[Ancient Faith Radio; January 23, 2008]
I’m recording this on January 22nd, 2008, the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion all through America—through all 50 states, through all nine months of pregnancy.People question that sometimes, because the Roe decision says that abortion should be available to a woman under any circumstances, until the point of viability.It said that, after that, states can begin to have some laws protecting the unborn child, after viability.But there’s a companion decision to Roe v. Wade, called Doe v. Bolton.It came down the same day, and it governs how that proposed post-viability period can be legislated in the states.It says that states may do nothing to restrict a woman’s access to abortion if she wants the abortion for some aspect of her health.Well, the result is that you can have a legal abortion at almost any point in pregnancy if you are willing to travel for it.There are specialists who go into these post-viability late-term abortions, that’s what they specialize in offering.
[Ancient Faith Radio; January 16, 2008]
This is another one of those times when I’m someplace and kind of embarrassed to say where I am. I’m in the parking lot of an all-you-an-eat buffet restaurant; this one’s a Golden Corral. I’m about to go in and have some dinner. And this is one of my secret techniques at being a writer, that when I have a lot of stuff I need to go through, a lot of paper, like when I’ve gotten the manuscript of a book back from the editor and I need to look at every page and see what all the suggestions and changes are, this is my plan: I go to an all-you-can-eat place and I put the big stack of paper on the table and I’ll get salad and then I’ll read for a half hour. And then I’ll get some vegetables and then read for another half hour. And just stretch it out and make it a little more cheerful than it might otherwise be.
[Ancient Faith Radio; January 9, 2008]
Frederica: Here we are, still hurtling along.This will air a week later, but I just broke there so that we could continue this fascinating conversation we’re having about ancient Rome, so that we could make it into two podcasts instead of one.I am in a car being driven with extreme competence and safety by my prayer partner Colleen Oren, who is the choir director at Holy Cross Church.Also in the front seat is Ina O’Dell, Shamassey Ina, wife of Deacon Mark.And we have our monthly breakfast where we get together and share our prayer requests, and our husbands think we get together to talk about them, but that just shows their suspicious minds.[Laughter] And today we’re going way out in the country to sort of a country family restaurant for breakfast, and I’ve been talking to Ina about what she saw in Rome about ancient Orthodox Christianity in Rome, and the very, very early churches that she saw.You have so much to say.How long were you there, like a week?
[Ancient Faith Radio; June 2, 2008]
Frederica: The wheels are turning on the pavement and we’re hurtling north-westward.[Laughter] I’m making this sound like a dramatic story here.We’re on I-795, hitting the pavement, as Colleen Oren, choir director at Holy Cross Church, intrepidly, courageously, and bravely drives her car forward, westward, into the cold.It’s sort of a chilly morning today.Colleen is one of my prayer partners, and so is Ina O’Dell who is sitting next to her in the front seat. Shamassey Ina, the wife of our deacon, Mark O’Dell.And I thought, now that we’re all trapped together in this one car for half an hour to get out there to the restaurant—we’re going out to a restaurant, sort of a country restaurant, and a fair trade store that’s nearby.Now that we’re on this expedition, I wanted to corral Ina and have her tell me about something.Ina and Mark went to Rome - it was something related to his work, wasn’t it? What was it that he was going for?
[Ancient Faith Radio; December 26, 2007]
Recently I was interviewed for a TV program about the star, the star of Bethlehem, and some of the things that I found out as I was researching it, were pretty interesting to me. Some things about the star, other things about the wise men, or the magi. And here’s the first one: the Bible doesn’t say there were three of them. It just says ‘Wise men from the east.’ It doesn’t say how many. Perhaps there were three. There were three gifts, the gold, frankincense and myrrh, so perhaps that’s where the idea came from, that there were three of them.
[Christianity Today Movies; December 21, 2007] This will sound like an odd thing to say about a comedy, but “Walk Hard” is an ambitious movie. It starts with 6-year-old Dewey Cox picking up a guitar in a rural general store and belting out a blues number, and proceeds to show…
[Ancient Faith Radio; December 19, 2007]
Recently I was interviewed by a TV show, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, which appears on PBS, for a story they were doing about the Bethlehem star. And the interviewer told me that she had talked to an astronomer and another person, a Christian, who had done a lot of research into the astronomical records that were kept by the Chinese and by the Egyptians. And there are various theories—you know, a lot of people have theories about what dramatic heavenly event it could have been that would have brought constellations together, or brought comets together or something to fill the role of that star.
[Christianity Today Movies, Dec 7, 2007] Movies are great at sweeping an audience up into intense emotions and experiences; even when a plot is flimsy, a good roller-coaster ride can be worth the price of admission. It’s not so easy to make a movie about something that isn’t happening. In “Grace is Gone,” what doesn’t happen (at least not for a very long time) is a dad breaking the news to his daughters that their mom is dead. We watch him not tell them in the living room, in the car, in restaurants, in motels, at an amusement park – he doesn’t tell them all the way from the upper Midwest to Florida. He grimaces and weeps, he calls his own answering machine to hear Grace’s recorded voice, but he can’t bring himself to get it out to the girls. The whole movie is like being stuck in bed with a cold.
[Ancient Faith Radio; November 21, 2007]
I’ve got a whole box of stuff here. This is tissue paper, it’s wrapped around little papier-mâché Christmas ornaments from India. And they’re all hand painted and there’s so much detail. I’m looking at one, it’s got a band of colors on top and another band on the bottom, and the middle is painted blue, and it’s dotted with—there must be a hundred little stars, and one, two, three, four, five angels, smiling with their wings stretched out and touching each other.
[National Review Online; November 21, 2007]
I’m going to try not to gush, but it’s hard when a movie is this delightful. “Enchanted” is even more than that, it’s original—lovely, fresh, funny, and charming to a princely degree. And this is where you and I can start to lose each other, because there’s no reviewer so smitten as the one who expected to endure a so-so movie and was surprised to find something really very good. Gratitude produces a review with a rosy glow, but if you read that review and buy a ticket expecting to see the best thing next to “Citizen Kane,” you could well be disappointed. It’s the very same movie, but it depends on where you’re coming from. That gap between discovery and verification is a communications hazard for readers and writers of all kinds of reviews. I know all that, but I can’t help it. “Enchanted” knocked me out.
