I attended all kinds of churches as I was growing up, my only requirement was that they taught the Bible, God’s Word.  Denomination wasn’t necessarily important to me, but the content of the sermons and the quality of the fellowship was.

While I can’t say that I’ve ever attended a church in a theatre, I have attended events in large settings, for example in concert halls.  The thought of using a theatre as a church setting is something that is being considered, and there is something in the works to promote the idea. Find out more here, if you like.

What do I think of the idea? Any way that God be presented to people, as long as it is teaching from the Bible, is fine with me, whether it be a small home church, to a church in a meeting place as large as a theatre. God meets people and changes their lives in many different settings. The first-ever inaugural Theatre Church Conference will be taking place in Silver Spring, MD on October 22 & 23. Find out more and let me know what you think in a comment.

View it, and if you grew up in the 40’s, 50’s, or part of the 60’s, you’ll enjoy! Sign up for the newsletter at the end to catch up with what has happened to who and more from days gone by.

THE “REMEMBER WHEN” MOVIE

Before I get sentimental, and share some of the wonderful things about my Mom, let me share a few things things that happened the year of her birth:

• March - Movie “Legion of the Condemned” with Gary Cooper opened on the 10th; there was record trading on Wall Street for the time on the 28th
• May - the Electron Microscope was invented; Shakespear’s “The Tempest” opens on Broadway; General Electric starts a regular schedule of television programs out of WGY in Schenectady, NY
• June - Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
• July - Television sets go on sale for the first time; Warner Brothers releases the first feature length talking movie “The Lights of New York”
• September - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
• October - Joseph Stalin’s 5 year plan is announced; the German Graf Zeppelin dirigible comes to Lakehurst, NJ. BUST BEST EVENT OF ALL, my Mom is born.
• November - Herbert Hoover is elected as President; Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willy”, the first synchronized cartoon with Mickey Mouse in the “Star” role, opens at the Colony Theatre in New York City.
• December -Boulder Dam Act approved by U.S. Congress, approving the construction of the dam in Nevada.

There’s just a bit of the history of the year of her birth, but let me tell you some of the things that I remember about my Mom that make her very special to me:

• She is a woman of exceptionally strong faith.
• I don’t remember a night in my childhood when she didn’t come in and pray with my brothers, sister and I before we went to bed, no matter how long the day had been or how tired she was.
• Mom is strong, yet gentle.
• She loves to garden, and still does, and always has something starting under her special plant lights.
• She had the challenge of raising a multiply-disabled son right up until a few months ago when he moved into a group home.  He was born when I was 12, with a brother and sister between he and I.  It took some maturing on my part, a lot of it, to realize how hard it must have been to divide her attention among all of us when she was faced with such a challenge.
• It was at my bedside after going to Vacation Bible School when I was just a toddler that I prayed with my Mom to receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.   I have found that I am never too old to learn some nugget of spiritual truth from my mother.
• Mom has always loved feeding birds, and has always had a feeder full of seeds…or when we were young, a tray that we would fill and lay out in the yard, and watch as Mom identified each bird.  When the Grackles were migrating by the hundreds, I remember her going out once with a LOT of bread, breaking it, and throwing it, and it was gone before much of it had a chance to hit the ground.  Thanks to her, I, too, always have a feeder full of seeds hanging outside.
• Mom never had a drivers license, and thanks to my father’s income and careful management of money, was able to stay at home and care for her children.
• During the last 5 years of my father’s life, years in which he was taken from Mom and all of us due to a series of small strokes, Mom sacrificed herself and her back bending over him to care for him; helping him to and from wheel chair to bed; taking care of his personal needs…yes, we did have help come in, but Mom did a lot. Dad passed 11 days after her birthday a few years ago…her words when I brought her into the room after he had passed (a phone call kept her from his bedside) were “my lover is gone”.
• Mom loves cats, she went from a woman who shot at them with a super-soaker when they came in the yard to stalk her birds at the feeder, to the owner of a series of cats, 3 of which she has today.
• Mom allowed us to explore the world around us, allowing me to keep all sorts of creatures in cages, jars and aquariums in my room as long as I took good care of them, and allowing my brother to study creatures smaller than the eye can see at a young age through a microscope, which I am sure is the foundation for his being the Scientist he is today.

