After the move

Well, I am sitting in a nice big house now filled with boxes and packing paper all over the floor. Maryland doesn't feel like home at all at this point and I am casting about looking for new dry cleaners, playgrounds for Veeka, restaurants, etc. Did discover a cool Ethiopian diner tonight that served a mean coffee. I needed it, as I'd been out on the Mall all day covering a huge prayer meeting of 50,000 people named TheCall DC. Fortunately the weather was not humid but it was still a ton of work tromping about the Mall interviewing folks as to what they were praying about and why they were there. I also got to talk with some of the leaders who were on the stage. Then I had to go write up the gathering in the press trailer, which had no video feed to the main stage. Fortunately, thanks to an Internet card loaned to me by a Call staffer, I could view everything that was going on 100 feet from me on stage through the God TV web site, which was filming the whole thing. It was reminiscent of the huge Promise Keepers gathering 11 years ago; people singing Christian praise music, prostrate on the ground in prayer, etc.
It's about midnight now and of course I've been sleep-deprived most of this week staying up for the Olympics - mainly the gymnastics. WHY they put the gymnastics at the ungodly hour of 11 p.m. is beyond me and totally infuriating as NBC broadcasts mindless gluck such as beach volleyball at the more civilized 9 pm hour.
I've not been able to photograph the new house as my camera is still packed away...somewhere. So, portrayed here is Oma, Opa and Veeka at one of the pretty spots we visited in Montana. I think they are gazing at a bald eagle. Or a plane.

Marvelous Montana

I'm sitting in the dark (Veeka is asleep) in a Missoula hotel setting the alarm for an early morning flight out of here tomorrow. I had not been to Montana in 30 years, since my college graduation. I've spent the last 5 days at a family reunion, relaxing and eating too much food at the Double Arrow resort at Lake Seeley, one of several lustrous lakes just south of Glacier National Park. For all those family members who sat this gathering out: You should have been there.
There were about 30 of us from Minnesota, Washington state and Virginia gathered there thanks to gargantuan efforts made by my Minneapolis cousins who realized, along with us all, that we could not wait for weddings and funerals to bring us together. Ever since Uncle Ed's funeral 17 months ago, the thought was that maybe the rest of us could intentionally spend more time together before more pass into eternity.
So we met at this lovely ranch underneath bright blue skies, about 2,000+ feet up, meaning there were no mosquitos! Some of us did whitewater rafting on Wednesday on the Clark Fork west of Missoula and others golfed, rode horses or simply ate. Or gazed at the stars at night. I was glad, with all the infusion of babies from the Hinnenthal side of things, to have at least one little one represented from the Duin side of the picture. For those who are not familiar with my father's side of the family, everything springs from Siegfried, the 11th son of a peasant family in northwest Germany, who immigrated here in 1903 and married Alma Englebert. They settled in New Ulm, Minn., and had four children. My Aunt Alice, 92, on the far left of the photo, was #2. My father, 83, who is standing, was #4. The aforementioned Uncle Ed was #3. The fourth, Jerry, who was the eldest, died at the turn of this century. From those four came tons of kids and grandkids. The photo shows the Duin side of the clan, which includes myself, my mother and Miss Veeka. Suggestion for our next gathering: Post a family tree chart.
With all sorts of people to cuddle up to and talk with, Veeka's vocabulary has made great leaps since I flew out this way July 16. Now it's back to sweltering Washington where I close on two homes this week, pack, move and collapse.

