I once spent a night or two with one my grandmothers. She was not that far away from where we lived. I had two aunts there who were only a few years older. I thought it strange that they still played with dolls. I gave up dolls when I was pretty young. Looking back, I think it may have been that I only had brothers at home and no neighbor girls who would play dolls with me.
The other grandparents had a cabin that we stayed at as a family. We often had our cousins and their families staying as well. My dad and one of the uncles added on to the cabin and built a bunk house. It was wonderful fun for all of us children with fishing, swimming, water skiing (I was too chicken for that) and visiting the fun tourist town not all that far away. I also went berry picking with my grandmother and off to get green apples from trees that were free for the taking. We had second cousins who had a cabin next door, so that just added to the fun.
Chas, you are in my prayers. Not that it is the same at all, but you may want to have someone buy you a body pillow for sleeping. My daughter uses one when her husband is gone for work purposes. Sleeping alone is so different when you are used to being with someone.
DJ, an LA question for you. I read the article Kizzie linked yesterday and wondered. Did they rename the Pasadena Freeway to the Arroyo Seco Freeway? I know it runs through the Arroyo Seco, but I’ve never heard it called by that name.
I drove it a lot when I lived in Pasadena, but generally from end to end, Pasadena to LA, and didn’t have to deal with the crazy right-turn on-ramps in between.
My children never stayed alone at my parent’s home. My mom had no interest in children. She did babysit for a couple of hours once when I had already tucked them all in bed.
They did spend the night (with cousins) at the other grandparent’s home. That ended because it became unsafe for them. The youngest never stayed there. She was very young when my MIL died.
I spent a lot of nights with my father’s parents. The were a huge presence in my childhood. My dad was an only child, so we were my grandparents’ whole family. Also my mom had health problems and needed a lot of help. They were there for every birthday, holiday, and school event.
My family didn’t go away on vacations at all – not even once – but we kids looked forward eagerly every summer to our week of “vacation” with Grandma and Grandpa. Sometimes all three of us went at once, and sometimes we each had them for a week all to ourselves (which is what we liked best!)
We’d do a lot of crafts with Grandma, play board and card games, and go on day trips.
My two kids stayed with their grandparents occasionally when Mrs. B. and I went away on a short trip, 4-5 days, and once when I was in the hospital.
Finished Bible study and then talked with my friend Karen. My brother called to chat from an auto repair shop since his radiator is leaking. He is still driving the very high mileage car which requires frequent trips to the repair shop. I need to call Florence who called yesterday and left a message. It’s the kind of day to give me a sore ear.
It’s like having a child hurting. You wish you could do something, but can’t.
Rose, a helper, is in there changing her diaper now. She is crying and screaming but there is nothing I can do. It needs to be done.
Good morning. My parents watched my oldest once while we went out. My mom would have enjoyed them, but she died before we knew we were pregnant with the third so was only there for the first two years. Then my dad babysat when I tried being social with my sister. We went to the gym together. He remembers second son hiding behind the curtains when dad went to check on them in bed. He saw the little feet poking out from under the curtains. But then we were off to overseas assignments.
So difficult, Chas. Our hearts and prayers are with you.
My mom was in that state not long ago. I wish all her children could have been with her. We could have if not for one. Still makes me sad.
We have had all our grandchildren stay with us all by themselves, except for the youngest two. Hopefully, we can have those two when they are old enough. One will be more of a challenge, since she has to eat gluten free. Children are quite different when they come all by themselves. I just realized, we have not had one who lives in TN by himself. However, we have spent weeks staying with him there and they have spent time with us here.
This cousin has posted on FB about supposed pagan origins of Christian holidays, about Anglo-Israelism, and has begun to observe Jewish holidays, all things found in the teaching of Armstrongism. A while back he posted something about the Jewish holidays and then said he had been called a heretic for thinking we should follow the law. I don’t know what this cousin believes about the Trinity, but his posts definitely display other characteristics of Armstrongism, including the tendency to assume other churches are apostate. The cousin and his siblings all like to criticize the church for being worldly, but I am afraid their critical spirit is in danger of leading them into worse error. They had been posting in support of a church in southern Ontario which has made a point of being defiant. I mentioned I discovered a couple of weeks ago, this church was a cult. It was while investigating what that cult entailed (it is a Church of God Restoration), that I suddenly realized that was what this cousin had been sharing.
As a small child I stayed with my maternal grandparents quote a bit. That ended abruptly due to some issues with a family member. I also stayed with my paternal grandfather some but that also ended when he and my grandmother remarried.
BG loved spending the night with all of her grandparents and as you know Mr Manipulative makes sure we have Little Miss one night a week. “It makes her parents better parents”. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was warned years ago to stay away from Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God. (Not that I was interested; it was a general warning through Christian groups I respected).
I’ve been around long enough that things denounced years ago, are now resurfacing and catching a new generation into their tenacles.
The only reason I can come up with, beyond there is nothing new under the sun, is the abominable track record the western church has on teaching how and why to read the Bible.
I’m a Bible teacher. My students are older than I am. None of them seem to be veering off into these peculiar offshoots–including QAnon.
Is it because they’re not on social media?
Or is it (more likely) because they’ve spent years reading and meditating on the actual Word of God, and can recognize in their spirit when something doesn’t ring true–and then they check it against the Bible.
Roscuro, I’ve heard of them, but mostly the repentance of their leader(s) a few years back. In Nashville I sometimes listened to “The Bible Answer Man” (Hank Hanegraaff, sp?), because the program was on during my commute somewhere, maybe prayer meeting, before he converted to become Orthodox. (I often disagreed with Hank. He’d “answer” some question about something treated in Scripture as quite literal by saying it was symbolic. The two I remember were the serpent in the Garden and the veil in the temple being rent in two at Jesus’ death. But his commentary was often interesting.) He talked about the errors of the church, and later the amazing turn toward orthodoxy, which apparently didn’t go all the way.
I was in a Zoom meeting recently when the international leader warned us to start stockpiling written Bibles.
Apparently, some clever people on the international scene are altering the code on electronically transmitted Bibles to make it more “culture affirming,” shall we say.
Some of you will remember the article from a few weeks ago about how the majority of Bibles, world-wide, are printed in one place. Do you think that nation is interested in the purity of the text?
😦
So, when you come across them “in the wild” without homes, take them into yours, put them in a box, and store them for when they may be needed.
Also, we should be memorizing (I’m bad at that), the truth as written.
It’s another reason, too, to be singing the old theologically-rich hymns: to memorize truth. (Which is what got the Vietnam POWs through the torture–memorized verses from Sunday school and hymns).
Such a dark world we live in. But it’s been darker and the Lord still reigns.
Oh, and one more thing. Lettie Cowman was delighted one day after WWII ended, to learn someone had found a bunch of Basque language Bibles.
The OMS funded having them sent into northern Spain where people, for the first time in a long time, could read the Word of God in their own languages.
You’re making me think I’d better invite the Adorables over to spend the night tomorrow night before our roomer returns (from house sitting at the other Adorables’ house).
We’ve been astonished and privileged to have the children in and out of our home–and see it as a contribution to their parents’ marriages and thus their lives.
My children only were able to spend short spurts with their grandparents over the years. During the 20 Navy years, we only left the children a half-dozen times, for lack of opportunity. Once we even paid someone.
It’s good for parents to have time to focus on their marriage without the distraction of children for a night or two. I wish we’d had more opportunities.
I never got to stay with grandparents because on my father’s side only my sickly grandmother was left, and on my mother’s side they were older and not in very good health, and they lived about six hours away. That is how it worked out for our son, too. By age 6 months both of his grandfathers had died and the grandmothers were not in good health.
Re grandparents and extended family: I grew up in Phoenix and was born about ten years after the death of my last grandparent. My dad’s family had mostly settled in Texas; we saw one uncle (Dad’s brother-in-law) several times, since he traveled on business and would stay with us in Phoenix when he came that direction–but I was quite young, maybe ten, on the last of those visits. The rest of the Texas family I saw only one time, except that two or three made it to Dad’s funeral. Since we traveled on vacation and drove through Texas multiple times, I have no idea why we only saw them once. Dad came from a big family; he was one of six who made it to adulthood, though one of his brothers died young a few months before I was born, leaving Dad with three sisters and one living brother. (One sister never married and one married but was childless. His brother who died young, his wife died a couple of years later and their children were raised by their mother’s family and lost touch with our side. His other brother married two or three times and didn’t really stay in touch with the family. That leaves me with only one family of cousins, but they were adults with their own children when I met them when I was ten. Though that aunt was three years younger than Dad, Dad was 50 when I was born and that made those of us born when Dad was 50-53 quite young among the cousins.)
