QUARANTINE BLOG # 71

June 9, 2020

My favorite news reporter of all time was Paul Harvey, as you might have guessed from my frequent “borrowings” from him.  Paul Harvey was in news like Sgt. Joe Friday was in police work: “Just the facts, ma’am.  Just the facts.”  It was refreshing to hear only what had happened around the world, rather than some talking head editorializing and spinning.

Well, that’s a long way to go for this picture (as sometimes is my wont):

This is not a recommendation for taxact.com – an online tax preparation service.  It is a complaint about fortune cookies!  Yes, fortune cookies.  You see, Bonnie and I ordered and picked up Chinese meals from a local restaurant, and when I opened the fortune cookie there was the commercial for the company on the back of the fortune.

One of the things I enjoy most about streaming all of my television shows is the absence of commercials.  The only over the air programs that I watch are Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, and they are usually prerecorded so I can fast forward through the lawyers telling me what a great job they’ll do for me after I make my one call, that’s all, while they keep 40% of my award.  But now commercials are in my food!  As Paul Harvey used to say, “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

And Bonnie said the fortune cookie tasted of printer’s ink.

👉  I didn’t tell you about this historical event from the past, which happened in 1692, because the anniversary was Sunday, June 7, and I save Sunday’s blog for “God’s encouraging Word, in simplicity and in power, for our time” (the quote from the late Ben Haden, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, TN, and national and international radio and TV speaker on Changed Lives).

Seventeen minutes before noon on June 7, 1692, the ground started to gently roll. The people of Port Royal, Jamaica, a pirate haven that Henry Morgan helped to create, were not panicked; the town had suffered these rollings ever since the English had been on Jamaica.  Then a second, stronger heaving motion rolled in, and the second wave gave way to a third tremor, which dwarfed the others in its ferocity.

The earthen streets on which  people were fleeing for their lives liquefied; saturated with sea water the sandy soil streets rose and fell in increasing ripples.  People were swept along like corks tossed on a wave.  The earthquake, and the tsunami that followed, destroyed the city.  Four of the town’s five forts dropped into the harbor leaving only Fort Charles standing.

The quake lasted six minutes.  In that time 90% of Port Royal had been destroyed or simply vanished into the sea.  2,000 people were dead; another 2,000 would die in the coming weeks.  The death toll was twice that of the San Francisco calamity of 1906, but that had occurred in a city of 400,000. The Great Earthquake of 1692 took more than 70 percent of Port Royal’s 6,500 residents.

That little snippet from history is part of one of my cruise talks, “Admiral Sir Henry Morgan and the Brethren of the Coast,” from my series, “The Golden Age of Sail.”  If you want to hear more of it, we’ll have to go on a cruise together.  When.  Not if.

👉 Well, it’s time to put another nickel in the nickelodeon.

“What is a nickelodeon?” you youngsters ask.  In this instance it has nothing to do with a television network.  It is a coin-operated player piano or orchestrion or a jukebox.  The name for such devices became popular in 1950 when Teresa Brewer released her first pop record.  Music!  Music! Music! charted at #1 on Billboard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gUNZAmFfKA The record was the B-side – typically a song just put on the back side of a 45 rpm record so the space wouldn’t be empty, rarely were they expected to become hits.  This time the A-side, a long forgotten tune called Copenhagen, did not chart (after some research on YouTube, I found it, and there is no wonder at all why it did not chart).

Music!  Music!  Music! had an infectious line which asked the listener to “put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon, and music, music, music.”  The reason for the plea was so the dancing would not stop.

Yesterday I promised you a return to the jukebox, as I play Disc Jockey and spin the platters.  Over the next few days, some golden oldies.

First up – actually the song in mind, and then a parody – Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean.  He was famous for his singing long before he sold sausage.  You might remember him as Williard Whyte, one of the characters in Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery’s sixth and final official appearance as James Bond.  Big Bad John was a “saga song” which was part of the “historical ballad” craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_qX5bPbPUo Give it a listen.

Now for the parody, Big Bad Don. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALGkQq3RJ7k

And another Big Bad Don (with one impolite word) from across the aisle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7I_y5qCUPc&feature=youtu.be

👉  There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are going through a crisis, and those who are going to go through a crisis.  These days, there are more of the first, and if you’re not in that group, stay ready.

Jesus talked about two men who built houses, and from all indications, the houses were fabricated with good materials and good craftsmanship.  The only difference was the construction site foundation.  One built his on a solid foundation of rock, the other built his on an unstable foundation of sand.

Then Jesus said this about each house: “And the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house” (Matthew 7:25, 27 NKJV).  It was not a matter of if the rain descends.  It was – and is – a matter of when.

We will never reach a point in our lives when all our problems go away.  Sometimes new problems simply replace old ones.  There is good news about problems according to Paul: “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long.  Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! (2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT).

We cannot control circumstances.  We cannot control what people say to us or about us.  We cannot control everything that comes our way, but we can control our reaction to those things.  Storms have a beginning, middle, and end.  And something will come out of them: an immeasurably great glory – just wait and see.

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