Haven't had a lot of time to do the sort of writing I like to put up on this blog, so I've started another. Check out Jeremiah's Aunt, a record of my experiences working at Our Daily Bread, a food and hospitality mission in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati.

I thought I'd never get to see this. If it hadn't been for Jim F. (thank you!), I would never have known it was available here. I knew there was a "Live in Tokyo" concert released on videodisc in Japan, but not until very recently did I hear The Nylons had started selling it on DVD at their concerts. I jumped on eBay. There it was. I ordered it, waited impatiently for it to arrive, got it last week, waited even more impatiently for an evening I could sit down and watch the darn thing.
Then I worried--not much, but a little--that I wouldn't like it. I'd gotten into The Nylons at thirteen. A lot changes in eighteen years. And besides that, could it possibly live up to my expectations of The Only Chance I'd Ever Get to See Marc Connors in Concert?

...was celebrated this year at St. Elizabeth's in Norwood with The Psalters, who arrived via Magic Bus with all their dreadlocked goodness. They played the djembe and doumbek, accordion and bouzouki, inspiring ecstatic tribal dancing in that tough old German-neighborhood, plaster-angeled space. Bellydancing in the sanctuary. Firedancing later, when the drum circle heated up and before we all broke into "I'll Fly Away." Crazy great.
I dressed up for it--I wore this wonderful green forest-sprite skirt Ali made me and my blue bellydance scarf with the coins. I had been wearing khaki shorts, but after the band kicked off with a droning Lord's Prayer which delved into dervish mode, it was clear they just wouldn't do.
None of this was really for the feast of St. Cajetan, of course. It was all part of a gathering here called Sabotage Cincinnati, where a youth group headed by this cool dude named Jeremiah (not that one) is gonna spend some time getting to know this neighborhood and letting us get to know them. A drum circle's a good place to start, I think.

So I wrote this book, right? Came out five years ago. It occurs to me that some of you reading this won't know that much about it as, after all, it came out five years ago. (Others know quite a bit about it.)
It's called Voice and Style: Marc Connors of The Nylons. It's a biography of a singer in a Canadian a cappella band told through interviews with those who knew him: family, friends, a classmate, someone who worked with him in theatre, bandmates. Marc tells a bit of his story too through an excerpt of the journal he was keeping before he died of an AIDS-related illness in 1991. The effect of all those different voices telling the same story from such different points of view...I can only compare it to harmony, the sounding of chords. Marc had the best voice and the most remarkable stage presence of anyone I've encountered, and for this reason I knew I had to tell his story. I wanted everyone to know about him. It was a joy and a privilege to work on this book.
I have gotten royalty statements every month since the book came out. (One came today; thanks to whoever-you-are who bought Voice and Style in April, if you're out there.) The publisher used to send checks every month purchases were made, but then they got tired of sending checks for piddly little amounts like $3.29. Now they wait until a more practical sales level is achieved.
I'm getting close to that magic amount, so if you've been considering buying this book, now would be a good time to do so! (As a barely-related aside, I'm entering a Master's program in pastoral ministry this fall, so fundage thus collected would be going to a good cause...)
You can order a copy of Voice and Style: Marc Connors of The Nylons by visiting
Buy Books on the Web. You can follow the link or do a search on bbotw.com for "Voice and Style." The book is also available on Amazon (or by requesting it at your local bookseller's), but the royalty check gets a little fatter the more people visit bbotw.com.
Thank you. As Chris would say, message ends.

Thunderstruck readers probably know Cathleen Falsani’s name. Her byline has appeared in the articles linked here many a time. Falsani is the religion writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and she “has always been interested in discovering God in the places some people say God isn’t supposed to be”—in her own way, putting the pop back in culture. That description shows up in the dust jacket of her new book The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)—a collection of conversations on spiritual matters with everyone from Bono to Elie Wiesel, Russell Simmons to David Lynch, Billy Corgan to Hugh Hefner, Annie Lennox to Anne Rice.

Now that she’s written a book, it’s time to put “God Girl”—a term of endearment—on the other side of the interview desk.