When Queen (no, not Elizabeth!) ruled the world

Freddie Mercury's doctor advised him not to perform that day. Mercury had a sore throat and he would likely do damage to his vocal cords. 

Instead, on Saturday, July 13, 1985, Freddie Mercury defied the doctor's orders, strutted on stage with his band, Queen, and delivered the performance of a lifetime.

It's since been said that for those 20 minutes, a different Queen ruled England.

***

I did not watch the Live Aid concert in July 1985.  I remember passing by the TV room in my college dorm and seeing that it was on TV, but all I knew about it was that it was a benefit concert for famine relief and that Phil Collins was going to perform in London and then hop the Concorde so he could also play the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia.

So when the movie Bohemian Rhapsody came out, which focused on Queen's performance at London's Live Aid concert, and also purported to tell Freddie Mercury's life story, I thought, "What's the big deal?" I have not seen Bohemian Rhapsody, but I have read 1) the movie is rife with inaccuracies about Mercury's life, and 2) Rami Malek delivered a fantastic performance worthy of the Oscar he won. 

Then I stumbled across this reaction video from the YouTube channel Jamel AKA Jamal. Reaction videos are videos where a person, or more than one person, listens and reacts to a piece of music they've never heard before. Most reaction videos are from millennials listening to '60's and '70's music for the first time. (I love Jamal. Here's his channel.) 

He did a reaction video of Queen's Live Aid concert .  . . and I watched . . . and I was fascinated. 

I got even more fascinated when watching this video about why Queen were so good that day.

What I took away from both videos were:

• They were a tight, professional band that had performed together for years.
• Since they'd performed together for years, they knew each other's ins and out. They'd know what to do if Brian May hit a wrong note on his guitar or if Freddie Mercury forgot a lyric.
• They'd rehearsed knowing that they'd only have 20 minutes to perform, and that there'd be a tight turnaround time. So when it was their time to go, they had to be ready to go. 

By the mid-1980's, Queen supposedly had seen their heyday. They'd ruled the charts in the '70's with "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Another One Bites the Dust," and who hasn't done a stomp-stomp-clap to "We Will Rock You"? But in 1985? They were still touring and still recording, but the shine from the '70's was gone.

And then Bob Geldof issued the invitation:  Will you perform at Live Aid? 

They said yes.

Unlike what the movie Bohemian Rhapsody says, Freddie Mercury may or may not have been ill with HIV/AIDS on the day of Live Aid. His diagnosis was not announced until the day before his death. 

Maybe the sore throat he had was because of HIV. Maybe it was just a regular sore throat.

But when the doctor said, "Don't sing," Freddie said, "No way," (or maybe he told the doctor something similar in more colorful language), and went on stage at 6:41 p.m. London time.

When he hit the first notes of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the piano and sang the first, "Mama . . ." he had the crowd immediately in the palm of his hand. The crowd became a sea of humanity, waving their arms and singing along with the familiar lyrics. 

From there, Mercury and the band launched into "Radio Ga Ga," "Hammer to Fall," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," "We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions."  

Between "Radio Ga Ga" and "Hammer to Fall", Mercury had some fun with the crowd, leading them in a singalong of "Ay-oh!" Back and forth Mercury went with his audience, and his final note has since become known as "The Note Heard Round The World"

For those 20 minutes, although guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor, and bassist John Deacon provided the music -- including blistering solos by Brian May -- Freddie Mercury, his body drenched in sweat, held the stage and held the audience. 

By the end, even if you had wanted to, if you had been in that 72,000 Wembley Stadium crowd, you could not have resisted doing a stomp-stomp-clap, singing back at the stage, "We will, we will rock you!" and joining in with the chorus of "We Are the Champions". 

The camera caught a mesmerized audience swaying back and forth under an hypnotic spell. 

Their 22-minute reign ended around 7 p.m. London time, with Mercury's final "We are the champions . . . of the worrrrlllllddd!" 

Champions of the world, indeed!

