QUARANTINE BLOG # 164

September 10, 2020

We begin today in the funny papers:

Talk about a trip in the Way Back Machine.  Brian Crane’s great comic strip Pickles took me back to 1953 and Mrs. McComas’ first grade class at Loch Lynn Elementary School at a time when 80 percent of first-grade students in the United States were reading Fun with Dick and Jane.

Dick and Jane first appeared in the Elson-Gray Readers in 1930 and continued in a subsequent series of books through the final version in 1965.  These readers were used in classrooms in the United States and in other English-speaking countries for nearly four decades.  The Dick and Jane series were known for their simple narrative text and watercolor illustrations.

For three decades, the whole-word or look-say method (also called sight reading) on which the Dick and Jane readers were based remained the dominant reading method in American schools.  It was replaced with more phonics-based reading methods in the 1970s, and the now discredited whole-language movement in the 1980s, before the reading curriculum returned, properly, to phonics.  Although criticized by many today, Dick and Jane taught me to read – a love I retain more than six decades later.

👉  It was 25 years ago this week (Sunday actually) that Cal Ripken, Jr., circled the field at Camden Yards, acknowledging the salute of the standing-room-only crowd.  On September 6, 1995, baseball’s unbreakable record – Lou Gehrig’s 2130 consecutive games played – was broken.  The Baltimore Orioles shortstop was a 19-time All-Star, playing his entire career with one team.  He was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

The streak nearly ended in 1993, when Ripken sprained his knee during a benches-clearing brawl against the Seattle Mariners.  The next morning, his knee had swollen so badly, it hurt to put any weight on it at all.

“I remember calling my mom that morning,” Ripken says. “I said, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to play.’”  Instead he got treatment in the training room, testing his knee in the indoor batting cage, and the streak continued.  On September 20, 1995, Cal walked into manager Ray Miller’s office and said, “I think the time is right.”  Ripken’s streak of 2,632 consecutive baseball games played is the sport’s ultimate unbreakable record.

When some called him a hero, Cal responded by saying, “All I do is just showing up for work.”

👉  Another September anniversary, celebrated this week, is the television premier of Star Trek 54 years ago.  The now iconic science-fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry followed the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) and her crew for 79 episodes before it was canceled.  Fan interest did not wan and the show returned first as an animated series in 1973, and then as motion pictures  (the first 6 set in the original series and then 4 from The Next Generation).  Spin-offs include Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, and Lower Decks.

Three new series have been announced: Prodigy, an animated series set to premier on Nickelodeon in 2021; Strange New Worlds, featuring the adventures of the Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike; and Section 31, featuring characters from Discovery.  The expanded franchise also includes a planned series set at Starfleet Academy, as well as Ceti Alpha V, a limited series based on the character Khan Noonien Singh (from the TV episode Space Seed, and The Wrath of Khan movie).

In 1972 NASA announced the development of fleet of reusable space vehicles, as contrasted with the fly-once craft of the  Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo series.  Star Trek fans began a letter writing campaign, asking President Gerald Ford to name the first shuttle Enterprise.  The first shuttle was actually named Constitution, but responding to hundreds of thousands of letters, President Ford directed NASA to changed the name to Enterprise.  On September 17, 1976, Enterprise was rolled with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and all the principal cast of the original series, with the exception of William Shatner (no official explanation was ever given for Captain Kirk’s absence), on hand at the dedication ceremony.

Any Star Trek fan who had the opportunity to go to the polls in the 1976 elections and did not vote for Gerald Ford should be banished to the penal gulag Rura Penthe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAIQ7lUMq7s.

👉  Today’s closing is from Anne Graham Lotz.

“He ... did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32 NKJV).

In the Old Testament, Abraham’s faith was tested when God told him to take his son, is only son, the son he loved, and offer him as a sacrifice.  And Abraham did.   Abraham bound Isaac to the altar and raised his knife to slay him in strict obedience to God’s Word.  Just before the gleaming knife plunged down, God leaned out of heaven and urgently commanded, “Abraham!  Abraham!  Do not lay a hand on the boy,” and Isaac’s life was spared!  Abraham looked around; caught in the thicket nearby was a ram.  After cutting Isaac loose, Abraham took the ram and offered it on the altar.

As God’s Son, God’s only Son, the Son He loved, hung on the Cross, the knife of God’s fierce wrath against sin was lifted, and there was no one to stay the Father’s hand.  Instead, “He ... did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all.”  Jesus was God’s Lamb and our Substitute who endured the full force of God’s wrath for your sins and mine when He was bound on the altar in our place.

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