to Seattle for Carley's wedding. We are stoked. I've been slaving away all summer sending out resumes and freelancing my heart out to try to make ends meet. In case anyone wonders whether freelancing pays the bills - it doesn't.

A few bright spots: last Saturday, I got invited to a media preview of a new movie, "Secretariat" about the Triple Crown winner, naturally. SUCH a good movie. I took a 13-year-old with me and there was nothing objectionable and lots in there about perseverance and hanging on during tough times and believing the best about the future. A really timely movie for these days when every other person I encounter is depressed about something. It opens Oct. 8 and go see it.

Anyway, will be in Denver for the Religion Newswriters convention, and am taking along the suit for a little jobhunting here and there. I then plan to do some R&R near some mountainous spot for a few days. Miss Veeka will be along so it'll be scenic but not restful. She doesn't do naps these days so I'm on duty all the time although when we get to Oma and Opa's place near Seattle, I hope to hand her over for some free babysitting!

The photo is of the little one outside the botanical gardens in downtown Washington. A friend was meeting with us and Veeka nabbed the scarf so she could practice looking soulful and wistful.

On the campaign trail

2010-09-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

When you work for newspapers, you're never allowed to engage in politicking, so it was with some trepidation I agreed to be a poll worker earlier this week. By that, I mean standing in front of one of the local polling places handing out literature in favor of a candidate.

That candidate was Tom Dernoga, described here, who was running for state's attorney. He was a conservative Democrat and I'm a Republican; nevertheless, a friend of mine who was doing local organizing for the campaign was desperate to get someone to do the 7-9 a.m. shift at the local middle school. I'd heard Mr. Dernoga speak and felt I could back him. Prince George's County is overwhelmingly Democrat and few Republicans even bother running for office there.

So I showed up, clad in a Dernoga T-shirt and looking like I'd just crawled out of bed. Which I had. A sympathetic neighbor took Veeka to school while I pounced on voters walking through the parking lot, asking them to consider my candidate. Many of them simply wanted to avoid me and the other folks who were passing out literature and so parked within the 100-foot perimeter where one is not allowed to approach people.

You could tell who the pros were at this business. I arrived right at 7 a.m., planted three yard signs by the entrance to the parking lot, then stood awkwardly while others lounged in camping chairs, leaping up only to accost the voters. One helpful woman, who was campaigning almost hopelessly on behalf of someone who was running for the local Democratic central committee, loaned me her chair. We talked about her trip to Israel.

Then someone who was working for immigrant rights showed up with a sample ballot with "my" candidate listed as one they endorsed. That was a relief as two other groups were passing out sample ballots listing other candidates. People would grab those, walk into the voting booth, then just vote the whole slate. Unfortunately Mr. Dernoga came in second to the winner, who, I was told, was backed by the local party machine that runs the county.

Other interesting news. My freelancing for the Economist (they've bought 2 articles) finally bore fruit today. I'd gotten an email last Friday asking if I could dash over to the debut convention of Ralph Reed's newest non-profit: The Faith and Freedom Coalition, and do 400 words on what transpired there. So I dashed downtown Saturday morning to the Mayflower Hotel after foisting Veeka off on Rob who fortunately was hanging out at the house that morning. Met Mr. Reed himself as soon as I walked into the ballroom. It wasn't hard to pick up quotes that morning and I was home by early afternoon. The article is here.

Scottish September

2010-09-09T18:06:00.001-07:00

Our summer would not have been complete without a visit to the Scottish Highland Games over Labor Day weekend. It was a visit to those games 14 years ago that resulted in me winning the I-wish-I-could-play-the-harp contest whereby I beat a dozen or so other contestants with my rave rendition of "Morning is Broken" (it was for people who'd never played the harp before) and with my victory got a free loaner harp for a year which started me to learning how to play this fascinating instrument. Sadly, I hardly play at all these days; a situation that must be rectified somehow. Veeka does not have the concentration to learn and I no longer have the reasons to play that I used to. Weekly lessons, concerts with other harpists and competitions kept me practicing like crazy each week for many years. The height of it all was attending an international harp convention in Edinburgh, Scotland in the spring of 2001.
Anyway, Veeka, her uncle Rob and her mommy went to this year's festival where the sunny, breezy weather was so beautiful, it hurt. The festivities were marred a bit by Veeka's habit of wandering off whereby I and Rob spent an anxious half hour searching for her. She had wandered into some kind of tower, the little minx. And then, after a friend gave her a Scottish frisbee, she promptly lost it.
The photo shows Veeka and her uncle sunning themselves in the back yard as temps are still in the 90s during the day. But the nights have cooled down quite a bit now and little pumpkins are starting to pop out in my garden.

Veeka starts kindergarten

2010-08-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

After much thought and agonizing, I decided to switch schools on Veeka, sending her to a place where she will learn a "classical" curriculum made famous by Dorothy Sayers' essay "The Lost Tools of Learning." The big new trend now is for kids to go to these classical schools where the focus is much more on memorization and reading classical texts and - for kindergarteners - learning the histories of ancient Egypt and Rome.

Veeka began going there today, happily sporting her new uniform which was a tough switch for me in that she's never had to wear uniforms before. But nearly all the schools in this county do. My little one's closet is overflowing with lovely outfits that she can now only wear on weekends. And so I've spent the past two weeks trying not to break the bank in buying her shorts, gym clothes and blouses in all the right colors.

The other switch is that this school is Catholic whereas she'd been attending an Episcopal preschool earlier - where she was quite happy and where I'd been planning to keep her for kindergarten. Then I found out that the local Catholic school was bringing in a classical curriculum; something I'd always wanted Veeka to enjoy. This particular school spent an entire year putting together a new curriculum and there's a lot riding on the hopes that it will work. Things look promising so far and people have been quite kind.
Will say there was some sticker shock involved in nearly $500 in registration, books and equipment fees that I was not aware of when I first approached the school. This was a serious hit to the pocketbook, being that as of Sept. 1 (tomorrow), it will have been three months since I was laid off. Only today was there a story on how the paper was sold back to Rev. Moon for $1 after one of his sons made a mash of managing it. Who knows whether all of us will be offered our jobs back or not; the lucky ones have moved on whereas the rest of us gallantly freelance for not much more than pennies! Things need to change soon on the job front or Veeka may end up leaving her lovely classical school and going to public kindergarten - a sad possibility I'm hoping to avoid.

Happily, she told me she enjoyed her new class, where she's outnumbered by little boys by at least 2-1.

Amish chairs

2010-08-26T19:44:00.000-07:00

Take a close look at these beautiful new light maple chairs in my kitchen because I spent much of the day driving to an Amish settlement about 50 miles away in St. Mary's County to pick these up. A few months ago, I was driving around on some back roads and saw a sign (one of many) advertising furniture making so I drove down a long driveway to a large shed where there were all manner of chairs in various woods and stages of manufacture. Out walked Raymond Yoder, an Amish carpenter right out of Central Casting who discussed with me what sorts of woods and chair styles I wanted. He gave me his business card but refused to take any money for a deposit. Amazing.
Three months later - the chairs were ready. He'd used some community phone to get ahold of me the week before and I sent him a letter back (no email with that group) telling him when I'd show up. And I did, with some friends in tow who wanted to see where the Amish lived. So they've perked up my dining room quite a bit. Now that I am unemployed, I'd think twice about such an expense but I put the order in just before I lost my job.
Still....various things are going on the fritz, such as my Olympus camera, which just bit the dust after 6 years. The camera shop was doubtful they could fix it for less than $200 and they said I could get a pretty decent Canon for less than that. And there are expenses such as Veeka's school, also a chunk. And don't get me started on the horrific expense that COBRA health payments are costing me.
Meanwhile, things are still pretty crazy at my old employer according to this piece as it seems that half of Washington is waiting for the paper to bite the dust. Which it refuses to do. Meanwhile I've moved on to hopefully better things. Am freelancing pieces like this (about Jewish singles) plus others that have not been posted yet, so I can't brag about them but let's just say I haven't sat around this summer.

At the communities conference

2010-08-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I had one of my more interesting encounters of the summer at the Twin Oaks Communities Conference which can be explored at this outdated link here. I'd visited Twin Oaks, which is northwest of Richmond in the middle of nowhere, central Virginia, 10 years ago to do an article so I was familiar with this group of 100 or so people living on 400+ acres. Every year they sponsor a communities conference which I thought might be the perfect place to interest folks in my new book.

Well....nice idea but the workshop I had on Sunday morning (on bringing the Spirit into community life) never had more than 10 people (some wandered in and out) listening at one time. I realized that all my talk about the religious roots of community was meeting with mostly non-comprehending stares. Most of the people listening had not a clue of what I was talking about even though I tried to simplify my terms, double-explain things and so on. Later, during lunch, it was raining and so a bunch of us took refuge on the floor of one tent - the photo here shows Veeka trying to sit cross-legged and looking pretty sopping wet as were we all - and discussed our ideas of God. I played devil's advocate and shot down some peoples' ideas as God being whatever one wants Him - it - She - to be. I insisted that God is not our projection but we're His projection. Also, I heard a lot of folks talking about absolutes while denying the possibility of God. I asked them what gave them the right to speak of absolutes when they were denying the standard - and standard-Giver Who makes those absolutes possible?

I got told I was being soooo dogmatic and basically ruining the discussion! Getting frustrated, I plunked Veeka on my lap and said if everything was relative, what was to prevent me from throwing her in a river? No one really answered that question. One woman broke in to say that she was offended that we were talking about God at all, especially God as "He." I really didn't care how offended she was but the rest of the group was more concerned about her sensitivities. That was how our discussion went; some of us would be in the midst of a debate and an outside person would break in to say how their feelings were getting hurt by just picking up some of our vibes.

Anyway, we were all at a camp site 1/4 mile from the Twin Oaks community, which had gone to great pains to set up some very nice clearings, space for preparing meals, tables and a wonderful little hollow with things to do for kids. Veeka loved camping and loved sleeping in a tent and relaxing in the colorful hemp hammocks that were everywhere. (Hammocks is one of the industries that Twin Oaks lives off of). Since we were a long way from a road, I could let her dash about and not watch her constantly as I usually have to do every day of my life. So mark that down as an enjoyable weekend.

Uncle Rob arrives

2010-08-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

The Layoff was two months ago and in a quirky coincidence, my take on the risks of going on the record - and how little appreciated this sacrifice turned out to be - made into a web site: Big Questions Online. Please check out my story here.

While I jobhunt, I've gotten a new housemate for the next few months; my older brother Rob. Turns out that his desire to leave Seattle - after several life reversals - coincided with his ability to find a job here a mere eight miles north of me. Today was his first official day of work and they've given him a schedule of all the people he's to meet, things he needs to learn, etc. Seems like a super nice and very professional place and we're hoping he can take all that window sales knowhow he learned in Seattle and apply it back East in what I believe is the largest Weathershield distributor in the country.

And so he needed a place to land while testing out this job and whose home should be nearby but mine? And so Veeka is sleeping in my room and Uncle Rob is esconced in a room full of stuffed toys, piggy banks and kiddie Bibles. There are even stars painted on the ceiling which I'm sure he's finding to be quite inspirational.

One of my requests is that, while here, he'd help me with a lot of things that need doing around the house and so he's spent the last 10 days working on my mud porch. We thought that we needed to just repair one windowsill; well now he's had to paint multiple surfaces, tear out all sorts of stuff and repaint shelves and walls and so on. So the first day he showed up in....as you'll see - not wearing a whole lot. In the blue underwear photo, he's holding some trim he got at Home Depot, a place he's gotten to know really well this past week. The brief attire is because it was 105 degrees out. In the porch photo, he's painting a shelf while Veeka poses with God-knows-what in her mouth. She of course is fascinated with this large being who has suddenly shown up in her home and with whom at one point she conked out in front of the TV.

Right as the porch was getting done, some nasty bug struck down my painter, who spent much of the weekend in bed. But, I'm sure he'll be recovered by next weekend, at which point he'll start on the painting of my dining room. Yes, the room and board come at a price. And so I've gotten more face time with Rob since he arrived July 25 than we've had ever since he left for college in 1971.

