You Will Never See a Sweeter Valentine Love Story Than This One
Posted on February 14, 2012 at 8:51 pm
Suggested by my darling daughter:
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The Loving Story
Posted on February 14, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Tonight HBO premieres a new documentary about one of the most important marriages in American history. And their name was Loving.
They should have been able to have the quiet life they hoped for. Mildred and Richard Loving were residents of Virginia who were married in the District of Columbia in 1958. The law of their home state prohibited marriage between people of different races. Mildred was black and Native American and Richard was white.
Police broke into their Virginia home while they were asleep in bed and accused them of the crime of sex outside of marriage. Mrs. Loving pointed to their marriage certificate on the wall in their defense, but that constituted another crime, the crime of miscegenation, a felony punishable with up to five years in prison. They were sentenced to a year in prison, suspended on the condition that they leave the state.
The case filed by the ACLU went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1967 that miscegenation laws violated the United States Constitution.
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
They were together until Mr. Loving was killed in an automobile accident in 1975. Mrs. Loving made a rare public statement in 2007 in support of extending the same right granted to her by the Supreme Court to gay couples. She died the following year.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
Interview: The Real Couple Behind “The Vow”
Posted on February 14, 2012 at 8:00 am
“The Vow,” starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams, is based on the real-life story of Kim and Krickett Carpenter, who wrote a book about their experience after a traumatic brain injury shortly after their wedding erased all of Krickett’s memory of the previous 18 months. She did not remember being married and she did not remember even having met her husband. He had to make her fall in love with him all over again. Kim Carpenter spoke to me about their book, The Vow: The True Events that Inspired the Movie
What do you think of the movie?
We enjoyed it! Obviously, there’s some artistic license that isn’t true to the entire story. Trying to tell a story of 20 years in 103 minutes is extremely challenging. They gravitate toward the emotion of the audience but it is very inspiring which is what we hope the real message will be, the real impact on the viewer. 
Our biggest concern is that my wife’s parents are very devout in their faith and have been happily married for over 50 years. Between my parents and Krickett’s parents there’s over 100 anniversaries that have been celebrated. So the portrayal of her parents was not like our story. But Rachel and Channing did an outstanding job in studying us, our behavior, our habits, interviews we’ve done over the years. And I don’t think you could come up with better chemistry between two actors. They created a true sense of relationship on the silver screen, so many similarities to us and to the events we went through. Our heart is in our book. The end of the movie draws people to want to know more and the people who read the book are drawn to wanting to see the movie.
Did Krickett move back in with her parents as the character does in the movie? Did you ever give up?
Yes, they felt it was in her best interests at the time and I went home to try to achieve some sense of normalcy but there was never any separation. She was in a rehab facility in her home town. We never gave up on one another. She had every right to; she had no recollection of me, meeting me, dating me, nothing. At my weakest and lowest point I did have the feeling that this can’t work. As Channing portrayed in the film, I was at that point. I thought, “If that’s going to be the case, I’m going to stay with her until first she can take care of herself and have a good quality of life and second that she can be with it enough to look me in the eye and tell me it just wasn’t going to happen.” But the Lord had different ideas about this. Our faith is very important to us and the overall experience is something we will always cherish. It taught us that the little things don’t matter. It made us different people.
One thing that was accurate in the movie is that first time you fell in love it was immediate but the second time it had to build up slowly over a long period of time. What was that like?
Comas are depicted in a strange way in Hollywood. It’s a level of consciousness. You can walk and talk and still be charted as being in a coma. That process was drawn out. To be quite honest, it took more than three years. We had to accept that we needed a new beginning, a start over. There’s not going to be any memory. There’s not going to be any recovery in that area. So let’s move on and build new memories and make new memories rather than being obsessed with trying to bring back what was.
So you started from the beginning?
We dated again. We got engaged again on Valentine’s day of 1996 and on May 25 of that year we had a second wedding.
What do your children think of your story?
To have a book written that readers see all over the world is awesome for us. To have a movie made about us because we maintained our vows is extraordinary. But our children are the true blessings of our vows. If we had not stayed together, they would have never had a chance at life. I’m excited about it all but I’m especially excited that our children get to share this experience, travel, meet the director, doing interviews.
Parents in a family structure spend their lives trying to teach their kids to do the right thing and to be honest. It’s one thing to listen to a parent’s lecture about it and another thing to use it as a lesson for them to learn that will forever be carried on in their life and that’s priceless. They are seeing the rewards of doing the right thing. It’s unfortunate that in our society doing the things you said you would do is unusual enough to make a movie about it. But we are glad the world has grasped onto the story. “Unbelievable” and “amazing” are the words we hear but we just did what we said we would do. In wedding ceremonies, they say “‘Til death do you part,” and 50 years ago that was what it meant, the death of your soulmate. But today’s society accepts the death of a marriage for the smallest of issues. That crumbles the foundation of society. Our biggest prayer is that we hope this move will inspire people, whether they’re married or not, to doing the right thing, making a commitment, look at life in a great way, making good decisions. In the institution of marriage, we hope it gives them a framework to provide a sense of direction and inspiration to start or save a marriage.
