QUARANTINE BLOG # 154

August 31, 2020

As we did in July, let’s take a look back at historical events from the month of August, picking and choosing.

👉  August 1, 1944.  Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl hiding out in Nazi-occupied Holland whose diary came to serve as a symbol of the Holocaust, wrote her final entry three days before she and her family were arrested and placed in concentration camps.  Anne received the diary on her 13th birthday, writing in it faithfully during the two years she and seven others lived in a secret annex behind her father’s business in Amsterdam during World War II.  Of the eight prisoners, her father, Otto Frank, was the only survivor.

👉  August 2, 1934.  Chancellor Adolf Hitler became absolute dictator of Germany.  The last remnants of Germany’s democratic government were dismantled to make way for Hitler’s Third Reich. The Fuhrer assured his people that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years, but Nazi Germany collapsed just 11 years later after having caused the death of untold millions.

👉  August 3, 1958.  The U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus completed the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole.  The world’s first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world.

**  August 4, 1892.  Andrew and Abby Borden were found hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home.  Andrew was discovered in a pool of blood on the living room couch. Abby was dead upstairs.  Their daughter, Lizzie, was charged with the murder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDBO1rIrb4, but the fact that no blood was found on her, coupled with her well-bred Christian persona convinced the all-male jury that she was incapable of the gruesome crime and they quickly acquitted her.

👉  August 5, 1962.  Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home in Los Angeles.  Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was “caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide.”  Conspiracy theorists blamed John and Robert Kennedy.

👉  August 6, 1911.  Lucille Desiree Ball, one of America’s most famous redheads, was born.  In 1940, she met the Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz on a movie set and the couple soon eloped.  They were eventually cast as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo in I Love Lucy, which aired from 1951 to 1957 and became one of the most popular TV sitcoms in history.  When Lucy went to commercial, water pressure dropped all over New York City as people took a bathroom break.

👉  August 8, 1974.  President Richard M. Nixon announced his intention to become the first president in American history to resign.  With impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement in the Watergate affair, Nixon said, “By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”

👉  August 13, 1961.  East German soldiers began laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city.   Soldiers worked over night, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire inside the East Berlin border.  The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights.  The wall remained a barrier to freedom until November 9, 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1Eg3gT_x-c.

👉  August 18, 1920.  The 19th Amendment was ratified.  A dramatic battle in the Tennessee House of Representatives ended decades of struggle and protest by suffragettes across the country for the right to vote.  The decisive vote is cast by a 24-year-old representative who reputedly changed his vote after receiving a note from his mother.

👉  August 21, 1959.  Hawaii became the 50th state when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the proclamation.  In 1893, a division of U.S. Marines deposed Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning monarch of Hawaii.  Many in Congress opposed the formal annexation of Hawaii, and it was not until 1898, following the use of the naval base at Pearl Harbor during the Spanish-American War, that Hawaii’s strategic importance became evident and formal annexation was approved.

👉  August 22, 1969.  The pop duo Zager and Evans ended a six-week run at #1 with their smash-hit “In The Year 2525” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdSqLfuRN18.  It would be their one and only hit.  Zager and Evans never returned to the pop charts, and disbanded two years later.

👉  August 23, 2000.  As punishment for betting on baseball, Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose accepted a settlement that includes a lifetime ban from the game.  A heated debate continues to rage as to whether Rose, a former player who remains the game’s all-time hits leader, should be given a second chance.  This blogger says, NO.  And performance enhancing drug users should not be admitted to the Hall of Fame, no matter how many home runs they hit, or how many games they pitched to a victory.

👉  August 26, 1939.  The first televised MLB game was broadcast on station W2XBS.  Announcer Red Barber called the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.  At the time, television was still in its infancy.  Regular programming did not yet exist, and very few people owned television sets – there were only about 400 in the New York area.

👉  August 28, 1963.  Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw-Ps9m1EnE.  250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  The demonstrators – black and white, poor and rich – came together in the nation’s capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination.  On that day the African American civil rights movement reached its high-water mark.  What is happening around our nation today is as far away from King’s dream as night is from day.