My mom’s family consisted of two brothers, one a Christian (but Mom believed him not to be sound theologically–my contact with him as an adult says that either Mom was wrong about what he believed or he changed his teachings, not sure which, but he doesn’t currently believe what she claimed he believed, that the vast majority of the Bible is not for Christians today) and one an atheist. We saw the Christian brother twice, the atheist brother once, when I was growing up. We saw the atheist brother’s children (my first cousins) at least twice each on their own. Mom talked to her brothers by phone fairly often, and she corresponded with one of her uncles all his life until he died, and then with his son (her cousin).
When I went to Chicago to go to school, I got to know my Christian uncle and his family a bit. My uncle was a pastor and I occasionally heard him on the radio. My girl cousin and her husband both worked on the campus where I attended, so I spoke to them when I saw them. Eventually they started adopting children, and she quit work to raise them, and 11 or 12 years into marriage (age 39) gave birth to a child. My cousin-in-law continued to work on campus. My mom came to my college once in my years there, my freshman year (her only visit to Chicago in my 14 years). I arranged for us to have lunch with her brother and his family, and it was her first time to see him in eight or ten years (since I was a preteen), and her last time to see him. Through the years I kept in touch with that uncle, had lunch with him periodically, but he was so much in the habit of not thinking of extended family that he didn’t initiate. Until I went to visit him in the hospital when he had a heart attack and also visited his daughter, my cousin, in the hospital when she had a stroke after giving birth. Those two contacts opened his eyes to the fact that I was family, and for the first time I got an invitation to their house–and when he rejoiced at that meeting that we were family, I had to break the news that I was moving out of Chicago. His wife died of Alzheimer’s several years later (he cared for her at home for four years and she died at home the day after I met my husband in person for the first time). When my husband and I were courting, the week we got engaged I flew to Chicago and my husband-to-be and the girls drove over. I tried to set up a meeting between my husband and this uncle–the last living remnant of the generation before mine–and it proved impossible. (My uncle, who was then 81 and is now 91, moved to live with his son. He was not leaving the house and his son had two big, fierce dogs who weren’t friendly to strangers, which I would be. Initially he agreed to meet us at a coffee shop, and then he backed down.) I keep in touch with this uncle now by phone. My mom’s atheist brother died several years before she herself did, and his wife was the next-to-last of my aunts and uncles, though I don’t remember ever meeting her, and she died in a nursing home several years ago.
It’s the State of the Port of Long Beach address today in 15 minutes — virtual, of course.
Kevin:
(Wikipedia): The Arroyo Seco Parkway, also known as the Pasadena Freeway, is the first freeway built in the United States. It connects Los Angeles with Pasadena alongside the Arroyo Seco seasonal river. It is notable not only for being the first, mostly opened in 1940, but for representing the transitional phase between early parkways and modern freeways. It conformed to modern standards when it was built, but is now regarded as a narrow, outdated roadway.[4] A 1953 extension brought the south end to the Four Level Interchange in downtown Los Angeles and a connection with the rest of the freeway system.
The road remains largely as it was on opening day, though the plants in its median have given way to a steel guard rail, and most recently to concrete barriers, and it now carries the designation State Route 110, not historic U.S. Route 66. Between 1954 and 2010, it was officially designated the Pasadena Freeway. In 2010, as part of plans to revitalize its scenic value and improve safety, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) restored the original name to the roadway.[5] All the bridges built during parkway construction remain, as do four older bridges that crossed the Arroyo Seco before the 1930s. The Arroyo Seco Parkway is designated a State Scenic Highway, National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and National Scenic Byway. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
Cheryl, basically, what the summary about the Restored Church of God is while the parent Church of God recanted their heresy on the Trinity, there were many members who disagreed with that recantation and split off to form different branches, most of them with Church of God somewhere in the title. The parent Church has actually renamed itself to Grace Communion, so if there is a Church of God in the title, chances are it is one of the splinter groups. So Armstrong’s false doctrines are still being propogated despite the parent Church recantation. My cousin, and one of his siblings, have held house meetings in the past, inspired by Francis Chan’s home church movement, whom they greatly admired and whose critiques of the church they often shared. So, the claim of Armstrongism that all other churches have corrupted themselves and this being the only true Christian life would be enormously appealing to this cousin.
… The six-lane Arroyo Seco Parkway (part of State Route 110) begins at the Four Level Interchange, a symmetrical stack interchange on the north side of downtown Los Angeles that connects the Pasadena (SR 110 north), Harbor (SR 110 south), Hollywood (US 101 north), and Santa Ana (US 101 south) Freeways. …
… The Arroyo Seco (Spanish: “dry gulch, or streambed”) is an intermittent stream that carries rainfall from the San Gabriel Mountains southerly through western Pasadena into the Los Angeles River near downtown Los Angeles. During the dry season, it served as a faster wagon connection between the two cities than the all-weather road on the present Huntington Drive.[8] …
… Despite a quadrupling of traffic volumes, the original roadway north of the Los Angeles River largely remains as it was when it opened in 1940. Trucks and buses were banned in 1943, though the bus restriction has since been dropped; this has kept the freeway in good condition and relatively safe, despite its outdated design. This design, state-of-the-art when built, includes tight “right-in/right-out” access with a recommended exit speed of 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) and stop signs on the entrance ramps; there are no acceleration or deceleration lanes. …
That freeway is a nightmare. The two-lanes are scary narrow and trying to merge from a stop sign into thundering traffic is horrific and terrifying.
My EMT lives nearby, so I have to drive it when I’m down South (0 times in the last year), but I try to get there a different way. Surface streets are benign in comparison.
“Today you have proclaimed the LORD to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will obey His voice.”
a. Today you have proclaimed the LORD to be your God: Israel was to proclaim two things. First, that the LORD to be their God. Second, that they will walk in His ways and keep His statutes. The two go together, because the identity of our God is always demonstrated by the direction of our obedience.
My little devotional journal book today uses the verse Exodus 38:8 about the donation of bronze mirrors given by the women at the tent of meeting to be made into the basin of bronze and its stand. These were treasures the women had brought back from Egypt. My reflection was on how much more glory God received by the ladies’ treasures not being withheld for their own private enjoyment. There was synergy when all got on board with the project and donations. I know in the past that church folks worked on big projects like starting schools and hospitals. People really sacrificed for such things to be established. Now denominations give money to sustain the former created entities. Are churches doing any new works or is it mostly staying afloat, dog paddling so to speak, and going through the motions but with a lack of heart?
The fact that I didn’t know my grandparents, aunts and uncles, or cousins is a big part of the reason I was very deliberate about keeping in touch with my sister’s children. Our older brothers more or less were like uncles to us. They are seven to fourteen years older than me (ten to seventeen years older than my youngest brother), and all four moved out of the house for various reasons before their eighteenth birthdays (army, college, moving to live with an older brother). So on family holidays they’d all come over and play board games with us, and it felt like a party.
Three of them married when I was still a minor, and between 13 and 18 I gained five nieces and nephews. None of my brother’s children have consistently called me “Aunt” Cheryl; I was just Cheryl a lot of the time. (My oldest niece, with children of her own, does call me Aunt now.) I only ever lived in the same city with two nephews, my oldest brother’s sons. One was born when I was sixteen, months before my dad died, and the other four years later. After Dad died, we moved back down to Phoenix, where they were still living, so I lived in the same town with my oldest brother and his wife and their one and then two sons, between the ages of 17 and 22, when I went off to college. (While I was in college they moved to another state where they had a daughter and later adopted two other children.)
With so many nieces and nephews, most of them living far away, there was no reasonable way to remember all their birthdays and keep in touch with all of them. Now, I’ve seen all of them far more than I saw my own uncles and aunts, but that isn’t saying much. My brothers’ children know each other and they also know their (older) aunts and uncles. (Two of my brothers travel for a living. Though they rarely got to Chicago when I lived there, they did get to California at least every year or two. I myself haven’t seen my California nephews for ten years, nor met any of the seven children they have between them so far. I have met three of their wives, and I have seen that California brother, sister-in-law, and niece at least twice each in the last decade.) My younger brother has not married, and one of the older ones has married but it’s complicated and they don’t have any children (yet).
But I could be, and was, deliberate about getting to know my sister’s children. She married when I was in my late twenties and beginning my career, so I had some money and some ability to travel to see them, and ten years into my career I chose to go freelance, and chose to move just three hours away from her, to be a more “present” part of their lives. I imagined having one or two of them come to stay with me for a few days as they got older; that never happened, but I did drive over to see them three or four times a year, was present to care for children for all the births, called each child on his birthday, and always bought Christmas gifts for them. And I told her that if something were to happen to her and her husband, I would be available to rear the children if they wanted me. (Since I was single they said no, but I was willing, especially since they didn’t have anyone else they considered a viable option.)
