Rich on the Road

We've all grown up with books and the written word.  And, because of that, we take for granted what a wonderous gift they are.  Primitive peoples, when first swamped by civilization, can more fully appreciate the miracle that allows an inanimate object to, literally, speak to us. 

Of course, the most wondrous Book of all is the Bible.  God's way of speaking to us.  His words.  A gift to us.  And, I spend time daily, listening to God, through the Book He has blessed us with.

I also believe that God speaks to us through other books.  I'm no theologian.  Not really qualified to make that assessment, you might argue.  But, I do.  God, I firmly believe, has inspired other mortals to write other books that come to us in the right season and help us to grow in our relationship with Him and with His only son, Jesus Christ.

I've written in this space several times about what a life-changing event Pastor Rick Warren's "A Purpose Driven Life" was for Catherine and I about four or five years ago when we did "40 Days of Purpose."  I have another book to share now -- a novel this time by William Paul Young  -- that has had a great impact on both of us.  It is called "The Shack." 

I'm not sure my feeble attempts at critiquing it will suffice so let me fall back on the words of others who seem to have come away with much the same emotions that I did:

"Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself,"  writes Patrick M. Roddy.

"'The Shack' cuts through the cliches of both religion and bad writing to reveal something compelling and beautiful about life's integral dance with the Divine,"  says Mike Morrell.

The story will make you cry.  It's a hard story about a very broken world.  It will force you to think about your own relationship with Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  It may help you answer serious questions about why bad things happen to good people.  Why God allows evil to permeate this place.

The Shack has moved me to a different and better place in my walk, with a renewed determination to put God at the center of everything I do.

"The Shack."  Willam Paul Young.   Buy it.  If you can't afford it, email me and I will get you a copy.

Rich 

Let me say from the outset that Sara Sidner is one of my all-time favorite co-workers - a beautiful lady inside and out.  So, when I came across this video of her doing a live shot from Mumbai for CNN it disturbed me greatly.  She was in the middle of the shot when pushing and shoving started and a couple of guys jumped in front of the camera, shouting and gesturing at her.  She wasn't hurt but clearly caught in a volatile situation, surrounded by hundreds of angry people.  She handled the chaos with remarkable courage.  But, it clearly could have turned out badly.  Some in the crowd were, apparently, drunk and angry that they were not being allowed access to areas where loved ones may have been injured or killed.

You can see the live report here:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/11/27/
sidner.bpr.live.shot.chaos.cnn

 Sara anchored and reported at Fox 4 for several years before going to San Francisco/Oakland to be the weekend anchor at the Fox affiate there before going to work for CNN.  We've kept in touch over the years and I know the India assignment (she's based in New Dehli) has been a tough one.  It's, clearly, going to be a focus of attention for some time now.

Rich

My buddy Keith was sandbagging last Friday night at Careciple -- our monthly Bible study and fellowship get-together with church friends.  I asked him how deer hunting was going -- and he poor-mouthed it.  To hear him tell the tale he didn't have much of a chance of putting any venison in the freezer this year.  Oh, he told me dejectedly, he'd seen some deer but not ones he'd want to shoot.  He was planning to go back and hunt a few more days, beginning at a friend's place and then he'd hunt his own property south of San Angelo for a couple more.  He was almost sure, he told me, that this year just wasn't going to be very productive.  Long sigh.

Of course, a couple days later I get this picture from him.

Now my buddy's biggest problem will be talking his lovely bride Lois into letting him get another mount for the house.  I think she's about to draw the line - if she hasn't already.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rich 

Lee Harvey Oswald's widow Marina is 67 years old now.  Still lives in a suburb of Dallas with her second husband.  She has two grown daughters by Lee that are, by all accounts, successful and happy with their anonymity.  I talk occasionally with one of Marina's friends -- a JFK researcher and author named Mary LaFontaine and Mary shares a little, but Marina guards her privacy and Mary respects that.  As recently as the late 1990s Marina worked at an Army/Navy store on McKinney Ave. in Dallas and I would stop in occasionally to chat with her.  Over the years she had become very suspicious of reporters and she certainly was of me.  The last time she appeared on local television was in 1996 -- on Fox 4's Good Day in order to promote a book that Mary LaFontaine and her late husband Ray had written.

Marina did speak to at least one reporter recently -- Ruby End at the National Review.  You can read Ruby's report on the increasingly rare public conversation at:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmQ1YTUyNzZlOG
Y3ZTg3MjU5MWIwM2U2ZDExNTNhNjk=

The key question is always did Lee do it?

“I don’t know if Lee even shot the president,” Marina told NRO.

Was he part of a conspiracy?

“I don’t know. But he said he was a ‘patsy.’ It was an odd word for him to use. I think he realized he had been set up.”

