A Brief History of Our Flag Day

That the flag of the United States shall be of thirteen stripes of alternate red and white,
with a union of thirteen stars of white in a blue field, representing the new constellation.

This was the resolution adopted by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777.

According to popular legend the first flag was sewn by Betsy Ross, a widowed seamstress acquainted with George and Martha Washington. However, it was Francis Hopkinson who is credited with designing the Stars and Stripes. He was a popular patriot, Congressman from New Jersey, and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Today the American flag consists of thirteen horizontal stripes; seven red stripes alternating with six white stripes representing the original 13 colonies. The stars represent the 50 states of the Union.

The colors of the flag are symbolic as well: Red symbolizes Hardiness and Valor, White symbolizes Purity and Innocence and Blue represents Vigilance, Perseverance and Justice.

However, it took centuries for Flag Day to become an official holiday.

Both President Wilson, in 1916, and President Coolidge, in 1927, issued proclamations asking for June 14 to be observed as the National Flag Day. But it wasn’t until August of 1949, that Congress approved the national observance, and President Harry Truman signed it into law.

Old Glory carries a rich history through the life and growth of our United States. From the inspiration for our National Anthem written by Francis Scott Key after witnessing American victory in the Battle of Baltimore during the War of 1812, to Marines raising our flag in victory at Iwo Jima during World War II, to firefighters helping with our recovery after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, it has become a symbol of American courage, strength and freedom.

Fly your Stars and Stripes high and proud above all other flags. Let your creator-endowed patriotic spirit soar today and every day. God bless America!

 

Sources:

Click to access flagday.pdf

https://www.usflagsupply.com/the-history-of-the-american-flag.html

Saint Of The Month: Patrick

Saint Patrick is one of the world’s most popular saints. Celebrations of his feast day, March 17, are legendary, especially here in America.

St. Patrick: Bishop of Ireland

Many events of his life are also legendary.

For instance, he did not really banish snakes from Ireland. The Emerald Isle has never been home to any snakes. That legend might be a metaphor for Christianity overcoming paganism.

Born in 387, birth name Maewyn Succat, Patrick was a Roman citizen from an affluent family in Britain. At age sixteen he was kidnapped by pirates and taken to Ireland. There he was forced to herd and tend sheep.

Patrick passed the time with constant prayer. His love for God grew.

He eventually escaped, returning home at age twenty. He studied for the priesthood. Later he was ordained a bishop and given the name Patricius, Latin for Patrick.

He returned to Ireland in March of 433. Since Patrick was familiar with Celtic language, he was able to convert most of the island to Christianity.

Another legend is Saint Patrick’s use of the shamrock to teach about the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God. The three leaves on the green plant represented God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Patrick preached the Gospel and built churches throughout Ireland. He died on March 17, 461.

He’s the patron saint of Ireland.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Make it legendary.

Enjoy this fun little Veggie Tales Video.

Valentine’s Day is For Real

Valentine’s Day is not a made up holiday invented by the greeting card industry.

There really was a man named Valentine. He’s the Patron Saint of love, young people, engaged couples and happy marriage.

 

St Valentine – The Man, The Myth, The Legend

 

Saint Valentine was a priest who lived in ancient Rome when Christianity was illegal. He was imprisoned for secretly marrying young Christian couples. He refused to renounce his faith and was ultimately martyred by Emperor Claudius II. Legend has it that his execution occurred on February 14^th in the year 269.

The United States greeting card industry didn’t enter the Valentine’s Day picture until the 1850’s. Book and stationary merchants found it would be a good way to make money and began mass-producing Valentine’s Day cards. Since then other industries jumped at the opportunity to exploit the Christian holiday.

Now Valentine’s Day is second only to Christmas in money spent by consumers. It’s a great mid-winter boost for the economy.

So splurge on those cards, jewelry, chocolate, roses, wine, food and movies to honor a man who sacrificed his life for the love of others and his God.

Let’s learn a lesson from St. Valentine and love each other a little more each day.

Walk Along With Him… Journey With Us…

Here we are.

At The Water Spigot was released in the summer of 2016. It’s a modern-day adaptation of the Samaritan Woman at the Well.

I’ve written two handfuls of other scripts that we want to produce for the Walk Along With Him series, modern-day short film adaptations of Jesus’ ministry.

We seek to refresh interest in the Bible, to show that Christ is still relevant and needed in today’s world more than ever.