Rob's pronounced himself quite taken with our muggy climate which is a nice switch from the drizzle he's endured after 39 years in Seattle and thinks he'd like to hang around these parts for good. Yes, it's true the winters here are sunny which they sure aren't in the Pacific NW. Last weekend we took a drive to our old haunts off Bradmoor Drive in Bethesda where he first attended elementary school and I was age 2-5. The lovely willow tree is gone but the house at 8932 Bradmoor Drive didn't look all that different after 48 years. And the "big woods" at the end of the street is still there with its trails and stream. As I was snapping Veeka standing in our old front yard, it felt so eerie to realize that 49 years ago, I stood in the same spot when I was 5.

We are now on Twitter

2010-07-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

I never thought I'd give in but after Koki Smith - a friend in the neighborhood and a web genius - gave me a tutorial last Friday on how to enter Twitterdom, I caved in. I am now contactable @juliaduin. Which is a Twitter address, I think. You can see my Twitter home page here.
Of course I have no idea how to work this new technology but it's like the iPhone; buy now, figure it out later. Which is also why I just bought "iPhone: The Manual" or something like that. It cost me plenty at Barnes & Noble.
Other big news today is I did not get selected for a jury. For the past two months, have been dreading this day as I really didn't want to get roped into a trial. Several of us were taken into a room where we were questioned by a judge re our participation in a civil suit having to do with a car accident. But I was not one of the lucky finalists. Must say there were about 150 of us crammed into the jury room at the Prince George's County courthouse this morning BUT the surroundings were humane. We were allowed to bring in a lunch, store it in a fridge, use a microwave, sip free coffee and use our lap tops. Much nicer than the Fairfax County courthouse where they berate you if you so much dare to walk in with a cell phone or computer that has a camera attached.
Above photo is of Miss Veeka posing on a swinging bridge that we found up in the mountains.

Virginia mountain high

2010-07-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

Well, we did escape to the mountains of western Virginia - not WEST Virginia, but Highland and Bath counties which are in western Virginia. I'd always driven through those counties on Routes 39 or 250 but hadn't really stopped there to see some of their charms. The last time I drove back from West Virginia (where I've done quite a bit of exploring), I swore I'd return to the "drive-by" portions of west Virginia.

And so we did. The top photo is of Veeka seated at our B&B, a paper airplane on the table. She learned how to fly one of these contraptions during our stay, an accomplishment that delighted her to no end.

The bottom photo is of Veeka posing at a mountain pass near the entrance to Highland County near where Confederate troops dug in for a nasty winter until the Union guys dislodged them. Didn't know that this region was a major thoroughfare for troops back then as there was a road through those parts that ended up in Parkersburg, WV. Then we came to our place for the next three nights: Laurel Point Bed & Breakfast just outside of Monterey, a very small town that is the tourist center for the county. My goodness, what a stunner of a B&B. We pulled up around the curve on the gravel road leading up to the place only to see a 180-degree swath of gorgeous blue ridges. Folks I talked with in town told me the B&B has "the best view in the county" and I think they're right.

Mike and Lorraine White, the hosts, were as nice as could be and the first night, I woke up at some ungodly hour and decided to go out and look at the stars, which of course were gorgeous. Couldn't sleep so sat out on the patio to watch dawn arrive, accompanied by the family dog. As the day progressed, Mike took Veeka and I on a tour of this lovely property on 104 acres to show us the Scottish highland cattle (furry beasts with quite a rack of horns) next to his large garden. Eventually we set off to explore and got lost, ending up at a charmer of an Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd a few miles north of Monterey in the tiny village of Blue Grass. (See photo of church with red door). So we wandered in and got to do Morning Prayer, as there's no regular priest within miles - nearest one is 2 hours away in Harrisonburg. The natives were friendly and everyone liked Miss Veeka who behaved rather well.

We drove some more, ending up near the Homestead, a large resort in Hot Springs. We decided to go high culture, attending a chamber music concert at Garth Newel, a high falutin music center just north of the Homestead. Again, Veeka was very good sitting through some of the weirdest compositions I've heard in a long time. They had all the esoteric stuff that Sunday but at least lemonaide and cookies were served. On the way back I got lost on a country road in a thunderstorm but finally landed on a road along the Cowpasture River in the early evening twilight.

After a second night at the B&B at 3,000 feet, we met one of the couples from the church at Evelyn's Pantry - the local hangout - for lunch, then headed for some water. Eventually ended up at Lake Moomaw, a great mountain lake nearly on the West Virginia state line. Took forever to get there but Veeka loved dashing into the water and there was almost no one else there. I noticed this quite a bit during our three days in the area. Highland County is not exactly awash with tourists. Our first night there when we had dinner at the Highland Inn, only two other tables were occupied. However, as I looked for maps of the area and brochures on things to do, I found both hard to find and not well organized. Local road maps were very approximate. There was no staffed chamber of commerce office that I could find anywhere. I had to use several maps to find my way around country roads in these places and I got lost more than once. Plus, especially on Sundays, restaurants in Monterey just shut down and we had the worst time finding dinner. Finally Veeka and I had to just make do with Dove Bars found at the local BP gas station.

Our final day, we had a delightful visit to the Jefferson Pools in Warm Springs, which are large octagonal buildings over hot springs. Thomas Jefferson supposedly spent time here which seems astonishing when you realize how isolated this area is. It took me many hours to get here by car. I can't imagine trying to get there by horse. Anyway, Veeka had the greatest time splashing about and actually getting her swimming strokes down with the help of a floatie stick. She did not want to leave. I wished we had stayed there, as a thunderstorm followed us nearly all the way home. No matter whether I drove east or north, I battled hours of nasty, heavy rains almost until I reached the Beltway.

Going to the mountains

2010-07-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

Pictured here is Miss Veeka on a road trip we took a few weeks ago at the eastern entrance to I-68, which is the back way to Pittsburgh. On Saturday we're heading to the mountains of western Virginia for a few days. I've always wanted to spend more time in Highland and Bath counties which are just stunning in the beautiful mountain views and drives. Soooo, found a B&B that takes kids and costs less than $100 a night and so off we go.
People ask how the jobhunting is going. There are some flashes of hope but it being summer, everyone is away or just coming back or just leaving for somewhere. I spent much of this week picking up some freelancing, trying to figure out how to get unemployment benefits through the DC government's web site and wrestling with the COBRA folks re health benefits. The premium I am now having to pay is pretty stunning. Can't do that for too many months.
And so I am taking a few days off from all that.

July 4 at the beach

2010-07-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

Once a year we try to get to the seashore so I thought this year I'd try something different: going to Rehoboth over the Fourth of July weekend. I'm glad we went but a lot of collateral damage came with going at such a time.
First, we chose to be there during a heat burst that struck the Washington area with 106-degree temps. Come to think of it, maybe we did well to be on the beach at that time. Back at home the local water authority decided to levy water restrictions on 2 Maryland counties, including mine, meaning that when I got home tonight, some of the nearly $500 I planted in landscaping this spring is in danger of dying. Yes, there are water restrictions in place during a HEAT WAVE. Someone wasn't thinking when they decided that one. I am sure some folks are quietly hosing down their back yards but mine looks very peaked right now.
Anyway, Miss Veeka and I left Friday for Rehoboth to spend a few days at the Drift Inn, a child-friendly B&B that's about 100 yards from the beach and which is neat and clean and very cheap! We did all the usual stuff: Amusement park rides, lots of beach time, swims in the very cold surf, watching the jellyfish wash in with the tide, lots of ice cream consumed and plenty of restaurants sampled. The night of the 4th, the fireworks were on the beach just down the street from our lodging so we all parked our lawn chairs on the sidewalk and watched. Well, almost all of us. Veeka dashed inside and I found her curled up under the sheets in our bed.
The folks at the B&B loved Veeka and the shot of her in the bike thingy is with Judy - a nice woman from Pennsylvania who took a liking to the tyke - and spoiled her rotten. Veeka didn't pull too many of her let's-run-down-the-beach-and-see-if-mommy-can-catch-me routines mainly because my left foot is still not so great and I yelled at her if she wandered off. She loved being her little princess self - see her pose beneath the umbrella - in the sands.
By Tuesday morning, we were ready to pull out which is when I discovered my car would not start. I spent all day - dripping with sweat - trying to figure out what was wrong as the battery was new. Waited for HOURS for the tow truck from my insurance company, which never arrived. Finally broke down and ordered a tow from elsewhere, but the car didn't get to a garage until late in the afternoon. By then I and several helpful folks from the B&B had discovered even more problems with car, ie it was leaking anti-freeze everywhere. Great.
So Veeka and I arrived on the beach at 5 pm. which is a lovely time of day; the air turns bluey in the late afternoon sun, the crowds have left and the water had finally warmed up to being swimmable. But to my surprise, Veeka had no interest in the water and just sat on the beach and pouted. Or sang and danced. A friend of mine told me later that her kids basically get bored with the beach after the third day which amazes me in that I used to spend weeks at the shore as a kid. But the novelty had worn off with Veeka who basically wanted to either watch TV or her videos. The fact she had no one to play with was a factor.
So we sat around the B&B all day waiting for the garage to call me back. When they didn't by 4 p.m., one of the angels at the B&B - name's Kelly and she's the owners' daughter - called the cell phone of the garage owner to find out what was what. Then she drove us to the garage with all our luggage. Yes, the car could run, they told me. Problem was, the cooling fans were not working. Just turn off the AC and drive over 35 mph, they told me. Do not under any circumstances idle in traffic more than 5 minutes or the engine will overheat.
WELL, I about collapsed in terror - the thought of a car breakdown on the Bay Bridge uppermost in my mind. Plus I knew the insurance company was none too quick with furnishing tow trucks. Apparently tow companies all over the Delaware peninsula were busier than one-armed paper hangers all weekend long because everyone's cars were breaking down. Kelly, who had not struck me as a particularly devout person on first impression, lectured me on trusting God to get home. My knees quaked. Put me to shame, she did. So we piled in with the windows down and I flew home in 2 1/2 hours through Delaware and eastern Maryland with no problems. Veeka didn't even complain about the windows being down or about being hot, even when her DVD player shut down in the middle of "Finding Nemo."
Thursday morning, el carro heads for the Subaru dealer.

Humid days

2010-06-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

In case some of you wonder why my profile on this blog is empty, well....I just spent an hour trying to compose something under 1,200 characters and NOTHING works. No matter what I do, Google simply will not accept what I write, so I've chosen to have nothing on my profile as the site basically won't accept anything I type into it.

Anyway, a month into this jobless gig, I've been lining up some freelance assignments plus I've been agonizing over whether or not to continue with COBRA, which triples my health-care payments. Please read here some of the issues at stake. I have to shake my head at the antics of the GOP leaders who oppose the subsidy and thank God there are Dems with a conscience. If this subsidy is continued, the US government picks up 65% of my payments, which would help beaucoup.

We have fun these days too, including a trip to the local Six Flags last Friday where Veeka experienced her first roller coaster (which was very tame and small). Her mommy no longer has the stomach for such rides, alas. And Veeka also behaved quite well at an Orthodox wedding last Saturday, which I informed her was warm-up for October, when she will be a flower girl in her cousin Carley's wedding. She can't wait!

This weekend, it's off to the beach. Might as well take the R&R when it's available.

June is bustin' out all over

2010-06-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Uncle Rob with Veeka

Now that life has settled down, I've been unpacking boxes, lots of them. Out pour memories of 14+ years of work. I've got souvenir booklets of Benedict XVI's visit, a Christmas card from the Church of Scientology, piles of notes from my 2006 trip to India, a list of Hindu holidays, documents about radical Hindu persecution of Christians in Orissa, notes on ethics dating back to the Clinton era, directories for the local Catholic archdiocese and Episcopal diocese, several dictionaries and AP style books, a Kurdish flag, my coffee mug, piles of business cards, notes on Chinese dissidents, two copies of the Book of Mormon with my name inscribed on the cover, files on abortion, Planned Parenthood and a nasty procedure called "selective reduction" whereby a woman pregnant with several fetuses arranges to have some of them killed right there in her womb. That was one of the toughest stories I ever had to write. Also a back rest, a few biographies of Billy Graham and piles of other religious books, many of which I'll be giving away.
It is pleasant to rest; to be reading "Stones Into Schools" (the book that comes after "Three Cups of Tea") and to actually have to try out an exercise club and meet someone for breakfast, which is how I spent this morning.
One thing I'm mulling over is whether to re-start my weekly religion blog and publish it here. "Stairway to Heaven" really did have quite a few fans, as I'm learning now.