Lavender fields forever

We have been in the Pacific Northwest for a week now and it's been lovely escaping those 97-degree temperatures back east. After a tiring plane ride from Washington via Detroit, made bearable by a very nice steward on Northwest Airlines who amused The Child after I was about to throttle her, we arrived in Seattle - and 60-degree temperatures. Two days later, we were bound for the Olympic peninsula where I fulfilled a longtime dream of attending the annual lavender festival in Sequim. Sequim, a small town on the northern peninsula coast, grows more lavender plants than anywhere else in the country; thus eight farms were open for us tourists to drop in at.
We had the best time strolling through fields of purple plants, looking through all the lavender gift items (did you know lavender tincture is good for insect bites?), listening to some cool bands, sampling the local wines and introducing Veeka to pet llamas, all in very mild, sunny weather. It's so odd to see folks wearing sweaters here when back east everything is sweltering. That evening, we stayed in my cousin Kathy's fabulous waterfront-view-of-Puget-Sound home, then it was off to Portland to attend a reunion of folks who I met in the 1970s in the Lewis & Clark College Christian Fellowship. These days, the Princeton Review rates L&C as one of the top 10 godless colleges in the country but 30 years ago, things were a bit more religion-friendly. So, about 40 of us spent 2 days at a Presbyterian retreat house overlooking the Columbia River gorge catching up. I found an amenable 16-year-old sitter for Miss Veeka, who loved wandering around the family farm with cows, dogs, a kitten and other delights.
I still cannot get over the profusion of flowers in the Pacific Northwest - so different from what one experiences back east in the summer - and the waterfalls. A bunch of us visited Multnomah Falls at the close of the retreat and luxuriated in the sunshine. Then I spent 3 nights lodging chez my friend Gail Dall and her husband Jamie while visiting several friends in Salem and Portland plus being the beneficiary of a delightful party Gail organized for me and a bunch of folks from Good Samaritan Ministries, a Christian group I got to know years back while living in the River City.
We returned to Seattle yesterday, detouring for lunch with Amy, a Veeka friend whose recent marriage to a soldier at Ft. Lewis necessitated a move to Tacoma. While Amy and I talked, Veeka dashed about a park on the western edge of the military reservation. Today, her grandparents took Veeka to a water park of sorts in Bellevue where she happily dashed about before crashing a class of Japanese-speaking students. Her mother will try to rest a bit before we take off for a week in Montana for a family reunion.

Publisher's Weekly hypes my book

My publisher, Baker Books, was a'twitter today when they saw the most recent issue of Publisher's Weekly, a bible for those in the publishing world, give a very decent review of my upcoming book. PW always writes short little synopses like this:

Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It
Julia Duin. Baker, $17.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-8010-6823-2
Duin brings two kinds of experiences to bear in this engaging little jeremiad: as religion editor for the Washington Times, she is in her element marshaling statistics, interviewing authors and clergy, and commenting on the trend of faithful evangelicals who increasingly vote with their feet by leaving their churches. But she's also a self-described born-again evangelical herself, coping with the personal pain of not having a viable and permanent church home. Drawing heavily on research by pollster George Barna, Duin diagnoses a widespread dissatisfaction among evangelicals, who feel their churches do a decent job with new Christians but fall far short with mature believers. In particular, Duin shows, women and singles are leaving churches in ever-greater numbers. (As a single woman herself, she discusses her own experiences with being marginalized while successfully evoking a larger context through research and polls.) Duin has some prescriptions to help with these problems, including meatier sermons that address real issues; house churches and micro-churches that foster more genuine community; and even in-church matchmaking services to help singles who want to find a mate. (Sept.)

So, if you want to pre-order or anything, just click here.

Wish I could say I had lots of speaking engagements lined up, but books on why churches are doing such a rotten job aren't inspirational enough for a lot of Christian meetings. I will appear on a panel in September with other journalists at a large gathering of religion writers in Washington, which is gold, PR-wise.

Other news: both contracts for the condo (to sell) and the house (to buy) are signed and I just lined up my mover and settlement company today.

The photo of Miss Veeka shows her on a hot summer night setting a dinner place for Miss Kitty.

