I had just gotten my driver’s license, was driving my first car (a Monza 2+2), and this pop star was, well, popular. Unbeknownst to me, about that same time two little Houstonian girls were waiting by their mailboxes, daily, for Mr Pop Star to reply to their letters. The year was 1977. Even now, all these years later, one can sense some bitterness; no reply was ever received. Was it this snub that jilted one of them toward becoming a... Read more

Possibly, like the tail-ends of the Roman and other Empires, the West is in danger of losing faith in itself. Nations are now burdened with fear, anxiety, hubris, xenophobia and popular ignorance. This time around, the women are joining in. Could it be that everything nowadays is just too easy and too available? For many of us, both men and women, there is enough to be done just watching the world go by–and being entertained. Spectator sports are at the... Read more

The 2011 Festival of Orthodoxy conference sponsored by North Texas Orthodox Missions is entitled “From Conception to Dying: Orthodox Christian Views in Today’s World”. It will be held Feb. 18-19 with sessions in both Ft. Worth and Dallas, TX. The featured speakers are: Kh. Frederica Mathewes-GreenKh. Frederica is a past Festival speaker. Frederica is the Khouriya (Presvytera) of Holy Cross Orthodox Church near Baltimore. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Christianity Today, the Los Angeles Times and The... Read more

From The Washington Post: Unlike evangelical Protestants and Catholics, the Orthodox in this country haven’t been known for taking to the streets as antiabortion activists. What I did find on the official Greek Orthodox Web site was a statement calling abortion “immoral” and “murder.” Likewise, the Antiochians condemn it in this statement on their site, adding that church fathers from apostolic times opposed it as well. They also posted an encouragement to take part in Monday’s march. Plus, Frederica Mathewes-Green,... Read more

From The Wall Street Journal … That’s not a question we are accustomed to hearing. For the most part, abortion—America’s most divisive issue—plays out as a question of competing rights. So it will be this weekend as pro-life and pro-choice legions each mark the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion. Yet a simple figure released earlier this month by the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a private nonprofit organization, provokes a different question. After crunching the... Read more

NICOSIA, Cyprus – Cyprus’ Orthodox Christian Church on Thursday thanked former Culture Club singer Boy George for returning an icon of Christ that it says was stolen from a church in the breakaway north of the divided island. Boy George agreed to return the 18th century icon he bought from a London art dealer in 1985 after being presented with proof of its true origin, the church said in a statement posted on its Web site. “Before this, I had... Read more

ROSCOMMON (AP) — A northern Michigan woman has put her own spin on Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” by making a replica out of laundry lint. Laura Bell of Roscommon collected lint from her dryer and fashioned it into a 14-foot-long, 4-foot tall reproduction of the Italian Renaissance painter’s masterpiece. Bell says she needed about 800 hours to do enough laundry to get the lint, and 200 hours to recreate the mural. She bought towels of the colors she... Read more

Back when I was a kid, my father had a wonderful basketball goal constructed in our back yard. Those were the days before they sold the now common mass produced basketball goals, with the plastic base you fill with water or sand. This one was the real deal – metal, wood, light pole, cemented in the ground. No problem with that goal; no, the problem was chubby me. But that all changed when, each night after supper, I would head... Read more

By KAREN CROUSE PITTSBURGH — Steelers safety Troy Polamalu opened his red leather-bound playbook to a dog-eared page. “The life of a man hangs by a hair,” he began reading in a voice as soft as falling snow. “At every step our life hangs in the balance.” It was three days before the Steelers’ A.F.C. divisional playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, a matchup in which the Super Bowl aspirations of two worthy contenders hang in the balance, and Polamalu... Read more

Click the above image to enlarge. Here’s the ad in TOUCHSTONE. Here’s the INFO and REGISTRATION. Hope to see you in Houston at the end of April! Read more