June's lazy days

2010-06-15T19:25:00.001-07:00

Veeka learns to swim

Actually, June is proving to be quite busy; had no sooner returned from Pittsburgh than my brother Rob was in for a surprise three-day visit. Of course I put him to work mowing my lawn. In the 27 years I've lived away from home, this is the first time he's visited me. Veeka of course was glad to see someone with testosterone around the house so she clung to him a lot. Now she prays for him at night, along with Carley and Lindsay.
Yes, the resumes are going out, for those of you who are curious about such things. I am also resting. Other than a three-month maternity leave, half of which was spent in sub-zero Kazakhstan, I've had no break in more than 14 years so I am enjoying this time. One top priority is getting my foot healed, which is taking longer than I'd like. I finally managed to squeeze said foot into a sandal today before hobbling about the supermarket.
Meanwhile, Veeka is busy with her swim lessons at the University of Maryland and there should be a photo here of her in the arms of an instructor as he coaxes her to float on her back. (She refused).

Off to Pittsburgh

2010-06-04T20:31:00.000-07:00

WELL - after an unexpectedly eventful week, we are off for two speaking engagements and one TV appearance 250 miles away in Pittsburgh. Veeka and I are going to stay with a family with seven children that includes a little girl Veeka's size and age. I, for obvious reasons, need a rest.
Post-Gazette scribe Ann Rodgers previewed my visit with this piece here.
On Thursday, I picked up the Post Style section to see myself - looking hot
and sweaty - and Veeka by the masthead plus the same photo - enlarged - next to an inside story. Veeka's daycare folks were excited to know she'd made the big time. Even more emails and phone calls poured in. Other articles of note ran here and here. Also learned Thursday there was one more layoff. Lots of rumors out there as to what's next for the newsroom.
As for us, out the door....

First day out

2010-06-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

By now I am sure you've all seen this blog on the WPost web site that quickly spread to some other journalism blogs. I've been amazed all day at the weird breaches of ethics I've run into; when I sent a private email to one blogger, he published it! And a woman supposedly doing a story on me for a web site all but accused me of lying about my situation. She was so abusive, I finally clammed up on her. It's sure enlightening being on the other side of the reporter's notebook.
I've noticed photos of me do not show the unfortunate foot that underwent surgery so just to prove that I was disabled, here is a photo of me bandaged up. The stitches were taken out today but I am still hobbling about.
Veeka is over her fever today, thank God. Visited the Adventist bookstore in Silver Spring and could not believe how in the 14+ years I've been here, I've never before visited this place. What an amazing amount of stuff - and so I loaded up on music CDs and a toddler Bible more geared to Veeka's level. Tonight we raced through Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Esau.
I've appreciated the gracious emails and Facebook messages I've gotten from so many people. My brother Steve weighed in this afternoon with this which I thought pretty funny.

Laid off from the Washington Times.

2010-06-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

Well, the other shoe dropped today: Remember the story that ran a month ago today in which I was quoted in the Washington Post about snakes in our newsroom? If you want to see it, please go to the "birthday month" entry below.
I thought journalists were truth-seeking types. Also, I am always trying to coax people to go on the record. Isn't it a bit hypocritical of me to not do so as well?
Alas, my employers felt differently. I knew things were going south when my articles were either cut in half, tossed out of the print edition or placed at the back of the paper. An one exception was this piece which got snuck onto the front page when the editor was away. Then we just had a new design of our web site and I couldn't help notice that "faith" was missing from the home page whereas "entertainment" was prominent on the navigation bar, even though we have no entertainment reporters. Then I heard last week that my religion blog had been killed.
But I was out sick most of that week due to surgery on my foot. Then Veeka came down with a fever over the weekend so I spent the morning of Memorial Day in one of those emergency doc-in-a-box clinics getting her antibiotics. So when I went into work today, it was on crutches with a bandaged foot, with Veeka in tow and a bottle of kiddie Tylenol in my purse. We were going to stay 1-2 hours while I gathered up some notes and prepared to do the rest of my work from home. So I was starting work on a column and Veeka was watching one of her videos when Sam Dealey, the editor, walked up. Now he has refused to speak to me since the Post article, so I knew something was up and sure enough, he invited me to his office.
He said the Washington Times is going in a different direction and that religion coverage would not be part of it; hence my job was being done away with. Yeah, right: for an organization whose four foundational principles are family, faith, freedom and service.
I flatly told Sam this was payback. Plus there I was having to pack 11 heavy boxes in a few hours containing 14 years of work - no easy task. And with a bum foot. Within about two hours, my phone and email were cut off. When dozens of Times reporters were laid off last December, they got two days to go through their email but hey, things have gotten nastier, haven't they?
Seeing what was going on, a few very nice employees took Veeka downstairs for lunch or out for a walk, just to help me out. Am including a photo that a helpful intern - Hillary May - shot on my iPhone of me sitting at the back of my car trunk after packing some of the boxes. Veeka began to cry so it took several tries to get her to smile a little. Poor little girl: having to be with her mommy during such a nasty day.
Hearing of this mess, the Levys, my neighbors across the street, ordered in Chinese and had Veeka and I over for dinner.

School nears its end

2010-05-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

The photo here is of Veeka - in hot pink pants - singing a song with her classmates called "On top of spaghetti." She graduates from pre-K next Friday night.
Meanwhile her mommy is recovering today from very minor foot surgery which means she is pretty much confined to the house this weekend. Again, thank God for health insurance, although the premiums will being going up this year. Last night before the surgery I was out madly planting half of my new shade garden because it's pretty hard to use a shovel when you're on crutches for two weeks.
Because Mommy is feeling so pokey, Veeka is being farmed out overnight to the very kind parents of the little girl sitting in front of Veeka in the wagon. The girls really like each other although together they can be pretty devilish. Not long after I snapped that photo, they both joined hands and bolted out of the front yard, ran half a block down the hill and crossed the street alone. I and her parents were tearing out our hair looking for them.
Oma and Opa arrive Sunday for a few days and Veeka asks about their arrival every other minute.

Birthday month

2010-05-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet here - sort of - as we await Oma's birthday this Saturday and mine next Wednesday. I got into lots of hot water at my workplace for getting quoted here in our competition about the sudden presence of reptiles in our newsroom because - among other expenses to save money - my newspaper is no longer paying for an exterminator to keep out the mice and snakes. Which is a little dicey when you're situated next door to the 400-acre National Arboreteum where creepy crawleys abound. The story came out the morning of the White House Correspondents Dinner, so to say the top brass at the newspaper was less than pleased would be understating things a bit.
My brother Stephen commented on the story here. My snakes quote got picked up everywhere. Not quite the notoriety I was looking for.
Veeka is fine and she and I are posing next to a fountain at Rice University where this photo was taken two months ago.
My parents, I must add, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Thursday.

Happy May Day

2010-04-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

Last week some friends and Veeka and I went to a cool garden show at the National Arboreteum and joined some folks dancing around a maypole. Can't say I have ever done that before. I am off to the side in bright green and Veeka, of course, is smack in the middle in her multi-colored raincoat.
Have worked like a dog this week churning out various religion articles. Things at my workplace are as unsettled as ever. One of the cuts made is that of the exterminator who used to keep mice from entering our building. Well...we are next to the 400-acre arboreteum and now not only mice are ranging about the newsroom but so are snakes. We discovered a 3-foot black snake curled up behind the door of the conference room earlier this week. Apparently there's been at least two more. Just the sort of thing to liven up the workplace: a creepy crawly hiding under my desk.
I am busily making plans to remodel the second-floor bathroom with some Christmas money and today the new washer arrived.
Discovery of the week: the guy who does massages for $1/minute at Union Station, which is a very cheap rate for this area. Was racing through there to a press conference and had a few minutes to spare when I saw this massage stand near the escalator. Ten minutes after having the knots in my neck rubbed out, I felt so much better.

Veeka and the bike

2010-04-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Of course one thing our now five-year-old got for her birthday was a bike with training wheels. So recent evenings after dinner have been spent helping her ride the thing. Never realized how hard it is to keep those little legs pumping so the pedals don't get stuck somewhere in the middle. I still have to push her uphill because she can't pedal up a slope yet. So, she resolutely does U-turns on the alley in back of our home.
Got a pleasant surprise last Friday when I received a first place award for religion coverage in 2009 for division A (dailies over 75,000) at the MDDC awards banquet today. Which stands for Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association, btw. All this while we were getting the news that our publisher is stepping down. Which is a shame because I truly like him. All sorts of rumors are out there about the newspaper being sold; apparently the current owners want out of the newspaper business. Read all about it here.
Just keep those paychecks coming, is all I can say.

Veeka turns 5

2010-04-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been awhile since we've posted but yours truly has been on the road, first to Tulsa and then a quick overnight to Richmond. But first: Easter. The photo of us is great but...our princess, who used to take great photos, now closes her eyes each time, which has made pix a bit more of a challenge.
A few days later, I zipped off to Tulsa for 3 days of attending a large charismatic conference there of 5,000-7,000 people. I think most of them were ORU students who were as courteous as could be. I'd never been to Tulsa before and it was a pleasant city but as I say in this column, the futuristic Jetsons-style architecture on the ORU campus was beyond weird. But the people were fine and I enjoyed walking about and attending workshops. Unfortunately I only sold 5 of my "Fire and Glory" books so the event was a financial loss for me and much of it was subsidized! Still, had to pay obscene fees to get the books back and forth on the airplane. It was quite a switch to be in an atmosphere where charismatic stuff is considered natural and everyday- so opposite to the world in which I normally live in.
And then there was the trip to Richmond, which I wrote about here. Some friends and I had dinner on W. Cary Street, a part of Richmond I'd never seen before and really enjoyed - lots of cute glitzy restaurants in the city's west end.
All this is a walk-up to April 16, which is when Miss Veeka woke up to a small mountain of presents. First, we dressed her up with a little crown and took her into school, along with 18 cupcakes for teachers and little friends. Then Veeka was allowed to bring one of her little friends home with her, shown helping her unwrap gifts. And then Veeka got to see her gift from Mommy, which was a bicycle. The next post will describe what it's like to help teach her to ride the thing. Some neighbors came over for dinner - and brought more cupcakes.

Good Friday in the cherry blossoms

2010-04-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

This morning, I packed Veeka into the car and drove to the Tidal Basin, an act of sheer madness as the roads around there were reaching gridlock by the time we got there. Finally found a place to leave the car - miraculously - although we'd no sooner walked away than Veeka began to wail that she was too tired. Little did she know she had an entire mile to go trudging around the pond. Whole buses were disgorging dozens of tourists, so the walk was beyond packed in that a crowd equaling the populations of several states were doing the same thing as we were. Still, the blossoms formed the loveliest delicate pink roof as we made our way around.
Veeka liked the Jefferson Memorial quite a lot, as it turned out and thought the blossoms were pretty and demanded to be carried much of the way. A popsicle mollified her somewhat on what turned out to be a very warm day. The weather could not have been lovelier and the photo was taken from one of the few uncrowded spots.
Next, we ended up at McDonalds, her favorite place, to get her a Happy Meal and then it was off to a local monastery that was also packed to the gills. The place is known for its stations of the cross walk through a very lovely garden so I spent a lot of time explaining to Veeka the concept of piercing someone's hand with a nail. She has done so well so far - Thursday she made it through an entire Maundy Thursday service. She really enjoyed having her feet washed.