And that’s one reason the break in fellowship with my sister is so difficult. I kept trying those last two years largely for the sake of her children. After 22 years of investing in her children, I should now be able to call the house and have any one of them happy to talk to me, now that they are all old enough to carry on intelligent conversation (the youngest will be a teenager next month). But alas, in this fallen world, life doesn’t always go as we wish.
Michelle, I don’t think this cousin received very sound instruction in the Bible in his formative years. He has always seemed a bit unstable, “tossed with every wind of doctrine.” His siblings also struggled a little, and seemed very put off by the shallow teaching of the Baptist denomination they grew up in. They seemed to greatly admire my parents joining ATI. They were older teens and young adults at the time – I am the second youngest of the cousins on my mother’s side. They are now a bit like the Christian hippy types that we used to come across when my mother started homeschooling us – live off the land, distrust the government/establishment, etc. Like those homeschooling families I remember from my childhood, they see conspiracy everywhere. Not the new fangled QAnon, but the old fashioned communist/Satanist conspiracy that used to be whispered about in my childhood and youth, the ones that claimed rock music had hidden Satanic references and governments were trying to gain control of your children. What were rumours and whispers in my youth, occasionally propagated by portly laid out tracts and self published books that appeared typewritten, has crystalized due to the internet magnifying the rumours into authentic sounding reports.
Sad to hear about your unfruitful investment into relationship, Cheryl. You have been a loving aunt by most Christian standards. It is something to keep in prayer, and some day things could change unexpectedly.
My mother’s eldest sister once said, in relation to the view of this set of cousins (who are not her children), that our family took their faith one of two ways, either filled with joyful confidence, or seriously and filled with gloom. I think she thought that my family was serious and filled with gloom when we joined ATI, and we probably were – I know my siblings and I took things far too seriously when we were in its thrall. Sometimes, I think she is right. I feel sad for my cousins that their lives have so much uneccesary angst, but I am really concerned about the one who seems to be entering realm of heresy. As Jesus said, we are not to fear those who can only kill the body, but to fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. What my cousins believe about the world will hinder their spiritual growth, but what they believe about God will hinder their salvation.
It’s an interesting question: how do we demonstrate to our loved ones and others at large, that our faith is focused on a joyful God who loved us so much that Jesus came to earth to live among us and understand the human life.
But that wasn’t enough. He died as our Passover lamb, tore the veil between God and man/woman, and set us free from the captivity of sin and death.
And, to finish off, sent the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts–enabling us to access and commune with God from anywhere.
That’s good news.
And if focus there rather than on the world’s fear-based cries, well, we’ll live happily ever after in the knowledge that no matter what happens we can never be separated from Jesus.
Someone said to us recently that those who were hurt by the church, usually legalism, leave to become legalists themselves.
Tragic. My faith is full of life and hope. I see the dangers, but I do not allow them to overtake me nor my love for others.
I feel free at the moment. I got a letter last night from a dear friend I’ve known since the Navy beginning. She’s a quirky librarian married to a most unusual man, and I savor every letter from her.
With all my pressing work cleared, I just wrote her a 2800 word reply. But, should I email it or mail it?
I already sent her two emails including several attachments and links!
I also said, “Do you want me to email the letter, or send it with a stamp. It references everything I’ve linked and attached to these emails? Awaiting your response.”
She had said in her letter she couldn’t figure out Goodreads. So I sent her my link to see what I’ve been reading–which is probably all she really wants to know anyway! LOL
The Worldwide Church of God was headquartered in Pasadena during my years there. They had a college, Ambassador College, with a beautiful campus and one of Pasadena’s finest auditoriums.
I never investigated the church personally. I always understood that it was considered a cult until it moved toward orthodoxy after Armstrong’s death.
I understand the college property has been parceled out, and that the auditorium belongs to Harvest Rock church now.
Re: Grandparents and grandchildren: I stayed overnight with my grandparents. Actually, Second, Youngest and I stayed a whole week with my maternal grandparents, while Eldest and my parents went to a conference for a certain homeschooling program. My grandparents, like my parents now, had their married children live with them as needed when they started out (including for two years, my parents) and one married child stayed permanently, so when we stayed with our grandparents, we also stayed with an uncle, an aunt and two cousins. Naturally, we spent a lot of our time with the cousins.
On my father’s side, my grandfather died before we were born, and my grandmother lived in another province. But I did stay overnight with her once when we went down to visit for a week. She couldn’t put us all up, an aunt did that, but she had each of us children, except youngest who was too young to be away from our mother, come and stay a night.
The night stands out because it was the same night of the OJ slow-speed chase. Church friend who picked me up was aghast at how people could even be interested in that breaking news story. I decided I shouldn’t ask her to turn on the news station in her car after she said that. LOL Drove me crazy, though, I couldn’t wait to get home to find out what happened.
When I mentioned Armstrongism to my father, he knew immediately what I was talking about and was startled to learn it was still in existence, as he knew about the turn toward orthodoxy. He said he had read about it in ‘The Kingdom of the Cults’ in his younger days
My sister and I stayed overnight sometimes with my paternal grandfather. She was old enough (5 years old than me) to get to know him more than I did. I remember playing with the toys and games that were kept in the desk drawers in the living room, and exploring the attic. Sometimes we walked the dog, but I was afraid of him (just a beagle, but I was afraid of all dogs). I might have been around ten when my grandfather had cataract surgery, which back then (early 1970’s) required him to wear something covering both eyes for several days, so we took turns spending time with him since he was effectively blind. I spent hours alone with him, but if we had conversations about anything more than what he needed me to do for him, I don’t remember them. Mostly he listened to recorded books, which meant of course that I listened to them too. I found Animal Farm rather upsetting, and it was years before I could bring myself to read it as an adult.
He died when I was 11, but I hadn’t known him well enough to actually miss him, despite having seen him probably at least once a week my whole life. My mother used to complain that he was of a generation that felt children should be seen and not heard, so I guess I wasn’t old enough for him to want to interact with. I also was a very quiet, introverted child who would happily sit by myself and read or play, never getting into trouble, so it was easy for adults to just leave me alone. His wife had died when I was a baby, so I have no memory of her, and my mother’s parents had died before she ever met my father. I suppose it would have been nice to have grandparents I loved and felt loved by, but it’s hard to miss something I never experienced. Of course, I wasn’t close to my parents either, so if I were going to wish for something it would be to have had parents I felt close to.
DJ, that OJ “chase” is mentioned in the book I’m editing. I always wonder how many people were actually “watching” and how many people just had the TV on because they’d been watching something else?
It was my first year out of college and I was renting a bedroom from friends, and I think I was alone in the house. I don’t remember what I was watching, but I was watching something when it came on. Since obviously nothing was “happening” (just a vehicle going down the expressway), I kept thinking they would go back to my program any minute now. I might have checked other channels and found that they all had it, but I don’t remember for sure. When my program didn’t come back right away, I lay down on the couch to wait for its return. I dozed off, and periodically I opened my eyes, looked at the TV, and saw it was still the “chase.” It was the most boring TV ever, and I kept waiting for the channel to realize that and go back to its programming. I’m assuming I eventually turned off the TV. All I know is that when later I heard how many people had watched the chase, I wondered how many people were just like me, not watching it at all, but who just happened to be in the room when that’s what was on.
At least in Southern California, where it was all taking place, we were mesmerized. One of our young photographers (who’s now a City Hall aide I deal with frequently) managed to grab a photo (that later won an award) from one of the freeway overpasses as the Bronco passed by underneath.
I don’t remember the name of the group, it was a more contemporary Christian music group, but I do recall one of the members mentioning the still-ongoing chase from the stage.
The entire OJ story, of course, was so local to us — so the chase was, indeed, an epic event, news-wise.
Images I missed by not having television growing up: the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the First Gulf War, the OJ chase, 9/11. I was alive and aware of those things, even saw some pictures well after the events (we didn’t get newspapers or magazines either), but I first heard of them via the medium of radio. I often formed pictures in my mind of what I was hearing, so I always felt a bit startled and confused when I finally saw pictures of people or places or events that I had only heard about, a bewildered sense of, “That’s what it looks like!?”
Lots of folks headed out to wave from the fwy sidelines as they figured out where the chase was headed.
It really was a pretty big deal.
Call us shallow, but most of us remember where we were when the chase happened. LOL Me, I was trapped in an auditorium listening to a Christian pop band I’d never heard of before.
My concert mate, however, seemed thoroughly above (as in nose-in-the-air) and disgusted by it all. So I didn’t even have anyone to talk to about it all night long. Torture.
