Family Business

My father is trained as a political economist, but pretty much everyone else in my family is not in the business of making money. Creative types. So I would like to call your attention to the upcoming productions of two other Langes.

1. My brother, photographer Jeremy M. Lange, has just published a multimedia slide show for the Independent Weekly, “Finding Faith on Chapel Hill Street,” with interviews and images, about a rundown street in Durham, NC with five houses of worship (including a mosque) and an acupuncture clinic. He writes:

I have seen a man take his first step toward Christ in the same building my dad and I bought my first bike, sold to us by Max, who at the time was God to me, the older, wiser biker of 16. Less than 100 yards away, just last year a good friend held a blood-soaked sweatshirt to the leg of a stranger to try and stop the heavy bleeding from a gun-shot wound. The stranger made it, the bike shop did not.

2. My aunt, documentary producer Monica Lange, has an hour-long show called Multitude of Multiples airing this Sunday, August 30 at 8 p.m. on TLC. I previewed some of the footage and it is fascinating. The three families profiled include the Carpios of Queens, New York, who are caring for six babies and an 8-year-old in a tiny house, on a maintanence worker’s salary, with more love, care, breastmilk and tidiness than many are able to muster with one. Most rise to the challenge of parenting, but when you see Digna Carpio mothering seven with a flower in her hair, you will fall in love. It isn’t all ruffles and rubber duckies, though. Unlike the TLC multiples series, reality of an unmanufactured variety still intrudes.