And as if weren't that enough, he and Brian May came back with an encore, not a hard-rock, high-energy set like they'd just performed, but a ballad asking "Is This the World We Created?" which brought the audience back to the reason for the whole Live Aid concert in the first place: the hungry mouths that needed to be fed. 

When Freddie Mercury died on November 24, 1991, the world lost a consummate showman and talented musician. 

I'm just sorry it took me 37 years to figure it out.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

A hero's death, a heroine's life

Today will be the funeral of a hero.

It should also be a salute to a heroine.

On June 24, I opened my Facebook feed and braced myself for the posts both celebrating and decrying the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Instead, I found at the top of my feed a post from Hayley Waldron, saying that her husband Harrison had died. Harrison's parents attended my church for several years. They've been missionaries both in Mexico and now in Honduras.

Harrison was 30. Hayley is 29.

They were married in 2014, right out of college, and at the time, I thought, "Isn't Harrison a little young to be getting married?"  (Bear in mind, I was a week shy of 30 when I got married. :-) )

Fourteen months after their marriage, on August 14, 2015, Harrison and Hayley took a trip for a friend's wedding.  While there, Harrison was involved in an ATV accident that left him with a devastating brain injury. At the time, Harrison's parents posted that they needed a miracle from God.

I'm sure the miracle everyone would have liked would have been for Harrison to be totally, physically healed. 

God, in His sovereignty, did not grant that miracle.

Instead, He gave us two people that showed the world around them, this is how you faithfully follow Christ in the midst of severe trial and hardship. 

Harrison would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair and would communicate with an iPad. Through that iPad, he would tell Hayley that he loved her. 

Hayley would spend the rest of Harrison's life loving him well. 

She also went back to school and became a nurse. 

I don't know if Harrison and Hayley would refer to themselves as "heroes". 

But there are those who, in their circumstances, would retreat into themselves and build up a wall of self-pity and resentment. (I know myself well enough to know that I'd be tempted to do just that.) 

From what I read of Harrison and Hayley, they did not do that. 

Yes, they had their struggles. They had struggles that many young couples do not have: health struggles, financial struggles, a struggle to find a niche when their lives turned upside down. 

They also had a God who did not leave them and whom they would not leave. 

Harrison endured to the end. I believe that when God saw him, he told him, "Well done, good and faithful servant." That's why I call him a hero.

Hayley, his partner in life, held true to her vow to be faithful "till death us do part". She exercised her faithfulness in her doing for Harrison and in her love for him. That's why I call her a heroine.

Today, Harrison will be laid to rest. His family and his friends will speak of him, tell memories of his life, and say goodbye. 

Today, Hayley begins her journey without her husband. She will cry at times and maybe she will even be angry at God and shake her fist at Him. 

And I also believe that she will remember the faithfulness of God.

So as we remember a hero today, let's also remember the heroine. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

The power of memory through buildings

Robb Elementary School, the Uvalde, Texas school that was the site of a horrific shooting, will meet the wrecking ball. 

Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, said, “You can never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back in that school ever.” 

Years earlier, Sandy Hook Elementary, the scene of another horrific massacre, was also demolished.

I can understand why. Who can walk into a building where you witnessed wholesale slaughter and act like everything is back to normal? 

You can’t.

I’ve never been a victim of a shooting, nor have I witnessed one. 

I can, however, tell you of my experience with a building where I experienced abuse.

It was a church building in Tallahassee, Florida. I was baptized in their baptistry on November 11, 1981, at age 18. For five years, from the ages of 18 to 23, I attended church in that building at least three to four times a week, excluding vacations from school.

To this day, I can still visualize the place as it looked in the 1980’s: the front door, which I didn’t use very often because it faced the street but not a parking lot, the side door that did lead to the sanctuary; the back door that led to the fellowship hall and to a staircase that would take you to the sanctuary. I can wander through that building in my mind and picture events that went on there, times we sang, the folding chairs we sat on in the fellowship hall — or the times we sat on the floor during our Friday night devotionals. 

I can remember the downstairs hallway where the nursery was on one side and the classrooms for the older kids were on the other. I’ve been in those classrooms, holding babies or trying to corral kids during children’s church.

