My Brother Jim

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!! Jim and John, my two older (and only) brothers are pictured at the left. Jim is the one on the left and John is the one on the right. That's funny especially if you know them. In fact it seems backward, but if you think about the image being a reflection they are both on the appropriate sides... James, Jim, Jimmy is my oldest brother and I love him dearly. He turns another year older this year and I can say I believe another year wiser. This past year has brought a lot of strife to Jim and his family, but he has handled it all with a quiet dignity that I respect in him. He is a cancer survivor. His non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma is in remission!!!

And now we can pick on him for being soooooo old and only one year away from the big 4-0.

I'm not sure how I came to have this picture except that I know I was left alone in the house with mom for 3 years and I found it and took it. I always thought it was super cool and very retro (Yes, Jim that is a reference to your age.) He was born in the last weeks of the summer of 1968. All the information below was gathered from Wikipedia. The year he was born saw:

January- At a White House conference on crime, singer and actress Eartha Kitt (who I was lucky enough to see in the Wild Party on Broadway in 2000, she brought the house down!) denounces the Vietnam War directly to President Lyndon Johnson.

February- The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight.

March- The Congress of the United States repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.

April- (a busy news month, it seems).
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities for several days afterward.
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
The musical Hair officially opens on Broadway.

May- The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.

June- U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California by Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies from his injuries the next day.
James Earl Ray is arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

July- Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état.
African-American militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio.

August- The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President and Spiro Agnew for Vice President.
Police clash with antiwar protesters in Chicago, Illinois outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President, and Edmund Muskie for Vice President.

And on September 6, 1968- Swaziland becomes independent from Great Britain. And James Beck was born the first of four to my mom and dad.

I know that sometimes it's hard to be a member of this family, but we love one another more passionately than we argue our politics. Always know that you are on the path you are supposed to be on. You are a culmination of all events and personal interactions past and present. Change one thing about yourself, your life, or the world and your life would be greatly altered. Every bump in the road is a reminder that you are human and every rainbow in the sky is a reminder that there is something greater than ourselves at work in the world. I love you Jim and I hope that you and your family have a beautiful day. Happy Birthday!!!

Jim, Jenny and I in the back yard before Jim's prom.

If you make funny faces into my camera, it gives me permission to publish them!