I heard about it but did not watch or particularly care. When was it? Maybe I can recall what was keeping me too busy to tend to such a riveting subject.
My paternal grandparents died before I was born, although my grandmother knew that I was on the way. My older cousins say that she was a wonderful, loving grandmother. I wish I had known her. From a couple photos from when she was younger, it looks like I look a little bit like her, at least when I was a younger myself.
My maternal grandmother died when I was four. I don’t really remember her, except for the feeling inside that she loved me very much, and I loved her, too. My maternal grandfather died about ten years later, when I was fourteen. He and I occasionally wrote letters to each other, as we had moved out of Connecticut when I was five. But we would visit him and my unmarried aunt, with whom he lived, every now and then.
Growing up mostly away from family, I always wished for a larger family, especially around holiday time. Holidays were spent with just the four of us – my parents, me, and my older brother, who didn’t (and still doesn’t) want much to do with me. So I was so grateful to see my daughters grow up having a wonderful, loving relationship with my parents.
(With Hubby’s mom, too, but not as close, and we only saw her every month or two for part of a weekend, until she moved in with us. But by then she was devolving into dementia, and was not pleasant to be around. The girls would spend some time with her, though, even if it was just to watch some TV with her.)
Mom and Dad did a lot with their three granddaughters, even taking them on vacations, and having them stay at their house quite often. Mom said she enjoyed having them one at a time sometimes, but she really loved when they were all together. She may have been a difficult mother, but she was a wonderful grandmother, and that helped heal my heart.
The OJ Bronco chase was a big thing because he was a fairly beloved celebrity accused of murdering his wife and her male friend. Some of you may remember the Hertz commercials with him running through an airport. He was also in some movies. He just seemed so amiable.
Let’s see … in 1994 I had a two-year-old son, I worked full-time and was going to grad school in the evenings, it seemed like I hardly ever saw my husband because he had just started seminary, he worked part-time to help pay the bills and had a church internship. I could not imagine spending even a minute following news on OJ (though I probably felt overly proud for never once watching a single bit of it on TV or reading about it in the news unless it was in WORLD Magazine).
It would have been just another murder trial reportedon the radio (Canada was having really horrific murder trial of a serial killer going on around the same time), if an uncle of ours hadn’t have been listening to Rush Limbaugh regularly. We heard vie the uncle’s offspring of my uncle’s opinions via Limbaugh – there was some kerfuffle over the composition of the jury when the not-guilty verdict was reached. I really didn’t know about his ethnic identity until then. Later, I came across a picture of the Hertz ad in our encyclopedia under advertising and pondered the vagaries of celebrity existence.
I saw on TV a van (or something) driving slowly down the road and police cars with lights flashing right behind.
I watched for a few minutes and decided that noting was going to happen and went about my business.
I didn’t know ’till later that somebody was being chased by somebody else. Someone on TV said “OJ something”
And didn’t much care.
Btw, although the whole situation with OJ was interesting, albeit disturbing, I did not watch the slow-motion chase. But I think I was aware that it was happening at the time it happened.
Earlier today, Nightingale, while preparing to go grocery shopping after work, texted me to ask if the kale in the fridge was good. I replied that it was misbehaving. 😀
Yeah, based on the house I was living in, “the chase” had to be 1993 or 1994. I knew who OJ was long before that, but I grew up in a home without a TV and only one of my brothers has any interest at all in sports. I heard people talking about the trial while it was going on, but I only watched the verdict. (Some co-workers and I sought out a TV when we heard it was about to be given.) Since then I have read some books about the case, but at the time I don’t think I had a TV and I really wasn’t interested enough to watch. It seemed pretty obvious he did it, and it wasn’t worth tracking down a TV to watch the minutia.
The chase (I looked it up) was on June 17, 1994 — it was mostly on the 405 Fwy which runs directly from OC through all of LA County to the north, we all use it frequently, it’s a major thoroughfare, always crowded.
The concert route my friend and I were on that night didn’t require the 405, just the 710 (long beach) to the 110 through downtown/Hollywood and into Pasadena.
Everyone liked OJ which is why the whole story was so shocking.
Well, then there are the UCLA folk . . . We lived in Hawai’i those years and nothing on the mainland seemed real. The building blown up in Oklahoma, for example. What year was that?
I was watching very little television then but saw a few clips of the OJ chase on the news. I had watched network news on television when Wesley was younger, but when he started to pretend to be a news reporter and was announcing all the bad news, I knew I had to stop watching it. I did however find myself glued to the tube during 9/11 coverage and I could hardly stop crying watching all the people putting up notices of the loved ones they were looking for. For my whole life that was the greatest extended sadness that seemed nonstop.
Mumsee @ 12:51
Elvera used to fix a nice breakfast on Saturday mornings.
Other days, she always got out of bed when she heard the front door close.. That means I was gone and out of the way.
My goal was to be on the beltway by 6:00. A minute later extended your drive time by two minutes.
That’s one of the ways you lived in the DC area.
The Oklahoma City bombing was another that I didn’t see pictures of until later, but I remember hearing about that too. I think, though I was a child, that only hearing about things made it much less traumatic. My mother, or older siblings would switch the radio off if details became too graphic, such as evidence given in the serial killer trial. I got so I would switch it off myself at those points.
No offense, LA reporter, but that nonstop news cycle is unhealthy. Living so far away, we shielded and it didn’t absorb us so much. It was something that happened and we moved along.
Maybe news has always been like that–you were affected by what happened in your neighborhood, and everything else was interesting but didn’t emotionally unhinge you.
We may have been more ignorant, but it didn’t hurt us–unless we missed a major weather event. (And in Hawai’i, we had tsunami warning sirens, so we didn’t miss those either)
We mostly listened to the classical music station during the day, then switched to CBC for the news at 6. It was only a half hour newscast, but packed in a good deal of national and international news. Then there was an interview show after that that often interviewed eyewitnesses or participants in events that were current news. So we spent at most only about an hour or so on news each day, yet, I clearly remember worldwide events that happened during my youth.
I remember watching the chase in a motel room. We had to bring one of our daughters to work at a camp. We ordered pizza and watched the chase while we ate. I am not sure anything else was on television.
My BIL and his wife were into Armstrongism for awhile. They used to read the magazines that were found in various places. I think they were attracted by the end times ideas. We did tell them it was a cult. They are still people who have to worship on the Sabbath and don’t have a Christmas tree etc. They have their own little group they have church with and/or bible study.
I believe the World Wide Church of God had a camp somewhere up here in a remote area. I do remember when there was a big break up in the church.
Paul warned of such sheep in wolves clothing and said they were even then in the flock. He said he prayed day and night for his flock. The devil loves to get us off track and keep us fruitless, if not actually losing out on salvation entirely. Unfortunately, people caught up in such cults too often are not interested in hearing the truth.
so I went to school today to attend chapel and then be a part of the Friday parent lunch where everyone is invited to bring their lunch to school. The principal had a free hour so we met to talk about what I might be doing.
okay, I needed to tell my kids first. but I committed to stay through June 2022. I am officially on the principals white board in her office to teach kinder next year. It has been hard but I haven’t even gone up to the classroom, it is not mine now.
I will be subbing in third grade for the rest of this term and doing tutoring. Plus I had several other ideas if the principal approves.
Wandering Views 
Good morning everyone.
Just checking in, I’ll be back later.
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Good Morning.
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Morning…husband is outside shoveling snow…it’s so pretty….we needed it! 😊 thankful…..
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Good morning.
I once spent a night or two with one my grandmothers. She was not that far away from where we lived. I had two aunts there who were only a few years older. I thought it strange that they still played with dolls. I gave up dolls when I was pretty young. Looking back, I think it may have been that I only had brothers at home and no neighbor girls who would play dolls with me.
The other grandparents had a cabin that we stayed at as a family. We often had our cousins and their families staying as well. My dad and one of the uncles added on to the cabin and built a bunk house. It was wonderful fun for all of us children with fishing, swimming, water skiing (I was too chicken for that) and visiting the fun tourist town not all that far away. I also went berry picking with my grandmother and off to get green apples from trees that were free for the taking. We had second cousins who had a cabin next door, so that just added to the fun.
Chas, you are in my prayers. Not that it is the same at all, but you may want to have someone buy you a body pillow for sleeping. My daughter uses one when her husband is gone for work purposes. Sleeping alone is so different when you are used to being with someone.
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Good morning!
DJ, an LA question for you. I read the article Kizzie linked yesterday and wondered. Did they rename the Pasadena Freeway to the Arroyo Seco Freeway? I know it runs through the Arroyo Seco, but I’ve never heard it called by that name.
