St. Matthew’s Church
Celebrates Women this
Mother’s Day

By Roberta Morris
Ledger Religion and Spirituality Writer 

GLENDALE—Mother’s Day is Women’s Day at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Glendale.
“We treat all the women of the congregation as spiritual mothers, regardless if they’re biological mothers. We honor them all on this day as our spiritual mothers,” said Melissa Bridge, St. Matthew’s music director.
This year, the congregations will celebrate Mother’s Day with dramatic readings and music that celebrates the stories of the women of the Bible and women today.
The origins of Mother’s Day lie in ancient Greece with the festival to Cybele, the wife of Cronus, that was held around the Vernal Equinox. The English observed what was called Mothering Sunday in mid-Lent which, here in the United States, inspired social activist Julia Ward Howe.
Abolitionist, poet, and author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Howe was also influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who initiated what she called Mothers’ Work Days. Howe called upon women to unite against war and wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. The first such Mother’s Day was celebrated on May 10, 1908, in the church in Grafton West Virginia, where Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School.
In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother’s Day to be the second Sunday in May, a day for Americans to honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
Now at St. Matthews, the women in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures – Miriam, Sarah, Rachel, Debra, and Leah – are raised up, and their strengths and struggles are linked to those of women today.
According to St. Matthew’s Bridge: “Miriam faced a dilemma at the shore of the Red Sea. You can’t cheer the death of your enemies, but you can praise God, so that’s what she did. She led the people in song, the first praise chorus”: “I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed! The horse and rider he has thrown into the sea!”
“Miriam’s Song” will be performed at St. Matthew’s by guest soloist Eva Hedberg.
“What happened was that my temple did a Sisterhood Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath observance) to celebrate the sisterhood organization, and it struck me that the readings were so beautiful,” said Bridge. “So, I went to the pastor at St. Matthews with the service, Pastor Keith Banwart. He’s known around here as P.K. He’s wonderful. And he agreed.”
A string ensemble, including Los Feliz artist John August Swanson playing violin, will perform during this special Mother’s Day service, Sun. May 13th, 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church,
1920 West Glenoaks Blvd. Glendale (818) 842-3138.

Tom Wilson’s Got An *
To Grind

By Colleen Paeff
Ledger Contributing Writer

   LOS FELIZ—If you live in Los Feliz, chances are you’ve seen Tom Wilson around. He likes to shoot the breeze with the guys at Leo’s Barber Shop on Hillhurst and most of the local sales clerks know him by name.
Los Feliz, Wilson said: “is kind of like Mayberry for me.”
At 47, Wilson is one of the youngest board members on the Griffith Park Neighborhood Council. Spending time with older, wiser people, he said, is what he enjoys most about the GGPNC, which he highly recommends joining.
“You really do tap into your community,” he said, “...and the commitments minimal.” 
Wilson moved to Los Feliz in 1987. He and his wife, actress Adele Baughn, started Nobody Productions two years later, winning critical acclaim for their first endeavor, a staging of David Rabe’s Hurly Burly.
Their controversial 2002 “mockumentary” They Shoot Movies, Don’t They? was called “a less celebrated but perhaps more telling look inside Hollywood than HBO’s Project Greenlight by the Los Angeles Times. And their most recent project, the documentary Sleep Across America (in which Wilson really does sleep across America), is currently in post-production. 
But lately Wilson’s attention has been diverted by a small, grammatical device: the asterisk.
An avid baseball fan, Wilson is the mastermind behind the best steroids-use-in-baseball-protest you’ve probably never heard of. He’s the creator of the foam “Asterisk.” The 16 x16-inch foam asterisk, similar to a #1 foam finger donned by sports fans at ballparks nationwide, is intended to unite fans in protest of what many are calling baseball’s “steroids era.”
Wilson hopes sports fans will purchase his Asterisk and display it proudly at the ballpark, especially as Barry Bonds, a supposed steroid-user, nears Hank Aaron’s home run record.
Many fans advocate using the asterisk symbol to denote statistical records set by steroid users. But Wilson’s Asterisk is meant as a peaceful protest. “It’s just to say we love the game,” he said, “and we respect the statistics and we want to make a comment.”
But according to Wilson, businesses—both manufacturers and retailers—have refused to work with him for fear of jeopardizing their relationships with the MLB.
One potentially huge public relations campaign went sour when a Washington Post sports writer agreed to write about Wilson’s Asterisk campaign and accompanied him to Shea Stadium in New York.
“I drove over to Shea Stadium where Barry Bonds was playing...and I couldn’t get [the asterisks] out of the van quick enough,” Wilson said. Fans, he said, were eating them up. But in a strange twist, Wilson said, the article—though written and filed by the reporter to the Post never appeared. And though a thousand Asterisks were waved in Shea Stadium that day, Wilson said not one appeared on the televised broadcast of the game. 
Is there a conspiracy? Wilson’s not sure—but he’s not giving up. “I know the fans would unite if I could reach them somehow,” he said.
Besides, he said, the trials and tribulations of his asterisk campaign should make for a winning documentary. The working title? Kiss My Asterisk.