Houston part 2/St. John the Divine

2010-03-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

I don't remember if I noted how large Houston seemed; how the huge number of freeways, on-ramps, toll roads and so on seemed doubled from when I visited there 12 years ago. One of the highlights was speaking at St. John the Divine my last night there. Thanks to a long-standing relationship with the rector, Larry Hall, I was invited to be a speaker in their Lenten speakers series on Wednesday nights. St. John the Divine is larger now than it was when I worked in Houston; 4,500 members and one of the top five Episcopal churches in the country.
There was lots of remodeling there since I last saw it and they asked me to speak on how Redeemer affected the city of Houston. The conversation with the two pastors (Larry Hall being the one to your right, my left) was on all sorts of things, including my personal walk with Christ, my "Quitting Church" book, etc. It was a most pleasant gathering; catered dinner, place cards, lovely tables, Eric and Stevie helping with the book table and a chance to chat up some of the church leaders while tossing dinner into Veeka's mouth.
It was a lovely evening; the kind I don't often get! I thought it so ironic that here I got such a nice reception in Houston and was treated like a queen while certain Anglican churches in the DC area - regarding my newest book - won't even return my calls! Which is why a speech I gave today on Capitol Hill at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church was so nice. For Lent, about 70 people ordered copies of my book and studied it. Imagine! Like a college text.
It is so lovely in DC right now as all the cherry blossoms are out. Everywhere you drive, there are cherry trees. Which is why I don't like to leave the area at the end of March. It's the nicest time to be here.

Trip to Houston, part 1

2010-03-19T19:50:00.001-07:00

So much happened this past week that I'll split it into two parts. There was some mixed reaction to my presence at Church of the Redeemer as not everyone there was wild about "Days of Fire and Glory" but no one had any qualms about the most popular member of our entourage: Miss Veeka. I showed up at Redeemer my second night in town to explain how my book came about. I'd say 80-100 showed up, which is a fabulous crowd for a Friday night event there and a few folks even drove in from Austin. Sending out all those personalized invites brought results! A few people from Redeemer's long-ago past, such as Charles Meisgeier, the University of Houston scholar who researched the place years ago, put in an appearance as did people I had not seen in two decades.
Fortunately some of the folks who were unhappy about the book when it came out finally read the thing and changed their minds 180 degrees after they saw the complexity of the story and appreciated the massive amount of work it took to put the book together over a four-year period. For two full summers and a 3-month stint in 1994, I worked on the book full-time, which didn't do much for my bank account. Those were the days before the Internet and before no-cost long distance calls, so you can imagine how expensive and time-consuming it was to do fact-checking.
Redeemer, as it turns out, is barely making it financially and its staff had to all take pay cuts recently but all the same, the folks there are really hoping the book can bring some needed healing to the place. I got lots of help from former members Eric and Stevie Sawyer who drove in to handle the book table, which was a godsend as I was embroiled in conversations the whole evening after my speech. But the person who was the star of the show was Miss Veeka, shown here with a banner as she joined the dancers in the aisle.
I returned Sunday morning just to be there and soak up the memories and talk with as many people as possible. Another photo shows Veeka seated in the arms of the rector, Nan Doerr.
I met with other friends around Houston and reintroduced myself to the wonderful local Mexican food. Monday, Veeka and I trapised up to Brenham, about 70 miles northwest of us, to try to find some bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. Unfortunately, because of a cold winter, the flowers were late by several weeks, so the photo here of Veeka standing in a field of blue were the ONLY bluebonnets I could find up there. We had a great time visiting a museum on the Brazos River that told the history of Texas as an independent country between 1836-1846 including many factoids I'd never known before. Sort of wish I had gone there many years ago when I first moved to Houston.
The one part of the trip that did not work out was getting any kind of media attention from the trip. I contacted TV and radio places to no avail. Either I got ignored or was told by one anchor that if my work was not related to that of the Osteens (the ruling family over Houston's largest church), she was not interested. The local media are fixated on this church: Lakewood. Finally near the end of my trip, one network affiliate expressed some interest, so I am hopeful. The Houston Chronicle ignored me; some bitternesses run deep, apparently.
Houston had changed a lot since I'd been there 12 years ago for a short visit. One way were all the new freeways and tollways west of town, which confused me quite a bit. Houston is the LA of the south in terms of all the road concrete out there. I was also amazed at the super-low housing prices. I could afford a lake-front mansion down there.

Coming to Houston

2010-03-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

Well...here we are, a mere three days from lift off when we jump on friendly Continental Airlines for our direct flight to Houston so I can make two book appearances and see lots of friends. It's been 12 years since I've been there, so I am mapquesting directions on how to get everywhere as I have quite forgotten how to get about the city.
For those of you who've not gotten my Facebook invites, I am appearing at Church of the Redeemer at 7:30 p.m. this Friday to talk about the book and then at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday the 17th at St. John the Divine Episcopal. The former is in the East End and the latter is in the far more ritzy River Oaks area. I'm hoping to touch base with lots of friends and of course show off Veeka who is pictured here in yet another of her ballet classes.
I also hope to get lots of face time with Texas botany such as its redbud trees and Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets. That's the main reason I'm showing up in March - to see all that - although I've been told Texas had a cold winter so everything is running late. Well...I didn't want to miss all the flowering trees up here in Maryland at the end of March, so I chose the second week of the month to head south to the Bayou City.
Things up here are doing fine although one of our associate publishers just quit the paper which put quite a chill into the newsroom which is still half-empty. I just came back from New York 10 days ago where I was doing research on a series I'm working on. Wouldn't you know it but I arrived just in time for a foot of snow. Then I drove to Virginia Beach last week to speak at Regent University and got MORE snow down there - even though they didn't see any of it in DC. That white stuff just follows me around.

My funny Valentine

2010-02-25T07:09:00.000-08:00

I am including pix of Veeka and I at a recent performance (by the Marinksi Ballet) of "The Sleeping Beauty" at the Kennedy Center. Considering that this marathon performance had THREE intermissions and went on seemingly forever, Miss Veeka lasted pretty well, I thought. OK, she was a bit pouty at the beginning as she did not like the sound of the drums but she cheered up later. I was helped by the presence of a friend, Diane, who helped take care of my little octopus as she dashed about Kennedy Center. Shown here is one photo of her actually behaving and another of me (dressed in my mom's dirndl) trying to pacify Unhappy Child.
I'd figured since Miss V did so well at "The Nutcracker," she'd hold up under the much longer "Sleeping Beauty" but it might be awhile before we visit another ballet. Fortunately there were lots of other kids at this performance but 4 is a tad young to sit through it all.
We are weathering this winter in fine fashion as the snow is finally almost gone and my porch has lost its icy sheeth. Am typing this from New York where I am on a business trip of a few days while Veeka stays with one of the families associated with her daycare. They have 2 boys about a year older than she so she adores spending time with them and doing fun things that she doesn't get to do with me. It is plummeting rain/snow here and shortly I have to brave this yucky mess. Then, back to DC.

And I got to ski, too

2010-02-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

Today was quite pleasant in that while some saintly friends of mine took care of Veeka ALL DAY, I whisked off to Whitetail, one of the closer ski resorts, to get in my once-a-year opportunity to schuss down the slopes. Here on the east coast and post-Veeka, I don't get to do much skiing these days so it was fun to wrap myself up in several layers and head off to ski. And it was a nice day of it, other than the fact that there were about 100 people (not a joke) in front of me in the ticket line and the combined populations of Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania were on the same slopes as I was.
In fact, I finally took refuge on the black diamond slopes to get away from crowds, only to get marooned on a double-black diamond that had turned quite icy. And I ended up near the trees in a stupid attempt to circumvent the moguls. Nothing like having the ski patrol folks yelling, "M'am?? Are you ok?" Well, finally I eased my way back onto the icy patches and managed to get down. Ordinarily, moguls are my friends, as they often have nice snowy tops one can turn on. Anyway, someone at the info desk at Whitetail told me it was their biggest day ever, mainly because the weather was decent and the slopes had not been skied bare yet by the snowboarding mobs.
I managed to work out of my home much this week and found a few newsworthy things to report (this thanks to the Anglicans) but it's a challenge with Veeka around. Although she has gamely watched "Happy Feet" about 15 times now.
Am attaching a photo of Veeka playing "house" by the fireplace. Tomorrow Veeka and I and a friend go to see "Sleeping Beauty" at the Kennedy Center. Will Veeka act up? Will she fall asleep? Will the ushers kick us out? Stay tuned.

At least we didn't lose our power

2010-02-07T11:02:00.001-08:00

We are still digging out from thigh-high snow here and fortunately today (Sunday the 7th) is sunny. I spent my morning digging up a downed wire (fortunately telephone, not electric) in my backyard and am about to go trudging out for an afternoon of digging out my garage. You'd think Veeka, considering the northern latitudes in which she was born, would love the white stuff but she spent this morning sitting atop a drift wailing about how cold she was so I sent her back inside to do some drawing while Mommy dug a path to the garage.
The photo posted shows Veeka some weeks before at her ballet/tap class. Am not sure about the future of said class in that last week she sat in the corner and sulked the whole time. My being in the room doesn't help either. However, she continually watches the penguin movie "Happy Feet" and loves to dance to it with her tap shoes so who knows?
Compared to plenty of others in the metro area, we are quite fortunate in that we never lost our power for which I am thanking God.

Snow in February

2010-02-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

Actually the newest dump of 5-6 inches came Saturday the 30th but it's still hanging around our yard quite a bit. Posed here by our mailbox is Miss Veeka in her dark purple coat get-up. She was not so happy yesterday when I tried to take her sledding. Mind you, I could have thought just of my needs and gone skiing in the bright sunshine that arrived yesterday but NO - I thought of my daughter and her needs before mine, right? And I figured that sledding would please her more than being dumped at the ski place's daycare all day.
Well...we walked to a small hill and went up and down twice and then she decided she didn't like the snow spray in her face so she did her rag doll thing and sat there in the snow and sulked. And I was thinking that I could have been skiing at Whitetail that day instead.
Other news: Am getting together churches where I'll be speaking at during my Houston trip next month plus am lining up some other speaking gigs that are finally coming in. At work, they've hired a new editor who is 15 years younger than I and who used to work for our editorial page and has no management experience that we know of so we're all just looking at the ceiling and saying, well, whatever. However, the man they hired before who did have management experience didn't do so hot either so who knows? Just as long as that paycheck keeps 'a coming in.

Wanted: End times books for kids

2010-01-16T19:04:00.000-08:00

The funniest thing happened last night as I was putting Veeka to bed. On the way, she glimpsed a stunning print on her bedroom wall of Jesus returning to Earth on a white horse. It's by Pat Marvenko Smith, a Pittsburgh artist who's done the coolest art on the book of Revelation. I really liked her depiction of the red-robed, golden-sashed King of kings with "eyes as flame of fire" and the little one was entranced with the picture.
"When is he coming back?" she asked.
"Soon," I said.
"Can I give him a hug?" she asked.
"I'm sure he'd like that."
"It's Aslan and Jesus, right?"
"Yes, sweetie." Usually she winds up her evening with a chapter from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" but last night she was too excited about the Second Coming. Who else was going to be there besides angels, she asked. Well...I said, Uncle Steve and Uncle Gob and Oma and Opa and (her cousins) Carley and Lindsay and (her friends) Rachael and Iannsa...well, to Veeka this sure sounded like a nice party with all her favorite people in attendance. She plied me with question after question about what heaven looks like and what people do there until I finally dug out a children's book about St. George and the Dragon with illustrations by the late famed artist Trina Schart Hyman who, although she was more into Wicca, did have one cool drawing in this book of this enormous mountain stretching 20 miles into the sky.
That, I explained to Veeka, pointing to the enormous city on the peak of this mountain, is what heaven will be like. I dug around in my other books and realized that for all the Bible tales I have, none of them are about the end of time. They're all folksy jungle tales about Adam and Eve, then switching to Noah's Ark and a few Old Testament tales, then lots and lots about the Nativity and Jesus' miracles, a bit about his death and then...not a whole lot after that. A lot of books don't even show Jesus' post-Resurrection face and only one even went into the acts of the apostles with a brief mention of the end of the world.
I realized this was an enormous teaching moment, so sat up late with Veeka explaining about Jesus coming back and angels (will explain later about the devil and 666) but realized there needs to be books out that show cool depictions of Up There. I did a search and all that's out there are books for kids about to lose a family member or pet. Randy Alcorn has a kids book out but it's for 8-12s. No, no, no, I want much more colorful stuff that shows the celestial city and the 12 gates made of enormous pearls, etc. etc.
So here is a new book imprint: It is ABC: Apocalyptic Children's Books. Cool, huh?
No other news here although it looks as though my March book tour to Houston, beginning about March 12 and lasting a week or so, is really shaping up. To date, I have three speaking invites in churches. More to come.

