A Farmer’s Wife
I was just looking for the latest news on the PBS-Frontline website and I came across the web/url for the documentary of A Farmer’s Wife that was broadcast back in the fall of 1998. That is going on ten years and it seems like a lifetime ago for me.
In 1998 I was on a sabbatical from my seminary internship and living and working in Houston, Texas and attending classes at Texas A&M in College Station. It was an interesting fall as I tried to transition from the full time life of being a future priest to living a secular life again. School and work seemed so odd to me at the time, but I can recall vividly several things that fall-running each night in 80’F weather, hot days in the 90’s, watching the Yankees beat the Padres in a 4 game sweep in the world series and watching this series on PBS over the course of three nights. It was interesting and it also made me think of the people I had left behind in Wisconsin-where I was working on my internships. I remember thinking that while Nebraska was quite different than Wisconsin that it still had enough similarities that it made me think of the parishioners that I spoke with everyday in the parishes I worked.
It brought to the fore front the difficulty of farming in our modern US society as well as how hard it is to raise a family and keep everything together-family, marriage and the farm as a business and family tradition.
If you’ve not heard or seen any of this documentary then I recommend you taking a few minutes to read about it or watch the first hour of the documentary. I believe it’s very worthwhile.
PBS- A Farmers Wife
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/farmerswife/view/
PBS-Frontline-A Farmer's Wife [1998]
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/farmerswife/
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
