Christmas is the musical highlight of the year. Christmas music is heard whenever you visit the local market, store, or mall. Sometimes, it’s old classics like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” or a Christmas Carol like “Silent Night.”

One of my favorites is “What Child is This?” written by William Chatterton Dix in 1986, using the tune of the traditional English folk song “Greensleeves.”

A couple of years ago, I was blessed to be working with some very gifted musicians, and I wrote a version of the song called “What Child?”. Music writing is something I have done over the years, especially around Christmas.

In the last year, much has been written about using AI to generate images. So I decided to experiment with Microsoft’s version and combine them with my song. You can see the results by clicking on the image above or using this link: https://youtu.be/0l0xohsqdjc.

I share it with mixed thoughts. On the one hand, the quality of the images is quite remarkable, and the way they helped me capture the spirit of the music was very enlightening. On the other hand, what does this do for illustrators who, in the past, would have been hired to draw these pictures?

Although I didn’t draw these pictures, it did take carefully worded prompts to get the results I was looking for. Each picture used needed several edits to get them just right. I also had to choose between art styles and ended up using the Anime mode. So, there is an element of creativity involved. And I must admit it was a lot of fun to do.

Each Technological Shift Brings Change

Each technological shift brings change. The early Christians used the codex instead of scrolls to share their writing. The codex is an earlier book form that allowed readers to find specific quotes and passages easily. The Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed on a printing press, led to the Protestant Revolution. The computer has shifted our world dramatically, with each of us possessing the computational power it took to send people to the moon in the palm of our hand as we fiddle, scroll, and engage with our smartphones. As AI becomes more universal, it will greatly impact the way we do our work and what we produce.

The question must always be asked, “Do these changes make us better?”

While AI promises much, it is well to remember that the brains, emotions, and physical bodies we have today have not changed much since Jesus’ time. We humans still fear, get angry, feel jealousy, and tend to mess up just like they did way back in 1 AD. Our technology may have changed, but we as a species still need the grace, joy, love, and hope that is found in following the newborn King.

Just in time for summer, the newest version of Memories For My Loved Ones (Summer) is now available on Amazon.

Featuring the art of Lauri Fernandez, Memories (Summer), like all four versions, is designed to guide you to tell your life story. Raised in Los Angeles, Lauri grew up exploring the beautiful landscapes of Southern California. These experiences gave her an appreciation for the majesty and tranquility of the earth God created. She is continually inspired to create art that reflects nature’s peace, invites contemplation, and lifts the spirit.

Memories is now available with four different covers to allow you to pick the one that best fits you. Each book includes the same prompts and illustrations that guide you through eighteen different topics like Childhood Family and Special Days. As you journal through the material, you will discover new insights about yourself and your life. Once you are finished, you will have a wonderful keepsake to share with your loved ones.

Memories: Loved Ones

When you see the iconic theme building at the Los Angeles Airport with its distinctive retro space-age design made to look like a ship landing from outer space, you may think of Los Angeles.  When I see it, I think of my dad, Arthur Kennet Miller, who went by the name Kenney.  He oversaw installing all the heating and air conditioning systems in the theme building and many of the LAX structures when the airport opened in 1961.

I often wonder how a boy raised on the farm in Homer, Indiana, who was the designated pool shark at his father’s pool hall in Bagnell, Missouri, when he was 12, and was rejected by the army right after Pearl Harbor because he only had half a thumb, ended up working on many of the significant building projects throughout the LA basin.   

He arrived in Los Angeles in the late 1930s with his family and joined his father in becoming some of the founding members of the Steamfitters Union. Eventually, he became an estimator who oversaw crews of workers throughout Southern California.  I still can smell the fragrance of ammonia emanating from the architectural plans he would spread out on our oversized kitchen table. 

He would measure each stretch of pipe with great perseverance and mark it with its appropriate shade with colored pencils.  Blue for water pipes. Red for gas pipes.  Orange for heating ducts. Green for oxygen and so on.  Then without a calculator or computer, he would add it all up with his pencil and paper as he estimated the cost of installation.  After a bid was accepted, he oversaw each site’s work. He must have been very good at it because his jobs included projects at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, UCLA, LAX, The Sports Arena, oil refineries, power plants, and many hospitals in the area.  

There were two things that he was big on – integrity and respect.  You were only as good as your word, and you judge people according to their actions, not where they come from.