Happy Epiphany

2010-01-07T19:45:00.000-08:00

If I were more organized, I would have baked one of my cardamom Three Kings cakes with all sorts of goodies hidden therein to symbolize the Magi but I'm at sixes and sevens with my furnace having broken down for 30 hours until a repairman figured out what was wrong with it. So Wednesday was pretty wretched as Veeka and I slept in 50-degree rooms until blessed heat arrived Thursday. The joys of home ownership.
Work has settled down; eerily so in that there are so few of us in the newsroom these days, the whole place is markedly colder. Didn't know 110 extra people could provide so much extra body heat.
The photo is of my niece, Carley, holding Veeka. Her younger sister, Lindsay, is to the right. What I didn't mention last time is how on Christmas Day, Carley walked into my parents' home with her left hand extended and her fourth finger bearing an engagement ring. Being that her parents are planning on a divorce in the near future, Christmas was very sad for us all but Carley's news really lightened the day. Hopes are for her to wear my mother's satin wedding gown from the late 1940s (one of my aunts wore it before my mom got married in 1950) because I sure can't fit into it. Even when I was 20 pounds lighter, I couldn't get the thing on. My whole body was just BIGGER. But Carley is pretty thin so we're hoping she can wear the dress.
Today, Jan. 7, Veeka had her first visit to the dentist and she behaved beautifully. I wasn't really happy at being charged $102 for all of 15 minutes she was there, tho.

Surviving the massacre

2009-12-31T19:28:00.000-08:00

It's New Year's Eve but I'm in no mood for celebrating anything considering I lived through one of the most wretched days I've had in a long time.
Yesterday, the Washington Times laid off 65 percent of the newsroom; approximately 110 reporters, editors, photographers and other employees. Today, most of them showed up to pack their belongings. It was absolutely horrible having to say good-bye to people whom I've known for more than 14 years. Four departments: photo, sports, metro and entertainment, were decimated. Business did not fare too well either. Nearly everyone in management was wiped out. Both our managing editors (David Jones and Jeff Birnbaum) are gone. The deputy ME, Ted Agres, is also gone, as are nearly all the assistant managing editors, such as Barbara Slavin and Geoff Etnyre (who was my boss). Only 12 editors remain, I believe: six on the news desk and another six elsewhere in the newsroom although that number is fungible. Several people on foreign desk, including old friends like Willis Witter, are gone or their fate is unknown. Four employees remain on that desk. Our web desk also lost quite a few folks, such as Jilly Badanes (the bright, cheery face on our webcasts who was the face of the newsroom each morning), Jim Ivancic and David Eldredge.
National desk, which I am on, fared a bit better although Ben Conery, Richard Slusser, Mike Wheatley, Andrea Billups and Sean Lengell (some of them did politics as well) were let go. Sean was the last person I bade farewell to when I left this evening and he was busily trying to go through all his emails, as were many other folks today (before their accounts were shut off).
I missed the big staff meeting yesterday when all this was announced (we were flying into Dulles at that moment - more on that later) so it was with lots of trepidation I arrived at work today. Arriving at the human resources department, I was handed a thin envelope, which meant I was staying. About 60 of us were retained. Those who were being let go had thicker packets detailing their severance packages. A hapless sports writer, Mark Zuckerman, walked in with me. He was one of 25 sports department workers who was let go. He gamely said he expected it. Then it was back down to an awfully grim newsroom where folks were cramming their belongings into boxes and hugging each other.
(By the way, a staff writer at the Washington Post wrote a really classy column here that said really nice things about our sports department and how they often did a better job than did the Post at covering sports stories. I also was heartened by how, in the past few weeks, people from outside the paper including several competitors, emailed me to see how I was doing. Thank you, all.)
It was impossible to concentrate and do much work with all this happening, so I spent much of my day saying good-bye to everyone and getting emails from folks I wished to keep in touch with. Although a lot of the politics reporters were kept, long-timers like Greg Pierce were let go. The big shock on national desk was that Audrey Hudson, our national security reporter who spent Christmas Day at work reporting on the Northwest Airlines would-be bomber, was also let go. No one could understand that one. I wandered over to features, where I said good-bye to Stephanie Green, who has really made a name for herself doing what I'd call investigative society reporting, for lack of a better description. She ended up having to write the article that announced her own layoff. She was packing up. So was Gabriella Boston, Denise Yourse and Cindy Brown.
Barbara Slavin, who was brought in from USA Today only about 18 months ago, was a real class act, as she went around the newsroom shaking hands with everyone and wishing them well before she left. It was just heartbreaking to see some of the editors and reporters who, on their last day there, were faithfully working on their last assignments to get out tomorrow's paper instead of walking out on the spot. One poor woman on news desk was celebrating her birthday with two chocolate cakes by the coffee pot - and she was being let go as well.
Most of the folks I talked with had no idea where they will end up. One of the librarians, Clark Eberly, may go back to school. Only two had definite jobs they were sure they'd get. Everyone else who had been sending out resumes said they'd had no luck whatsoever. My across-the-aisle seatmate, Don Lambro, will still have his syndicated political column but he's in no mood to retire yet. He was let go. So was Rita Tiwari, who helped do bookkeeping for the newsroom. One of the worst-luck stories is Lois Carlson, who worked alongside Rita. Not only did she lose her job; so did her husband, Eric, who works in the library. They have three kids but no income. Wally Hindes, who did radio for us, is also gone.
And our photographers - I got to say good-bye to a few, but we had an excellent batch who nearly landed a Pulitzer in 2003. Only two - Joe Eddins and Melissa Cannarozzi - are being kept on, mainly to do desk work. The new photo editor, Janet Reeves, had fortunately kept her home in Denver when she moved here last fall. Good thing she did.
Lots and lots of conversations were held about what is in store for those of us who stay. Nothing has been revealed as to what we should expect but fortunately for me and two other reporters on related beats, the Higher Ups wanted to retain reporting on social and cultural issues, which includes religion. Considering that so many religion reporters have lost their jobs this year, I am very fortunate to still have mine.
But to lose so much unbelievable talent is such a sad way to close out the year. I am enclosing a photo of Veeka in the cockpit of our Boeing 757 which flew us back from Seattle yesterday. We got up at 4 a.m. to make the flight, but she acted like a little angel the whole time.
Here's to hoping 2010 will be a better year.

Farewell Aunt Dot & hello snow

2009-12-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

Soon after Miss Veeka arrived on these shores, my Uncle Ed passed away and she came with me to his funeral on a sunny March day, adding much light and joy. She fulfilled this duty again on Thursday when we had a funeral at the same church and same grave site locale for his wife, Dorothy Duin, who passed away Dec. 9 in California. Her family flew here (from California and London at no little expense) to have a pre-Christmas funeral and so we all showed up on a sunny-but-wintery day of 40-degree temps to say good-bye. It was so odd to be back at the same places we were at nearly three years ago when we said good-bye to Ed. Instead, this time it was Nancy who gave the farewell sermon instead of my father.
It being Dec. 17, I was the only member of the family who got there as tickets were at a premium this crowded time of year. The first photo is of Veeka posing with Nancy and Alex, one of Dot's daughters with the only grandchild. After the funeral, we all went to the lovely home of one of the St. Paul's Lutheran Church parishioners who put on a great spread. The second photo shows Veeka on Alex's lap. Sadly, I am not sure when I'll see him or his aunts/my cousins again.
Speaking of which, they are stranded here as we speak due to the lovely two feet of snow we are receiving as I type (on Dec. 19). All the flights in and out today have been cancelled. Turns out we have tickets to Seattle and for a time, I was unhappy that I could not get us out of here until Christmas Eve. Now I am very grateful we are not leaving for another five days because the airports will be horribly jammed at the beginning of the week with all those poor folks who could not get out today. I put Veeka in her old snow suit and photographed her romping around the backyard. Problem is, I forgot to buy her new boots and her feet were way too small for the tiny boots we crammed them into.
I did, I will add, teach her now to make a snow angel.
The big mercy is this is all occurring over the weekend, so no one has to get to work for two days. The snowplowing in town has been lackadaisical at best, so at present, my car is trapped in my garage as the alley is piled high with white stuff.

40 % to be laid off

2009-12-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

Well, the other shoe did drop and we were told Wednesday (the 2nd) that 40 percent of our 370-person workforce would be laid off. That means about 170 people. All sorts of guessing is going on right now as to which sections (entertainment? metro? sports?) will get the ax and whether those of us who work on national desk are truly safer. Providentially, our main competition ran a front-page story on the layoffs and the last thing the president of our company said is he wants to keep the religion/values reporting. So *my* job seems secure although technically we have all been laid off. Then 60% will be told they are retained, although the conditions they will continue to work under might be quite different. Which is what a lot of us are also wondering about.
Anyway, the first wave of people who will have to go will start in about two weeks, we're told, JUST before Christmas. Isn't the timing lovely? So of course all of us are wondering how much to spend for Christmas, whether that bathroom remodel we'd planned for January will have to be scrapped; that sort of thing. Many people in the newsroom are quite depressed and angry at the recent revelations of some of the obscenely high salaries that the higher-ups in my organization were getting while the rest of us have been scraping along. It's been a real morale killer.
But at this point all of us are simply glad to have work - and health insurance - which puts us in a better place than where many Americans are at this point.

Nov. 24: Veeka & I appear on CBN

2009-11-24T20:02:00.000-08:00

Singles Adoption: A Tough Question for the Church

Insanity in the newsroom

2009-11-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

This week was really quite the week at my place of employ. On Monday morning, we walked in to find that 3 top people in charge of the company - including the president - were fired over the weekend. Extra guards were in the lobby and the third floor - where the administration was - got put on lockdown. Immediately every media outlet in town, smelling blood, was filing reports about our alleged soon-to-be demise. We had a large staff meeting where the new president of the company essentially read out loud a press release that we'd already seen - then refused to take questions. Bad sign. A number of us then surrounded the two managing editors and demanded to know more. We got a few details - ie that there would not be layoffs - but not much.
More news trickled out and more outside reporters were calling us staff writers on the sly and then a bigger bomb dropped on Thursday when, on deadline, they announced that our top editor had resigned. He had been missing all week, so this was not a great shock but it was still very weird and left a lot of unanswered questions.
It seems that a lot of the mess stems from debates high up in the ranks of our owners involving our finances. We have always operated at a huge deficit and the question is how long they want this state of affairs to continue. Although there are some things that I cannot say in this public space, I can say I am concerned. I've already had one friend email me a job possibility and it's no secret that much of my newsroom is panicked. Although we just hired a photo editor and started a new radio talk show last Monday, we lost two of our White House reporters in last two months, so things are not trending up. And on Friday, we got the inevitable memo from Human Resources saying the company, as of immediately, was cutting its matching contributions to our 401Ks. Other newspapers did the same thing ages ago so we were lucky to have kept ours this long. Still, employee morale has tanked.
On the plus side, Veeka - shown here in her new pink loafers and Russian-style white hair bow - was the model child Friday morning when CBN arrived at my home to shoot a segment on single adoptive moms. As a camera man followed us about, we made my bed, picked produce in our garden, I combed her hair and brushed her teeth and we posed next to the harp.

