March 10, 2009

When delegates want to speak at a gathering of my denomination, it’s customary for them to stand up and give their name, next give the name of their church, and then say whatever it is they got up to say.

Don Charles grips a broadfork, his feet invisible beneath displaced straw from the potato row. The tool is a cross between a rake and a shovel and rises to chest height on most people. Charles bends his 6’7” frame to grip the handles at his waist and plants his weight on the metal beam connecting handles and teeth. The teeth begin to penetrate the ground’s matted surface, revealing a rich mix of fluffy soil and lumpy potatoes.

The first days of Princeton Theological Seminary’s annual book sale are an academic feeding frenzy. Used copies of biblical commentaries, patristic texts and works by Aquinas, Luther and Calvin are quickly scooped up by eager seminarians. After two days of this, what’s mostly left are the “cutting-edge” religion books of the 1950s and ’60s—the dregs of retired pastors’ libraries that the next generation can do without.

Working at the top of his game as both a filmmaker and an actor’s director, Ron Howard has converted one of the most intriguing media events of the late 1970s—David Frost’s TV interviews with Richard Nixon three years after Nixon resigned as president—into memorable drama.