As I was dragging myself towards my first cup of coffee this morning, Terri said “I don’t know if this is possible, or if you would even want to, or if it would just be too hard, but could you post Justin reading from Christmas of ’94?”
“I can do that,” I said.
Several years back, I was going through a stack of VHS video tapes (remember those?) and transferring them to DVDs, hoping to preserve them for a longer expected lifespan, when we came across the video tape of 1994. This was compliments of Terri’s older brother Ken who had invested in video technology for the purpose of capturing memories of family life, for which we are forever grateful.
In 1994, Justin was 9 years old and was already active in the music ministry at St. Peter’s, singing with the other children for the Christmas Eve Mass, with assistance that year from both Terri and I (and the Hunter’s). He was also selected to proclaim the First Reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.
And proclaim it, he did! Seeing the video from 1994 reminded us of that.
When Justin decided to return to school for his Masters Degree, I put together a video of his life from snapshots and video clips and titled it “Looking Back, Moving Forward.” In this I used a snippet of the Christmas of 1994 video.
Christmas of 1994. It seems like a long time ago and in some respects, it is. You can do the math.
But it is good to look back where you’ve been when you ponder where you are.
This Christmas, we still mourn the loss of our dear son, Justin, but are comforted in our faith in the one whose birth we celebrate this evening. May we always find hope in the peace of knowing Christ.
And because we miss him so very much it was very ‘hard’ to do, as Terri said earlier, but we are blessed by the gift that was given to us in our son.
Over the years, I’ve dabbled in doing some musical composition and arranging.
My largest work to date and perhaps most enduring has been my setting of the “Stations of the Cross.” I first discovered the “Stations” when attending church in the late 70’s with my girlfriend in Annapolis, MD at St. Mary’s Church. Since my Christian upbringing was mostly rooted in the Southern Baptist denomination, I knew little about the traditions of Roman Catholicism which included meditating on the “Via Crucis” or “Way of the Cross” or simply retracing the steps of Jesus from his trial before Pilate to his death on the Cross. Over the years, artists had created depictions of each of the scenes which are usually placed in the main body of the Catholic churches. The ones at St. Mary’s are especially beautiful and I remember being quite moved when we attended the “Stations” for my first time. So moved that I was inspired to write some songs focusing on some of the characters you meet along the way. It was during an extended several week long training class in Rochester, NY while with Eastman Kodak that I had decided to take some of my musical gear with me to stave off boredom in the off hours that I began in earnest the attempt to further develop the settings. After sharing some of my work with a couple of the Redemptorist priests at St. Mary’s, I was encouraged to share it with the St. Mary’s community that upcoming Lent. Then the pressure was on! There would not be time to prepare for a ‘live’ presentation, so we decided to use some technology to aid us. After I completed the compositions, I recorded the music tracks and then had some members of the St. Mary’s music ministry record the vocals for the characters. We would present the “Stations” using a ‘live’ narrator and then play the songs from tape. The positive comments afterward encouraged me to continue refining the work over the years.
Station One at St. Peter’s
Fast-Forward to roughly the year 2000, when my home parish (Yes, I ‘came home to Rome’ and joined the Catholic church) of St. Peter’s in Libertytown, MD asked that we present my “Stations” again. St. Peter’s has some pretty beautiful “Stations” as well (which survived our church fire in 2004.) It was this time that I wanted to add more choral arrangements and had been toying with an arrangement of the great hymn, “O Sacred Head, Surrounded.” It seemed to fit well within the construct of the “Stations.” I split it into two sections for the use with the “Stations,” but I decided to ‘publish’ a full version on the Sibelius Music site. I received several positive reviews of the setting from the Sibelius music community.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I was surprised to find an email in my inbox entitled “Your score O Sacred Head by Hans L. Hassler arr. Doug Jackson on SibeliusMusic.com”
Upon opening it, I found a very nice note from Robert Miller:
Hello,My name is Robert Miller and I’m the arranger of The Brethren Brass (more info about us, below.) Our latest CD will be titled ‘Hymn’ and will be unique modern arrangements of traditional hymns and Spirituals. While searching for music for the project on SibeliusMusic, we were incredibly lucky to stumble upon your fine work! I purchased and arranged your beautiful “O Sacred Head” and we just finished recording it. Since SibeliusMusic’s message system doesn’t allow attachments, you can hear an MP3 (and see program notes) at: http://www.brethrenbrass.com/hymn.htm
He went on with some additional details about their group and ministry. I was most interested in how Robert might have arranged my arrangement for his Brass group, so I visited their site right away. It was beautifully done.
Wow, what an honor to be recognized by a group of talented musicians. I replied to Robert that he had my permission to use my arrangement as the basis for his and include their recording of his arrangement of my arrangement (Ah, I just love the music ‘biz’) on their upcoming CD. And if he wouldn’t mind, could he send me a copy.
Well, the CD arrived today and the rest of the tracks are equally impressive. Thanks, “Brethren Brass,” and may God continue to bless your music ministry.
Oh, and my girlfriend and I celebrated our 29th Wedding Anniversary last April.
Unfortunately, due to extenuating circumstances, my completion of the Video editing was delayed far longer than I had imagined or hoped for. My sincere apologies to those who ordered DVDs at the Conference expecting them to be delivered some time ago.
I’m glad to finally report that the DVDs are ready to go. I’ve contacted Dale Ahlquist at the ACS to let him know.
Here’s a sampling of some of the great speakers who presented at the Conference:
In July, my friend Tim Watkins from Renegade Productions called and said “We’re going to be filming another Americans for Life event in Chicago. Are you available to produce another video for us?” And I said “I’d love to!”
About a week later, I got an email that said the footage was available and that we should meet to discuss the project. It concluded with
“Illinois is disgusted and embarrassed with its tired corrupt political apparatus. The Daleys, Blagojevich, Obama. They have sold their soul. Using what we shot of small town/middle America we have a couple parades where people hope for a better future, one that does not threaten the life of our children and their future.”
“Well, that sounds easy enough,” I thought to myself. And so it began.
I met Tim and got the footage and began the process of reviewing and cataloging the shots. Good stuff. This was the Lions Club annual Independence Day parade in Darien, IL and this year they were honoring those who serve — Police, Fire and Service personnel. The “Americans For Life” were participating in the parade. Renegade had two cameras running. There were some interviews with participants, some candidates running for various elected offices, and kids; happy kids.
So what about the whole political corruption thread? Of course I had heard of Rod Blagojevich, but since I am not from the Chicago area, I knew very little about the history of the politics in Illinois. It did not take much research to uncover a bunch of documentation about the political corruption in Cook County and the state of Illinois. A report release in Feb 2010 by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Better Government Association documented over 140 years of corruption! Well, that wasn’t long after Abraham Lincoln served as President of the US!
Well, after a rather lengthy and intense on-the-job training session in Adobe After Effects, and some welcomed feedback and direction from Tim, I had an intro that set the scene for the parade footage. When I found a clip of Ronald Reagan from the Republican National Convention in 1984 talking about celebrating Independence Day, I felt we were making good progress. But what really galvanized the story for me was to find a clip from just this past July of the current US president talking about ‘rights‘ of Americans.
That’s about all I’ll say. And although it proved to not be quite as easy as I first thought, I think it turned out pretty well.
Enjoy the video. And exercise your right to Vote this November.