Work, work, work

2009-11-06T18:08:00.000-08:00

I'm probably breaking child labor laws here by having Veeka push the vacuum around but she does insist on being Little Miss Cleaning Lady. We both have been struggling with colds for the past week and today was the first day in quite awhile that we both were operating anywhere near normal. Today was going to be catch-up day at work - or so I thought - until I was told I had to go to the mosque where the Ft. Hood shooter once hung out. So I drove to the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and easily found the place because of the TV trucks parked in front. Those poor people; have dozens of TV and radio reporters show up for their Friday prayer time and getting buttonholed by all those nasty reporters. Of course I *was* one of those nasty reporters - dressed in a long skirt with a scarf around my hair - interviewing whoever I could find. You can read about it here.
It's been quite a week with Islamic stuff today and the leader of world Orthodoxy - known as the Ecumenical Patriarch - in town and who I followed around this past week (here was the advance piece) along with doing articles on Joel Osteen (see here) and a group of humanistic Jews. I dragged Veeka (who was borderline sick) to their meeting in Northwest DC on a rainy Sunday morning. After 45 minutes of Israeli folkdancing, we attended a class taught by a rabbi who identified himself as a bi-sexual atheist. Fortunately, Veeka had no idea what was going on.
Meanwhile, Veeka has discovered "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" so she wants the video played continually because she wants to see the lion, as she says. She was sick on Halloween but when she saw the heavy bags of candy kids were carrying, she decided to recover long enough for us to walk around the block in the rain gathering goodies for her. Because we were on the late side, people were emptying loads of candy into her little bag.
And, as we've been switching into winter clothes, I discovered Veeka had a growth spurt this summer and a lot of things are now too small. She lost about half her clothes to the fact that she is now bigger...

Finally getting some TV

2009-10-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

I took today off to prepare for a 5-minute segment about the new book that will be showing on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Today we filmed it in front of Christ Church on Massachusetts Avenue, a church that was a beacon during the 1970s in the charismatic/pentecostal movement. Of course I was late, the traffic was nasty and Veeka screeched during the filming (her daycare had the day off) but the weather was out of this world and I took care to wear the most colorful outfit I had which is a must for TV. The church pastor came out just before the cameras started to roll, so afterwards I had a long talk with him about how dry the whole renewal movement is these days in the USA.
Am apparently coming down with a cold, so am not in the best spirits now but am happy that last week's rain has changed into this week's sun which hopefully will redden the few remaining green tomatoes on the vines in my back yard.
Had a lovely booksigning for my latest two books last weekend in Virginia and got 25 people which was much appreciated.
Will let y'all know when the CBN spot airs. I have a few more possibilities in the cooker so stay tuned. Fortunately, Veeka cheered up after the shooting for me to get this photo. The host, Paul Strand, is in the background in blue.

Booksignings, booksignings

2009-10-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it is nice to be busy selling my book. Yesterday, I spent several hours at a local conference of newly minted Anglicans (formerly Virginia Episcopalians) trying to hawk my wares. Fortunately, one of the bishops at the gathering - Martyn Minns - decided to make the lessons from "Fire and Glory" part of his sermon, which brought several people to my book table afterwards. Thanks, bishop. I owe you one.
And this coming Wednesday I will be heading north to Grove City College, an evangelical Christian place about an hour north of Pittsburgh to deliver some lectures and...yes, hawk more books! Veeka is coming because the organizers - bless them - have agreed to babysit her all day Thursday. A photo of Veeka with her little friends at daycare is included here.
Work has been busy, busy, busy - feels like I never get to rest as there is always something breaking plus two weekly columns to churn out. This (Oct. 3-4) is the first weekend I've been home in almost a month. Last weekend, I was with friends in Bethany Beach, Delaware renting out a place there super-close to the ocean; the weather, unfortunately was a tad chilly. And the weekend before, we were in New York for a journalists confab and booksigning there. I don't get to Manhattan often, so it was much fun seeing the uppper West side near Columbia University, which was much nicer looking than when I last saw it in 1993.

Where I win an award and Minnesota part 2

2009-09-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

In the past month, I've been to Minnesota twice, once to cover the Lutherans and the other to attend a Religion Newswriters Association contest where I picked up two very nice awards on Sept. 12. The WTimes just ran a piece today announcing the awards (a week late but oh well) which looks fairly nice. It was not the first time I had placed second in the Religion Reporter of the Year award - I also came in second 20 years ago. NOW if I can only place first...
My brief four days in Minnesota ran into a spell of nice, warm weather and of course that is when I had my book launch party. I am just at the beginning of getting word out about "Days of Fire and Glory" but when I show up at various venues, people are quick to grab it. It sells out before "Quitting Church" does.
My final days in Minnesota, by the way, were quite pleasant. Veeka and I spent a week at the Trapper's Lodge on Leech Lake, which was quite lovely. We found lots of things to do, so I have posted photos of Veeka by the lake, Veeka actually catching a fish (she had no idea what to do with it) and of course Veeka standing by a large blue ox, which is the local symbol up there. So I have been reading her tales of Paul Bunyan and explaining to her what an "ox" is. Can't say we have those in Maryland, especially of the large blue variety. We spent one day in Itasca State Park, where the headwaters of the Mississippi are; that is one lovely area with tons of lakes and white birch trees. We even went biking (with her in a little cart behind my bike) but the mosquitos ate us up. I spent one evening near Bemidji at Ben Israel, a Christian community about which I wrote this column a few days later.
On our last day, we arrived back in the Twin Cities just in time for a Hinnenthal family barbecue hosted by Beth and Chris, so we got to see everyone once again.

My book is finally out!

2009-09-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

I am here in Minneapolis, the day after my book launch party at the downtown Marriott. It was a lovely time - in a 31st-floor suite with a view of I-94. I'd say about 30 people, including some of my Minneapolis-area relatives showed up for a nice event showcasing work by Joe Rigert - a former AP reporter who wrote a book about abusive Irish Catholic priests - and myself. "Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community" has been in process 20 years and it's such a triumph for me to have the hardback in hand - finally!! It has been such a long road with so many disappointments but I hung in there and hung in there and....well, here is the Amazon link to what I think will be the best book I will ever write.
I am also including the wonderful cover with a fabulous photo by Debbie Scott of Graham Pulkingham - the iconic priest whom the book portrays - in the middle celebrating the Eucharist. Everyone's hands are raised in praise; it's a high point of the liturgy. I cannot be happy enough about this; if there was any problem with the launch party, it was that I didn't buy enough wine for all those thirsty reporters. Instead of having it be an event where everyone stood around and had mini-conversations, I instead set Joe and I in the middle of things and we led a fascinating discussion on what makes some religious movements fail. It was invigorating and will hopefully lead to some nice reviews.
For those of you who wonder what this book is about, I am attaching material from a press release. Please enjoy and...order the thing!

"Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community" is about one of the most gifted leaders of the charismatic movement and the newspaper reporter who unwittingly unearthed his secret.

Millions of evangelical Christians who lived through the Jesus movement and the charismatic renewal of the 1970s and 1980s wish to process what happened them in the early days of their faith. Some even moved into Christian community households to replicate the pattern of the early church in Acts 2. Many are seeking to regain the spiritual power and assurance they felt during those days. Still others have watched how this pentecostal subset of American life went mainstream beginning in the year 2000, penetrating even to the core of the White House and even becoming an issue during the 2008 election in the person of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
"Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community" is the story of God, sex and power, how a huge 20th century religious experiment in the life of one cleric led to the rise and fall of many. The author, Julia Duin, is the award-winning religion editor of the Washington Times and the author of five books. She worked for the Houston Chronicle from 1986-1990.

Her book traces the journey of Graham Pulkingham, an Episcopal priest who led Church of the Redeemer, one of the nation's fastest growing and most vibrant churches in a Houston slum and left a legacy that lasts to this day. He held thousands spellbound with his Gospel preaching and influenced millions with his daring vision of a compelling, charismatic Christianity made visible by a system of worldwide communities. Yet, Pulkingham hid from his followers a dark double life that he at first resisted, then secretly pursued and finally allowed to twist his personal theology into a gordian knot of accommodation and self-deceit and finally death.

Twenty years ago, Miss Duin, then a Houston Chronicle reporter, set out to do a laudatory account of events at Redeemer, only to discover the hidden sins not only of one Houston church but of an entire movement.

At its heights, Church of the Redeemer was a place afire. It was a megachurch before megachurches came into vogue. It had everything: an international reputation, fabulous music and joyous worship. It was not only a vibrant center for the Jesus movement that was transfixing the country in the early '70s, but it was the energy center for the charismatic movement, a type of Christianity straight from the exciting miracles of the New Testament book of Acts. Christians who were being "baptized in the Holy Spirit" within this movement felt they were witnessing the waking of a 2,000-year-old giant and experiencing a renaissance of the glory days of Christianity's beginning.

But there was more. Lurking in the shadows of Church of the Redeemer were dark secrets that in time made the church a living symbol of the charismatic movement's rise and decline; of a time when people's desire for God's love and power was shot through with pride, obsession with control and twisted sexuality.

It all began in 1964 when Graham Pulkingham, a burned-out Houston clergyman, traveled to New York and found himself transformed by the experience of being "baptized in the Spirit" through the prayers of David Wilkerson, author of "The Cross and the Switchblade" and today one of the world's best-known pentecostal preachers. Returning to Houston, the on-fire priest helped lay the groundwork for the Jesus movement. Under his leadership, the church catapulted itself into the communal living movement, creating dozens of extended Christian households encompassing more than 400 people in low-income neighborhoods. Through the books and magazine articles describing this remarkable church, thousands of curious babyboomer Christians visited Houston. Artists and musicians from around the world drifted in, creating a new genre of Christian music.

Things began to unravel in the mid 1970s after CBS's laudatory hour-long special in 1972 drew overflow crowds, overwhelming the church and its households. Pulkingham traveled to England to extend his influence by planting communities there, but left a cadre of authoritarian elders ruling the church in his absence. These elders began implementing the principles of a ruinous "discipleship movement" that was also sweeping contemporary Christianity - and devastating lives. The top elder at Redeemer was caught in adultery and the unrelated Jim Jones Guyana tragedy cast a pall over the notion of communal living. The household communities rapidly split up and even though Pulkingham moved back into 1980 to fix up the place, it was too late.

Not that Pulkingham was the best one to go around cleaning up anyone's reputation. A husband with six children, he had struggled with a lifetime of homosexual urges. Believing himself rid of them forever after his spiritual transformation in New York, he let himself be enticed back into the lifestyle several years later and began to act on these urges in England. He and his wife moved into separate bedrooms and he began propositioning male followers for sexual favors. In Houston, other followers noticed his theology had taken a decidedly left-hand turn. As more sex scandals - again involving elders - rocked the church, he was forced out just two years after his return. The charismatic movement had reached every corner of the globe by this time, but many of its American originators had turned on each other.

By the mid-1980s, both Pulkingham and the charismatic movement had run out of steam as disappointed followers penned books such as "Power Religion," "Churches That Abuse" and "Disappointment With God." Insiders who tried to reform the movement – and Pulkingham’s church - were largely ignored.

Then the PTL and Jimmy Swaggart scandals became double black eyes for Christianity while the 1988 presidential run of the first openly charismatic Christian candidate Pat Robertson politicized the movement. The monastic trio of poverty, chastity and obedience in the lives of early charismatics that had propelled their movement to such heady successes became the three-way trap of sex, money and power. God's love and power, which had transformed Church of the Redeemer, had been perverted to become raw power and sexual desire. Rocketing way beyond its biblical basis, the charismatic Christian movement in the 1990s became fertile ground for bizarre spiritual manifestations, such as believers being overcome with "holy laughter," uncontrollable shaking, making animal noises during services and people claiming that God was supplying them with new gold fillings for their teeth.

The book climaxes with Pulkingham's betrayal at the hands of the wife of a former lover and the collapse of a new community he founded north of Pittsburgh. By the time he was stricken with a fatal heart attack while caught in the midst of a 1993 supermarket shootout, Pulkingham was disgraced by a decades-long string of homosexual flings, under investigation by his bishop for propositioning some of the troubled men he counseled and on the verge of being defrocked by the very denomination he helped energize for three decades.

The reporter who narrates the book becomes part of the tale when she acquires a job at the Houston Chronicle at the midpoint of the book. Her investigation of Graham Pulkingham is the final straw that leads to his downfall and ultimately his death.