Upstairs, I sat through sermon after sermon; Sunday School lesson after Sunday School lesson; special speakers, retreats, weddings, and other events. 

I was never raped in that building, nor did anyone physically assault me there. 

But I was subject to spiritual abuse there: listened to sermons and classes where we were pushed to do more, where “the spiritual” were defined as those who converted the most people, those who worked full-time for the church, and/or those that chose to give up everything for missions. If you did not have the numbers, you were second-class. 

We took away lessons from that building that said, go invite total strangers to church; go knock on people’s doors and invite them to a church service or a Bible study; submit to your leaders, do not question why they are doing what they are doing and do not argue with them. You must have a discipleship partner and confess everything to them. You must have a “quiet time” daily where you study the Bible and pray and you need to be ready to tell your discipleship partner what you were studying. If you’re not doing it every day, the partner is allowed to “speak the truth in love” with a loud, harsh voice asking you if you really love God, because if you did, you would be inviting people and having your daily “quiet times”. 

I left Tallahassee for good in 1986, and I went back to that building at least once. 

The last time I visited that building was 1994. I was 30 years old. 

I didn’t enter the building; it was during a weekday and I’m sure the doors were locked. But I walked around the building, in the back parking lot where I climbed out of the car of whoever was giving me a ride that day, past the windows that let light into the sanctuary, past the back door that led to the fellowship all, past the parking area near the Red Cross building next door.

And then I got to the front of the building . . . and my legs started to shake. I could not move them. I was close to the church office, and part of my fear was wondering, is there anyone there that knew me when I was a member here? And if there is, would they recognize me? 

I tried to make myself walk in front of the building.

I could not.

In order to walk in front of that church building, I had to cross the street. And even then, my legs still shook. My body remembered what had happened to me as the result of attending that church — the demands to share your faith, to attend every event, including baby and bridal showers and weddings of people you didn’t know, being rebuked for not being “out of yourself”, the constant probing for sin, the dating rules which included mandatory double dating and, I suspect, being told who you should and shouldn’t date. And if you were a woman, you were “encouraged” to accept a date, even if you weren’t too crazy about the guy who was asking you out.

All of this was done in the name of God. 

Spiritual abuse is very hard to describe. Everything I listed above — quiet times, dating, relationships, sharing your faith — are good things. Pursuing a relationship with God is a good thing. Getting to know Jesus is a very good thing. 

But infuse it with the demands to perform in a certain way, with the expectation to become someone’s idea of what a Christian should be, and these very good things then become weaponized. 

I finally walked in front of the church, even though I had to cross the street to do it, said my good-byes to it, and caught a city bus back to the hotel I was staying at. 

I had this reaction to a building where I was never physically assaulted, never raped, never shot or shot at, and never saw anyone assaulted or shot. 

Can you imagine the reaction that the people present at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022 would have if they went back to the building where their classmates and their teachers were shot and killed? Where a student smeared herself with blood and played dead to keep from being shot? Where police waited for nearly an hour before going in? 

If I had to cross a street with shaking legs to pass a building where I was not physically assaulted but only subject to spiritual abuse, I can only imagine the reaction that anyone present at Robb Elementary on that horrible day would have. 

The power of a building to evoke memory is palpable.

I don’t blame Uvalde for wanting to get rid of Robb Elementary.

Just my. 04, adjusted for inflation.

When is it going to stop?

 I had hoped and planned to write a blog entry about the final episode of This Is Us, and I may do that at some other point.

Today, my heart is too heavy to share those thoughts.

Instead, I find myself with a heart broken for 21 families in Uvalde, Texas, a place that until yesterday I only knew as the birthplace of entertainer Dale Evans and hometown of US Vice President John Nance Garner (who famously described the office of Vice President as “a bowl of warm spit”.)

As I understand the story, the 18-year-old shooter crashed his car in the parking lot of Uvalde’s Ross Elementary School, and then — dressed in body armor, like the shooter in Buffalo 10 days (?!) ago — ran into the school, barricaded himself into a fourth grade classroom, and started shooting. 