Now we need to find the resources to make it happen. Our goal is to reach 1 million souls with our films.

This is what God has called us to do. We pray everyday for His divine intervention. We’re praying that someone like you will pray with us, take that leap of faith with us. We pray that you will generously step forward and journey with us.

Help us refresh interest in the Word of God. Help bring fear of God and respect for His people back to our society.

What do you say?

Here’s your chance to be a part of film and entertainment, to impact the culture.

Do you want to help save souls? How about your own?

Look into the eyes of your children and grandchildren. What sort of world do you want to leave for them?

Plant the mustard seed…

Join our journey. Please contribute to our prayer and fundraising campaign.

BE NOT AFRAID

 

The Water Spigot: Post-production and beyond…

Stephanie Finklea, Robert Green and Will Wright in a scene from At The Water Spigot

Amy Watson is the beauty and brains of our company. A big part of her position is the role of film editor. After we shot At The Water Spigot she took some time to decompress, to have a baby shower, to enjoy her pregnancy and the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.

In late January of 2016 our first born, Monica Rose, entered this crazy world. I’m often still speechless by her beauty and I joyfully laugh at her silliness.

We are so thankful for Monica. She is such a great gift. She fills our world with so much love and happiness. We’re still adjusting to the challenges and joys of parenthood and having fun with it…

After the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl and Amy settled into her maternity leave, she let her body recover from the childbirth. The editing of At The Water Spigot began. The short film is a modern-day adaptation of the Samaritan Woman at the Well.

While I went back to work, Amy adjusted to motherhood and edited the film when she could find the time.

When her maternity leave ended, she went ahead with her plan to be a stay-at-home mom. Just over a month later, I was downsized from my day job. Later that day Amy told me “I’m glad you’re home.”

We had previously discussed that if I ever lost my day job, we would take the leap of faith and dive full-time into our film production business.

So we dove in…

 

*BIG SIDE NOTE:

We’re embarking upon our BE NOT AFRAID prayer and crowdfunding campaign. Help us plant the mustard seed. Join our journey. It’ll be fun!

At The Water Spigot: The Film Shoot, part 4

Not only did we have to battle bees and distant noises the weekend of our film shoot, but children. Busloads of Junior ROTC kids came to the park that Saturday for their war games. They repeatedly and noisily trounced through our film set/campsite that we had reserved.

So one of our volunteer PAs took charge. Arnold Finklea, Stephanie’s dad, retired from the Air Force with a decently high rank. He also worked security for two presidents. He could tell us about stuff, but then he’d have to kill us.

He found the person in charge of the Junior ROTC activities and made them aware of our situation. That greatly reduced the number of kids running through our set.

That evening we had a dinner/wrap party. We grilled some brats, burgers and hot dogs. I also lit a campfire and made smores.

Most of our crew went home early so Amy and I got the cabin to ourselves. I watched the second half of the Notre Dame – Clemson football game and enjoyed some delicious, cold, man beverages. MMMMMM! Beer…

I let the campfire die down and went to sleep. ZZZZZZZZZ!

We awoke early Sunday morning and finished cleaning the cabin. Amy and I finished packing up and went home to clean the rest of our things.

We made it to 5:00 pm mass.  

We thanked God for giving us the great opportunity to shoot our film with the blessing of such beautiful weather and all the wonderful people who freely helped us.

Then we went back home and ate dinner. I watched some NFL football and went to bed early.

*BIG SIDE NOTE:

We’re embarking upon our BE NOT AFRAID prayer and crowdfunding campaign. Help us plant the mustard seed. Join our journey. It’ll be fun!

At The Water Spigot: The Film Shoot, part 3

Saturday morning, day two of filming At The Water Spigot, a modern-day adaptation of the Samaritan Woman At The Well, came very quickly. The morning air was quite chilly but a beautiful mist began to burn off. We served an egg casserole, donuts and fruit for breakfast at 7:00 am.

We began the day of filming with a prayer.

By 7:30 am, our small crew captured some shots of Joshua (William Wright) walking along a path. The sun beautifully peaked through the trees.

At 8:30 we moved to the water spigot where most of our story’s action occurs. Photina (Stephanie Finklea) encountered Joshua. We spent the rest of our morning filming their exchange, capturing it from a spectrum of angles. Amy had completely taken over calling the shots by now.

At noon we broke for lunch of pulled pork sandwiches and fixings.

MMMMM!