I drove it a lot when I lived in Pasadena, but generally from end to end, Pasadena to LA, and didn’t have to deal with the crazy right-turn on-ramps in between.
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My children never stayed alone at my parent’s home. My mom had no interest in children. She did babysit for a couple of hours once when I had already tucked them all in bed.
They did spend the night (with cousins) at the other grandparent’s home. That ended because it became unsafe for them. The youngest never stayed there. She was very young when my MIL died.
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I spent a lot of nights with my father’s parents. The were a huge presence in my childhood. My dad was an only child, so we were my grandparents’ whole family. Also my mom had health problems and needed a lot of help. They were there for every birthday, holiday, and school event.
My family didn’t go away on vacations at all – not even once – but we kids looked forward eagerly every summer to our week of “vacation” with Grandma and Grandpa. Sometimes all three of us went at once, and sometimes we each had them for a week all to ourselves (which is what we liked best!)
We’d do a lot of crafts with Grandma, play board and card games, and go on day trips.
My two kids stayed with their grandparents occasionally when Mrs. B. and I went away on a short trip, 4-5 days, and once when I was in the hospital.
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Finished Bible study and then talked with my friend Karen. My brother called to chat from an auto repair shop since his radiator is leaking. He is still driving the very high mileage car which requires frequent trips to the repair shop. I need to call Florence who called yesterday and left a message. It’s the kind of day to give me a sore ear.
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It’s like having a child hurting. You wish you could do something, but can’t.
Rose, a helper, is in there changing her diaper now. She is crying and screaming but there is nothing I can do. It needs to be done.
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Good morning. My parents watched my oldest once while we went out. My mom would have enjoyed them, but she died before we knew we were pregnant with the third so was only there for the first two years. Then my dad babysat when I tried being social with my sister. We went to the gym together. He remembers second son hiding behind the curtains when dad went to check on them in bed. He saw the little feet poking out from under the curtains. But then we were off to overseas assignments.
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So difficult, Chas. Our hearts and prayers are with you.
My mom was in that state not long ago. I wish all her children could have been with her. We could have if not for one. Still makes me sad.
We have had all our grandchildren stay with us all by themselves, except for the youngest two. Hopefully, we can have those two when they are old enough. One will be more of a challenge, since she has to eat gluten free. Children are quite different when they come all by themselves. I just realized, we have not had one who lives in TN by himself. However, we have spent weeks staying with him there and they have spent time with us here.
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Have any of you heard of Armstrongism? I think one of my cousins has become entangled in it.
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I have never heard of Armstrongism. Explanation?
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Of course the name reminded me of Stretch Armstrong. Such a unique shape-changer before its time.
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A short summary:
https://www.gotquestions.org/Worldwide-Church-God-Armstrongism.html
A detailed breakdown: https://www.namb.net/apologetics/resource/armstrongism/
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Another short summary on how Armstrongism continues: https://www.gotquestions.org/Restored-Church-of-God.html
This cousin has posted on FB about supposed pagan origins of Christian holidays, about Anglo-Israelism, and has begun to observe Jewish holidays, all things found in the teaching of Armstrongism. A while back he posted something about the Jewish holidays and then said he had been called a heretic for thinking we should follow the law. I don’t know what this cousin believes about the Trinity, but his posts definitely display other characteristics of Armstrongism, including the tendency to assume other churches are apostate. The cousin and his siblings all like to criticize the church for being worldly, but I am afraid their critical spirit is in danger of leading them into worse error. They had been posting in support of a church in southern Ontario which has made a point of being defiant. I mentioned I discovered a couple of weeks ago, this church was a cult. It was while investigating what that cult entailed (it is a Church of God Restoration), that I suddenly realized that was what this cousin had been sharing.
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As a small child I stayed with my maternal grandparents quote a bit. That ended abruptly due to some issues with a family member. I also stayed with my paternal grandfather some but that also ended when he and my grandmother remarried.
BG loved spending the night with all of her grandparents and as you know Mr Manipulative makes sure we have Little Miss one night a week. “It makes her parents better parents”. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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This is what came to my mind: What does the Bible say about a critical spirit?
https://www.openbible.info/topics/critical_spirit
I was warned years ago to stay away from Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God. (Not that I was interested; it was a general warning through Christian groups I respected).
I’ve been around long enough that things denounced years ago, are now resurfacing and catching a new generation into their tenacles.
The only reason I can come up with, beyond there is nothing new under the sun, is the abominable track record the western church has on teaching how and why to read the Bible.
I’m a Bible teacher. My students are older than I am. None of them seem to be veering off into these peculiar offshoots–including QAnon.
Is it because they’re not on social media?
Or is it (more likely) because they’ve spent years reading and meditating on the actual Word of God, and can recognize in their spirit when something doesn’t ring true–and then they check it against the Bible.
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Roscuro, I’ve heard of them, but mostly the repentance of their leader(s) a few years back. In Nashville I sometimes listened to “The Bible Answer Man” (Hank Hanegraaff, sp?), because the program was on during my commute somewhere, maybe prayer meeting, before he converted to become Orthodox. (I often disagreed with Hank. He’d “answer” some question about something treated in Scripture as quite literal by saying it was symbolic. The two I remember were the serpent in the Garden and the veil in the temple being rent in two at Jesus’ death. But his commentary was often interesting.) He talked about the errors of the church, and later the amazing turn toward orthodoxy, which apparently didn’t go all the way.
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I was in a Zoom meeting recently when the international leader warned us to start stockpiling written Bibles.
Apparently, some clever people on the international scene are altering the code on electronically transmitted Bibles to make it more “culture affirming,” shall we say.
Some of you will remember the article from a few weeks ago about how the majority of Bibles, world-wide, are printed in one place. Do you think that nation is interested in the purity of the text?
😦
So, when you come across them “in the wild” without homes, take them into yours, put them in a box, and store them for when they may be needed.
Also, we should be memorizing (I’m bad at that), the truth as written.
It’s another reason, too, to be singing the old theologically-rich hymns: to memorize truth. (Which is what got the Vietnam POWs through the torture–memorized verses from Sunday school and hymns).
Such a dark world we live in. But it’s been darker and the Lord still reigns.
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Oh, and one more thing. Lettie Cowman was delighted one day after WWII ended, to learn someone had found a bunch of Basque language Bibles.
The OMS funded having them sent into northern Spain where people, for the first time in a long time, could read the Word of God in their own languages.
It’s important.
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You’re making me think I’d better invite the Adorables over to spend the night tomorrow night before our roomer returns (from house sitting at the other Adorables’ house).
We’ve been astonished and privileged to have the children in and out of our home–and see it as a contribution to their parents’ marriages and thus their lives.
My children only were able to spend short spurts with their grandparents over the years. During the 20 Navy years, we only left the children a half-dozen times, for lack of opportunity. Once we even paid someone.
It’s good for parents to have time to focus on their marriage without the distraction of children for a night or two. I wish we’d had more opportunities.
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I never got to stay with grandparents because on my father’s side only my sickly grandmother was left, and on my mother’s side they were older and not in very good health, and they lived about six hours away. That is how it worked out for our son, too. By age 6 months both of his grandfathers had died and the grandmothers were not in good health.
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Re grandparents and extended family: I grew up in Phoenix and was born about ten years after the death of my last grandparent. My dad’s family had mostly settled in Texas; we saw one uncle (Dad’s brother-in-law) several times, since he traveled on business and would stay with us in Phoenix when he came that direction–but I was quite young, maybe ten, on the last of those visits. The rest of the Texas family I saw only one time, except that two or three made it to Dad’s funeral. Since we traveled on vacation and drove through Texas multiple times, I have no idea why we only saw them once. Dad came from a big family; he was one of six who made it to adulthood, though one of his brothers died young a few months before I was born, leaving Dad with three sisters and one living brother. (One sister never married and one married but was childless. His brother who died young, his wife died a couple of years later and their children were raised by their mother’s family and lost touch with our side. His other brother married two or three times and didn’t really stay in touch with the family. That leaves me with only one family of cousins, but they were adults with their own children when I met them when I was ten. Though that aunt was three years younger than Dad, Dad was 50 when I was born and that made those of us born when Dad was 50-53 quite young among the cousins.)
My mom’s family consisted of two brothers, one a Christian (but Mom believed him not to be sound theologically–my contact with him as an adult says that either Mom was wrong about what he believed or he changed his teachings, not sure which, but he doesn’t currently believe what she claimed he believed, that the vast majority of the Bible is not for Christians today) and one an atheist. We saw the Christian brother twice, the atheist brother once, when I was growing up. We saw the atheist brother’s children (my first cousins) at least twice each on their own. Mom talked to her brothers by phone fairly often, and she corresponded with one of her uncles all his life until he died, and then with his son (her cousin).