👉  August 31, 1997.  Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash in Paris.  She was 36.  Her boyfriend,  socialite Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the car, Henri Paul, died as well.  At first, the paparazzi hounding the car were blamed for the crash, but later it was revealed that the driver was under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs.

👉   We’ve looked back.  Let’s look to the future.  Maybe today.

Revelation 21:1-7 (New King James Version)

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.  Also there was no more sea.  Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people.  God Himself will be with them and be their God.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.  There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”  And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”

And He said to me, “It is done!  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.  He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 153

August 30, 2020

IF GOOD MEN FAIL

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

That quote from Edmund Burke in Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents has, in general use, come to be delivered as, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Which ever version you prefer, the message is the same: evil will, therefore good must.

One of the most frightening interpretations of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, is the message, Stalin could have been stopped.  During the time of the Great Purge, which sent millions of Russians to their graves, people slept with their clothes on, not because they wanted to be ready to escape, but because they expected to be arrested!

Before Stalin, Lenin’s Commissar of Justice, Nikolai Krylenko said, “We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”  In 1927, two Chekists tried to arrest a woman on Serpukhov Square in Moscow.  It was broad daylight.  The woman grabbed hold of a lamp post and began to scream.  She refused to submit.  When a crowd gathered, her would-be arresters got into their car and drove away.  But, incredibly, instead of going directly to the railroad station and attempt to flee, she went home.  The police came that night and she was never seen again.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

One woman who survived Kolyma, the Siberian prison camp, the worst of the gulags, said, “My interrogator asked me how to tap on the cell walls, the code which the prisoners used.  When I asked, ‘What for?’ he answered, ‘I think I may need it.’” She taught him.  Not long after he was arrested.

“Defense Counsel Sedov” is a Russian movie which reflects on those dark times.  The lawyer and his wife are eating dinner.  A knock at the door freezes all conversation.  The husband looks at his watch, relaxes and then says, reassuringly, “It’s only ten o’clock.  They come later.”

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

It is not a stretch to compare Stalin’s Purges and Hitler’s Final Solution to the witch hunts in Europe 200 years ago.  In a frenzy still unexplained, and largely unexplainable, at least 60,000 died.  Historian Hugh Trevorroper suggests that “mass hysteria has momentum.  Any outbreak seems quickly to become independent of the causes that trigger it.”

A strange thing happened – more and more people were accused, but less and less “evidence” was gathered.  Without proof, the denunciations became even more important.  Encouraging denunciations helped draw additional people into the climate of paranoia.  Denunciations were a sign of good citizenship.  Therefore anyone, even the humblest peasant could help defend society from witches or “enemies of the people.”  Being politically correct, you see, is nothing new.

To dare doubt that the correct path was being followed, was supreme proof that you, yourself, were guilty of witchcraft, or treason.  Grigory Kaminsky, the only top Soviet official who ever questioned the correctness of the Purge trial verdicts in a public speech, was arrested the very same day and was never heard from again.

In January, 1918, Lenin published an essay, “How to Organize the Competition,” in which he declared that the united purpose of society was to “purge the Russian land of all kinds of harmful insects.”  The old legal system then in place, would have made it impossible for the “hygienic purging” to have proceeded. So  Lenin established the Cheka, what Solzhenitsyn calls, “the only punitive organ in human history that combined in one set of hands investigation, arrest, interrogation, prosecution, trial and execution of the verdict.”

Vladimir Nakoryakov, another Kolyma survivor, says that there was a quota for arrests, just as there was a quota for steel production.  A new organization, the NKVD was made responsible for the arrests.  “If they arrested fewer [than their quota], it might mean that some NKVD employees would be out of work,” Nakoryakov said.  “It seems to me that the moment this organization came to life, we were all doomed.”

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Witch hunts, the Final Solution, the Great Purge, those are all history, ancient history, you say.

Right.

So what’s the point for America in 2020?

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 152

TEMPEST IN THE ATLANTIC

Today we’ll conclude the story of the founding of Bermuda and the shipwreck of 153 passengers and crew aboard the Sea Venture.  Next Saturday, we’ll tour Old San Juan.