Rooting for the John Muir Mustangs

Recently, when I attended my high school reunion, a classmate approached me and commented on my father.  During the height of the civil rights unrest in the 1960s, my father co-coached our little league baseball team with Mr. Milton, who was black.  His son was the best pitcher in the league. I can still feel the burn in my glove when we went over to their house and played catcher as Jimmy threw his coveted fastball. Dad was a no-nonsense person who demonstrated his respect for people by the people he worked with in his personal and work life.

I remember when I was in elementary school, my neighborhood friends were white.  In Junior High and High School, they were black.  What happened?  When forced school busing was initiated in Pasadena in the late 1960s, many whites moved out.  There was even a name for it – White Flight.  But my parents didn’t leave; they stayed.  

I think a lot of it had to do with my dad’s love for the football team at John Muir High.  For almost 15 years, while my sisters and I attended Muir, we would go to every home game.  His favorites were the games at the Rose Bowl, especially the Turkey Tussle against the hated Pasadena High School team in their red and white uniforms. My friends liked to make fun of him because of the blue and gold gear he would wear to the games to root for the Mustangs next to my mom, who often waved a small blue and gold pompom.

In college, I worked summers and breaks on construction jobs that my dad was managing.  The men who worked for him showed their love for him by giving his son a hard time.  On one job, they told me to wear my warmest clothes as I would be working near the refrigerator unit.  So, I wore heavy jeans, a flannel shirt, and a warm coat, only to find myself working outside the refrigerator unit next to the boiler, the hottest place in the building.

Dad had a heart attack in his early sixties and had to give up working. He died way too young, at the age of 67.

There is one more story that says a lot about him.  From time to time, he would drive us to a small house somewhere outside of Pasadena.  He told us to wait in the car. He had to see someone.  As a kid, I never knew what he was up to.  One day I got up the courage to ask him what he was doing.  He told me he was visiting one of his workers who had become paralyzed on a job when he fell off a ladder.  He could only move his head and his eyes.

These visits continued for several years until the worker passed away. It wasn’t something Dad had to do.  I am sure he was making sure the family had enough money to live on. He did it because he believed it was the right thing to do.  For him, integrity and respect were more than words. It was seen in what you did. It was who you were.

Memories: Teenage Bedroom
Craig Kennet Miller

While my friends had posters of Diana Ross, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones on their bedroom walls, I was a nerd before the term was coined. Prominently displayed was a wall-size poster of the Apollo program showing the steps needed to get the Apollo Astronauts to the moon.  From the launch of the Saturn V Rocket to the lunar landing to the splashdown into the ocean, it was a visual image of what was possible when people dreamed beyond themselves.

It started with President Kennedy’s announcement in 1961 that before the end of the decade, an astronaut would land on the moon. It was an audacious proclamation that was viewed to be impossible by most. His mission statement dominated my imagination in my early teens.

I vividly remember sitting in front of the TV as Walter Cronkite greeted us for each launch of the Gemini and Apollo spacecrafts. There was always a mix of excitement, fear, and awe as we watched launches with the tongues of fire and smoke billowing under the rockets as they blasted into space.  This was followed by a couple of minutes of tension as we watched each ship disappear into space hoping that it wouldn’t blow apart on its way into the sky.

Then there was waiting until each vehicle made its voyage.  Some to simply orbit the earth, some to try out new technology like seeing if the lunar module would dock properly, then the orbit around the moon, and finally, the landing on the moon.

Each voyage would end with a splashdown with threats of disaster to be overcome. Would the heat shields hold?  Would the parachutes deploy?  Would the Navy get to the capsule before it sunk into the ocean?

Star Trek and Planet of the Apes

The cultural impact was seen in TV shows like Star Trek and movies like Planet of the Apes with their alternate views of the future.  Star Trek, which ran from 1966 to 1969 at the height of Apollo, pictured a future where a diversity of people and aliens worked together to create a better future, to go “where no man has gone before.” When it was announced it was canceled, I passed a petition around at school to protest its demise and mailed it to NBC.

Planet of the Apes, whose first film made it into movie theaters in 1968, spawned a total of five movies from 1968 to 1973. It told a very different story, where humankind destroyed itself through its use of nuclear bombs and gave rise to intelligent apes who ruled the world over the hapless humans who survived. It was my favorite movie. I must admit I didn’t see the reveal coming at the end of the movie when Charlton Heston’s character fell to his knees in front of a half-buried Statue of Liberty. He hadn’t traveled to a distant planet, he was back on earth.

