January Light
I’m giving a speech as I accept an award from the Religion News Association at a ceremony in New York.
Today is the first of 2023; a profusion of what I call “January light” here in the semi-dark Pacific Northwest. It’s the cerulean-blue skies washed with the rain that drenches these parts and whose drops hang glimmering on the evergreen landscape.
The year 2022 had lots of ups and downs; more downs the first part of the year with a gradual sloping up during the closing months.
Veeka hiking in the Umtanum Ridge Crest area near Ellensburg in central Washington last spring.
My Newsweek job really took off this year, crowned by a piece I published today about the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (with whom I felt a closeness as I was in Rome when he was elected in 2005. That same week, my daughter was born in Kazakhstan). Covering the death of a pope is always a major deal for a religion reporter, so on the last day of 2022, I snagged an interview with the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, about his thoughts on the pope’s passing.
When he told me that the pope was the most misunderstood major personality in modern times, I knew I had a story.
The year’s highlight was an awards ceremony in New York. I learned that I won more awards from the Religion News Association for my religion coverage in 2021 than any other individual journalist. At age 66, I am not sure how many more awards I am going to amass, but getting one first and two second places in a very competitive arena against the best religion writers in the country was a good enough reason to accept these prizes in person.
I hadn’t graced the confines of the Newark airport in decades and little had changed when I flew in. An old friend and co-writer for GetReligion.org met me for dinner; this was Dick Ostling, the former religion editor for Time magazine, among other publications. We hadn’t seen each other since 2018, and I feel so isolated up here in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s lovely to see real faces. The next challenge was figuring out how to take public transport into Penn Station in Manhattan; there was a total lack of signs at the airport on how to get downtown so one had to ask numerous people.
Newsweek’s New York office in the World Trade Center - but will anyone fill up these empty desks?
If there was a theme to the New York visit, it was confusion. I was continually lost or turned around and I was constantly asking people for directions. I can’t imagine being a foreigner there. Part of Penn Station was being remodeled but the portion where I was turned out to be as shabby as ever. Eventually I found my way up to Columbia University uptown, where their teachers college gave me inexpensive ($159/night) accommodations during a time when most hotels were charging $400/night and up.
You do get what you pay for; the internet didn’t work, so the next morning I repaired to a campus café at 120th and Broadway to finish off a story for Newsweek on Pentecostal leaders and Christian nationalism. Then I repaired to Newsweek’s office on the 72nd floor of the new World Trade Center building. It was an ear-popping ride up and there was tons of security in the lobby below, not to mention a totally rebuilt underground mall called the Oculus that serves 12 subway lines and a PATH station plus a bunch of stores. I first glimpsed it from above ground, as the whole place is covered with this giant white ribbed structure that looks like an enraged sea nettle.
The views from Newsweek’s offices were amazing and, as it was sunny, quite clear. From there, I went to visit an old friend in Brooklyn from my Washington Times days, then headed back into Manhattan at the awards ceremony in Columbia University’s Pulitzer building. Wearing my maroon cashmere dress from Mongolia, I accepted a first place for online news reporting, a second for story of the year and a second for feature writing (see photo atop this blog post). I knew a bunch of the winners and afterwards I was on a panel of reporters who placed in the story-of-the-year contest.
Veeka relaxing outside a restaurant off Rt. 97 in central Oregon last summer.
All too soon I had to leave for an early bedtime, as I had to be back at the subway station at 6:30 a.m. I was amazed to find the cars packed with people. Fortunately, the A train took me straight to Kennedy airport and back to Seattle I went, to relieve the wonder woman who was taking care of Veeka while I was gone.
Speaking of whom, Veeka is now 17. The year was rough for a long time. There’s been lots of doctor visits and hospital stays. She accompanied me on our August trip through central Oregon and northern California for my piece on the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway that ran in the Seattle Times. These were parts of both states I’d never seen so we had much fun exploring places like Lassen Volcanic National Park, a real jewel of a place not far from Redding. The park was very modern, with internet at some of the rest areas and cool hikes to geo-thermal hot springs. I definitely recommend going there. We got to see Crater Lake again, see Klamath Falls for the first time learn a lot about different kinds of volcanoes. Typically, August is forest fire season in those parts, but that wasn’t the case this year. The places we visited were all about a mile up in altitude, so our days were never that hot.
Veeka and I at McBurney Falls State Park.
Veeka did great in a rock-climbing class in June, so I’ve enrolled her in ski lessons with a group called Outdoors for All, to start next week. She’s already outfitted with a pink ski helmet, poles and pink- themed skis. (Guess what is her favorite color?)
We spent winter break hanging out near Spokane (and trying some of the local ski areas that I’d never done) and spring break driving through the Columbia Gorge, to Bend, Ore., and then back to Portland for a few days. Some of the hotels we stayed in got spotlighted in this Seattle Times travel story that ran in May.
Another highlight of the year was getting to go on a four-day press trip of Vancouver (BC’s) eastern suburbs of Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Fort Langley. That farm area was mainly a place I drove through to get to central BC but I never knew some of the cool roadside stops, restaurants and things to do in the area near Harrison Hot Springs. Canada is so much closer to the wild; it seems like you don’t have to drive far to get into some gorgeous mountains and I adored being wined and dined for a few days courtesy of the provincial tourism bureau. I was even given an extra night in Vancouver so I could do a guided bike ride around Stanley Park. Veeka was taken care of at a wonderful multi-day camp for special needs kids just south of the border.
My biggest story for Newsweek came at the beginning of the year when I wrote my whatever-happened-to-the-Trump prophets story. It’s gotten the most hits of any of my stories; it’s one of two that made the print edition and it’s been the gift that’s kept on giving. Never thought my expertise in Pentecostals and charismatics would lead to much but in recent years, it’s paid off.
Our kittens Juneteenth and Velocity when they first arrived. They since doubled in size.
Sadly stories on much more major issues (worldwide religious persecution and abortion pill reversal) got much fewer hits but then I hit pay dirt when reporting on Grove City College, a secluded Christian institution just north of Pittsburgh that I happened to visit many years ago. My story on the on-campus debate re critical race theory was my third most popular story of the year.
Meanwhile, one of my Trump prophets stories from 2021 – done for ReligionUnplugged - was winning a first place from the Evangelical Press Association.
This past summer, I joined the Society of American Travel Writers, as I finally had enough articles published in the past two years for large enough publications to qualify. Having Newsweek run my Greenland story in February was a real help!
One of my favorite stories, by the way, was one about the evangelical adoption movement and how it’s broken down over the past decade, leaving families in impossible situations – and impossible kids. I’ve been wanting to write it for a long time but could never find a publication interested in the topic. I finally got the chance to place it in Newsweek in 2022.
My story would not be complete without adding that in August we adopted two long-haired kittens that we got off Craig’s List. One’s a white-and-peanut-butter-colored tabby, called Velocity because when we first met, all she’d do is run away from us. (And remember we have a tradition of giving cats names like Felicity, Serenity and Tenacity). The other, a coal-black ball of fur born June 19, was aptly named Juneteenth. They have given us much joy.
