I just watched the “Beautiful Day” movie – how did I manage to wait so long? As a young mother, everything I knew about child psychology, I learned from Fred Rogers, never mind Spock. I’m basking in the memory, playing the trailer, remembering how I started to write a Vacation Bible School curriculum focused on The Neighborhood, was encouraged by the Fred Rogers people, but never got it done.

Basking, I’m looking up various references that you might enjoy. He grew up in Latrobe where his sister has an art center. In this interview he talks about the lessons he earned early in life, and at minute 18 he tells how he learned how it felt when someone turned you down. People desire to be in touch with honesty (minute 20).

“The very first view that we have of our whole world is that view of our mother’s face during nursing. And so we get our very first impressions of what this world is like through our mouth and our eyes. And, if what’s good is coming into our mouth and what’s good is coming into our eyes, we have a mighty strong beginning.”

Tom Hanks was sooo good, but he had to be persuaded to take that role.

“It’s in the pause that the greatest potency is found…” says Matthew Rhys, the Welsh actor who, when he played the Esquire writer, managed to lose his Welsh accent. He and Hanks were interviewed by Judy Woodruff on PBS News Hour.

I didn’t know that the movie plot was based on a true story, that there really WAS an Esquire writer, Tom Junod, who was changed by his interviews with Fred.

Said Junod:  He was leading me to that moment of prayer that whole time that I was with him. And what did Fred want from me? He clearly wanted me to pray. He clearly believed in prayer as a way of life. He prayed every day of his life. He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. And so I wrote that. The answer to: What did Fred want? He wanted us to pray.

I saw this movie with 30 people at Stonebridge at Montgomery on a Saturday night. The lights went up, people were leaving, but the credits were still rolling and somebody was still singing and I was transfixed. I knew it had to be the REAL Fred Rogers. Finally the credits parted and showed a glimpse of the real Fred’s face.

Alone among those thirty, I was the one — TA DA! – who recognized the real Fred. Here’s the real Fred singing “It’s You I Like.”