QUARANTINE BLOG # 51

May 20, 2020

Happy Eliza Doolittle Day!  If you don’t recognize the reference, click on the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q9UAbxNlWg

👉  “A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi Yo Silver!’ The Lone Ranger.  ‘Hi Yo Silver, away!’  With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains, led the fight for law and order in the early west.  Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.  The Lone Ranger rides again!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbtdOX5ZGYY

The legend of the Lone Ranger is one of the best known Westerns, whether on television or in motion pictures.  John Reid was one of six Texas Rangers who were ambushed and left for dead by the Butch Cavendish gang.  Tonto comes upon the bodies and finds one of them, Reid, still alive, and nurses him back to health.  After recovering, Reid puts on the mask to conceal his identity, and together with Tonto defended the weak and brought the bad guys to justice.

Clayton Moore played The Lone Ranger from 1949-1951 and from 1954-1957.  Most accounts say that after the second year of the TV series, he was replaced by John Hart because of a salary disagreement with the studio.  In Moore’s autobiography, “I Was That Masked Man,” he said never knew why he was replaced by Hart, and also that he had not sought a pay increase.  Fans were disappointed with Hart and Clayton Moore returned to the show in the third season.

In 1958, Moore began 40 years of personal appearances, TV guest spots, and classic commercials as the legendary masked man.  In 1979, Jack Wrather, who owned the Lone Ranger character, began a new film version of the story and believed that Moore’s public appearances in character would undercut the value of the character and the film.  He obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from making future appearances as the Lone Ranger.  The legal proceedings between Moore and Wrather dragged on until 1984, when Wrather suddenly dropped the lawsuit permitting Moore to again make public appearances as the Lone Ranger.

Clayton Moore was often quoted as saying he had “fallen in love with the Lone Ranger character” and strove in his personal life to take The Lone Ranger Creed to heart.   Moore was so identified with the masked man that he is the only person on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to have his character’s name along with his on the star, which reads, “Clayton Moore – The Lone Ranger.”

Jay Silverheels, born Harold Jay Smith, was a member of the Mohawk tribe of Canada’s Six Nations Reserve.   He entered films as a stuntman in 1938.  He worked in a number of films through the 1940s before gaining notice as the Osceola brother in a Humphrey Bogart film, Key Largo.  In 1949, he was hired to play the faithful Indian companion, Tonto.  When The Lone Ranger television series ended, he found himself firmly typecast as a Native American.  Silverheels became an outspoken activist for Indian rights and a respected teacher within the Indian acting community.

👉  Star Trek fans got some good news over the weekend.  CBS All Access is bringing back some favorite characters for a another brand new Trek series.

“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” will star Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One, and Ethan Peck as Mr. Spock.  The characters all appeared in the original series, but returned in Season 2 of “Star Trek: Discovery.”  Like “Discovery,” the new series will be set 10 years before Captain James Tiberius Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise.

👉  With air travel nearly shut down, the major U.S. airlines are losing $350 million to $400 million a day as expenses like payroll, rent and aircraft maintenance far exceed the money they are bringing in. And even though they are slashing schedules, they are averaging only 23 passengers on each domestic flight.  Half of the industry’s 6,215 planes are parked.  It may be months, if not years, before airlines operate as many flights as they did before the crisis started. Even when people start flying again, the industry could be transformed, much as it was after the September 11 Islamic terrorist attacks.

👉  Twitter has started adding labels to tweets that contain misinformation about the coronavirus.  Posts that Twitter considers particularly harmful or misleading will be hidden behind a warning label, which cautions viewers that the tweet contains information that “conflicts with guidance from public health experts.”

Well, that’s a start, but if they have determined the tweets contain misinformation, why not just block them and do us all a service?  Did I just hear someone scream, “First Amendment rights”?  Well, the First Amendment does not allow anyone to scream, “Fire!” in a crowded building.

👉 For today’s closing piece, I am going to turn the keyboard over to Charles Hadden Spurgeon.  Called in modern times, “The Prince of Preachers,” Spurgeon served one church, London’s New Park Street Chapel (later in a new building, the Metropolitan Tabernacle) for 38 years.

Before the close, two of my favorite Spurgeon anecdotes:

First, the Metropolitan Tabernacle had seating for 5,000 and standing room for another 1,000, and the house was full when Spurgeon preached Sunday morning, Tuesday night, and Thursday night.  One Sunday every three months, the regular attenders were asked to stay home, and the house was filled with 6,000 visitors.

Second, on Sunday morning’s when picking up fares, cab drivers would say, “Over to Charlie’s then?”  Meaning are you going to worship at the Metropolitan Tabernacle?

Stenographers took down Spurgeon’s sermons and they were then published in printed form every week in what was called “The Penny Pulpit.”  A bound volume of each year’s sermons was also produced.  After his death in 1892, previously unpublished sermons were printed in annual volumes until 1917.

Here, from Spurgeon’s, Morning by Morning are excerpts from his devotional on 1 Corinthians 2:9-11 – “In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him.”

All the attributes of Christ, as God and man, are at our disposal.  All the fulness of the Godhead, whatever that marvelous term may comprehend, is ours to make us complete.  His omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability and infallibility, are all combined for our defense.  How vast His grace, how firm His faithfulness, how unswerving His immutability, how infinite His power, how limitless His knowledge!  All these are by the Lord Jesus made the pillars of the temple of salvation.

The fathomless love of the Savior’s heart is every drop of it ours; every sinew in the arm of might, every jewel in the crown of majesty, the immensity of divine knowledge, and the sternness of divine justice, all are ours, and shall be employed for us.

His wisdom is our direction, His knowledge our instruction, His power our protection, His justice our surety, His love our comfort, His mercy our solace, and His immutability our trust.  He makes no reserve, but opens the recesses of the Mount of God and bids us dig in its mines for the hidden treasures.

Oh! how sweet to call upon Him with the certain confidence that in seeking the interposition of His love or power, we are but asking for that which He has already faithfully promised.

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