Episode 563 - Judith Valente - From Journalism to Author of The Italian Soul - Add the Italian Good Life into your home

Judith Valente is an awarding-winning author, print and broadcast journalist, poet and essayist.

She is a sought-after speaker and retreat leader on such subjects as living a more contemplative life, discovering inner wisdom through poetry, and finding meaning in your work. She is a lay associate of the Benedictine monastery Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas, which is the subject of her 2013 memoir, Atchison Blue: A Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith, which was chosen by Religion Newswriters Association as one of the three best spirituality books of that year.

Her book, The Art Of Pausing: Meditations For The Overworked And Overwhelmed won a Best Book Award from the Catholic Press Association.

More recently, she wrote How to Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community, which was followed in 2021 by How to Be: A Monk and a Journalist Reflect on Living & Dying, Purpose & Prayer, Forgiveness & Friendship.

Judith and Associated Press President, Will Stevenson.

She began her work in journalism at the age of 21 as a staff reporter for The Washington Post. She later joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal, reporting from that paper’s Chicago and London bureaus. She was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, first in the public service category as part of a team of reporters at The Dallas Times Herald investigating airline safety. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer in the feature writing category for her front page article in The Wall Street Journal chronicling the story of a religiously conservative father caring for his son dying of AIDS.

Judith was a regular contributor to the national PBS TV news program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. She won numerous broadcast awards for her work on the show. Her work also appeared on The PBS News Hour. She previously covered religion, interviewed poets and authors, and served as a guest essayist on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio, and was a senior correspondent at WGLT radio, an NPR affiliate in central Illinois.

Book - The Italian Soul offers practical guidance into how we can transport a taste of the Italian “good life” into our own homes. Additionally, it explores the contemplative practices and attitudes that seem to come naturally to a people who have made an art of living and working joyfully. It is both a travel dispatch and a spirituality guide for seekers who eschew traditional religious practices but are yearning for ways to bring more balance, sanity, and a greater sense of the transcendent into their daily lives.

https://www.judithvalente.com/

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Episode 562 - Kate Maruyama - The Collective and The Alterations - Hollywood History, Horror and Family Dynamics

Kate Maruyama is the author of Harrowgate, Bleak Houses, and The Collective and her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. Her short work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of the Uncharted Short Story Prize. She served on the working Board for Women Who Submit, and the Board for the Shirley Jackson Awards. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.

https://www.katemaruyama.com/

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Episode 393 - Adam Nimoy - The Most Human, Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy

Adam was born during the Eisenhower administration to Leonard and Sandra Zoberblatt Nimoy. He attended the University Elementary School, a “lab school” run by UCLA, where he was subjected to numerous psychological experiments. The experimentation continued at UC Berkeley in the form of mind-altering substances from which he may, or may not, have fully recovered. In a state of absolute certainty, Adam attended Loyola Law School. He was wrong.

After seven years of practicing entertainment law and one moment of clarity, Adam left his life as an attorney to follow his passion of making films. After directing forty-five hours of network television, some of it sublime, some of it eminently unwatchable, Adam’s career plummeted due in large part to drug and alcohol addiction. On January 1, 2004, Adam entered 12-Step recovery hoping to achieve an attitude adjustment. This was a New Year’s resolution he knew he had to keep. For 8 years, he taught writing, directing and acting at the New York Film Academy and taught filmmaking at Beit T’Shuvah, an addiction treatment center where the residents kept him on the straight and narrow.

Book: The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy

"Engaging and immensely relatable, while at the same time offering deeply profound insights into Adam Nimoy's personal relationships, particularly with his famous father." — Eugene Roddenberry Jr., CEO Roddenberry Entertainment

Living with Dad was like living with a stranger— as a kid I often had trouble connecting and relating to him. But I was always proud of him. Even before Star Trek I'd see him popping up in bit roles on some of my favorite TV shows like Get Smart, Sea Hunt, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. And then one night he brought home Polaroids of himself in makeup and wardrobe for a pilot he was working on.

It was December 1964 and nobody had heard of Star Trek. Still, the eight-year-old me had watched enough Outer Limits and My Favorite Martian to understand exactly what I was looking at. Spock's popularity happened quickly, and soon the fan magazines were writing about dad's personal life, characterizing us as a "close family." But the awkwardness that defined our early relationship blossomed into conflict, sometimes smoldering, sometimes open and intense. There were occasional flashes of warmth between the arguments and hurt feelings— even something akin to love— especially when we were celebrating my father's many successes. The rest of the time, things between us were often strained.

My resentment towards my father kept building through the years. I wasn't blameless, I know that now, but my bitterness blinded me to any thought of my own contribution to the problem. I wanted things to be different for my children. I wanted to be the father I never had, so I coached Maddy's soccer, drove Jonah to music lessons, helped them with their homework— all the things dads are supposed to do. All the things I wanted to do. So what if my Dad and I had been estranged for years? I was living one day at a time. And then I got his letter.

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3KvTi1s

https://adamnimoy.com/

original pub date - Wednesday, July 17, 2024

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