QUARANTINE BLOG # 115

July 23, 2020

Please watch this 2 second clip which I edited from a 1980 presidential debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBodVU9XJjo  And then a tip of the hat to Walmart for a very positive “there you go again.”

Walmart announced Tuesday it will pay its workers another round of cash bonuses.  Full-time hourly employees and drivers will receive a bonus of $300, and part-time hourly and temporary associates will receive $150.   Assistant managers will also receive a bonus, and store and facility managers will also receive one.  It’s the third special cash bonus offered by Walmart since the pandemic began, separate from other cash bonuses received by employees in April and June.  In addition to bonus pay, Walmart will close its stores this year on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, to allow associates to spend the day with their families.

It makes me want to take back one of the times I complained about carting my own groceries.  You go Walmart!

👉  On the other hand, there is major league baseball which is in the position of having the American sports world largely to itself for the next week.  Even before today’s opening day, with the Washington Nationals in defense of their World Series title, players and coaches in the sport are taking a more active approach to supporting social justice, and some of those approaches are disgraceful.  Among the examples: San Francisco manager Gabe Kapler and several players kneeling during the national anthem before an exhibition game.

Three things.  One, free speech and the right to protest is guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States of America (as long as you don’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater).  Two, I whole-heartedly support your right to express your opinion.  Three, pick another way other than kneeling during our National Anthem, a way that honors the sacrifices of the men and women who died to protect your right, one that does not degrade their heroism.

👉  The Associated Press Headline reads: “Silent spread of virus keeps scientists grasping for clues.”  This is an incredible article https://apnews.com/33ce920720ee71dbabcd8db757b8dfd3.  It is long, but very simply written, and very well written.  No jargon.  Just information.  I recommend you take the time to read it.

👉  Here’s one from our “Unfinished Business Department.”  Actually it’s here because I forgot to put it in yesterday when I was talking about potatoes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxn1z8LCnFw Check out this clip of Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story.

👉  A United Arab Emirates spacecraft rocketed into space from a Japanese launch center Monday.  It was the start of a seven-month journey to Mars on the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.  The liftoff of the Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since the country’s formation.  In September that year, Amal will start transmitting Martian atmospheric data, which will be made available to the international scientific community.

👉 Launched in 1941, Captain Marvel was a comic book created by writer Bill Parker and artist C.C. Beck.  Cap quickly became the top-selling superhero in the world – beating Superman by millions of copies every month, and for several years in a row.  DC Comics successfully sued Cap’s publisher, claiming copyright infringement, and his book was eventually cancelled.  He’s since been brought back under the DC banner, but he rarely shows up on his own, and never the first hero to be used.  But I thought it worth mentioning that this comic book, the first magazine I ever subscribed to, for several years had the Man of Steel to struggling to play catch-up.

👉  And since we are reading comic books, this is a good time to look back at the funny papers, with one of the favorites of all time: Charles Schulz’s Peanuts.

Peanuts was written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz.  Over the comic strip’s 50-year run, Schulz refused to allow anyone else to draw or write Peanuts.  First published in 1947 under the name Li’l Folks, the strip, renamed Peanuts in 1950, featured a cast of children led by Charlie Brown, Schulz’s alter ego in the strip. 

Peanuts is among the most popular and influential in the history of comic strips, with 17,897 strips published in all, making it “the longest story ever told by one human being” (Encyclopedia Britannica).  By the time of Schulz’s death in 2000, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of around 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.

Tomorrow we’ll begin a look at some of the characters in the strip beginning with my favorite, Snoopy.

👉  We close today with a piece from The Gospel According to Peanuts, by Robert L. Short.

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39 NKJV).

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