I could go on and on, she deserves so many accolades, and I don’t know how to put my love for her into words.  She is a treasure beyond words! I love you, Mom.

Was I there? No, I was looking ahead to my Senior year in High School, working at a summer camp in New Hampshire at the time. It was the talk of the summer, though, since it wasn’t all that far away and all of us knew someone that was going, we knew about the traffic, and how it was affecting some that were trying to get to camp. But I can’t say I was fully into the culture of the time yet, a bit of that that came into my life later, I’ll have to share about that one day.

Back to Hendrix, it’s a shame that such talent had to be snuffed out due to drug overdose, sad, what a waste, but here’s Hendrix, immortalized on video.  First a brief interview, then “The Star Spangled Banner” as only Hendrix could play it…listen for the “bombs bursting in air”…the anti-war (Viet Nam) movement was in full swing at the time, but in another time and place, the song could have considered pretty patriotic.

This touches a very special place in my heart because I have a brother who is in his 40’s who is a special needs adult.  The memories from his past life are a mixed bag that contains many different emotions. Maybe, over time, I’ll share some of those things with you, and you can share your situations if you’ve “been there” in comments here, if you like.

For now, may I just say that it is wonderful to see that someone is bringing this issue to the forefront on a national level!   After just finishing spending several years helping my family and brother by researching how to best meet my brother’s future needs, I have learned and seen a lot, and there is a lot of need in this area.

My brother, John, is in his 40’s, he has a delightful disposition, and a wonderful smile, because my Mom, who will be 80 in a couple of weeks, has been devoted to him and his care.  John cannot talk, he can walk, but not easily, he can’t hear in one ear, and can only hear a bit in the other.  All of this from a bout with Spinal Meningitis when he was a baby, while we were on vacation as a family at my Grandparents.

After the doctors realized the damage that had been done to my 6 month old baby brother from this illness that kept him in the hospital for most of the summer, and often with a 50/50 chance of living, they told my mother that it would be best if she just put him in an institution, that he would never amount to anything.  That was not to be, and because of it, my brother was an active member of our family for his whole life.  He is capable of caring for many of his own personal needs, getting a bowl of cereal, vacuuming, dressing himself, so many little helpful things that would never have happened had he been raised in an institution.  There is a lot deep inside my brother that you see in his eyes that may never come out until we can talk to one another in heaven when all things are made new…what a day that will be!

Recently, after a lot of work and even more prayer, we were able to move my brother into a Christian group home, the one that we hoped and prayed he would live in, and he is happy there. Best of all, he doesn’t live far from all of us.

Was it always an easy road? Far from it, but it is through the challenges in life that we learn the most, isn’t it?

First we decided that if we had a boy and a girl, we would give each our middle name.  Then we had to settle on first names.  My husband had a baby brother who only lived a very short time after his birth, but he was buried with a name.  We decided to bring that name to life again by giving it to our son.   That decision was an easy one.  2 years later it was time to chose a name for a boy or girl…which turned out to be a girl.  I had a name picked out up until 2 weeks before her birth, when suddenly a name scrolled up on the credits on a favorite TV show that I couldn’t resist..it became hers, along with my middle name.

It’s kind of nice to shared a piece of ourselves with each of our children in more ways than one.

In the story, the then-young star, Matthew Broderick, hacks into the US Military’s war computer, and plays “a game”, a bit bigger game than he anticipated, with their Computer. At the time the movie was out, home computers where not nearly as commonplace as they are now, in fact we didn’t have one, so it was fascinating to think that something like this was even possible. It’s an intense story, and guess what, you can view it again on the big screen at a special event AND see a preview of the sequel, “WarGames: The Dead Code” at select theaters throughout the USA next week on Thursday, July 24th. It’s a one-night event, and will include interviews with the film’s creators, AND members of the cast, including Broderick and Ally Sheedy, and the crew. Sounds like great fun, stop by and see if WarGames is playing in your area.