Nineteen children in that classroom died. So did both of their teachers. 

It took an off-duty Border Patrol agent to stop the killing.  At the risk of his own life, he ran into the school and shot the shooter. The agent was wounded.

In order to identify the bodies, parents had to be swabbed for DNA because the bodies were so riddled with bullets that it was possible the parents would not recognize them. 

Last night, Joe Biden, angry and heartbroken, demanded to know, when are we going to put a stop to all this carnage?

I have two simple words, Mr. President:

We aren’t. 

My son was two months old when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold ran into Columbine High school and murdered 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves in the school library. 

He turned 23 in February. 

Nothing has changed. 

We “lather, rinse, repeat” with our “thoughts and prayers”, give ideas about what we should do, yell at each other on social media (and sadly, I have seen Christians do this to each other) . . . and then it all dies down until the next mass shooting.

According to an article at newsnationnow.com, the US has had more than 200 mass shootings so far this year. Their statistics come from the Gun Violence Archive.  The Gun Violence Archive (at gunviolencearchive.org) defines “mass shooting” as “four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.” There is no one accepted definition of  “mass shooting”, and the GVA website mentions that even the FBI does not define “mass shooting”. 

I don’t have the energy right now to figure out how many mass shootings have happened between Columbine and now, how many hundreds of people killed, wounded, traumatized for life.  I’m selfishly glad that my son is no longer in school. But he works in a supermarket. The Buffalo shooter shot up a supermarket. My family attends church weekly. One of the most recent mass shootings happened in a church in California. And I can think of at least two or three more that happened in churches. 

Last night, Joe Biden demanded to know when we were going to stand up to the gun lobby. 

In 1968, when Robert Kennedy lay on an operating table after being shot in the head, ABC broadcaster Howard K. Smith made editorial comments about gun control and about how powerful the gun lobby was. 

That was 54 years ago.

Nothing has changed. 

The gun lobby remains as powerful as ever. 

British columnist Dan Hodges commented on Twitter in 2015 that Sandy Hook marked the end of the gun control debate. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” 

I am at the end of my rope. Like a counselor friend of mine has said, I’m exhausted. I do not want to be fearful when I go to church or to a grocery store. 

But as long as “my freedom,” “my liberty”, and “my rights” are trumpeted over our responsibility to society at large — especially its most vulnerable members, the children, elderly, and disabled — we will see this happen over and over again. 

This morning, I listened to a Christian radio station waiting for the top of the hour news update. The song playing asked, did God move every mountain? Yes, he did. So he can. 

And all I could think of was how hollow that must ring in the ears of the 21 families whose children and loved ones will not come home, ever again; whose resting place will be underneath a gravestone or in a columbarium, or in scattered ashes. 

When, dear God, does it stop? 

When will Rachel stop weeping for her children? 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Twenty years

Twenty years. 

 

Two decades. 

 

240 months. 

 

1,043 weeks. 

 

7304 days.  

 

175,312 hours. 

 

10, 518, 723 minutes. 

 

631,123,380 seconds. 

 

That is how long my husband, son, and I have lived since I sat in a doctor’s examining room at about 4:30 p.m. on May 20, 2002, and heard the words, “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, which is on the autism spectrum.” (The hours, minutes, and seconds are timed from 4:30 p.m. on May 20 to 8:30 a.m today, which is the time I began this entry.) 

 

We’d known for a while that something was up with Matthew. We’d been asked too many questions at his three-year-old checkup that we’d answered “no” to.  I’d been asked if Matthew had had his hearing checked. I’d been warned about his behavior in Sunday School. I’d been told by a close friend that I might want to ask his doctor about his speech because he was behind other nearly three-year-olds.  

 

I’d even suspected autism; I don’t know when that word crawled into my brain. 

 

I only remember a few things after that: the PA checking Matthew’s reflexes, the doc saying that we needed to get him set up for speech therapy and needed to figure out if insurance covered it; my snappish remark, “You know what? I don’t care.”  

