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Between budget cuts, layoffs and diminishing page counts, it’s rare to see newspapers publish long-form stories of several thousand words or so. The Wichita Eagle puts its readers to the test by publishing a 3-part series of about 7,000 words. Its readers appeared to respond with hits, since the series “Promise Not to Tell” is the most-read story on the newspaper’s website this week.
When I saw the headline, I got nervous: “Obama, in shadow of worrisome polls, embraces ‘Christian’ label.”
You know how, in the competitions during the summer Olympics, the divers’ scores are often calculated on the basis of the difficult of the dives that they are attempting?
After our engagement, my husband suggested we put on a Google wedding: send out Google invitations through Gmail connected through Google Calendar, plan the wedding through Google Documents and then post wedding photos on Google’s Picasa and video on Google’s YouTube. I quickly nixed the idea, but I briefly wondered if we could’ve hired a Google pastor to perform the ceremony.
Let’s read this story together, shall me? The headline on A1 of the Washington Post was blunt, yet with very few specific details, in part because of the presence of that dishwater adjective “moderate.”
The other day my three-year-old daughter told me she missed her cemetery. (Until a few weeks ago, we lived near a beautiful, historic cemetery in Washington, D.C. We’d take walks in it most days and read tombstones as we played and ran around.) I loved hearing her say that because I always loved the cemeteries I grew up around, too. As a pastor’s kid, I wasn’t shielded from death and dying. I love Lutheran funerals so much that I’ve been known to attend ones for members of my congregation I wasn’t close to. And while I never planned out my wedding, I have written down what hymns I want sung at my funeral. And I’ve told my husband I want as simple a box as possible and no embalming. I do want a nice tombstone and I want my family to come visit me often.
GetReligion readers who pay close attention to church-state issues this time of year — also known as the “Christmas wars” — just knew that this story was coming. Actually, in this case we are talking about a specific battle in the larger war that breaks out every year in mid-November, or thereabouts. It’s the battle over the creche in the public square (usually a civic lawn).
The word through the grapevine is that tmatt is wrapping up end-of-the-semester grading this afternoon.
I’m surprised we haven’t seen more coverage of Festivus, which is something of a countercultural tradition in more ironic circles. It was the holiday that became famous after it was written into a Seinfeld episode. Thirteen years ago, believe it or not.