When I went to Chicago to go to school, I got to know my Christian uncle and his family a bit. My uncle was a pastor and I occasionally heard him on the radio. My girl cousin and her husband both worked on the campus where I attended, so I spoke to them when I saw them. Eventually they started adopting children, and she quit work to raise them, and 11 or 12 years into marriage (age 39) gave birth to a child. My cousin-in-law continued to work on campus. My mom came to my college once in my years there, my freshman year (her only visit to Chicago in my 14 years). I arranged for us to have lunch with her brother and his family, and it was her first time to see him in eight or ten years (since I was a preteen), and her last time to see him. Through the years I kept in touch with that uncle, had lunch with him periodically, but he was so much in the habit of not thinking of extended family that he didn’t initiate. Until I went to visit him in the hospital when he had a heart attack and also visited his daughter, my cousin, in the hospital when she had a stroke after giving birth. Those two contacts opened his eyes to the fact that I was family, and for the first time I got an invitation to their house–and when he rejoiced at that meeting that we were family, I had to break the news that I was moving out of Chicago. His wife died of Alzheimer’s several years later (he cared for her at home for four years and she died at home the day after I met my husband in person for the first time). When my husband and I were courting, the week we got engaged I flew to Chicago and my husband-to-be and the girls drove over. I tried to set up a meeting between my husband and this uncle–the last living remnant of the generation before mine–and it proved impossible. (My uncle, who was then 81 and is now 91, moved to live with his son. He was not leaving the house and his son had two big, fierce dogs who weren’t friendly to strangers, which I would be. Initially he agreed to meet us at a coffee shop, and then he backed down.) I keep in touch with this uncle now by phone. My mom’s atheist brother died several years before she herself did, and his wife was the next-to-last of my aunts and uncles, though I don’t remember ever meeting her, and she died in a nursing home several years ago.
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It’s the State of the Port of Long Beach address today in 15 minutes — virtual, of course.
Kevin:
(Wikipedia): The Arroyo Seco Parkway, also known as the Pasadena Freeway, is the first freeway built in the United States. It connects Los Angeles with Pasadena alongside the Arroyo Seco seasonal river. It is notable not only for being the first, mostly opened in 1940, but for representing the transitional phase between early parkways and modern freeways. It conformed to modern standards when it was built, but is now regarded as a narrow, outdated roadway.[4] A 1953 extension brought the south end to the Four Level Interchange in downtown Los Angeles and a connection with the rest of the freeway system.
The road remains largely as it was on opening day, though the plants in its median have given way to a steel guard rail, and most recently to concrete barriers, and it now carries the designation State Route 110, not historic U.S. Route 66. Between 1954 and 2010, it was officially designated the Pasadena Freeway. In 2010, as part of plans to revitalize its scenic value and improve safety, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) restored the original name to the roadway.[5] All the bridges built during parkway construction remain, as do four older bridges that crossed the Arroyo Seco before the 1930s. The Arroyo Seco Parkway is designated a State Scenic Highway, National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and National Scenic Byway. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.
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Cheryl, basically, what the summary about the Restored Church of God is while the parent Church of God recanted their heresy on the Trinity, there were many members who disagreed with that recantation and split off to form different branches, most of them with Church of God somewhere in the title. The parent Church has actually renamed itself to Grace Communion, so if there is a Church of God in the title, chances are it is one of the splinter groups. So Armstrong’s false doctrines are still being propogated despite the parent Church recantation. My cousin, and one of his siblings, have held house meetings in the past, inspired by Francis Chan’s home church movement, whom they greatly admired and whose critiques of the church they often shared. So, the claim of Armstrongism that all other churches have corrupted themselves and this being the only true Christian life would be enormously appealing to this cousin.
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… The six-lane Arroyo Seco Parkway (part of State Route 110) begins at the Four Level Interchange, a symmetrical stack interchange on the north side of downtown Los Angeles that connects the Pasadena (SR 110 north), Harbor (SR 110 south), Hollywood (US 101 north), and Santa Ana (US 101 south) Freeways. …
… The Arroyo Seco (Spanish: “dry gulch, or streambed”) is an intermittent stream that carries rainfall from the San Gabriel Mountains southerly through western Pasadena into the Los Angeles River near downtown Los Angeles. During the dry season, it served as a faster wagon connection between the two cities than the all-weather road on the present Huntington Drive.[8] …
… Despite a quadrupling of traffic volumes, the original roadway north of the Los Angeles River largely remains as it was when it opened in 1940. Trucks and buses were banned in 1943, though the bus restriction has since been dropped; this has kept the freeway in good condition and relatively safe, despite its outdated design. This design, state-of-the-art when built, includes tight “right-in/right-out” access with a recommended exit speed of 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) and stop signs on the entrance ramps; there are no acceleration or deceleration lanes. …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroyo_Seco_Parkway
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Why can’t people just go by what the Bible says?
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That freeway is a nightmare. The two-lanes are scary narrow and trying to merge from a stop sign into thundering traffic is horrific and terrifying.
My EMT lives nearby, so I have to drive it when I’m down South (0 times in the last year), but I try to get there a different way. Surface streets are benign in comparison.
I didn’t know the name was changed.
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From Enduring Word, Deuteronomy 26:
“Today you have proclaimed the LORD to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will obey His voice.”
a. Today you have proclaimed the LORD to be your God: Israel was to proclaim two things. First, that the LORD to be their God. Second, that they will walk in His ways and keep His statutes. The two go together, because the identity of our God is always demonstrated by the direction of our obedience.
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Chas, perhaps because people tend to think they know better than God how to run His creation.
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Chas, before you became the king of Cheerios, did Elvera make breakfast? Did she do bacon and eggs or hashbrowns or grits or pancakes or waffles?
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My little devotional journal book today uses the verse Exodus 38:8 about the donation of bronze mirrors given by the women at the tent of meeting to be made into the basin of bronze and its stand. These were treasures the women had brought back from Egypt. My reflection was on how much more glory God received by the ladies’ treasures not being withheld for their own private enjoyment. There was synergy when all got on board with the project and donations. I know in the past that church folks worked on big projects like starting schools and hospitals. People really sacrificed for such things to be established. Now denominations give money to sustain the former created entities. Are churches doing any new works or is it mostly staying afloat, dog paddling so to speak, and going through the motions but with a lack of heart?
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2/2
The fact that I didn’t know my grandparents, aunts and uncles, or cousins is a big part of the reason I was very deliberate about keeping in touch with my sister’s children. Our older brothers more or less were like uncles to us. They are seven to fourteen years older than me (ten to seventeen years older than my youngest brother), and all four moved out of the house for various reasons before their eighteenth birthdays (army, college, moving to live with an older brother). So on family holidays they’d all come over and play board games with us, and it felt like a party.
Three of them married when I was still a minor, and between 13 and 18 I gained five nieces and nephews. None of my brother’s children have consistently called me “Aunt” Cheryl; I was just Cheryl a lot of the time. (My oldest niece, with children of her own, does call me Aunt now.) I only ever lived in the same city with two nephews, my oldest brother’s sons. One was born when I was sixteen, months before my dad died, and the other four years later. After Dad died, we moved back down to Phoenix, where they were still living, so I lived in the same town with my oldest brother and his wife and their one and then two sons, between the ages of 17 and 22, when I went off to college. (While I was in college they moved to another state where they had a daughter and later adopted two other children.)
With so many nieces and nephews, most of them living far away, there was no reasonable way to remember all their birthdays and keep in touch with all of them. Now, I’ve seen all of them far more than I saw my own uncles and aunts, but that isn’t saying much. My brothers’ children know each other and they also know their (older) aunts and uncles. (Two of my brothers travel for a living. Though they rarely got to Chicago when I lived there, they did get to California at least every year or two. I myself haven’t seen my California nephews for ten years, nor met any of the seven children they have between them so far. I have met three of their wives, and I have seen that California brother, sister-in-law, and niece at least twice each in the last decade.) My younger brother has not married, and one of the older ones has married but it’s complicated and they don’t have any children (yet).
But I could be, and was, deliberate about getting to know my sister’s children. She married when I was in my late twenties and beginning my career, so I had some money and some ability to travel to see them, and ten years into my career I chose to go freelance, and chose to move just three hours away from her, to be a more “present” part of their lives. I imagined having one or two of them come to stay with me for a few days as they got older; that never happened, but I did drive over to see them three or four times a year, was present to care for children for all the births, called each child on his birthday, and always bought Christmas gifts for them. And I told her that if something were to happen to her and her husband, I would be available to rear the children if they wanted me. (Since I was single they said no, but I was willing, especially since they didn’t have anyone else they considered a viable option.)
