Patt Morrison for Friday, May 20, 2011

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Friday, May 20, 2011

1-3 p.m.

 

CALL-IN @ 866-893-5722, 866-893-KPCC; OR JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE ON THE PATT MORRISON BLOG AT KPCC-DOT-ORG

 

 

1:06 – 1:19

OPEN

 

 

1:21:30 – 1:39

How to become a saint

Not God, but recognizably holy, oftentimes a martyr and always a miracle worker, how does one become a saint? The earliest form of the canonization process was more or less a popularity contest, but over the centuries, it’s become more stringent. Sometime after the year 400, bishops decided who would be declared a saint, until around the year 1100, when a priest got into a bar fight in Scandinavia and was killed. When his bishop friends began to revere him as a saint, the pope reserved the saint-making process for himself, and it’s been in the hands of Rome ever since. Today, the process is a complex affair involving formal investigations and witness testimonies, of sometimes up to 1,000 pages. In addition to the Virgin Mary and St. Patrick, there are as many as 40,000 Catholic saints and now some southlanders are petitioning to canonize a local Basque Claretian Missionary priest buried at the San Gabriel Mission. Tune in as Patt gets the latest on the story of Father Aloysius Ellacuria and a brief history of sainthood. 

 

 - The process of beatification and canonization doesn’t usually begin until someone has been dead for five years. John Paul II  made an exception for Mother Theresa and now an exception is being made for Pope John Paul II. On Jan. 14, it was announced by the Vatican that he will be beatified on May 1.

 

NOT CONFIRMED:

Thomas Craughwell, author of six books about saints including “Saints Behaving Badly: The Cutthroats, Crooks, Trollops, Conmen and Devil Worshippers Who Became Saints.” His new book, “Saints Preserved,” about relics--such as a fingers, bones, a lock of hair--that are honored and revered by Catholics, is due out in July

 

Chuck Lyons, runs the gift shop and museum at the San Gabriel Mission where Father Aloysius is buried

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1:41:30 – 1:58:30

Enjoy your TGIF…because the world ends tomorrow

The billboards have been all over Southern California for the past several months.  “Save the date!” they read.  “Jesus is coming on May 21!”  We first checked in with the man behind these apocalypse-advertising billboards two months ago—Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, had previously predicted the rapture would arrive on May 21, 1994, but as he told Patt Morrison he made a few miscalculations in his Biblical translation.  Now he’s positive that this Saturday is the date when Jesus will return to Earth to retrieve saved souls and has paid for 5,500 billboards across the country to advertise the date.  How will you know if the rapture is upon us on Saturday?  It will start with an earthquake so large that it will be felt across the planet with the apocalypse officially arriving in California at 6pm local time.  We explain the thinking behind this particular claim of the apocalypse and the other movements over time that have taken their shot at predicting the end of the world. 

 

Guest:

Steve Friesen, chair in Biblical studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches the course “Revelation and Apocalyptic Literature”

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• Friesen used Family Radio’s May 21^st movement as part of his coursework this semester.

 

 

2:06 – 2:19

OPEN

 

 

2:21:30 – 2:39

Harry Shearer and The Big Uneasy

You may know him better as The Simpsons’ Ned Flanders or the bassist from the rock group Spinal Tap, but Harry Shearer has more on his plate than just comic roles. More recently, he’s taken upon the very serious and real world duty of documenting the tragic events that took place in New Orleans during and after hurricane Katrina. With sidekick and native New Orleanian John Goodman in tow – along with an additional investigative team of scientists and engineers – the group has set off to tell the whole story of Katrina. The documentary “The Big Uneasy” is the end product of their work and Shearer is confident that it’s going to change some minds. Could the disaster have been prevented by the army core and did the media’s sensationalistic tendencies undermine the potential lessons to be learned? Patt sits down with Harry Shearer and KPCC’s own Molly Peterson.

 

Guests:

Harry Shearer, show host of KCRW’s “Le Show” and director of “The Big Uneasy:

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Molly Peterson, KPCC’s environmental reporter

IN STUDIO

 

 

 

2:41:30 – 2:58:30

Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text

Roy Blount Jr.—you’ve heard him on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, but did you know he is a usage consultant to the American Heritage Dictionary? Blount’s love affair with words is clear from his previous book’s subtitle: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; with Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory. In his new, follow-up to that “wordy” book, Blount explains that letters and sounds are not arbitrary but rather that there’s a purpose to the juiciness of some words connecting to our sight and sound. Blount, who is jealous of Hunter Thompson for his word booger, Jimmy Breslin for boozehound, and William Safire for hoohah, coins his own—“sonicky”—to describe the satisfying or curious sounds of words. Blount creates a chapter for each letter of the alphabet and explores the origin, meaning, and pronunciation of words as old as prick (1598) and as new as mediablur, with juicy anecdotes and crazy stories told along the way. 

 

Guest:

Roy Blount Jr., author of Alphabetter Juice; regular panelist on NPR's Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me

IN STUDIO

 

 

Jonathan Serviss
Senior Producer, Patt Morrison
Southern California Public Radio
NPR Affiliate for Los Angeles
89.3 KPCC-FM | 89.1 KUOR-FM | 90.3 KPCV-FM
626.583.5171, office
415.497.2131, mobile
jserviss@kpcc.org / jserviss@scpr.org
www.scpr.org