Medieval pilgrims often slept in churches, finding respite there during their arduous journeys. But locals, too, had a wonderful familiarity with their churches, treating them as homes away from home. They bathed and did laundry with water drawn from holy wells and ate the food that merchants sold in the aisles. The smoke billowing from [...]
In honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day on December 12th, I’m giving away 5 inscribed copies of Full of Grace: Encountering Mary in Faith, Art and Life! Full of Grace takes the reader inside the Virgin Mary’s world in ancient Palestine while showing how thoroughly she inhabits the 21st century. The book touches on [...]
Are some books Kindle-proof, as this article suggests? Then let me wave my literary freak flag high: My books are illustrated with hundreds of color photographs (and illustrations, maps, floor plans, handwriting samples, etc.), incorporate fragmented page designs, and can be read front to back (or vice versa, and every way in between). The designers [...]
Lounging this morning with the Sunday New York Times has already provided considerable food for thought, and I’m not even into the Week in Review yet. The front page of the Style section features a story about the lengths to which people will go in order to bask momentarily in the marketing-glow supersonic jet fuel [...]
On a recent flight from Austin, I watched as my seatmate threw her bag in the overhead, snapped on her seat belt, and dove into a book. It was a well-loved copy of Memoirs of a Geisha, the mesmerizing tale of a fisherman’s daughter whose beautiful face and natural grace propels her to the upper [...]
The reading public rarely suspects the blood, sweat, and tears that go into designing a book cover. Creating a cover that will entice bookstore browsers to pick up the book and visually convey its essence (in a glance) is ultimately more of an art than a science. The fine online journal Ancora Imparo ran the [...]
Inspirational speaker Nicole Johnson uses my book, Churches, to deliver a powerful message of hope for everyone who feels invisible and taken for granted. I don’t know Nicole, but what she took away from Churches and how she brought the lessons of the Gothic cathedral builders to bear on today’s problems, blew me away. Watch, [...]
Building a bridge is a monumental undertaking, and there is something inherent in projects of this size and scope that makes people want to participate in their creation. In the case of the sleek, new I-35W crossing over the Mississippi that opened in Minneapolis this week, Twin City residents engaged in a day-long discussion that [...]
One thrill of the writing life is receiving pictures of one’s “babies” taken in faraway places. Bill Pinkney, the visionary behind the recreation of the Amistad schooner as a floating, living memorial to civil rights, presented a copy of Monuments, which tells Amistad’s story, to Josephine Kargbo of the Monuments and Relics Commission of Sierra [...]
