QUARANTINE BLOG # 73

June 11, 2020

Around the middle of the 16th century, the medical condition in which the lens of the eye goes progressively opaque stopped being called a “web in the eye” and was for the future known as a “cataract.”  Doctors were using cataract as a simile for something that stopped light entering the eye.

But the first use of the word cataract had nothing to do with the eye.  It was instead the name for a waterfall or an area of rapids on a river.  For you etymologists, the word is a derivative of the Greek katarassein, from kata which means “down” plus arassein “strike or smash.”  It was applied to a large waterfall in which the water plummets over a precipice.

A cataract is not always as dramatic as Niagra Falls.

There are six cataracts along the Nile River which hardly seem like waterfalls at all.  This is the first one.

My favorite cataract/waterfall is beautiful Swallow Falls near Oakland, Maryland, where The Bro and I used to swim, and which the mother of my children once used it as a water slide (but that’s a story for another time).

Well, this morning at 7:50 I went to my eye surgeon, not about Niagra Falls, or the Nile, or Swallow Falls, but about the cloudiness in my eyes caused by age-deterioration of the protein in them.  I am having multi-focal lenses implanted, so prayerfully I won’t need glasses or contacts anymore.

Thank you for your prayers!!

👉  On this day in 1979, John Wayne, born Marion Michael Morrison, died.  More than an actor, director, and producer, he was also an American patriot, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.

He got his big break when John Ford cast him as Ringo Kid in the Oscar-winning Stagecoach.  Over four decades of acting, John Wayne, with his trademark drawl, appeared in over 250 films.

He was known as the Duke, a nickname he got from the family dog.  You Indiana Jones fans, probably just said, “Wait a minute!”  You remember the scene from The Last Crusade, when Sean Connery said, “Henry Jones, Jr.  We named the dog ‘Indiana.’”

In 1969, he won an Oscar for his role as a drunken, one-eyed federal marshal named Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.  His last film was The Shootist, in which he played a legendary gunslinger dying of cancer.  The role had particular meaning, as the actor was fighting the disease in real life.

One thing I did not know about John Wayne’s career until I started writing this piece was that for several of his films, the producers made him a “singing cowboy” with a singer doing the music and the Duke was lip syncing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GmDxgXoC6U&feature=youtu.be

Watch this clip of Wayne on the Phil Donahue show in 1976 talking about the singing cowboy roles, and the man he recommended to replace him. https://youtu.be/E2aw21CSFh0

I started to make a list of my favorite John Wayne movies, and decided I’d have to list almost the entire catalogue.  So here are a few.  For your favorites that I’ve left out, put them in the comments.  You can’t have too many John Wayne movies.

Below are the trailers for four of my favorites.  If you know the movie, you can enjoy the memories.  If it’s new to you, enjoy a glimpse of a great film.

The Shootist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7QQD5xoxfw

McClintock! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cbh2UqXk-s

The Sands of Iwo Jima https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSAhMDp0zw4

Hatari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqGbPAljDWY

👉  If you are one of the millions of people who pay $5 a cup for coffee, and more, at Starbucks – and I’m one of them – take notice, because they times, they are a changing.  Starbucks will close up to 400 company-owned locations over the next 18 months while also opening “convenience-led formats” such as curbside pickup, Drive-Thru and mobile-only pickup locations.  They say the moves are being driven by changing consumer behaviors that have shifted because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  These changes are mainly coming in dense markets like New York City, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

👉  Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and is frequently humorous.  Here are a few shared with me from one of your fellow blog readers:

1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
2. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
3. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
4. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
5. I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

👉   Today’s closing piece is by Paul David Tripp.

I wish I always
carried it with me.
I wish it always
shaped the way
I look at life.
I wish it directed
my desires.
I wish it was
the natural inclination of
my heart.
I wish remembering
your boundless grace
would silence
my grumbling.
I wish
my worship of you,
my trust of you,
my rest in you
would drive away
all complaint.
If my heart is ever
going to be freed of
grumbling
and ruled by
gratitude,
I need your grace:
grace to remember,
grace to see,
grace that produces
a heart of humble joy.

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