In 1609 William Strachey was a 32 year old, struggling writer in London. A break came when the Virginia Company of London was preparing to launch the Third Supply expedition to their Jamestown colony.  Strachey was appointed chronicler of the New World.

Seven vessels sailed from London to Jamestown. Three men would lead the expedition.  Thomas Gates was the newly appointed governor; George Somers was the fleet admiral; and Christopher Newport was the captain of the Sea Venture. 

Sunday, July 23, 1609, the wind began to pick up, but the little fleet was still together, but the end of the serene sail of the Sea Venture came on the next evening.  A week from Jamestown, rising wind had the sailors working to tie down everything on the ship in preparation for a storm.

The fleet was about to face a kind of storm that few English mariners had seen but many had heard about since Europeans began crossing the Atlantic – a hurricane.  Within an hour the fleet was scattered and each vessel was on its own.

On Tuesday morning July 25, the sailors discovered that the Sea Venture was leaking.  Captain Newport immediately ordered pumping and bailing to begin, while sailors used the most readily available time-tested method – stuffing strips of dried beef into the seams.  Once moistened with seawater the beef expanded and formed an adequate temporary caulking.  But the leaks never stopped.  One hundred men pumped and bailed night and day to keep the ship afloat.

Dawn on Friday July 28, the storm still raged around them after four days.  The flood in the hold continued to gain on the bailers and pumpers.  Strachey wrote in his journal, “It being now the fourth morning, there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches and commending our sinful souls to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea.”

Fleet Admiral Somers continued to scan the ocean.  At the crest of a swell he detected a flutter on the horizon.  Above the waves, he saw the tops of palm trees moving in the wind.  The land was almost certainly Bermuda, an island discovered by Spaniard Juan Bermudez in 1505.

Somers knew that the only way to save his passengers was to run toward the land and ground the ship.  If the Sea Venture was pushed on its side, it would break apart in the surf, and most of the exhausted voyagers would drown.  The ship came aground three-quarters of a mile off shore in the only place on the entire coast that was deep enough to allow a large vessel to approach so close!

The sailors quickly put the longboat and a skiff over the side, and filled to capacity, pulled for land.  Five trips later, everyone was on shore.  No one on the Sea Venture had died or even suffered a serious injury.  They were safe.  And no one in the world knew they were there.

The morning of Saturday, July 29, 1609, was the first day on land after four terror-filled days in the hurricane.  If the other ships of the Third Supply had survived the hurricane, they now thought the Sea Venture was at the bottom of the sea.

One month after coming ashore, the voyagers of the Sea Venture began preparations for their own rescue.  Woodcutters selected manageable cedars growing on the island for lumber, gathered wood salvaged from their ship, and began building two boats.

The easy of life on Bermuda allowed at least two people to seek for normalcy.  Thomas Powell, who was George Somers’s cook, began to court one of the few single women on the island, Elizabeth Persons.  Rev. Richard Buck officiated at their wedding.

And on February 11, 1610, Jane and John Rolfe celebrated the birth of their first child.  She was named “Bermuda.”

Two rescue vessels were completed.  The Deliverance was 40 feet long; the Patience was even smaller than the Discovery, 29.  The castaways would soon leave their sanctuary of nine months.  “About ten of the clock, that day being Thursday,” William Strachey wrote in his journal, “we set sail.”  It was May 10, 1610.

Full size replica of the Deliverance in St. George Bermuda.

On May 21 the expedition reached Jamestown.  By William Strachey’s estimate, if the Bermuda castaways had arrived “but four days” later with the preserved food they brought from Bermuda, the 60 Jamestown survivors “had doubtless starved.”

The forces of nature had been working against the success of the colony from the start.  In 1607, the year the first settlers arrived, Virginia began its driest seven-year span in 770 years.  The lack of rain devastated the food and water resources of the settlers and the native Powhatans.  An invading population that could not grow food met a resident people whose crops were failing them.  Jamestown would not be successful until they began to grow tobacco.

To finish our tale of the voyage of Sea Venture let us bring to conclusion, the stories of two of the principals.

