And PLEASE don't miss the answer to the Jamestown question :rofl:
What is your favorite hymn?Allen: “Amazing Grace.” ... I look at “Amazing Grace” when the song is sung, and I think that it was written for me. ... The thing about “Amazing Grace,” whether it’s a church organ, whether it’s a bluegrass band, whether it is bagpipes. No matter whatever instruments are used to play it, it is just a great song.
Webb: “Amazing Grace.”
http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=13267Next year we’ll be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the settlement at Jamestown. If you had been among the first settlers there in 1607, how do you think you would have contributed to history?Allen: Well I would have been out hunting. Either trying to grow some crops or out hunting ... maybe out on the river trying to catch some fish, as well. Mostly, that was the Virginia Company, and it was a commercial endeavor, and so I would have wanted to make sure that first the community was safe. I would have wanted to have good relations with the inhabitants that were already here, the Virginia Indians, and then tried to work with them in a positive way and learn from them the best we could, but also set up our own self-government. ... to meet the needs of the community and try to of course get more people to join in our venture. It’s interesting you ask that question, because as governor, I
shares of stock in the Virginia Company to companies that would come into Virginia.
Webb: I would have died in 1609 {laughs} when the cold frost came in, when two-thirds of them died, I think.
When is the last time a piece of great art affected you? What was it and why?
Allen: This is a serious question? This is such an unusual question. Can architecture be ...? The Pantheon in Rome. The perfection of it. ... For the first time ever, I took an art history course at the University of Virginia, and I always wanted to go to Rome and Florence — I’ve never gotten to Florence yet. I’m chairman of the European Affairs Subcommittee. And they just had new leadership, Prodi, as the new prime minister of Italy. And so I wanted to meet with him and other Italian government leaders. ... Rome itself, the whole thing is absolutely inspiring. It’s my new favorite city outside of the United States. I wanted to be an architect, but there was just too much math to it. But the Pantheon ... just the perfection of that building and the way the sun, depending on the time of the year, ends up being a clock through the hole in the ocular aspect of it in the top ... And then when Michelangelo was building St. Peter’s, they wanted ... it to be bigger than the Pantheon, and they said it can’t be done. And to think that that was fifteen hundred years later. ... It’s remarkable to think that was being built two thousand years ago when they didn’t have the measurements that we had here. ... You talk about something that’s awe-inspiring. It’s just very moving. All of Rome is, but in particular the Pantheon and St. Peter’s.
Webb: For someone who’s a writer, you know, I’m a great art-lover, all kinds of art. I include music as art, by the way. I am constantly affected by really good films, or books, or music, or whatever. That’s a big part of who I am, so it’s really hard to say … I’ve had a hard time seeing films this year, I’ve been pretty wiped out. The last film I saw that I really flipped over was “Walk the Line.” I love that movie. It’s almost like my mother’s and my father’s story in terms of background, because June Carter Cash is from Hilton, Virginia — my dad’s family’s out of Gate City, six miles away. Johnny Cash is from east Arkansas. So is my mother. I had an uncle who lost his hand in a saw mill, so that scene when the kid was killed in the saw mill … that’s a very powerful movie.