"Days of Fire and Glory" required 182 face-to-face interviews. It reveals how sex and religion, unhappily tangled, are still the stuff of headlines. The amazing characters, who were gifted people with the best intentions, failed miserably when they allow their faith in God to succumb to the desires of their bodies. Theirs is a cautionary tale that would well be heeded by all for whom the Gospel has become the foundation of their earthly success. Intentional community movements are becoming popular among young Christians and some of the worst excesses of religious authoritarian movements of several decades ago are popping up under new names.

However, the book is an inspiration that shows what God once did among an unlikely group of people in Houston and what He can do again.

As for babyboomers who lived through the religious movements of the last decades of the millennium, "Days of Fire and Glory" is a long-awaited validation of their search for God.

Tornadoes and Minnesota part 1

2009-08-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

Last night after Veeka fell asleep, I walked out to see a blanket of stars over the lake. I never get to see the Milky Way like this, near as we are to the Big City.
But this week we are away from the maddening crowd in the Minnesota north woods. How did we get here? Well, last week I was sent on a business trip to cover the biennial convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. As it turned out, it was a good call because they ended up making ecclesiastical history in that they are now the largest American Christian denomination to accept gay clergy. Which is what they voted to do plus a few other things this past week. You can read the walk-up to the event here, and and follow-up here and some of the react here and here and here. It was one highly interesting event to cover because of a tornado that bore down upon the gathering on Wednesday afternoon that some saw as a warning from the Almidghty to not proceed along the path the ELCA seemed to be going. My blog on this highly interesting event (nothing like having a tornado heading towards you) is at the end of this post.
Anyway, my cousins who live in town were super-helpful in arranging care for Veeka while I was covering all this. After dinner one night with the Weispfennings (related to my late cousin Anne) who live on a lovely bluff overlooking downtown St. Paul (or is it Minneapolis?), I got lots of help from Allison (actually my first cousin once removed as she's the eldest daughter of my cousin Faith) who has kids Veeka's age. So Veeka stayed at the daycare next door to Faith and Allison and husband Jon (shown with Veeka in one of the photos) picked up Veeka in the afternoon so she could play with her second cousins once removed: Charlie, Lucy and Cassie until Mommy got home from covering the ELCA. It sounds complicated but it all worked out quite well.
Finally on Saturday morning we were free to depart and head 200 miles northwest of Minneapolis to a lodge I'd found on the Internet on Leech Lake which has turned out to be a world Veeka's never encountered. Yesterday she touched her first fish and a little girl (who was equipped with a Barbie doll fishing rod) showed Veeka how to cast for fish. She's also seen cattails (none of those in Maryland) and experienced bonfires and tasted marshmallows. She's learned to say "Minnesota" and is reading a little paperback I bought her on Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox (might as well inculcate her in the local culture. After all, her grandfather is from these parts).
Stayed tuned for more Lessons in the Wilderness. Attached is another photo from our visit to the Mall of America and the interesting creature we met there. And below is my WTimes post on the tornado:

It was just before 2 p.m. when someone rushed into the press room and told us to vacate the place fast. A tornado had touched down close by, we were told, and it was heading our way. We were covering the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's churchwide assembly in Minneapolis. The police wanted us all in a safe place away from the glass windows that encase the huge Minneapolis Convention Center.
So everyone rushed into the main hall to join some 1,045 voting members who were listening to a Bible on the prodigal son being given by Luther Seminary Old Testament professor Diane Jacobson. As she continued speaking, a palpable blanket of fear descended on the entire group as the doors to the outside hallways were shut, enclosing us in the giant room which apparently was the safest place to be in the case of a tornado. Worse, we could hear the winds howling outside. I thought of my rental car parked nearby and hoped it'd stay in one piece. It also did not help the general atmosphere that the air conditioning was set on minus 2.
And a tornado *was* headed our way. Just after 2 p.m., the twister knocked the cross off the steeple of Central Lutheran Church just across the street from the convention center. I walked outside afterwards to look at it and the steel cross was dangling high up in the air.
During the storm, ELCA President Mark Hanson read outloud the 121st Psalm to us to calm everyone down.
"We trust the weather is not a commentar on our work," said the Rev. Steven Loy, chairman of an ad hoc committee on a controversial statement on human sexuality that was on the floor that afternoon. The statement, which seems to open the door to greater acceptance of homosexual practice, passed by an exact two-thirds vote a few hours later. One or two votes less would have killed it. There was quite a gasp when we saw the results.
Later some of us were discussing in the press room whether the Almighty had sent a tornado to send the Lutherans a message. After all, one of the reporters said, the ELCA endured an electrical storm during one of their previous conventions - where human sexuality was also on the table - in Orlando.
And if God was speaking, was anyone listening?
- Julia Duin, religion editor

A year in Hyattsville

2009-08-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

Well, here is a photo of my home into which we moved one year ago this weekend. The Virginia-to-Maryland switch has gone reasonably well; I really miss all the great restaurants and retail over there in the Old Dominion as what's available here in Prince George's County is not much to write home about. Then again, one of my great discoveries was a Massage Envy outlet that was almost half the price of what I was shelling out for shoulder rubs to the south. And the community "feel" to this area is lightyears better than what I had, plus the availability of kids, family-friendly stuff for Veeka, lots of people with children and WAY more support than I had available in Virginia made it a very good move.
Fortunately nothing awful, other than a broken garage door, happened my first year and the biggest problem I have is keeping my tomatoes out of reach from the squirrels. MUCH nicer neighbors than what I had in Falls Church (although the people immediately next to me in my former condo were nice enough) but the 2 Hyattsville list serves I am on have been invaluable as to helping me out in so many ways. Living only 5 miles from work is one good idea. The biggest pain has been switching doctors, etc. The first dentist I found here did not work out so will try another. Last week I visited what I thought would be Veeka's new pediatrician but walked out after we were kept waiting 40 minutes. There were no toys to play with and Veeka was bouncing off the walls. And the waiting room was dirty and there was little privacy; you could walk 3 steps down the hall and watch what was going on in one of the exam rooms. When Veeka did just that - run down the hallway and gape at a little screaming kid getting some kind of shot - I bolted.
My next choice for pediatrician is over the county line into Silver Spring - a longer commute but I was getting so many mixed reviews of the local kiddie doctors. A shame one must go to a richer county for better service but that is the way of it here in PG County which deserves some of the bad rep it has for things just being a lot shabbier than elsewhere in the DC metro area. However, the park system is great but apparently the schools are not - a headache I will have to face a year from now.
Veeka is growing like a little stringbean - up and down - but not OUT, meaning some of her clothes from two years ago are still fitting her. Am dragging her to that newest pediatrician a month from now for a physical just to make sure everything is on schedule but she looks as healthy as can be and gives the pre-school people fits because of her high-energy antics and refusal to take naps. I have gotten very strict about the latter and told her she MUST sleep at naptime (she is a bear if she does not) because I have gotten some very unhappy notes from her teacher informing me what a terror she is at naptime (rocks back and forth and sings to herself, wakes up the other kids, sometimes runs around the room - aargh).
Her vocabulary is doing great so no more special ed this coming year like she's had since she came here.
As for me, am passing around galleys of my new book which is available here should you wish to pre-order! More on that for a later post. Am preparing to go to Minneapolis in a little more than a week to cover the Lutherans so am using this coming week to wrap up many loose ends.

In which my parents leave their home

2009-07-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally happened; the lovely family home that's provided for us years of mountain and Lake Sammamish views just east of Seattle is in the past. My parents moved last week to a retirement place (altho they would not call it that) 8 miles away in Redmond WITH NO VIEW. They got to experience, like we did a year ago, the delights of moving lock, stock and barrel. They'd owned the place since that summer of 1971 when they and us kids rolled into western Washington state and wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into. We'd just spent two weeks crossing the country and camping out along the way. Back then, we were from sophisticated Maryland and Bellevue and especially Redmond seemed a bit behind the times, we thought. My entire family ended up settling in the Pacific Northwest except for me, the wandering Jew of the lot. I've included an older photo of the place which I will miss like anything. It's the closest thing I ever had as a family home, being that we moved every few years when I was younger.
My dad has promised that NOW he will finally get a kitty so we shall see if he keeps his promise. Soooo, no more lovely roses like the ones that always greeted me when I came home in the summers. I didn't fly back to Seattle this summer as it turned out; my parents' topsy-turvy home situation being one reason.
But Uncle Steve was in town this past weekend so Veeka and I wandered over to his in-laws where I caught a photo of them and Aunt Nancy at the dinner table. Veeka is now very taken with Uncle 'Teve and his brother, Uncle Gob. And Oma and Opa of course. As usual, Veeka charmed everyone.

The finish line approacheth

2009-07-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know it's been awhile since I've posted but I am in the final weeks of PUTTING OUT A BOOK. You can tell the signs: piles of unread newspapers around the house; unread mail, unpaid bills, mountains of kitty fur that need to be vacuumed up. For those of you who know me, this is the "Redeemer book" that will be launched this September at the Religion Newswriters Association convention in Minneapolis and plans are afoot now for a reception somewhere in the host hotel (the downtown Marriott). I'd wanted a pricey setting with wine flowing and hors d'oeuvres but my publisher didn't want to lay out too much money, so I am shopping about for alternatives.
If I had my way, the launch would be in Houston, where most of the action takes place, but circumstances have not worked out yet for me to get down there.
But I cannot say how glad I am that this 20-year project is almost over. I am now working on proofing copy, scanning photos, re-reading the dust jacket copy, negotiating with the photographer and digging up obscure facts. I spent last Wednesday in Baltimore doing a last-minute read through the manuscript which is about 300 pages.
As for Veeka, well, she is fine. There is one photo of what looks like a blur bouncing a ball. That is our little honey bunch learning how to bounce a ball. I got her a red ball so she is trying to learn how to dribble. Where is Uncle Steve when I need him to show her how?
Potty training is almost down pat. There are a few bad days but she has made incredible progress since her birthday when she decided to get serious about learning how. She doesn't need a kiddie diaper in the pool any more which is a great relief.
The other photo is of Veeka at the beach where I took her and the daughter of a friend who helped me take care of her. Am learning that on a weekend at the beach, I need someone along to help, as she has to be constantly watched. Despite there being two of us, she escaped us at one point and dashed two blocks down the beach just because she felt like running. Fortunately some people spotted my frantic looking about and told me they'd seen her. I sprinted down the sand and finally saw her - on the lifeguard stand happily enjoying herself. Grrrrr.

Off to Dallas

2009-06-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Well..for only a few days to cover the conference that officially establishes a new Anglican province made up of dissaffected Episcopalians. Problem is, the archbishop of Canterbury doesn't recognize this group but he may at some point. Anyway, on Sunday night, I fly from Baltimore to DFW to lodge with a reporter friend from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and share a rental car as we spend 3 days in Texas. For me, it will be a chance to greet tons of old friends as many of these folks are people I knew in seminary or in various churches I've been in along the way.
As soon as I heard of this trip, I dashed to Kinkos to print 200 postcards advertising my upcoming book on the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer and Graham Pulkingham which had a working title of "Power and Desire: The Rise and Fall of Christian Community and Charismatic Renewal." We've re-tooled that to a new title: "Days of Fire and Glory: The rise and fall of a charismatic community" which is not as far-reaching but may be more accurate.
The photo is of a happy Veeka lounging on her new bed with the kitty who sleeps on it every day. My right arm is still terribly sore now that I have begun physical therapy and I'm still on pain meds. I've worked 2 six-day weeks in a row and I'm pretty weary.