Admiral Sir George Somers volunteered to go back to Bermuda to restock Jamestown with food.  Back on Bermuda, he decided to break ties with Jamestown, and finance his own colony, but to honor his word, he and his crew spent six weeks hunting food to take back to Jamestown.  The hunt halted when Somers was taken ill, dying on November 9.

Having seen the desperate straits of Jamestown firsthand, none of the men who had accompanied Somers wanted to return there.  In the spring of 1611 the Patience departed for England.  On April 28,1612, Bermuda’s first appointed governor, Richard Moore, set sail from England with sixty settlers, including his wife and children.  They would be Bermuda’s first official colonists.

William Strachey returned to England from Jamestown in 1611.  In November of that year, all of London was talking about a new play by William Shakespeare.  Watching The Tempest in the Blackfriars Theater, parts of the play were strangely familiar to Strachey.  The opening scene was an eerie reminder of a rain-whipped night two years before.

Strachey had sent his journal ahead to England to his patroness, hoping for publication.  Watching Shakespeare’s characters on stage, it was almost as if the playwright had read his letter and recast his words in the popular play.  William Shakespeare had done just that.  The greatest writer of the English language was a literary pickpocket.

In the years that followed the Sea Venture was lost below the waves. The ship lay untouched until a descendant of a Sea Venture passenger found the historic wreck in 1958.  Artifacts were raised that had not been touched since a tempest-tossed ship ran for the Bermuda shore on July 28, 1609.

In Jamestown, one of the most  archaeological startling finds was a brass signet ring embossed with an eagle.  It had slipped from the hand of William Strachey and into the dust of Virginia.

As Prospero said in The Tempest, “Our revels now are ended.”

👉  Psalm 107:23-31 (King James Version)

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.

They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end.

Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.

He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.

Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.

Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 151

August 28, 2020

Cruise ships are sailing, but not to exotic destinations, and not with passengers aboard.  The 1995-built Carnival Imagination departed from Curacao on Wednesday and her track shows her heading for the scrap yards of Aliaga, Turkey, to join her sister ships Carnival Inspiration and Carnival Fantasy.  

Carnival Corporation initially announced that it would be removing nine ships from its fleet during the summer in addition to four that it had previously sold to new owners.  In addition, two other ships, the Pacific Aria and Pacific Dawn, both which had previously operated for P&O Cruises in Australia had been sold to CMV Cruises for delivery in 2021.  CMV, however, went into receivership in the UK during the summer.

👉  I have been asked how I come up with the ideas about which I write for the blog.  And I really don’t know from whence most of them spring, but I do know the source of this one.  I was discussing politics with a reader when I asked, “Have you heard that The Donald wants Sleepy Joe to take a drug test before debating?”  The reader replied, “Don’t you mean Dumb Donald?  He gets a push in the polls and then heads straight for Twitter.”  And then we started talking about “Match Game” and the Dumb Donald questions, and I was off to search YouTube.

If you don’t remember, “Match Game” starred Gene Rayburn and featured contestants who had to fill in the blank to match the answers of the celebrity stars.  Also a lot of the time of the 30 minute show was taken up by Brett Sommers mugging for camera time.

Anyway.  Dumb Donald s so dumb (and the audience replies “How dumb was he?”) that for entertainment, instead of watching the TV he sits around the house and watches the BLANK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjjHCfM8puM.  Or Dumb Donald was so dumb he thinks ping pong is a Chinese BLANK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgZRUWRFN5E.

And not to leave the ladies out, Dumb Dora was so dumb she thought the Happy Hooker was a book about BLANKING https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIBJw0aUcQo.  Or Dumb Dora was so dumb, she tried to catch a BLANK with a catcher’s mitt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q4DNfGGZTc.

One of the neat things about watching those clips is trying to remember who those celebrities are.

👉  The swinging 60s gave us The Beatles, mini skirts and Woodstock – as well as, for many people, a sizeable disposable income.  Here are three of those iconic items everyone was splashing the cash on – I plucked these from a list of 31; if you want to see the rest check out go to  https://www.lovemoney.com/galleries/62942/the-bestselling-products-of-the-60s-how-many-do-you-remember?page=1.

