Wordy Birds

Frankenstein: A Cultural History

Original airdate: October 26, 2007

Everyone knows Frankenstein, that flattopped green monster with the stiff walk and bolts in his neck. Whether it’s Boris Karloff playing him in the classic film or a cartoon version chasing Scooby-Doo, the creature is an instantly recognizable classic.

But who is he really? And where did he come from?

Susan Tyler Hitchcock tackles the mystery, armed with tons of cultural, literary, cinematic and historical clues. The result is a definitive portrait of the macabre creation which has stumbled through our subconscious in films from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to “Young Frankenstein.”

“This is our monster,” Hitchcock writes. “To know him is to know ourselves.”

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True Richmond Stories: Historic Tales from Virginia’s Capital

Original airdate: October 19, 2007

Virginia’s beautiful capital on the James River, has seen more than its fair share of history. Although Richmond is probably best known as the site of one of the first English settlements in America and for its role as the Confederate capital in the Civil War, the city’s past has much more to offer. Since 1992, Harry Kollatz has been recording the lesser-known heritage of Virginia’s Holy City in his “Flashback” column in Richmond Magazine. From the inauguration of the world’s first practical electric trolley system and early civil rights activists, to a psychic horse and a wild ride on a sturgeon, he has covered it all.

Compiled for the first time in this volume, this selection of articles is sure to delight all who love Richmond by shedding light on some of the city’s lesser-known stories.

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An Infinity of Little Hours

Original airdate: October 19, 2007

About the Book: This riveting chronicle of a difficult spiritual journey offers an unprecedented look inside a secretive world unchanged since the eleventh century.

In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest center of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society that had maintained the same beliefs and lifestyle since St. Bruno initiated the order in 1084.

An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men’s struggles as they avoid the 1960s—the decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality—and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each faces a choice: if he stays to make “solemn profession,” he will never leave. But if he leaves, he must turn his back on his journey to find God in solitude—his life’s ambition.

A remarkable investigative work, the book combines first-hand testimony with unique source material to describe the Carthusian life. And the final chapter recounts a reunion forty years later revealing who succeeds and how the others incorporated their monastic experience as they rejoined the world outside.
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