Kind of boring here

Actually it's the calm before the storm as I may be moving in August back to the state where I was born. Guess where that is? Hint: It is across the river from the Washington Times building. No, it's not New Mexico unfortunately. I spent all Saturday afternoon putting together an offer for a house. Haven't heard back on that yet. About my current abode, had the house inspection today. I hope the inspector saw all that expensive insulation 4 of us homeowners put in the crawl space two years ago. Am starting to schedule visits for moving estimates. Everything must move quickly as my vacation starts July 16 so all must be done before then.
If any of you want to read my stuff on the Washington Times web site, go to the main page and in the search space, put in my name in quotes, ie "Julia Duin." For some weird html reason, that's the only way to call up all my bylines. I've had one story after another; black pro-lifers demonstrating on Capitol Hill, the latest Pew Forum survey on the religious views of Americans, a court ruling by a Fairfax County judge on an Anglican/Episcopal church split and today, a story about a Catholic bishop in Richmond who allowed a poor immigrant girl who was a ward of Catholic Charities (which operates under the aegis of the diocese) to get an abortion. That was in just one week. Then I had 2 columns and a blog to do - well, 7 article-like things; eight if you count the sidebar I wrote for our web site on what the pro-lifers said. Yes, that's like eight articles in a week. My brother Stephen does 3 columns a week and a blog for the Oregonian and calls THAT a full-time job. And gets paid a lot more than do I.
The photo is of Veeka in a cute little Chinese dress "riding" the duckies outside a Baltimore restaurant. The Little Darling does love to pose. It's been in he 90s here so we just go to a water park and I find a lawn chair by the wading pool and just let her splash about. She's becoming a little fish and sort of gets the concept of kicking. Afterwards we had a favorite: Pizza. She is a bit slow on the speech end but she can pronounce that.
There's so much you have to teach kids. Like how to eat a popsicle. They don't come into the world knowing that so you have to show them how to hold the thing, lick it just so and gobble it fast so it won't drip. Let's just say we go through lots of dish towels here. And thanks to Uncle Rob, she has a CD player and little earphones with which she likes to fall asleep. I gave her some New Age music tonight but it was not bouncy enough so I found a CD of Keith Green (contemporary Christian rock and folk) which she loved. I could hear her giggling as she fell asleep.

Beach princess

Well, here Veeka is at a beach retreat I attended last weekend on the Jersey shore. Note the cupped hands, the engaging smile, the little knee bent just so. I did not coach her at all; she just struck that pose when she saw the camera. I think some of the 15 folks at the retreat were not too sure about sharing time with a 3-year-old but Our Princess behaved beautifully; sitting on peoples' laps, quietly listening during our sessions, clapping during the music - I wondered if this was my child. I think she was also glad to be out of my clutches.
The good news is that another offer has come in and we are finalizing that contract now. Wednesday I go visit the house I most like in the neighborhood I'm looking at and hopefully make an offer soon after that. August may be a very busy month for me. Not much in the way of other news - at least news I can share on a public blog - but generally things are doing well. My twice-weekly column in the Washington Times, named "Stairway to heaven," is doing OK - you can read one of my latest here which was my ruminations on what is the besetting sin of Washington, DC. The columns, tho, have doubled my workload and the breaking news, which I also must cover, is not letting up. Last week I broke a front -page story about officials in the Catholic Diocese of Richmond helping a 16-year-old immigrant girl get an abortion (!) and there's more dirt to be spilled on that one. Generally to find my stuff, go to the Washington Times front page (www.washingtontimes.com) and put in "Julia" and "Duin" in the search field and you'll come up with some of my stuff. I am trying to get the web people to create a "faith" tab where EVERYTHING religious would be filed but that's not quite working yet.

Then again, maybe not

I got The Call this morning from my agent saying my buyer had chickened out. When he was late by several days in returning the signed contract, I began to wonder. Now it's back to keeping this place squeaky clean again - now into my 13th week. I had been fairly happy with the offer; it was one I could live with although quite a cut from what I wanted and the condo deserves to get. But real estate is so bizarre and quirky these days that simply everyone is having a rough time. It is not uncommon for homes to be on the market 6 months around here.
Meanwhile, Veeka and I are living large. The photos of her dressed up in a princess costume and blowing bubbles with a 4-year-old friend, Ruth Elizabeth I think her name is. She was at a babysitters when they were taken. Veeka likes to be babysat because she has a lot more fun than she does with Boring Mommy. Tomorrow Mommy is going to drag her to some house showings but Sunday she gets to meet her 2nd cousins, once removed, who are visiting friends in Annapolis. Their mom, Allison, and I, are planning a fun time in the hotel pool.
Her mother is also working hard at the paper. I have been given a twice-weekly religion column, called "Stairway to Heaven." Here is my latest entry which is kind of inside baseball for local Catholics but it sure got good react. Sunday, I'll be doing a column on Washington's besetting sin. Now if you look for me on the Washington Times new jazzy web site, you may not find me! Even we employees do not understand our revved-up site with the news "cube" (you press an arrow to 'turn' it to different stories) on the front page. To find my blog and articles, click on culture in the header and you'll get some of my stuff, like this blog here.
Now I am writing 2 weekly columns, doing breaking news (1-2 articles a week) and running a blog. That is 4-6 separate pieces a week. My brother at the Oregonian does 3 weekly columns and a blog and gets paid a lot more!