Barbie was the number one doll of the decade.  Barbie’s looks and outfits reflected the fashions of the time, with dolls sporting everything from chic Jackie O-style suits to hip Mod-inspired threads. She originally sold for $3, but at a recent auction she fetched an astonishing $27,460 – in mint condition.

Chatty Cathy was the second most popular doll of the 60s.  She was a pull-string doll who would utter any one of eleven phrases when her cord was tugged – which, by many kids, was every five minutes.  Launched in 1959, Chatty Cathy remained in production intermittently until 2001, when she was discontinued.

Etch-a-Sketch.  If you’ve ever wondered if anyone could actually draw anything decent on these, take a look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CTyWwQrMo.  Invented by French toy maker André Cassagnes in the late 50s, Etch-a-Sketch was acquired by the Ohio Art Company and launched in the US market in 1960, priced at $2.99, around $25 in today’s money.  It’s still going strong today.  Oh, I asked Google for some other pictures produced by this device, and next week I’ll show you some.

If you missed the 60s, you can find all of those goodies on eBay.  Or maybe in your parents’ storage building. 

👉  On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon.  As Lennon walked into his apartment building’s  with his wife Yoko Ono, Chapman fired five shots at Lennon, hitting him four times in the back.  Chapman remained at the scene reading J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by police.  Chapman was incensed by Lennon’s lifestyle and public statements, such as his remark about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus.” 

Chapman’s legal team intended to mount an insanity defense, but as the trial approached, he instructed his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty based on what he had decided was the will of God.  The judge sentencing him to a prison term of 20 years to life.  On Wednesday Chapman was denied parole for the 11th time.  Hopefully the results of the parole hearing in August 2022 will be # 12.

👉  I know that today is only August 28, but that means Christmas is less than 4 months away, so I offer the following gift suggestions (culled from a website wanting you to click through so they get a commission) so you can beat the rush and start now to run up credit card debt.  Seriously – do we really need more STUFF? (I looked for a version of George Carlin’s “Stuff Routine” that had been cleaned up and found none.  Sorry.).

Airomé Serenity Medium Diffuser offers aromatherapy for $29.74, plus $9.99 for an Essential Oils Top 6 Gift Set.  It provides an even scent for up to six hours and is available in 28 designs to suit your giftee’s decor.

Last year, you bought Apple AirPods, but this year the upgraded AirPods Pro will be all the rage.  Nothing much wrong with the old ones, but the new ones are only $220.  Stuff that in your ears.

You’ve just binged on Top Chef or Guy’s Grocery Games and now you are heading for the kitchen.  You’ll need Always Pan from Our Place which will replace eight pieces of cookware and can do everything from sauteing, frying, boiling pasta, and so much more.  And it’s $145 for a fancy skillet.

If you walk from room to room saying, “My house is sooo dirty,” you need Eufy RoboVac 11s.  The slim profile also makes it easier to reach every crook and nanny, and since it’s reasonably priced – $159.99 you can splurge a little on your loved one.

You’re welcome!

👉  Today’s closing article is from Rick Warren.

“Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers” (Ephesians 6:18 NLT).

Why should you remain persistent in your prayers when you don’t get an answer?   Here are three reasons.

Persistent prayer focuses your attention.

When you pray a prayer request over and over, it’s not to remind God.  He doesn’t need to be reminded!  It’s to remind yourself that God is the source of your answer and all your needs.

Persistent prayer clarifies your request.

A delayed answer gives you time to clarify exactly what you want and to refine your prayers.  When you pray persistently to your heavenly Father and you say something over and over again, it separates deep longings from mere whims.  It says, “God, I really care about this.”

Persistent prayer tests your faith.

James 1:3-4 says, “When your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.   So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (NLT).

Growing in spiritual maturity may require having your faith tested.  One of the ways God tests your faith is by delaying some answers to your prayers.

Remember, “God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20 NCV).

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 150

August 27, 2020

First of all Happy Birthday wishes to Emma Kensington Sisler.  There is just no way you can be 12 years old today.  It seems like only yesterday.  And so many precious yesterdays, and incredible future ahead.