By 1:00 pm our Matthew character (Robert Green) had arrived and the intensity of the acting jumped. We spent the early chunk of that afternoon around the water spigot capturing shots of dialogue exchanges between those three gifted actors.

Stephanie, Robert and Will act out a scene from At The Water Spigot

Late afternoon the sun moved and created shadows over the campsite set. We relit the campfire and got the final shots we needed.

That whole weekend bees were flying around for their last hurrah of the season. Our sound guy, Ken, suffered a sting. Fortunately he’s not allergic to bees.

When we did our location scout, Platte River State Park was peacefully quiet. However, that weekend the local railroads decided to run their trains constantly, rattling the land and blowing their horns, echoing from the distance.

Also, somebody decided to run a chainsaw that Friday afternoon.

 

Chainsaws are noisy!

Coming up… we were challenged by even worse disruptions…

*BIG SIDE NOTE:

We’re embarking upon our BE NOT AFRAID prayer and crowdfunding campaign. Help us plant the mustard seed. Join our journey. It’ll be fun!

At The Water Spigot: The Film Shoot, part 2

We began the day of filming with a prayer. There is no other way to begin filming At The Water Spigot, a modern-day adaptation of the Samaritan Woman at the Well. 

I donned my Chicago Cubs bucket hat and we got down to business.

I had been on film sets plenty of times, but never as director. I was nervous and quite clumsy calling the shots. Nevertheless, they were simple shots and we thought we got what we needed, hopefully.

Halfway through shooting that day, our monitor that we attached to our camera stopped talking with the camera. Since Amy held the camera, I couldn’t see the actors’ work through the lens. I handed the shot calling, thus directing over to her. I was flying blind and Amy’s vision became limited to the small screen on our DSLR camera. We had no idea how this footage would translate to a big screen. That’s a frightening thing.

We filmed as long as the sunlight allowed us. The campfire scene was set at night so we used the shadows of the trees to our benefit.

When finished filming, we packed up our equipment and lugged it back to the cabin. We enjoyed a dinner of chili dogs. MMMMM!     

Stephanie and Sarah stayed with us in the cabin that night. The remainder of the cast and crew went home. Day one of filming At The Water Spigot was complete.

*BIG SIDE NOTE:

We’re embarking upon our BE NOT AFRAID prayer and crowdfunding campaign. Join our journey. Help us plant the mustard seed. It’ll be fun!

At The Water Spigot: The Film Shoot, Part 1

So there we were! Finally made it to our film shoot of At The Water Spigot! It’s a modern-day adaptation of the Samaritan Women at the Well from the Gospel of John 4:4-42.

 

Stephanie Finklea, Robert Green and William Wright in a scene from At The Water Spigot

We took some paid time off from our day jobs for the Friday of the shoot. We awoke at the crack of dawn that morning. In addition to our car, we borrowed Amy’s mom’s SUV. I loaded up both vehicles with film equipment and camping equipment.

I was really excited about this film project because it combined two of my favorite things – camping and filming.

Our craft services volunteer, Sarah, arrived at our apartment. We filled her vehicle as well. We drove in a three-car caravan to Platte River State Park. We checked in at the park office and rolled to our cabin to unload the vehicles.

The ladies set up things at the cabin while I went into Louisville, Nebraska to buy some sandwiches, ice and firewood.

 

MMMMM! Sandwiches…

The crew arrived for their 1:30 call time. Stephanie and Robert arrived for their 2:00 call time. We were blessed with sunshine and began filming. We had the campsite simply set up like a little stage.

We began the day of filming with a prayer…

 

At The Water Spigot: Last Minute Changes

A very, very long pre-production, part 4

Three days before our film shoot of At The Water Spigot, our camera operator had to leave our crew for a paid gig. We went into panic mode.

Amy was six months pregnant at the time.

Our plan was to have her sit in a director’s chair while somebody else ran camera and worked some magic on the complex shots we hoped to get with slides and jibs, etc.

The only other experienced crew we had on set was our sound guy, Ken. We needed him to focus on capturing the sound. Running camera is not quite in my skill set yet. So, I contacted several people we knew who could run camera. Everyone was booked.

I convinced Amy to let me direct the actors while she ran camera. I wrote the story so I know it better than anybody. We simplified the shot list and I assumed role of director. We hoped and prayed for sunny weather but packed our lighting kit just incase.

A woman running camera while six months pregnant and a 1st time director has disaster written all over it.