And that’s one reason the break in fellowship with my sister is so difficult. I kept trying those last two years largely for the sake of her children. After 22 years of investing in her children, I should now be able to call the house and have any one of them happy to talk to me, now that they are all old enough to carry on intelligent conversation (the youngest will be a teenager next month). But alas, in this fallen world, life doesn’t always go as we wish.
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Michelle, I don’t think this cousin received very sound instruction in the Bible in his formative years. He has always seemed a bit unstable, “tossed with every wind of doctrine.” His siblings also struggled a little, and seemed very put off by the shallow teaching of the Baptist denomination they grew up in. They seemed to greatly admire my parents joining ATI. They were older teens and young adults at the time – I am the second youngest of the cousins on my mother’s side. They are now a bit like the Christian hippy types that we used to come across when my mother started homeschooling us – live off the land, distrust the government/establishment, etc. Like those homeschooling families I remember from my childhood, they see conspiracy everywhere. Not the new fangled QAnon, but the old fashioned communist/Satanist conspiracy that used to be whispered about in my childhood and youth, the ones that claimed rock music had hidden Satanic references and governments were trying to gain control of your children. What were rumours and whispers in my youth, occasionally propagated by portly laid out tracts and self published books that appeared typewritten, has crystalized due to the internet magnifying the rumours into authentic sounding reports.
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*poorly, not portly
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Sad to hear about your unfruitful investment into relationship, Cheryl. You have been a loving aunt by most Christian standards. It is something to keep in prayer, and some day things could change unexpectedly.
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My mother’s eldest sister once said, in relation to the view of this set of cousins (who are not her children), that our family took their faith one of two ways, either filled with joyful confidence, or seriously and filled with gloom. I think she thought that my family was serious and filled with gloom when we joined ATI, and we probably were – I know my siblings and I took things far too seriously when we were in its thrall. Sometimes, I think she is right. I feel sad for my cousins that their lives have so much uneccesary angst, but I am really concerned about the one who seems to be entering realm of heresy. As Jesus said, we are not to fear those who can only kill the body, but to fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. What my cousins believe about the world will hinder their spiritual growth, but what they believe about God will hinder their salvation.
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Roscuro, I’m sorry your cousin seems to have chosen that path. I’m not surprised the group split, but saddened to hear it.
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It’s an interesting question: how do we demonstrate to our loved ones and others at large, that our faith is focused on a joyful God who loved us so much that Jesus came to earth to live among us and understand the human life.
But that wasn’t enough. He died as our Passover lamb, tore the veil between God and man/woman, and set us free from the captivity of sin and death.
And, to finish off, sent the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts–enabling us to access and commune with God from anywhere.
That’s good news.
And if focus there rather than on the world’s fear-based cries, well, we’ll live happily ever after in the knowledge that no matter what happens we can never be separated from Jesus.
Someone said to us recently that those who were hurt by the church, usually legalism, leave to become legalists themselves.
Tragic. My faith is full of life and hope. I see the dangers, but I do not allow them to overtake me nor my love for others.
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I feel free at the moment. I got a letter last night from a dear friend I’ve known since the Navy beginning. She’s a quirky librarian married to a most unusual man, and I savor every letter from her.
With all my pressing work cleared, I just wrote her a 2800 word reply. But, should I email it or mail it?
I already sent her two emails including several attachments and links!
I also said, “Do you want me to email the letter, or send it with a stamp. It references everything I’ve linked and attached to these emails? Awaiting your response.”
She had said in her letter she couldn’t figure out Goodreads. So I sent her my link to see what I’ve been reading–which is probably all she really wants to know anyway! LOL
Such a funny world.
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The Worldwide Church of God was headquartered in Pasadena during my years there. They had a college, Ambassador College, with a beautiful campus and one of Pasadena’s finest auditoriums.
I never investigated the church personally. I always understood that it was considered a cult until it moved toward orthodoxy after Armstrong’s death.
I understand the college property has been parceled out, and that the auditorium belongs to Harvest Rock church now.
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Re: Grandparents and grandchildren: I stayed overnight with my grandparents. Actually, Second, Youngest and I stayed a whole week with my maternal grandparents, while Eldest and my parents went to a conference for a certain homeschooling program. My grandparents, like my parents now, had their married children live with them as needed when they started out (including for two years, my parents) and one married child stayed permanently, so when we stayed with our grandparents, we also stayed with an uncle, an aunt and two cousins. Naturally, we spent a lot of our time with the cousins.
On my father’s side, my grandfather died before we were born, and my grandmother lived in another province. But I did stay overnight with her once when we went down to visit for a week. She couldn’t put us all up, an aunt did that, but she had each of us children, except youngest who was too young to be away from our mother, come and stay a night.
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I attended a Christian concert at that auditorium sometime in the 1990s, performance wasn’t connected to the church.
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The night stands out because it was the same night of the OJ slow-speed chase. Church friend who picked me up was aghast at how people could even be interested in that breaking news story. I decided I shouldn’t ask her to turn on the news station in her car after she said that. LOL Drove me crazy, though, I couldn’t wait to get home to find out what happened.
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When I mentioned Armstrongism to my father, he knew immediately what I was talking about and was startled to learn it was still in existence, as he knew about the turn toward orthodoxy. He said he had read about it in ‘The Kingdom of the Cults’ in his younger days
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My sister and I stayed overnight sometimes with my paternal grandfather. She was old enough (5 years old than me) to get to know him more than I did. I remember playing with the toys and games that were kept in the desk drawers in the living room, and exploring the attic. Sometimes we walked the dog, but I was afraid of him (just a beagle, but I was afraid of all dogs). I might have been around ten when my grandfather had cataract surgery, which back then (early 1970’s) required him to wear something covering both eyes for several days, so we took turns spending time with him since he was effectively blind. I spent hours alone with him, but if we had conversations about anything more than what he needed me to do for him, I don’t remember them. Mostly he listened to recorded books, which meant of course that I listened to them too. I found Animal Farm rather upsetting, and it was years before I could bring myself to read it as an adult.
He died when I was 11, but I hadn’t known him well enough to actually miss him, despite having seen him probably at least once a week my whole life. My mother used to complain that he was of a generation that felt children should be seen and not heard, so I guess I wasn’t old enough for him to want to interact with. I also was a very quiet, introverted child who would happily sit by myself and read or play, never getting into trouble, so it was easy for adults to just leave me alone. His wife had died when I was a baby, so I have no memory of her, and my mother’s parents had died before she ever met my father. I suppose it would have been nice to have grandparents I loved and felt loved by, but it’s hard to miss something I never experienced. Of course, I wasn’t close to my parents either, so if I were going to wish for something it would be to have had parents I felt close to.
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DJ, that OJ “chase” is mentioned in the book I’m editing. I always wonder how many people were actually “watching” and how many people just had the TV on because they’d been watching something else?
It was my first year out of college and I was renting a bedroom from friends, and I think I was alone in the house. I don’t remember what I was watching, but I was watching something when it came on. Since obviously nothing was “happening” (just a vehicle going down the expressway), I kept thinking they would go back to my program any minute now. I might have checked other channels and found that they all had it, but I don’t remember for sure. When my program didn’t come back right away, I lay down on the couch to wait for its return. I dozed off, and periodically I opened my eyes, looked at the TV, and saw it was still the “chase.” It was the most boring TV ever, and I kept waiting for the channel to realize that and go back to its programming. I’m assuming I eventually turned off the TV. All I know is that when later I heard how many people had watched the chase, I wondered how many people were just like me, not watching it at all, but who just happened to be in the room when that’s what was on.
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DJ, you didn’t say who was performing that concert. Do you even remember? Or did the OJ news drive out all other memories?
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Boring?! What???
Surely you jest.
At least in Southern California, where it was all taking place, we were mesmerized. One of our young photographers (who’s now a City Hall aide I deal with frequently) managed to grab a photo (that later won an award) from one of the freeway overpasses as the Bronco passed by underneath.
I don’t remember the name of the group, it was a more contemporary Christian music group, but I do recall one of the members mentioning the still-ongoing chase from the stage.
The entire OJ story, of course, was so local to us — so the chase was, indeed, an epic event, news-wise.
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Images I missed by not having television growing up: the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the First Gulf War, the OJ chase, 9/11. I was alive and aware of those things, even saw some pictures well after the events (we didn’t get newspapers or magazines either), but I first heard of them via the medium of radio. I often formed pictures in my mind of what I was hearing, so I always felt a bit startled and confused when I finally saw pictures of people or places or events that I had only heard about, a bewildered sense of, “That’s what it looks like!?”
