3 Facts About Mr. Rogers

I watched a biography channel biography of Mr. Rogers.  Three touching facts:

1.  Koko, the sign language gorilla, would watch Mr. Rogers everyday.  when she met him, she took off his shoes.

2.  In 1980, Joan Rivers guest hosted The Tonight Show, and Mr. Rogers was a guest.  Joan Rivers was pissed, thinking that a saccharine children's show host had no place on late night television.  When she interviewed him on the show, she was so charmed by his sincerity that she cried when he sang "I like you."

3.  Mr. Rogers did not want to make a big deal out of the final episode of his show.  He wanted there to be a catalogue of episodes teaching lessons to children, and wanted his last episode to be just another show.  So, there is nothing special about the final episode of the show, except for this:  during the episode, Mr. McFeely, the mailman, did something he had never done before.  Before he left, he shook Mr. Rogers' hand.

In cartoons and gum commercials, a bright smile sparkles and makes that *ding* sound with a shiny asterisk.  There is a brief moment when the suns shines just right through the trees onto a piece of rock, and the rock glows for a moment.  There are those beautiful moments in time and in life, too.  These ones with Mr. Rogers are some of them.

Daily Fact

In 1961, Jim and Marceline Jones were the first white couple to adopt a black child in Indiana.  They adopted several children who were not caucasian.  An essential tenet of The People's Temple was racial integration.

Namesake

Today's fact about The People's Temple, which was the name of Jim Jones' church:

909 People's Temple members died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978.  Although this event is widely thought of as a mass suicide, only approximately half of the people who died there drank the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid willingly.  The rest of those died were elderly or children to whom other members administered the poison.  Jim Jones himself did not drink the Kool-Aid, nor did he even take his own life.  He had a Temple member shoot him in the head.