While the landing on the moon in the summer of 1969 achieved Kennedy’s goal, for me the most memorable moment happened on Christmas Eve of 1968. As the lunar orbiter came around the dark side of the moon, for the first time in human history, we saw an image of the earth from the moon. As our planet came into focus, astronaut William Anders said, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth.”

Over one-fourth of the world’s population heard that message as all three astronauts, Anders, Borman, and Lovell Jr., took turns reading verses from Genesis as we watched a live video from space as the edge of the earth appeared from behind the moon. As soon as they got back to Earth, NASA developed its most memorable picture, called Earthrise. It showed a planet with no dividing lines or national boundaries, instead, it made clear that all of us share the same fate as inhabitors of the Earth.

The Contentious Year of 1968

It was a positive capstone to one of the most contentious years in United States history. In 1968 there were the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Robert Kennedy. The Vietnam War saw some of its bloodiest battles. Riots raged in our major cities while young people began burning draft cards in protest. A contentious election ended with Nixon as President. As the year ended much was unsettled and there was little to celebrate.

But an image from outer space brought life into focus. A quote from a poem by Archibald MacLeish on Christmas Day 1968 in the New York Times summed it up well, “To see the earth as it truly is, small blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”

Of course, today that quote would not pass muster, as brothers would need to be replaced with another reference to our commonality as humans. But the message remains the same. We all share this planet and how we wage peace instead of war, how we take care of our natural resources impacts the health of this planet, and how we live together in the midst of great diversity foretells the future of the generations to come.

The items you had in your bedroom as a teenager say a lot about your generation. Did you have a typewriter or a computer? A radio or a TV? Musical instruments or sports equipment? What about the clothes you wore? Or posters or pictures on a wall? These all tell alot about what was important to you.
Memories for My Loved Ones: A Guided Journal
Craig Kennet Miller

Childhood Family

My parent’s best friends were Don and Jane. We would go with them each year to a Dude Ranch in Northern California, where we milked cows, rode horses, and ate at a huge buffet. We were often at their house, which was filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread Jane made every day.

When I was in Fifth Grade, my dad and Don volunteered to teach Sunday School at Holliston Methodist Church in Pasadena. One Sunday, the lesson focused on the 23rd Psalm. Don gave a testimony that I never forgot.

He said, “I was part of a troop of 120 men fighting in the Pacific. As we marched through a canyon, we were surrounded by the enemy. Only two of us survived. During that battle, I kept repeating, ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are still with me.’ That passage kept me alive.”

We wanted to ask questions, but the look on his face told us that was the extent of what he wanted to share.

Don was one of the millions of Americans that fought in World War II. They were celebrated for their bravery and victory when they came back. But as many of those soldiers’ children, friends, and families can tell you, they did not talk about it. They didn’t want their loved ones to know the horror of war.

Don went on to work at Lockheed and loved to help train horses at the Santa Anita Race Track. As a friend of our family, he was an ongoing presence of stability and support as I grew up. His children, Charlie and Susan were like older siblings to me. And Jane was my mom’s best friend. He was a member of a large group of friends of my parents in our church, who supported each other into their old age.

When he was in his eighties, I visited Don at his house outside San Antonio, Texas. After Jane had died, he moved from Pasadena to be close to his children. He was still in good shape, tall and lean; he still looked like one who had served in the military.

As we talked, he suddenly blurted out, “I didn’t want to kill him. He just popped out of the bushes. We were both surprised. I was the lucky one. I had my gun out. I can still see the look in his eyes. We were just kids.”

Then he went on to talk about his garden.

In his two remarks, he gave me a glimpse of the images of war he carried with him all his life.

On this Memorial Day, as we think about those who have served in war defending our freedom, remember they did so at a cost. Not only do they carry the physical scars of war, but they also hold unspeakable stories deep in their memories, stories that may never see the light of day.

As we remember those who died in war, let us also take special care to listen to those who are still with us. When we say, ‘Thank you for your service,” it is well to keep in mind that although their battles have been fought, the memories of those battles last a lifetime. In some fashion, their sacrifice for our country continues to this day.