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Lots of folks headed out to wave from the fwy sidelines as they figured out where the chase was headed.
It really was a pretty big deal.
Call us shallow, but most of us remember where we were when the chase happened. LOL Me, I was trapped in an auditorium listening to a Christian pop band I’d never heard of before.
My concert mate, however, seemed thoroughly above (as in nose-in-the-air) and disgusted by it all. So I didn’t even have anyone to talk to about it all night long. Torture.
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Remember, too, that OJ was such a hometown hero here, from his USC football days and onward; a very familiar (and much loved and admired) celebrity
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I didn’t know who he was until the arrest and trial.
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You have been busy while I have been doing Continuing Education. It’s done.
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How’s everyone feeling in your family Kim? Recovering on schedule?
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Oh, lookie here, 57.
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“Missed it by that much.” Maxwell Smart
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LA-centric, of course. I couldn’t believe TV was covering it, whatever year that was.
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fifty…..never mind….
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I heard about it but did not watch or particularly care. When was it? Maybe I can recall what was keeping me too busy to tend to such a riveting subject.
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1994. I thought it was mid-90’s. I was just completing my first decade then.
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My paternal grandparents died before I was born, although my grandmother knew that I was on the way. My older cousins say that she was a wonderful, loving grandmother. I wish I had known her. From a couple photos from when she was younger, it looks like I look a little bit like her, at least when I was a younger myself.
My maternal grandmother died when I was four. I don’t really remember her, except for the feeling inside that she loved me very much, and I loved her, too. My maternal grandfather died about ten years later, when I was fourteen. He and I occasionally wrote letters to each other, as we had moved out of Connecticut when I was five. But we would visit him and my unmarried aunt, with whom he lived, every now and then.
Growing up mostly away from family, I always wished for a larger family, especially around holiday time. Holidays were spent with just the four of us – my parents, me, and my older brother, who didn’t (and still doesn’t) want much to do with me. So I was so grateful to see my daughters grow up having a wonderful, loving relationship with my parents.
(With Hubby’s mom, too, but not as close, and we only saw her every month or two for part of a weekend, until she moved in with us. But by then she was devolving into dementia, and was not pleasant to be around. The girls would spend some time with her, though, even if it was just to watch some TV with her.)
Mom and Dad did a lot with their three granddaughters, even taking them on vacations, and having them stay at their house quite often. Mom said she enjoyed having them one at a time sometimes, but she really loved when they were all together. She may have been a difficult mother, but she was a wonderful grandmother, and that helped heal my heart.
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The OJ Bronco chase was a big thing because he was a fairly beloved celebrity accused of murdering his wife and her male friend. Some of you may remember the Hertz commercials with him running through an airport. He was also in some movies. He just seemed so amiable.
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Let’s see … in 1994 I had a two-year-old son, I worked full-time and was going to grad school in the evenings, it seemed like I hardly ever saw my husband because he had just started seminary, he worked part-time to help pay the bills and had a church internship. I could not imagine spending even a minute following news on OJ (though I probably felt overly proud for never once watching a single bit of it on TV or reading about it in the news unless it was in WORLD Magazine).
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It would have been just another murder trial reportedon the radio (Canada was having really horrific murder trial of a serial killer going on around the same time), if an uncle of ours hadn’t have been listening to Rush Limbaugh regularly. We heard vie the uncle’s offspring of my uncle’s opinions via Limbaugh – there was some kerfuffle over the composition of the jury when the not-guilty verdict was reached. I really didn’t know about his ethnic identity until then. Later, I came across a picture of the Hertz ad in our encyclopedia under advertising and pondered the vagaries of celebrity existence.
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I saw on TV a van (or something) driving slowly down the road and police cars with lights flashing right behind.
I watched for a few minutes and decided that noting was going to happen and went about my business.
I didn’t know ’till later that somebody was being chased by somebody else. Someone on TV said “OJ something”
And didn’t much care.
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Btw, although the whole situation with OJ was interesting, albeit disturbing, I did not watch the slow-motion chase. But I think I was aware that it was happening at the time it happened.
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Earlier today, Nightingale, while preparing to go grocery shopping after work, texted me to ask if the kale in the fridge was good. I replied that it was misbehaving. 😀
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Yeah, based on the house I was living in, “the chase” had to be 1993 or 1994. I knew who OJ was long before that, but I grew up in a home without a TV and only one of my brothers has any interest at all in sports. I heard people talking about the trial while it was going on, but I only watched the verdict. (Some co-workers and I sought out a TV when we heard it was about to be given.) Since then I have read some books about the case, but at the time I don’t think I had a TV and I really wasn’t interested enough to watch. It seemed pretty obvious he did it, and it wasn’t worth tracking down a TV to watch the minutia.
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The chase (I looked it up) was on June 17, 1994 — it was mostly on the 405 Fwy which runs directly from OC through all of LA County to the north, we all use it frequently, it’s a major thoroughfare, always crowded.
The concert route my friend and I were on that night didn’t require the 405, just the 710 (long beach) to the 110 through downtown/Hollywood and into Pasadena.
Everyone liked OJ which is why the whole story was so shocking.
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Well, then there are the UCLA folk . . . We lived in Hawai’i those years and nothing on the mainland seemed real. The building blown up in Oklahoma, for example. What year was that?
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1992?
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Nope, I was off — April 19, 1995
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I was watching very little television then but saw a few clips of the OJ chase on the news. I had watched network news on television when Wesley was younger, but when he started to pretend to be a news reporter and was announcing all the bad news, I knew I had to stop watching it. I did however find myself glued to the tube during 9/11 coverage and I could hardly stop crying watching all the people putting up notices of the loved ones they were looking for. For my whole life that was the greatest extended sadness that seemed nonstop.
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Only 24 more posts to make 100!
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Mumsee @ 12:51
Elvera used to fix a nice breakfast on Saturday mornings.
Other days, she always got out of bed when she heard the front door close.. That means I was gone and out of the way.
My goal was to be on the beltway by 6:00. A minute later extended your drive time by two minutes.
That’s one of the ways you lived in the DC area.
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The Oklahoma City bombing was another that I didn’t see pictures of until later, but I remember hearing about that too. I think, though I was a child, that only hearing about things made it much less traumatic. My mother, or older siblings would switch the radio off if details became too graphic, such as evidence given in the serial killer trial. I got so I would switch it off myself at those points.
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A friend sent this to me tonight. It is my first time to hear it.
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No offense, LA reporter, but that nonstop news cycle is unhealthy. Living so far away, we shielded and it didn’t absorb us so much. It was something that happened and we moved along.
Maybe news has always been like that–you were affected by what happened in your neighborhood, and everything else was interesting but didn’t emotionally unhinge you.
We may have been more ignorant, but it didn’t hurt us–unless we missed a major weather event. (And in Hawai’i, we had tsunami warning sirens, so we didn’t miss those either)
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We mostly listened to the classical music station during the day, then switched to CBC for the news at 6. It was only a half hour newscast, but packed in a good deal of national and international news. Then there was an interview show after that that often interviewed eyewitnesses or participants in events that were current news. So we spent at most only about an hour or so on news each day, yet, I clearly remember worldwide events that happened during my youth.
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We had Paul Harvey and local radio news about five minutes per day and newspapers, no TV news, ever. Now it is still newspapers but also internet.
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I remember watching the chase in a motel room. We had to bring one of our daughters to work at a camp. We ordered pizza and watched the chase while we ate. I am not sure anything else was on television.
My BIL and his wife were into Armstrongism for awhile. They used to read the magazines that were found in various places. I think they were attracted by the end times ideas. We did tell them it was a cult. They are still people who have to worship on the Sabbath and don’t have a Christmas tree etc. They have their own little group they have church with and/or bible study.
I believe the World Wide Church of God had a camp somewhere up here in a remote area. I do remember when there was a big break up in the church.
Paul warned of such sheep in wolves clothing and said they were even then in the flock. He said he prayed day and night for his flock. The devil loves to get us off track and keep us fruitless, if not actually losing out on salvation entirely. Unfortunately, people caught up in such cults too often are not interested in hearing the truth.
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That is a nice duck photo.
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so I went to school today to attend chapel and then be a part of the Friday parent lunch where everyone is invited to bring their lunch to school. The principal had a free hour so we met to talk about what I might be doing.
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okay, I needed to tell my kids first. but I committed to stay through June 2022. I am officially on the principals white board in her office to teach kinder next year. It has been hard but I haven’t even gone up to the classroom, it is not mine now.
I will be subbing in third grade for the rest of this term and doing tutoring. Plus I had several other ideas if the principal approves.
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Wow! That’s wonderful, Jo.
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