Christmas 2019

Christmas signals the end of another year.

This has been the year of great change.  

In areas where I thought everything was going great, it changed for the worst. 

My local church family is in turmoil and friends have left

In areas where I thought I had lost the opportunity to help, things changed for the better. 

I thought the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame that I helped found had left me, but they sought me out.

In my business I keep being asked: "Are you about to retire?"  

I am more active than ever and working State wide with a wonderful team.

That Chapter is closed.

Nothing binds me:

All is made ready, all waiting

                     Dag Hammarskjold

 2020 approaches

New Beginnings

It is September and my mental New Year has arrived.  Since childhood my calendar  has been the same as the school calendar.  I also am renewing my efforts to blog or as I think of it a to journal.

I am discontinuing movie ratings since I have waited out the people that used to read them. I believe that I now have no regular readers. So everything is new again.

Catching Up on Movies

Captain Marvel  v very good   4 stars

Train Your Dragon 3  good 3 stars

Lego 2  good 3 stars

Greta   Very Good  3 1/2 stars

The UPSIDE  4 stars

Cold Pursuit  3 1/2 stars

Mary Poppins Returns   3 stars

Can you ever Forgive me  4 stars

Movies 4,5, 6,7,8,9,10, 11

Are you Committed

There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses only results.

                     Kenneth Blanchard

Two wildly different Movies that are alike

FUTURE:
I watched "Bird Box" on Netflix to see what all the talk was about. This is a good movie starring Sandra Bullock and is a tense story. In last year's "A Quiet Place" Aliens have invaded but they are blind. But if you make noise they will get you. In Bird Box if you go out side to see they will get you through your eyes.  Yikes!  Great fun.    2019 Movie 2   I give it ***1/2 stars.

PAST:

"Mary Queen of Scots" is the retelling of Mary, Queen of Scotland and her life.  It shows her world where she once was married to the King of France. He dies and she returns to Scotland to claim her throne but also sets her sites on England.  She was the daughter of King Henry of England but the throne was taken by her cousin Queen Elizabeth.  This is Monarchy at its most treacherous.  Great acting.  2019 Movie 3  It is ****star


The thing these movies have in common are three  strong women who face great odds in a male dominant world.  Sandra Bullock's character faced great odds, but so did Mary.  Another common bond is how they all viewed the importance of children in their lives.

Teaching Sunday School

Their is nothing about this title that I like.

First: I am not a teacher. I am a story teller and I discuss things based on experience or what good stories tell, but I am not a trained teacher. When I am given a time to teach, I tell those that gather that my function is to arouse thought. They teach themselves.

Second: Sunday School is weird. As I wise elder once to me: "Mike, did you know that Sunday school is the only school where you can't graduate. It is endless."

That said: When asked to have a class, I chose to talk about the future of the church.  WE muse about the future being heaven but we never consider our future while in our present position.  The Old Testament  has many stories pertaining to the future but we normally skip those. Jesus challenges us in the later writings to live for the future and God's dealings with the apostles was ALL about the future. But we tend to think that we were the future since everything is about us.

I hope my stories and the Bible's stories will make sense. I'll keep you posted.

Us Baby Boomers

It is well documented that we baby boomers are different.  I had this thought the other day about current fashions

Men with three beards and stubble:  Growing up in the first of the TV age the only men that looked like they were unkept or needing a shave were the "Bad guys" in the westerns. John Wayne and his kind always beat them.  So we tend it be clean shaven,

Men with beards:  In the days of the westerns only judges and old wise men had beards.  We grow them when we want to be wise.  When I started  my first business, I was 30 and wanted to seem older and smart so I had a full beard for eight years.  I only shaved it when my chin started turning gray  (before I was ready).

Tattoos:  Again as a child the only people that had these had just come back from World War 2 and were Navy veterans.  I equated them with someone who had a wild experience. Never thought they would be a fashion thing worn by folks that have never experienced anything.

I would mention piercings but I would have to dive into old Nation Geographics!

Welcome to Marwen

"Welcome to Marwen" is my first movie of 2019.  Rotten Tomatoes and other ratings do not give this much of  chance. As a creative, I totally get it.  This is a true story of an illustrator who gets almost beaten to death by five punks.  He looses all personal memories of his life before and has to reconstruct everything. He can no longer draw so he turns to photography to capture his new world.

Steve Carell was great.

His imaginary world allows him to live in a time and place that he can control.  I won't go any further about the story but I will tell you this. It made sense to me.

When I was younger I loved to draw and create my own fantasy worlds that could not be explained to anyone. I know I tried a couple of times.  I heard from people we know that this movie was horrible. That tells me they were never creative.

This movie may not work for some but I get it.

2019 Movie #1  I give it ****stars.