May 18, 2010

I’m delighted to be back among the 400-year-old whitebark pine trees of the Wind River Range in northwest Wyoming. At tree line, near 10,000 feet, the bent and grizzled pines almost seem to thrive on wind-driven snow and sleet, lightning strikes, drought and disease. They stand as grand masters of sustained indifference.

I started to write when I was teaching at Augustana College, but after moving to the University of Notre Dame in 1970 I really began to put words on paper. I did not write because I thought you needed to publish to get tenure. I was not that savvy about how these things worked. I probably did need to write to get tenure, but I wrote because I thought I had something to say.

Short-term mission trips continue to rise in popularity. In leading such trips and researching their impact, I’ve found that they can have a profound effect on the faith and life of participants, and good work is often done: people living in poverty have their needs addressed by energetic and caring people.

The Last Station is a complex but entertaining study of a 48-year marriage and the way subtle and extreme changes that take place in each partner can take a terrifying toll on the relationship. This is not an unfamiliar premise, except that the principals in this battle of wills are Leo Tolstoy (Christo pher Plummer), the Russian novelist considered by many the greatest of all time, and his hot-blooded wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren), who is 20 years younger than Tolstoy and has borne him 13 children.

The first ever Academy Award for Best Picture was given in 1929 to Wings, a World War I aviation drama full of groundbreaking aerial sequences. People flocked to see the film largely because they longed to feel what it might be like to fly.

That old longing is also satisfied in How to Train Your Dragon—though in this case we get to fly among dragons. The visually dazzling DreamWorks animation film, based on the children’s book series by Cressida Cowell, turns out to be strikingly thoughtful as well.