Beautiful girl!

Bridesmaid for her big sister. She will trade that dress for a bridal gown before we know it.

👉  We haven’t been to the Jukebox in a while, and as luck would have it, we get three spins for a quarter today.  Our featured artists, and featuring 3 of their Number 1 hits, are Herman’s Hermits.

Herman’s Hermits was formed from two different local bands, the Heartbeats and the Wailers.  Some said that lead singer Peter Noone resembled Sherman from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  Sherman was shortened to Herman, and the band became Herman and His Hermits, which was shortened to Herman’s Hermits.  Which is all kind of strange because Noone doesn’t wear glasses and lead guitarist Derek “Lek” Leckenby does.  But it was the 60s.  Go figure.

In 1966 the group was nominated for the Grammy award’s Best New Artist of 1965 – they lost to Tom Jones – and for their song which hit # 1 in the United States, “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv8k0VI9tBc – they lost to the Beatles “Michelle.”  After “Mrs. Brown” had been on the charts for awhile, John Lennon called lead singer Peter Noone and said, “Peter, the song does not have  one single rhyming lyric.”  And Peter’s response was that that was correct, but nobody else that he knew ever seemed to notice.

They scored a second # 1 in the U.S. with “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am.”  The character’s name is spelled “Henery” but pronounced “Enery” in Cockney style.  It’s roots are in a 1910 British music hall song.  It became the fastest-selling song in history to that point, and was the group’s second # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.  At 1:50 it is one of the shortest number one singles of all time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6EJxYNQxvw.

And # 1 on the British charts was “I’m into Something Good,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvcIj3XzU8 a song composed by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

👉  Gannett Co., Inc., in a copyrighted story in USA TODAY, written by Elizabeth Weise and Karen Weintraub, talked about public confidence and delivery of COVID vaccines https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2020/08/25/covid-vaccine-race-experts-steady-progress-worry-logistics-distribution/3389988001/.  With thanks to Gannett for the 4 page story, and apologies to Weise and Weintraub, I offer a Reader’s Digest version (the original is at the link above).

A coronavirus vaccine or even several could be ready in just a few months, so experts are beginning to worry about how to get it into people’s arms.  “Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations save lives,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Editorial comment: good point since there are parents who refuse to vaccinate their children against common childhood diseases.

Educating the public about how the vaccines will work and the painstaking process required to approve them will be key to getting people to line up and roll up their sleeves once they’re available.  The agencies that decide if a vaccine is ready and who gets it first – the FDA and the CDC – need to be front and center and as transparent as possible.

This may not be one-and-done, said Dr. Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group.  Just as the common cold and flu mutate a little each year, coronavirus could do the same.  Funding new vaccine development that can fill the void in case of viral mutation/recombination will be critical.

With at least 10 possible vaccines now in the final Phase 3 clinical testing stage, two looming questions remain: Will they work and will they work long enough?

Only the Phase 3 trials will determine if vaccines provide immunity to COVID-19, but even if immunity only lasts a year, booster immunizations can be given.  Simply having a vaccine that worked for a year at a time would turn COVID-19 from a pandemic into something manageable, just like the seasonal flu.

Finally, the public needs to remember that life isn’t going to suddenly zip back to the way it was in January, when we all lived blissfully unaware of the virus or its effects.  It’s not likely any vaccine will be 100% effective and it could be that people who are immunized might still get sick, but less severely.  That alone will be a huge win, but the need to keep wearing masks and socially distance might still be there.

👉  Back to Bond.  Daniel Craig is the current 007 and it seems that he will surrender his license to kill after the appearance of No Time to Die – his 5th Bond and the 25th installment in the James Bond film series produced by Eon Productions.  Work has been ongoing in NTTD since 2016.  It was scheduled for release this past April, and now may hit the big screen on November 20.