Free from the sling

2009-06-10T19:08:00.001-07:00

Although the photo shows me still in the darned thing, the orthopedist gave me the green light Monday to shed the sling just short of a month of wearing it. That last week, my arm was cramping quite a bit with it on plus I was starting to drive by myself and had to take it off while in the car (one gets a ticket if you're driving with one of those things on). So I am well into physical therapy at this point.
This week has been crazy with daily stories zinging me every day. I am flooded with work. Monday was a press conference with abortionist LeRoy Carhart who was a close friend of George Tillers and was in town to give a eulogy for him at a memorial service. Turns out I had Carhart nearly to myself and got to ask him quite a bit about life as a doctor who aborts babies in the third trimester. I really blanched when he told me about the suicidal woman whose fetus he aborted at 30 weeks, as Veeka was born at 32 weeks. I learned later when I interviewed a gynecologist, abortion often makes women more suicidal, not less. Near the end of the interview, however, I did refer to that thing in the womb as a "baby" at which point Carhart, his wife, daughter and about 10 other people in the room started looking at me strangely as to ask "how did she sneak in"? We got into quite a discussion of where God stands on abortion; a little bit of which I am repeating for my June 11 "Stairway" colum.
Anyway, on Tuesday, it was announced the Tiller clinic was shutting down for good so I had to do another story. And today, there was a shooting at the Holocaust museum so I had to drop everything and do a story on the Jewish reaction to it all. Fortunately I had tons of Jewish contacts - and their cell phones - in my files so I was able to throw a story together within a few hours.
But all these stories mean I've been late in picking up Veeka at the daycare. The poor child has been traumatized by all the thunderstorms we've been having at dusk. And yesterday a huge tree branch from the abandoned house next door came crashing down into my back yard, covering one-quarter of it. Fortunately the bank that owns the house agreed today to send someone with a chainsaw to remove the mess. Amazingly, none of my phone or electric lines went down with it.
One bright spot have been these meals brought to me by members of a small group I belong to, since it's difficult for me to put together a full meal with my right arm in this much pain. A succession of casseroles, salads, chips and cookies have been showing up each evening. It's been lovely every night getting different stuff that I don't have to cook. Tonight we got the best gooey caramel and chocolate Haagen-Daz ice cream. Slurp.

Week #3 of The Sling

2009-05-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well, here at last is a photo of this awful contraption taken by Gail during our Maryland Tour last weekend. It does kind of envelope my whole right side, doesn't it? I was at the Amish market and you can see their horses in the background. I've gone through 3 sessions of physical therapy and believe me, this is going to be a long haul. I can lift my right arm at 110 degrees - a bit more than right angle to my body.
Gail, unfortunately, flew out Tuesday and I was all alone for the first time in 2 weeks, which was gloomy for me. Not only that, but Veeka suddenly came down with a fever at noon so the last thing Gail ended up doing was racing to the daycare to pick up Veeka and bringing her home and putting her to bed while I nabbed a co-worker who drove me back home. Fortunately the Little One "only" had a 24-hour virus that most of the little kids - I later found out - in the neighborhood all got but all the same, it was nasty seeing her temperature rise and being trapped, unable to drive even to a pharmacy. A friend who has 7 kids took pity on me and brought us some cooked rice, iced popsicles and Tylenol suppositories to get medicine into Veeka since it's hard to ingest orally when you're vomiting. That got me through the night - it's so nasty when you live alone and you can't run to a pharmacy when there's a sick kid at home.
Later in the week, a similar situation arose where I needed to run out for 10 minutes but Veeka had just fallen asleep and it was so frightfully hard to get her down for a nap, I was frantic not to wake her. Fortunately I spotted a neighbor gardening who graciously agreed to sit in my home to watch Veeka while I went and picked up someone at the Metro (only a mile away so I can drive that far) who had come for the day to help me clean the house. And starting tomorrow, I have a succession of friends - most of them part of a Sunday night Catholic prayer group I attend - who are bring us meals. With this arm, it is excruciating to slice veggies or work the can opener. So we've had lots of cheese, crackers and sausage lately.
In the midst of all this mess, I was working full time and ended up - during a four-day work week (cuz of Memorial Day) putting out six articles. Need to slow that pace down. The second photo, also taken by Gail, is of Veeka and one of the Amish girls in a buggy. Veeka has a way of elbowing her way into every photo op.

And I turn 53

2009-05-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, how age creepeth on. Tuesday was *my* birthday, so my parents and I went to a "Hawaiian fusion" restaurant in Crofton which we all liked. Also there was Gail Dall, an old friend who had flown in to be with me during my 2nd week of convalescence so it was lovely having all sorts of nice people around me. (A babysitter was with Veeka who has little patience for restaurants these days).
And so Oma and Opa flew off in a plane, much to Veeka's bewilderment, and now Gail is helping me get dressed, undressed, clean around the house unload/load the dishwasher, shop for food and tons of other stuff that needs to be done. I am still pretty much operating with one arm although I CAN type with both. Physical therapy on Thursday was excruciating - most painful was an exercise where you just let your arm dangle - this lengthens the hurt muscles I guess - but aaeeah.
Today was fun; in an effort to show Gail some of the local scenery, we headed east of Washington to St. Mary's County where we visited an Amish market (Veeka could not wait to climb up into the Amish carriages), then headed further east to Calvert County where we visited a cypress swamp and a beach (to Veeka's delight). Gail had never swum in the Chesapeake before but the water was so warm, the jellyfish were already out (usually they don't appear until July at the earliest). Veeka adores any and every beach. Then we headed south toward a children's museum on Solomon's Island, but got sidetracked by an airshow at the nearby Air Force base where the Blue Angels were performing. We arrived just when the show started and found a fabulous parking space with a view. Unfortunately Veeka shrieked every time a jet roared over so 45 minutes into the show, we decided to leave because of her wailing. Turns out the show ended right about then so we beat all the traffic out of there. The whole day was like that; through several fortunate coincidences - or favors from God - we ended up at the places we needed to be just when we needed to be there. Like, if we had not stopped at the tourism center, we would not have learned where the Amish market was.
Then we drove 50 miles north to Annapolis where Gail and I walked up and down Main Street and had crab cakes at Middleton Tavern, a really nice restaurant right there at the waterfront. The night was so warm and everyone was out with their beach clothes and their dogs and everyone was in such a good mood because the Naval Academy graduation had been Friday so lots of folks were in town. Sunday and Monday we rest and Tuesday, GAIL LEAVES. And I'll be bereft!
(The photo is from several weeks ago when Veeka and I were in Ambridge and staying overnight with a very nice family who have a 4-year-old, Lydia, the same age as Veeka. The two got along great.)

Oma hits 81!

2009-05-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, for the second year in a row, Oma and Opa are with us during mid-May. The occasion: Julia's right shoulder surgery that took place May 13 (my parents' 59th wedding anniversary, in fact). It was not the most romantic day for them because I showed up at the hospital just before noon and was released shortly before 6. My dad is the one who held vigil at the Kernan orthopedic hospital, which was in Baltimore. We don't yet have the right name of the muscle tear in my right shoulder that's been bothering me for 2 years but the doctor definitely found it and hopefully repaired it all. I was in quite a bit of pain all day Thursday and groggy to boot with all the painkillers plus an ice pack that was attached to my shoulders. Hardly left my bed. Friday managed to plunk down a birthday card for Oma and then later on in the day, we ordered take-out from the Olive Garden which turned out to be surprisingly good.
So it's been pretty quiet here. Oma accompanied me to my Pilates class today so she could see what one looks like and to help me get up and down. My right arm is all encased in a black gortex sling with a bolster - tomorrow we will try changing the dressing. Opa has been busy doing errands around the house; he just got done repairing a bookcase. We visit the doctor on Monday and I start physical therapy on Thursday. Am not sure when I drive again but I can't right now. Oh, and Oma/Opa also patiently waited at Costco to get me new tires so that I didn't have to sit there for hours. We should have them visit more often, no?
The photo is of Veeka sitting on Oma's lap just after the candles were blown out.

Veeka's dedication

2009-04-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

One other thing that happened recently was that I had Veeka dedicated to God at a local church. I'm not into infant baptism - want to let her be baptized when she makes her own decision to be a believer but I wanted to do something. Some friends of mine arranged for her to be dedicated to God and prayed over at an Assembly of God church in Fairfax, which is what we did. The people at Way of Faith AG were super gracious even though no one really knew me; they just knew Sue and Rebecca (show with Veeka and I in a photo here). They gave us a little certificate which I will put in my soon-to-be assembled Veeka Scrapbook.
After the service, Rebecca arranged for a 2nd birthday party at Arties, a local restaurant where we had all sorts of presents and balloons and once again, Veeka's favorite meal of hamburger and French fries. The Little One adored all the balloons and streamers. Rebecca and Sue also gave her a necklace with a heart containing a little seed that symbolized God's word growing like a seed in one's heart. Being that Sue and Rebecca are moving to Alabama shortly, it was a bittersweet time of good-byes as I am not sure how much I will see them again. The "Quitting Church" book was dedicated to them, among others, and they will be missed.
Potty training is doing well enough and Veeka is going on long jags of hours without end of accident-free days. However the slipcovers on the white couch in my living room are showing a few slip-ups and I know I must wash them before The Visit by Oma and Opa starting May 11. Yes, they will be in residence for a week, as I am getting shoulder surgery May 13 and expect to be in a sling for up to a month - am hoping the surgeon lowers that estimate (I had been told it'd be 2-3 weeks when I first agreed to do this!) - to repair a capsular tear in my right arm that has bothered me for two years. Lifting Veeka and the repetitive motion of reaching back to her car seat did something bad that 2 sessions of physical therapy did not heal.
Sooo I am trying to set up people to help me once my parents leave, as I will not be able to sling Veeka around simply with my left arm. My biggest needs are help for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening although that could change - I just do not know how mobile I will be. One friend is going to try to get some 6th-grade-age girls to help out in the evenings for their community service credits but mornings could be a problem as no one is available to help out weekdays. I did ask 3 sets of friends if they could fly here to help me (even offered free plane fare!) but people generally cannot break free.

Veeka turns 4

2009-04-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

She was looking forward to it for days: the big FOUR. The day before, we spent Aunt Susan's check on shoes and girly underwear as Miss Veeka is finally getting serious about potty training (size 4 for any of you who want to help contribute to the cause). She was hungry and pouty at Target, so I took her down the mall to McDonalds where she cheered up after having her favorite meal: hamburger, fries and ice cream. Yum yum.
And the next day, I dressed her up and sent her to school while I put together a nice meal for a guest who was coming over (a fellow single mom-to-be from Kazakhstan). That night Veeka opened her gifts and was especially entranced by a pink scooter furnished by Oma and Opa. She rode all over the neighborhood on that one. A kind neighbor brought over a chocolate birthday cake so she could BLOW out her multiple candles. Four really is the age where they "get" birthdays and talk about them weeks before the actual occurrence. I suppose some day I will have to put together an actual party but for now, our little get-together worked just fine.
This weekend we're in the Pittsburgh area for a speaking engagement for "Quitting Church" at my old seminary while I show Veeka off to friends. Today I just filmed some more episodes for CBN, whose producers seem to like me and want to have me on for their new 24-hour channel. So if any of you watch religious TV, I'm now popping up here and there. I've finally found a hairdresser who has given me a cut that looks decent on TV and which I can easily reproduce at home. It's taken me years to find a "look" that works but that day has arrived.

Easter day

2009-04-13T19:36:00.001-07:00

I really tried to get that signature Easter photo but just could not get the right shot no matter how hard I tried. We had a lovely, sunny day. Veeka and I went to church with Veeks who is dressed in a lovely pink knit given by a friend of my parents and afterwards planned a new red-bud tree I had bought at the nursery. I also mowed my jungle of a lawn, thanks to a kind neighbor who lent me his mower. Then we went to a friend's home for an Easter egg hunt (see Veeka holding her egg collection bag), then pot-luck. Amira, the lady of the house, decorated her Victorian home beautifully with roses and flowers and Scripture verses and candies placed about - it was a truly lovely day. She even had cupcakes decorated in lovely pastel icings.
Unfortunately many of us could not squeeze down a lot of the cupcakes and SO Amira told me to help myself which....I did as I need cupcakes for this Thursday, Veeka's BIG DAY whereupon she turns 4. She totally gets the concept of birthdays now and is very excited about her presents. A little pink scooter from Oma and Opa sits in the garage waiting for her delighted swoop. I got her a combo orchid/cactus hanging plant with bright pink flowers for her birthday and a cool doll from Grenada. If anyone wants ideas...well, she needs lots of little-girl underwear because Oma and Opa will be here in May to help finish potty-training. Being that she will be 4, it is TIME. (Bubble bath is a good gift idea too as we go through lots of it).
One of my kind neighbors has offered to bring over a cake plus I'm having a friend in who is thinking of adoption.