Miriam Marston writes

Hello Mark,
I pray this finds you well!

The last few days, I’ve been trying to get the word out into the Catholic blogosphere about a new album I released a few months ago – your name came up in a conversation with a student the other day, and I thought you might be a good person to pass it along to, especially since the album title is from a chapter title from Chesterton’s “Manalive” — “The Luggage of an Optimist”.

Most of the music may be found here (I would like to get my own website up and running, but still figuring all that out) and may be purchased on I-tunes, Amazon, etc or here.

I live and work in the Boston area (working for the Theological Institute for the New Evangelization, a branch of the seminary) and do the music-thing in my spare time. I was featured on a Catholic radio station based out of Portland, Oregon, and have been able to perform here and there around Boston.

Anyways, if there’s any chance you could check it out at some point, and if you feel okay with spreading the word to your blog followers, I would be most grateful!!

Any word on the status of the Manalive movie?

Thanks and God bless,
Miriam

Anybody writing Chesterton-based music rocks in my book. I’m going to forward your note to Dale Ahlquist at the American Chesterton Society. Although he is a whiny and starchy critic of my laptop’s vast array of fine tunefulness who complained continually as I stooped down from my Olympian heights and tried to broaden his tastes when I stayed with him in Minnesota a week or so ago, I feel confident that he will be interested in your work.

Re: Manalive. The sound edit proceeds apace and Dale feels confident that the film will be released sometime before I die a natural death. Beyond that, nothing to report except that Dale (who has seen a rough cut) said it’s very funny (which is the most critical part of making a comedy) and the bit I’ve seen (a nine minute scene of which this is a very brief precis):

…did not make my flesh crawl (an otherwise constant phenomenon whenever I see myself on screen). The Chesterton ’09 conference gave it enthusiastic thumbs up, so I’m hopeful that it will be reasonably well-received, but then I’m just a dumb actor and can’t see the wood for the trees.

Anyway, I’m inspired that somebody would record an album based, not merely on Chesterton, but on the marvelous Innocent Smith. You go, girl!