While Craig has come to be regarded as one of the best Bonds, the announcement of his casting caused noses to turn up in Bondom with no less than The Daily Mirror running a front-page news story with the headline, “The Name’s Bland – James Bland.”  However, after the premier of his 2006 film Casino Royale, the reviews changed.  “Variety” said, “Craig comes closer to the author’s original conception of this exceptionally long-lived male fantasy figure than anyone since early Sean Connery.”  Steven Spielberg called Craig “the perfect 21st-century Bond.”  And the BBC observed that “Daniel Craig is not a good Bond.  He’s a great Bond.”  However the violence in the Craig Bond films has left your friendly neighborhood blogger behind.  Do we really need to see our hero tied naked to a chair that has the bottom cut out and the villain swinging a torture device at Bond’s exposed body parts?

To wrap our visit with 007, I offer for your Bond pleasure the 55 greatest James Bond one-liners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7__HL3zWn0 (Make that 54 greats – I had no way to edit #53 out).

👉  Today’s closing is by Max Lucado.

The widest river in the world is not the Mississippi, Amazon, or Nile.  The widest river on earth is a body of water called If Only.

Throngs of people stand on its banks and cast longing eyes over the waters.  They long to cross but can’t seem to find the ferry.  They are convinced the If Only River separates them from the good life.

If only I were thinner, I’d have the good life.  If only I were richer, I’d have the good life.  If only the kids would come.  If only the kids were gone.  If only I could leave home, move home, get married, get divorced.

The If Only River.

Look at Paul’s antidote for the anxiety of If Only.  “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6).

If it came in pill form, gratitude would be deemed the miracle cure.  It’s no wonder, then, that, God’s anxiety therapy includes a large, delightful dollop of gratitude.

Gratitude leads us off the river bank of “if only” and escorts us into the fertile valley of “already.”  The anxious heart says, “Lord, if only I had this, that, or the other, I’d be ok.”  The grateful heart says, “Oh, look!  You’ve already given me this, that, and the other.  Thank you, God!”

Anchor your heart to the character of God.  Your boat will rock.  Moods will come and go.  Situations will fluctuate and change.  But will you be left adrift on the ocean of despair?  Not if you have found a contentment that endures the storm.

No more if only.  It is the petri dish in which anxiety thrives.  Replace your if only with already.  Look what you already have.  Treat each anxious thought with a grateful one and prepare yourself for a new day of joy.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 149

August 26, 2020

Fried chicken chain KFC is pausing one of fast food’s most popular slogans.  The restaurant chain will suspend use of “It’s Finger Lickin’ Good” after 64 years.  KFC said during an unprecedented year during which the COVID-19 pandemic has upended businesses and lives around the globe, use of the slogan “doesn’t feel quite right.”

“We find ourselves in a unique situation – having an iconic slogan that doesn’t quite fit in the current environment,” said Catherine Tan-Gillespie, global chief marketing officer at KFC.  According to the CDC, one of the steps people can take to protect themselves from spreading COVID-19 is washing hands often, and keeping hands away from your mouth, nose, and eyes.  KFC said the slogan will not go away forever.  The chain said they will bring it back “when the time is right.”

👉  British cruise line Cunard, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp., has extended its pause in operations until spring 2021.  “After very careful consideration and reviewing the latest guidance, we simply do not feel it would be sensible to start sailing again with our current schedule so we have reviewed future itineraries,” said Simon Palethorpe, president of Cunard.

Cunard’s three ships, the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Victoria, all have different restart dates.  The Queen Mary 2 is scheduled to sail again on April 18 and the Queen Victoria won’t sail until May 16.  The Queen Elizabeth won’t sail any of its scheduled itineraries in and around Australia, Japan and Alaska thru December 31.   New schedules for all three ships will be announced.

👉  Northern California is being ravaged by historic wildfires, but the giant redwoods are standing tall.  The fires have burned park buildings and campground infrastructure, but the redwoods remain.  Scientists say this seemingly amazing feat – surviving as a wildfire, ignited by a string of lightning strikes, that is burning some 78,000 acres around Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties – is expected for the redwoods.  Redwoods have thick bark that can survive intense blazes.  Tannin in the trees’ bark and heartwood give the redwoods their color and also act as a flame retardant.