Was your faith tested?
I was bitter at the Lord. How could this happen? I was on top of the world. I was bulletproof. I told my wife, “I can never be humbled.” But I met a man who lost his leg and then watched his daughter drown because he could not swim to save her. I met a family who lost three daughters in three years. It put things into perspective at how blessed we are. Those kinds of life experiences are all parts of lessons we learn.
Do you have a favorite Bible verse?
2 Corinthians 5:7 “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” And Krickett?
Krickett Carpenter: Mine is “I can do all things by Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13 . That is what I really held onto. He can give you strength through all things. This was just one thing of all the trials that could happen to people. I clung to those verses because God’s word is true and he’s a faithful, loving God.
List: Movies for Your Valentine
Posted on February 13, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Some of my favorite movie romances are just right for Valentine’s Day. Cuddle up with your valentine and a bowl of popcorn and enjoy these movies about how love makes us crazy and immeasurably happy at the same time.
1. Moonstruck
Love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*.
2. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
3. You’ve Got Mail
4. The Philadelphia Story
5. To Have and Have Not
A Wrinkle in Time: 50th Anniversary Interview with Madeleine L’Engle’s Granddaughter
Posted on February 13, 2012 at 8:00 am
Madeleine L’Engle
L’Engle’s book was turned down by a number of publishers because it did not fit into any genre. It is the story of a teenaged loner named Meg Murray and her precocious little brother Charles Wallace who travel to another planet to rescue their scientist father. It has elements of science fiction, religion, science and mathematics, adventure, coming of age, family drama, and some teen romance. When it was finally published, it was an instant classic and it was awarded the highest prize in children’s literature, the Newbery medal. It led to four sequels
Dr. Voiklis spoke to me about her grandmother and the origins of the book and about L’Engle’s faith, which is the subject of some of her books, including Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
I love A Wrinkle in Time. I read it as a kid and then I read it aloud to my children.
My grandmother wrote it in her early 40’s. She always described her 30’s as a decade of rejection, very hard for her. She felt nothing she wrote was getting published. She and her family were living in northwestern Connecticut and she wasn’t your typical housewife or a published writer making money and she had intense guilt about that. She started writing A Wrinkle in Time during a period of transition when they were moving back to New York, a period of transition. And she first got the image of Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who when they were driving through the Painted Desert area. The landscape was just so otherworldly. She said herself that she really couldn’t explain it except that it came during a period of transition and doubt and that it was a way of affirming a vision of the universe in which she wanted to believe.
I was charmed when I read that she argued with her publisher that she did not want to have a period after Mrs for Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Which, and Mrs Who as they do in Europe. Why was that important to her?
She felt that those little typographical details would convey a great deal. For American readers, that little signal would show that these women were not typical.
You said you helped her answer her mail from readers. What were some of the questions she got asked most often?
“Where do you get your ideas?” She liked to quote Papa Bach, who said he couldn’t get up in the morning without tripping over ideas. What to write about was never a problem. More than questions, the letters that touched her deeply were the ones from readers who were so moved by what they read in her books that they felt that they could trust her. They shared a lot of themselves. The Facebook page for A Wrinkle in Time has a number of comments from people who say, “This book changed my life.” She really felt deeply honored by that and took it very seriously.
Meg is somebody everyone can identify with. Everyone feels misunderstood and alone some of the time.
And the fact that its her faults that save her, that’s important, too. She really was like Meg, the passionate intensity, the emotionalism. If she felt something she had to say it. That kind of authenticity was totally her. She wrote fiction and non-fiction and there were elements of non-fiction and truth-telling in her fiction and elements of fiction in her non-fiction, the narrative of it.
What about Charles Wallace, who is only five but is so wise and knowledgeable?
He’s a leap of imagination. It’s not like she knew anybody who was like that. In one of the early drafts, she calls him a mutant. In the final version they just say, “he knew.”
He might be the next level of evolution.
Exactly.
Your grandmother was so prolific. Do you have a favorite of her books?
I have a very strong connection to The Small Rain
What did she teach you?
One of the most important things I learned from her was her sense of discipline. And discipline as a way of creating order so there would be opportunities for growth. She practiced the piano religiously. She went to bed every night at nine o’clock. She took a bath and shut the twelve shutters in her bedroom in a very methodical way. When I was a teenager, I didn’t get that! But the sense of order that an outward discipline gave her helped with the internal discipline needed for writing and using her writing to make sense of the chaos that is in everybody’s life.
The religious discipline worked the same way, the liturgical calendar, the liturgical year. She read the Bible every night. She liked to quote Karl Barth, who said, “I take the Bible much too seriously to read it literally.” It gave her a framework.
