QUARANTINE BLOG # 78

June 16, 2020

First of all today, a very Happy Birthday wish for our granddaughter, Rachel Bryn Eastman, 17 years old today, and a rising high school senior.  It does not seem possible!  Stay sweet!

👉  I enjoy museums and galleries.  I’ve been blessed to visit some of the world’s finest: the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum both in Moscow, and I drove past the Louvre in a tour bus.

But imagine a museum where the sculptures are on display, but you can’t see them.  No, there is nothing wrong with your eyes.  Willard Wigan’s sculptures can measure just 0.0002 inches, many carved out of a single grain of rice and displayed in the eye of a needle, or sitting on an eyelash, or next to a grain of sand.

Wigan, who was awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to art, displays select pieces on his website: https://www.willardwiganmbe.com/gallery.  Be sure to click on each piece to see the incredible detail.

Learning how to carve into something as small as a grain of rice is something Wigan had to teach his body to do.  He studied meditative techniques to lower any movement in his body – holding his breath with each stroke to ensure the exact control needed to create such intimate detail.

It’s a job that comes with some hazards.  When working on a collection of Alice in Wonderland pieces he said, “There was a tragedy when I first tried making this piece.  I inhaled Alice!”

Twenty-five of Wigan’s sculptures were on display in Naples, FL.  We just missed it.  The exhibit closed May 19.

👉  Yesterday was National Kiss a Wookie Day.  The holiday has been observed since June 15, 2005.  Sorry I missed it, but today is National Fudge Day.  The obvious way to celebrate is by consuming your favorite flavor of this confectionary.  If you don’t get enough today, on November 20th Peanut Butter Fudge Day is celebrated.  And if you want to eat healthy today, another food group is celebrated with a national day.  June 16 is also Fresh Vegetables Day, which is, conveniently, in the middle of National Fruit and Vegetables Month.

👉  On this day in 1884 the first roller coaster in America opened at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.  Known as a switchback railway, it was invented by LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride.  By the turn of the century there were hundreds of roller coasters around the country.

By the mid-1960s, the major amusement parks at Coney Island had shut down, but in  recent decades it has been revitalized.  It is still home to the Cyclone, a wooden coaster that made its debut in 1927.  Capable of speeds of 60 mph and with an 85-foot drop, the Cyclone is one of the country’s oldest coasters in operation today.

The hot dog is said to have been invented at Coney Island in 1867 by Charles Feltman.  In 1916, a nickel hot dog stand called Nathan’s was opened by a former Feltman employee and went on to become a Coney Island institution and international franchise.  Nathan Handwerker came to America the proper way, via Ellis Island.

Sixty years ago I walked the Boardwalk at Coney Island, watched the “Amazing Diving Horse” (standing for what seemed like hours to watch a horse coaxed into a tank of water), and rode the Cyclone 9 times without getting off (my brother says that is the reason he doesn’t like roller coasters today).

👉  We go to the juke box today with Whitney Houston – the most awarded female artist of all time as cited by Guinness World Records and one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, with estimated sales of over 200 million records worldwide.

Singing could be said to have been in her blood because she was the first cousin of singers Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and her mom, Cissy Houston, was a member of the group “The Sweet Inspirations” which also opened for and sang backup for Elvis Presley.  Her debut album “Whitney Houston” was released in February 1985 and sold 25 million copies worldwide.  She won her first Grammy Award with this LP.

Her first #1 hit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxmv2tyeRs was “Saving All My Love For You.”  The final hit single from the “Whitney Houston” album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYzlVDlE72w was “The Greatest Love of All.”

I said we’d be playing songs from the 80s, but this is my favorite Whitney Houston recording, her 1994 Grammy Award winning song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS7LdU “I Will Always Love You.”

On February 11, 2012, Houston was found unconscious in a suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, submerged in the bathtub.  Paramedics found her unresponsive, performed CPR, but she was pronounced dead 20 minutes after their arrival.  The coroner’s report said her death was caused by drowning and the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”  Whitney Houston was 49 years old.

👉  I’m going to turn the keyboard over to one of my favorites for this closing piece: Max Lucado.

God notices the grateful heart.  He took a praise-singing shepherd boy and made him a king.  There’s no hint of God getting out of sorts if we aren’t thankful, but there is evidence that we’re affected by our own ingratitude.  What of the disastrous days?  The nights I can’t sleep and the hours I can’t rest?  Are we still grateful then?  Jesus was.

The Bible records, “On the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24 New Living Translation).  It’s not often you see the words “betrayed” and “thanks” in the same sentence, much less in the same heart.  In the midst of the darkest night of the human soul, Jesus found a way to give thanks.  Anyone can thank God for the light.  Jesus teaches us to thank God for the night.  And He says to us, “you’ll get through this,” and we will.

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