February blues

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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.