I’ve done a lot of public speaking (not counting the 1,345,043 hours in the classroom), done television, both live and taped.

But today, I met the TelePrompter.

Interesting. Headed over to this place to do that thing today. Very nice people, simple set up. Script I wrote was on the teleprompter. I hadn’t even given any thought to what it would be like, but what startled me, immediately, was how difficult it was to keep my eyes on the camera. (You know, of course, that the words run right over the camera lense).  My instinct was to let my eyes rove, as they do when you’re speaking to an audience, or at the very least, lift them up to look above the lens. No can do.

It was strange. It took a great deal of will to keep my eyes from darting off. It was almost as if I had to bury myself in the words scrolling down that little screen and shut absolutely everything else out, so my eyes wouldn’t flinch.

But that was only responsible for one retake. Most of the others were due to traffic noise outside (no soundproofing) and once, someone typing on the computer on the other end of the room.

So…if you’re Catholic and in the military, look for that DVD, with one little segment featuring The Palest Person in Indiana (which is pretty darn pale) talking about Mary, sometime next year, I guess!

Michael and the children wandered around Notre Dame while I did my job. They prayed at the grotto, and Michael reported that Joseph’s prayer was, "Thank you God, for this food."

We went through Shipshewana on the way back,saw lots and lots of Amish. Also saw a young Mennonite woman working in a store, who had her little caplet, her long-sleeved shirt, and her ankle-length skirt, except the skirt was slit up to mid-thigh on both sides, so the whole Anabaptist effect was somewhat muted in that particular case.