QUARANTINE BLOG # 143

August 20, 2020

Booth.  Edwin Booth.

Less than a year before John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, Booth’s brother Edwin saved the life of Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert.  Unlike his now-notorious brother, Edwin Booth was a supporter of the Union during the Civil War.

In late 1864, Lincoln’s son Robert Todd was traveling via train from New York to Washington, D.C.  During a stop in Jersey City, New Jersey, he stepped back on the crowded platform to let others pass by, pressing his back against a stopped train.   When the train began to move, Lincoln fell onto the tracks and would have been gravely injured – or worse – if a stranger hadn’t caught him by the collar and hauled him back onto the platform.

Lincoln immediately recognized his savior as the famous stage actor and thanked him.  For his part, Booth only later learned the identity of the man he had rescued.  It was another of history’s great coincidences.

👉  As my brother pointed out yesterday, concerning the above paragraph and its yesterday cousin, “There is no such thing as coincidence” – Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ Rule # 39.

Gibbs has a set of rules he expects everyone on the team to follow.  Kind of like John Wayne as John Bernard Books in The Shootist: “I won’t be wronged.  I won’t be insulted.  I won’t be laid a-hand on.  I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”

As long as we are here, let’s look at a few more of Gibbs’ Rules from NCIS (Is that like CSI?  Only if you are dyslexic.).  There are 69 rules, but not all of them have been revealed.

Rule 3: Never believe what you are told.  Double check.
Rule 4: Best way to keep a secret.  Keep it to yourself.  Second-best, tell one other person – if you must.  There is no third best.
Rule 8: Never take anything for granted.
Rule 9: Never go anywhere without a knife.
Rule 16: If someone thinks he has the upper hand, break it.
Rule 18: It’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission.
Rule 28: When you need help, ask.
Rule 44: First things first, hide the women and children.
Rule 62: Always give people space when they get off an elevator.

👉  Here are three offerings from our “People Have More Fun Than Anybody Department.”

👉  Nearly 80 teachers in Utah’s Salt Lake County have resigned or retired as in-person classes are set to resume at schools this year, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.  79 teachers left their posts due to concerns about COVID-19.  Salt Lake County has the highest number of virus cases in the state, and teachers leaving the classroom told the newspaper that they would rather resign or retire now than return in the fall, risking their own health or the health of their students.  “We’re just being told to jump in like nothing is wrong,” Jan Roberts, a teacher of 32 years who just retired, told the Tribune.  “It’s not OK.”

👉  Here’s one I missed.  Almost 2 years ago.  Wow, did I!  The announcement came on October 6, 2018, that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is no longer to be called the Mormon Tabernacle Choir – or MoTab as some fans call it.  The singers will now be called the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (like Oriole Park at Camden Yards, or as it should have been named in Pittsburgh: Roberto Clemente Field at PNC Park). The choir was renamed to strip out the word “Mormon” (they also want us to stop calling them “LDS”) in a move aimed at ending shorthand names for the religion that have been used for generations by church members and others.  The group had been known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir since 1929, when it began broadcasting a weekly radio program to a wide audience.

👉  Cayman Islands will not see the reopening of cruise tourism until 2021 at the earliest.  Acting Port Director, Joseph Woods issued a notice to Cayman’s cruise industry partners: “The Cayman Islands Government has taken the decision that ... it cannot allow the resumption of cruise tourism in the Cayman Islands for the immediate future.  The Cayman Islands will therefore be closed for cruise tourism until the 31st December 2020.”

The Bahamas has shut down all public offices in its capital, banned all international flights except for emergencies, restricted hotels to essential staff only, and ordered journalists to first contact the police if they need to be out on the street as part of new controls to slow the spread of COVID-19.  With more than 1,100 active COVID-19 cases and its healthcare system on the verge of collapse, New Providence has to go under stricture measures for the next seven days, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis declared.

👉  Back to Bond.  When Sean Connery decided to no longer play 007 after You Only Live Twice, the producers chose little known Australian actor George Lazenby.  A male model, he first came to their attention in a “Fry’s Chocolate Cream” advertisement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQxcoGOhnts.  Lazenby took some terrible advice from his agent who was convinced that the secret agent character image would be archaic in the liberated 1970s, and so he turned down a seven movie contract.  As a result,  he left the role of Agent 007 even before the release of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969.

In the film, Bond faces Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who is planning to hold the world to ransom by a threat to render infertile all food plants and livestock, through the actions of a group of brainwashed “angels of death.”  Along the way Bond meets, falls in love with, and marries Contessa Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg).  At the end of the film, Blofeld and his henchwoman Irma Bunt, commit a drive-by shooting, killing Tracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgndOK2zuY0.  A policeman stops at the car and Bond, holding Tracy’s lifeless body, tells him, “There’s no hurry you see.  We have all the time in the world.”

👉  Fanny Crosby was blinded in infancy through the malpractice of a doctor.  In 1835, she enrolled in a school for the blind in New York City, staying there 12 years, first as a student, then as a teacher.  In 1850, Fanny, then 30 years old, attended a revival meeting at New York’s Thirtieth Street Methodist Church.  During these services, she felt something was missing in her life.  On November 20, 1850, as the altar call was given, Fanny went forward and found Christ as her Savior.  The congregation was singing Isaac Watts’s great hymn about the cross:

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.

Shortly thereafter, Fanny turned her poetic skills to hymn writing, and many of her songs focused on the theme of the cross, such as this one, “Near the Cross.”

Jesus keep me near the cross,
There a precious fountain,
Free to all, a healing stream,
Flows from Calvary’s mountain.

In the cross, in the cross,
Be my glory ever,
‘Til my raptured soul shall find
Rest beyond the river.

Near the cross, a trembling soul,
Love and mercy found me;
There the bright and Morning Star
Shed its beams around me.

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