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Do You Have a Beloved Companion?

This Ode May Help Us Recall Our Own Loves on St. Fancis Day

MONDAY, OCTBER 4, 2021, is St. Francis Day, a perfect occasion to reach out in a compassionate way to our beloved companions in life.

DUNCAN NEWCOMER is mainly known as a Lincoln scholar, a public radio storyteller and an occasional writer on American values for national publications like the Christian Science Monitor. He is also a cat lover and reflects, this week, on the loss of his 12-year companion Sonnets, a wise and affectionate Abyssinian. Please, read this week’s Cover Story by Duncan and you may then want to share this remarkable tribute with friends.

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How are you helping family, friends, neighbors beat cancer?

OCTOBER is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Front Edge Publishing’s Susan Stitt writes about the many books we have launched to help individuals, families and the entire community.

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Suzy Farbman—

The Joys of Pomegranates

THIS WEEK’S GodSigns column by Suzy Farbman celebrates the joys of pomegranates, which doctors have recommended as a healthy food for many centuries.

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Native American solidarity

Our Publishing House’s Commitment—

SINCE OUR FOUNDING IN 2007, solidarity with Native American communities has been a core value in some of the books we have chosen to publish. Why are events in 2021 such an important milestone in human rights? Here is a story we published this past summer about the unfolding nationwide investigation into the history of abuses at so-called Indian Boarding Schools—which includes recommendations of two books that focus on this issue. Then, this week, we are pleased to see the United Methodist church take formal notice of the investigation—adding its support at all levels of the denomination’s leadership. We are sure that more denominations will follow as this historic reckoning unfolds.

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Among the ‘Best BLM books’

OUR AUTHORS are honored, this week, to see that the editors at the online magazine Pretty Progressive have included two of our books to feature in a short list of “best BLM books.” Take a look at the list to see which of our authors were featured.

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Faith & Film

ED McNULTY, for decades, has published reviews, magazine articles and books exploring connections between faith and film. Most of his work is freely published. Ed supports his work by selling the Visual Parables Journal, a monthly magazine packed with discussion guides to films. This resource is used coast-to-coast by individuals who love the movies and by educators, clergy and small-group leaders.

Among Ed’s free reviews and columns:

1. FLAG DAY—Ed praises this film in which three members of the Penn family portray the family of a con man.
2. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)—Ed writes, “This is the 70th anniversary of the release of this classic science fiction film. It stood out at the time as the most intelligent film of the genre, carrying a message of peace and tolerance during the onslaught of the Cold War. Unlike other sci-fi films, the menace to Earth came not from alien monsters but from humans themselves.”
3. SON OF THE SOUTH—”Writer-director Barry Alexander Brown’s film is based on Bob Zellner’s well-received 2008 autobiography The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement.”
4. THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE—Ed praises the new film about the lives of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and says it’s likely to surprise many viewers.
5. BLUE BAYOU—Ed writes, “Actor/director Justin Chon throws light on a little-known aspect of ICE and its ruthless practice of deportation in this highly dramatic story set around and in a bayou near New Orleans. But be for warned—have on hand a handkerchief for the emotionally wrought ending!”
6. REMINISCE—Ed McNulty writes, “Writer-director Lisa Joy blends film noir with science fiction in this tale set in a near future Miami whose streets are being flooded as climate change causes the ocean to rise. Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is the jaded detective whose specialty is the past.”
7. COME FROM AWAY—”The horrific events that occurred 20 years ago on 9/11 reveal the evil depths that humanity can sink to, but this filmed version of David Hein and Irene Sankoff’s Broadway play celebrates the heights to which humanity can rise.”
8. DAYS OF GLORY—”Co-writer/director Rachid Bouchareb provides a very different perspective on World War II in this tale centering on four North African Muslims who enlist to free what they regard as their fatherland, France.”
9. THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US—”Kate Winslet stars as Alex Martin and Idris Elba as Ben Bass. She is a daring-do photographer willing to take risks, whereas he is an overly cautious neurosurgeon, so their different temperaments fuel the conflict when the story kicks into high gear.”
10. RESPECT—”Director Liesl Tommy and writer Tracey Scott Wilson’s film biography of Aretha Franklin certainly deserves our respect—and gratitude. Covering about 29 years of the singer’s life, it begins with her as a 10-year-old rousted out of bed to entertain her father’s guests to the recording of her greatest hit album, Amazing Grace.”

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