 

I remember a dinner at McDonald’s, asking my husband, “You know what this means, don’t you?” while Matthew played in the PlayPlace. 

 

I remember a phone call from a friend advising me to take some Tylenol PM so I could sleep that night. 

 

And I remember lying in bed, wanting to cry. 

 

What did it all mean?  

 

Well, for one thing, it meant starting school at three years old, it meant speech therapy, and it meant that the plans and dream I had for Matthew would be changed.  

 

I write this with a mixture of emotions.  When a parent hears a diagnosis such as “autism”, it’s a titanic shift in the way you think about your child. Most of us imagine our kids going to school, to college, getting married, having kids, getting a halfway decent job (although in this day and age, that seems harder) . . . and outside of school, none of that was going to be happening for my son.  

 

I’ve dealt with a mixture of grief and pride, of sorrow and joy, of anxiety mixed with a struggling faith in these last twenty years, however you break it down.  

 

I remember IEP meetings, speech therapy sessions, occupational therapy appointments, talks with teachers, doctors, bursts of frustration in my own therapy sessions and with friends. I remember frustration over lack of child care so that my husband and I could get to therapy sessions. I remember fear of the future, battling with the state over the Katie Beckett waiver, applying for guardianship. Currently, I’m in the waiting period for Matthew’s SSI and suspect it will be another fight there, as well.  

 

And I still wonder about the future.  

 

I feel sorrow over loss of “regular” school, over loss of college, the loss of a possible marriage and the loss of potential grandchildren.  

 

But I would be lying if I said that autism came and stole and destroyed.  

 

The week of Matthew’s diagnosis, I got three phone calls in a row – all on the same day -  scheduling speech therapy, testing for special education, and making an appointment for a brain stem test.  

 

Friends came out of the woodwork with support.  

 

We learned that Matthew could be left alone in the waiting room of our therapist’s office, as long as he had something to play with. 

 

A friend gave us a Game Boy to keep Matthew busy.  

 

Teachers cared about him and cheered his progress.  

 

A dear woman volunteered to help Matthew in Sunday School, and other Sunday School teachers pitched in.  

 

A wonderful youth minister and his staff gave their time and energy to making sure that Matthew would be part of their youth group. That youth group pitched in and surrounded him.  

 

A teacher nominated him for an award, calling him “a joy to teach”. 

 

He learned to do his own laundry and to cook because his high school teachers emphasized learning skills.  

 

He walked in a graduation ceremony.  

 

Four years of college were replaced by four years of a special program to teach him work skills.  

 

And as of today, he’s been in a job for nearly ten months.  

 

Autism, a supposed thief, unleashed a kind, caring little boy who his parents loved and who was loved by those around him. It shaped and formed a man whose tastes range from fast-food chicken nuggets, to meat loaf, to “birthday donuts”.  

 
As I write this, he’s humming the “Law and Order” theme while catching up on “Law and Order” in his room. He watches the Law and Order franchise along with the Chicago franchise, New Amsterdam, and The Good Doctor. The Good Doctor opened many conversations with Matthew about autism; in fact, it was this show that caused Matthew to ask the question, “Do I have autism?” My answer was a (hopefully!) matter-of-fact, “You do.” 

 

He loves Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and mourned the death of Alex Trebek.  

 

And he still holds a soft spot in his heart for Blue’s Clues and Bubble Guppies.  

 

In an hour and a half, I will send him off to work.  

 

In these twenty years, 240 months, etc. I’ve had plenty of tears and anger and worry and anxiety . . . and many more of happiness, pride, elation, and laughter. I’ve often said that life at our house is many things, but one thing it is not, is boring.  

 

There are still questions about his future, mainly, what happens when his dad and I are gone? We are looking into arrangements to answer that question. We deal with the day to day challenges of autism, of understanding his behavior, of understanding his language, of trying to explain the world to him in ways he can grasp.  

 

But, when all is said and done, Matthew remains what his first name means:  gift of God, given to us in answer to a mother’s prayer for a child.  

 

We don’t know what the future holds for Matthew. But we do know that God holds his future. 

 

Just my.04, adjusted for inflation.