ACT ONE-DC — MAY 9 – JUNE 5TH I will be mostly consumed with our new class of writers for the next four weeks. Blogging will be light to non-existent. Pray for safe travel for our faculty. Pray for the students to be free from fear and sloth. Pray for protection for all of us on the streets of the nation’s capital. Thanks! God bless – Read more

BIZ BUZZ [The run-down formally known as SPICY BITS.] …The Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild and the Recording Industry of America have all joined together to express their shock and outrage that the FCC has fined Bono for using the expression “f*cking brilliant” during the live Golden Globes telecast last year. The industry organisms are all very clear that when Bono said it, the F word was NOT indecent. They haven’t decided what it... Read more

“THE ARTS CAN PREPARE PEOPLE FOR CHURCH” Here’s an interview that just appeared today in ZENIT. It is in anticipation of my speech in Spain next week, hence all the questions about European cinema. VALENCIA, Spain, MAY 5, 2004 (Zenit.org).- The film industry won’t change with criticism, but with the positive contribution of believers, says the director of a school for Christian scriptwriters in Hollywood. Barbara Nicolosi, program director of Act One, was interviewed by ZENIT before participating in the... Read more

RECLAIMING THE OTHER F-WORD Friend (and co-Founder with me of the currently in ideological utero but destined to be earth-shattering Association of Cool 21st Century Women Saving the Planet…) Zoe Romanowsky-St. Paul (I’m so jealous that she gets to have MY PATRON SAINT as her last name!) has a good piece on Godspy this week. Here’s a snip… “When Pope John Paul II used the f-word back in 1995, it got my attention. Not that f-word. I’m talking about the... Read more

THE PARTING OF FRIENDS I reasonate with Jan the Maven about the final episode of Friends this week. Friends started the year I walked out of the convent, and I will probably always think of it as background music for things I did in my thirties: working in Cambridge, graduate school at Northwestern, moving to L.A., working at Paulist Productions, starting Act One. One Friends related memory: At Northwestern, I was a grad student R.A. to an all female dorm... Read more

‘GOD IS AVAILABLE TO ALL OF US.’ Here’s an interview with TV showrunner, Barbara Hall (Joan of Arcadia) on Beliefnet. I don’t know how old it is. I just found it. It is careful, but still has some vintage Hallisms. There’s one in here… One thing I want to do is to debunk the notion that science and spirituality are natural enemies. Joseph Campbell said it’s impossible to live without a mythology and it always baffled him how we live... Read more

CALL FOR PAPERS I will be speaking at this conference in November. Have some thoughts about art? Go on, send it in… Epiphanies of Beauty: The Arts in a Post-Christian Culture November 18-20, 2004 University of Notre Dame Sponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture “Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains... Read more

WHY ACT ONE-DC? One of our Act One alumns, Erik Lokkesmoe, works in Washington and wrote a thoughtful piece for our Act One community letter which deserves a wider audience. Why A Creative Renaissance Is Needed In Our Nation’s Capital, and How Act One Can Help By Erik Lokkesmoe It was more of a statement than a question. “Why Washington?” the senior government official responded, words heavy with skepticism, when I shared the news of Act One’s month-long session in... Read more

MARCH FOR WOMEN’S SELFISH LIVES I watched quite a bit of the pro-choice march on C-SPAN last weekend. I found it weird and sad. I was struck by how old the legendary pro-choice heroes looked – Sarah Weddington, Eleanor Smeal, Kate Michelman, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi – they all looked like foolish old ladies way too wrinkled and gray-haired to be seriously screaming “Keep your hands off my body!” I think they were aware of it too, because nearly every... Read more

ANNIVERSARY Yesterday, May 1st, marked the 10th anniversary of my leaving the convent. I was in for 9 1/2 years, and now I’ve been out for 10. As I seem to experience major, life altering changes every decade ending in “4”, I have to admit I’m a little curious about what might happen to me before the end of this year… If I had to distinguish between the two decades, I would say that my decade in the convent went... Read more