Random

• “Let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage”. Walden Media is awesome. So is Hillsdale College's monthly print/electronic publication Imprimis. This month Walden co-founder and President Michael Flaherty writes about the vision of Walden.

"We wanted to create a company dedicated to recapturing imagination, rekindling curiosity, and demonstrating the rewards of knowledge and virtue. All of our films would be based on great books, great people, and great historical events. They would be made by the best talent in entertainment and they would all be linked to educational materials developed by some of the best talent in education. We were taking Henry David Thoreau’s famous advice—to march to the beat of a different drummer—to Hollywood, which is why we decided to name our company after Thoreau’s most famous book, Walden."

Read more - you won't be sorry. These are the first guys I want to show my screenplay to.

• Every Last week of February, right before my March 2 birthday - I give myself back to my parents as a birthday present. I wish I could bring my whole family with me. I'm writing from my parents' home in Davis. Brother Tom picked me up late Thursday night at the airport; sister karin and husband Dave drove up from Claremont; and all of us had dinner last night (as is our tradition) at The Buckhorn in Winters, of whom the Davis Enterprise recently wrote:

Where's the best beef? The Buckhorn Steak and Roadhouse in Winters, according to the U.S. cattle industry. The Winters steakhouse has been named top independent restaurant in the nation with the National Beef Backer Award, announced last month by the Beef Checkoff Program at the annual Cattle Industry Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

• An enjoyable side benefit to this annual soujourn to the town of my raising is dinner the next night - Saturday (tonight), which gathers a circle of friends who became close in our High School years. Some of them, like Peter York and Bill Pfanner, I count among my friends since our days at North Davis Elementary School (and Oliver Wendell holmes Junior High, where the three of us were Dorothy's companions in the spring 1971 production of "The Wizard of Oz"). Others, like Christine Hopper, our hostess, became a friend in High School. All of them are interesting people (one of them is getting lots of airplay (and residuals, I hope) in a Progresso soup commercial in which she is a woman trying on a black dress). It's good to be with people who have known me for over 35 years and like me even though they don't have to. They even schedule a dinner around my travel schedule. How nice is that? I'll snap some pics tonight and see if I can pare them with some old pics and post them next week.

• And finally, I typically will speak at a Vespers Service at URC, where Dad and Mom live. That's Sunday, after attending my home church, University Covenant.

It's all good - just as it will be good to get home Monday night.