 Marina and daughters - Dallas Morning News

All that is 180 degrees from what Marina told Channel 4's Eddie Barker in her first TV interview just weeks after the assasination.  That you can see (in very nearly its entirety, including setup shots) on our JFK Video site:

http://media.myfoxdfw.com/JFKvideo

The story of Marina and Ruth Paine - the woman she was living with at the time of the assasination -- is another I covered extensively for a series of reports in 2003.  Those, too, can be found on the JFK Video site.  Fascinating stuff all these many decades later.

I probably won't do much JFK stuff for awhile.  But, come next November, like moths to a flame I'll be pulled back in again.  Like clockwork.

Rich 

Old friend Kent Farquhar sent these photographs along last week -- along with several more I don't have space for. 

I enjoyed them and thought you might, too.

They demonstrate that even in the toughest situations our servicemen and servicewomen can find humor.

It's easy to forget them (if they aren't your son or daughter) but let's not. 

Say a prayer for those overseas this Thanksgiving.

Rich

The Minnesota Senate race, now in the midst of a recount, is one of the whackiest ever.  Comedian-turned-politician Al Franken is now just 115 votes behind incumbent Republican Norm Coleman with about half the process completed. 

Take a look at some of the ballots that are being challenged.

These all come off a website called 236.com.

Being a native Minnesotan, I can honestly say that the politics and the voters there are even crazier than Texas.  Minnesota did, after all, elect Jesse Ventura.

Al Franken couldn't be any more unconventional than Jesse, could he?

Clearly some of these voters had way tooo much time on their hands when they entered the voting booth.

Rich

During the waning days of the Presidential campaign an Associated Press story got wide play in newspapers around the country - often headlined something like "Evangelicals in the News - Not in the Newsroom."  It has sparked some interesting comment since, from Rod Dreher in the National Review and, of all places, the New York Times.  The conclusion, what most everyone agrees on, is that Evangelical Christians, in particular, and people of faith, in general, are woefully under-represented in American newsrooms. 

This, I'm sure, comes as a shock to no one.

But, let me quote some statistics:

In 2007 The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that 8% of journalists surveyed at national media outlets said they attended church or synagogue weekly. Nearly a third (29%) never attend such services.  39% report they go a few times a year.

Pew polling of the general public found 39% of Americans say they attend religious services weekly.   Other polls find that about 2/3rds of Americans say they attend, at least, occasionally.

I think the numbers are probably a little less skewed at local media outlets and, I'm guessing, much better at Fox 4 News.  Just a rough count of the committed, church-going Christians that I'm aware of in the newsroom is a whole lot higher than 8%.

But, at the network level, at places like the New York Times and the Washington Post, such people are nearly non-existent.  Don't take my word for it - here's what Nicolas Kristof, a columnist at the New York Times writes about Evangelicals:

"nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans."

Kristof is a talented journalist.  And, a remarkably honest one.  He goes on to write:

"liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at Evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable."

Kristof's mea culpa column has others in the business writing and talking about increasing the diversity -- not just of Evangelicals but of journalists of other Faiths.  To be effective, we have to represent and understand our audience.  Newsrooms should reflect the diversity of those they report to.

I don't intend for this blog to spark the sort of knee-jerk reaction that I'm sure it will with a lot of you.  Angry broadsides at the "Godless Media" aren't entirely accurate and don't do anybody any good.  Part of the problem is that the only contact many journalists have with Evangelical Christians is from hate-filled emails and  phone calls.  That is not the "fruit of the Spirit." 

What I would encourage, instead, is that you let your newspaper and television outlets know that you appreciate when we do cover religious issues.  I've fought for and succeeded in getting several stories on the air in recent years -- a four-part series on short-term missions, stories about Dallas Theological Seminary offering classes on the internet in China, for example.  When you see that kind of thing call and email in a positive way.  My bosses do pay attention.  I'll keep pitching those kind of stories and positive feedback from viewers will help them get on the air.

Rich

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is in a bind.  And, Dan Rather put them there.  Rather was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the museum's event Saturday night - marking the 45th anniversary of the JFK assasination.  I got a note this afternoon from the museum's PR lady and Rather has cancelled, saying he's "been called out of town." 

It's my understanding he wasn't supposed to arrive here until just before the event, so "called out of town" seems odd. 

Rather would have been an intriguing speaker.  He was a young correspondent based in Dallas when the assasination happened.  He filed reports out of this studio -- a couple of which I have pulled from deep in our archives and will have posted on our JFK Video site click here

by Saturday.  They are fascinating to watch.  In one, he reports from Dealey Plaza on the morning that Lee Oswald was supposed to be transported to the Dallas County Jail.  Of course, Oswald never made it, instead gunned down by Jack Ruby.  In the other, he reports from the studio with former Channel 4 News Director Eddie Barker by his side.