“These trees are amazing,” Mark Finney, a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service in Montana told the San Jose Mercury News.  “Redwoods are an ancient lineage.  There are fossils of them from tens of millions of years ago.  They have lived through a lot.”

👉  One Dallas Cowboys football player said he plans to kneel during the national anthem.   Before a 2017 game owner Jerry Jones joined Cowboys players in kneeling before the anthem and then standing for the playing of the song.  “As a team, we all knelt together before the anthem and then we stood for the anthem to recognize what its symbol is to America.  I thought that was good.  That’s the kind of thing that we’ll be looking to see if we can implement, Jones said.”  Jones has not announced any plans for 2020.

Cowboys defensive tackle Dontari Poe said he planned on kneeling during the anthem.  “Not saying that anybody else is wrong for not doing it or whatever their cause is,” Poe said.  “But I just felt like I just wanted to do it for me and the statement I wanted to make.”

Editorial comment: Kneeling – showing disrespect – during the anthem of the nation that allows him to make $4,250,000 a year playing a game.  That’s some statement!

👉  Back to Bond.  My favorite James Bond, after Sean Connery, is Pierce Brosnan (and he is a very close second), who played 007 from 1995 to 2002 in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day.

Brosnan first met producer Cubby Broccoli on the set of Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only, when Brosnan’s wife, Cassandra Harris, was appearing in the film as Countess Lisl von Schlaf.  Before Timothy Dalton was hired to replace Roger Moore, Brosnan was considered for the roll of 007, but his contract for the TV show Remington Steele kept him from accepting.  In his portrayal of Steele, Brosnan captured some of the traits of previous Bonds in playing the role: the suave, elegance, charm and wit of Roger Moore, and the masculinity and grittiness Sean Connery.

Brosnan’s first entry into the Bond franchise was in GoldenEye – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGPBFvDz_HM the name was a tribute to Ian Fleming’s home in Jamaica.  The story features an attack on an illicit Soviet chemical weapons facility, 006 turning rogue, and a satellite called “GoldenEye.”  The Bond girl was Natalya Simonova, and in addition to 006 (Alec Trevelyan), James Bond had to contend with a female agent called Xenia Onatopp.  James must stop the evildoers from stealing money from the Bank of England, erasing all of its financial records with the GoldenEye, concealing the theft, and destroying Britain’s economy.  All in a day’s work.

In this scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxe_run_cIU Bond steals a Russian tank and wreaks havoc on the streets of St. Petersburg.

Bond has a pen that will explode if the plunger is pushed in the proper sequence.  Boris Grishenko, Trevelyan’s henchman, nervously plays with the pen, not knowing it’s potential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C09knP1SAyA.

In 2004, Pierce Brosnan was gearing up to do a fifth movie in the 007 franchise when he received a shocking phone call.  He was told by producers the role was being recast.  “There’s no regret,” he said.  “I do not let regret come into my world.  It just leads to more misery and more regrets.”  Daniel Craig was the one to replace Brosnan’s Bond.  The producers felt the franchise needed a reboot to stay relevant in “a post-9/11 world.”

“Bond is the gift that keeps giving and has allowed me to have a wonderful career,” Brosnan explained.  “Once you’re branded as a Bond, it’s with you forever, so you better make peace with it and you’d better understand that when you walk through those doors and pick up the mantle of playing James Bond.”

Brosnan kept busy before the coronavirus pandemic put Hollywood on pause.  He has four films in production and a fifth awaiting release.  “I would like to think that the vaccine will come soon for the disease of corona,” he said.  “And I would like to think, also, a vaccine will come for the disease of racism and that we can really come together as communities to respect each other’s religions and beliefs and not to be so judgmental.”

👉  Today’s close is from Christ Beside Me, Christ Within Me, by Beth A. Richardson.

TOO MUCH

Some days
It seems like
Too much to bear.

Too much sickness,
Too much dying,
Too many stories of terror and sadness.

How can I bear it?
These people I love
Are crazy with grief and fear.
This world I love
Has lost all sense and reason.

I watch, I weep, I wait.
I wait for you to show up
With your healing,
Your comfort,
Your wisdom.

Come quickly.
Please,
Be present.

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