QUARANTINE BLOG # 215

October 31, 2020

Before we return to “The Incredible Hermitage ...”

Don’t forget to “fall back” tonight.

In 1918 the Russian calendar was 13 days behind the rest of Europe. On Lenin’s instructions, February was reduced to 15 days in order to catch up. So the February Revolution in fact took place in March. The Hermitage was closed early in the month because of shooting in the streets. On March 15, Emperor Nicholas Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov abdicated. He and his family were later taken to Ekaterinburg and on July 17, they were all executed.

It might be expected that a Communist state would desecrate or destroy an elitist collection of art treasures put together by a hated imperial family, but the opposite happened. The Hermitage was regarded as a precious repository of national culture which should be preserved for the enjoyment of the proletariat.

The Hermitage was given all the best art in public and private collections in St Petersburg. By 1996 the museum owned over three million objects compared to one million in 1918. It became the Soviet government’s number one cultural showcase.

A brief aside: If you could stay awake for an entire month, and looked at each piece in the collection for one second, you would not see the entire collection. Another way to judge the size of the collection: if you spend a minute at one item and spend 8 hours in the Hermitage daily, it will take you almost 15 years to view all the museum’s exhibits!

In the spring of 1930 the assistant curator of the museum was told one night to stay behind in the museum after it closed, take Jan van Eyck’s Annunciation, off of the walls, and hand it to the representative of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. She was then to rearrange the way the paintings were hung so that the public would not notice a gap.

The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck. The Annunciation shows the Archangel Gabriel telling  the Virgin Mary that she will bear the son of God (Luke 1:26-38). The inscription shows his words in Latin: “Hail, full of grace.” She modestly draws back and responds, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.” The words appear upside down because they are directed to God and are therefore inscribed with a God’s-eye view.

In June 1930 the painting was bought by Andrew Mellon, the United States Treasury Secretary, for $502,899. The Annunciation was one of 21 paintings that he acquired from the Hermitage. Mellon went on to found the National Gallery, and the Hermitage paintings have become the stars of America’s national collection.

Massive sales which took place between 1928 and 1932 are still regarded at the Hermitage as a criminal act by the Soviet government. It is the loss of great Old Master paintings that still rankles most. Roughly 25 world-class paintings were sold. 

Faberge: The Imperial Coronation Egg. 1897

Titian. Venus with a Mirror. Circa 1555

The political background for the sales lies in Stalin’s first Five Year Plan and the country’s shortage of foreign currency. Stalin was determined to build up Russia’s industrial base and create an economically viable Socialist state. So critical was the need for foreign currency that in 1929-30 Stalin chose to export grain and allow his own citizens to starve. 

The caption reads: “Beloved Stalin. People’s Happiness!” Political advertising today is just as untrustworthy.

Very little church silver was saved from the melting pot. One exceptional piece remains in the Hermitage, the Sarcophagus of Alexander Nevsky, Prince of Novgorod, Grand Prince of Kiev, was declared a saint in 1549.  Peter the Great’s daughter, the Empress Elizabeth, commissioned the pyramid-shaped sarcophagus, the largest silver monument in the world. It is made up of several pieces, and contains 1½ tons of silver.

On Sunday June 22, 1941, at 11 a.m. the Hermitage doors opened as usual; guided tours moved around the galleries. At noon patrons heard the announcement that Hitler’s forces had invaded Russia. The museum emptied. 

Museum Director Iosif Orbeli ordered the preparation of the Hermitage treasures for evacuation, a packing marathon which continued non-stop for six days and nights. A 32 car train with two engines, two cars for anti-aircraft batteries, a passenger car for the Hermitage staff and the military guard, and 27 cars filled with 500,000 pieces of art left for Ekaterinburg. Three weeks later a second train left containing one million pieces packed into 23 freight cars.

During the Siege of Leningrad, the Hermitage was hit by 32 shells and two bombs, but remained standing with all its windows, some five acres of glass, shattered and boarded up. The cream of the collection spent the war years at Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg) in the Urals in the house where the imperial family died in 1918.

Orbeli returned to the museum in June 1944. The materials necessary to begin the  restoration included 65 tons of plaster, 80 tons of alabaster, 100 tons of cement, two tons of joiner’s glue, 15,000 feet of triple strength glass plus 6,500 feet of extra fine glass, 6,500 feet of canvas, 100,000 feet of decorative fabrics, two tons of casting bronze, two tons of sheet bronze and six kilograms of gold leaf.

On November 4, 1945, 68 rooms of the museum were reopened to the public. Despite the war, very little of the collection was lost. The building was patched and painted until it looked like new. In bad weather, however, the building still springs leaks where the shells hit it, like an old soldier troubled by his war wounds. Watch a video I made of the Siege of Leningrad and the emptying of the Heritage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up62eReQJ20.

👉   The Quarantine Blog Index has been updated with the October additions http://davidsisler.com/QB_index.pdf.

👉   We will complete the story of The Incredible Hermitage next Saturday, but before we go, here is a song of the season https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U1Bz_NUKxQ.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 214

October 30, 2020

Today’s blog will feature “This day in history.”

👉  On October 1, 1890, an act of Congress created Yosemite National Park, home of such natural wonders as Half Dome and the giant sequoia trees.  Environmental trailblazer John Muir and his colleagues campaigned for the congressional action, which was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison and paved the way for generations of hikers, campers and nature lovers, along with countless “Don’t Feed the Bears” signs.

👉  On October 2, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  As chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s and ’50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of the legal strategy that ended the era of official racial segregation.

👉  Former football star O.J. Simpson was acquitted, on October 3, 1995, of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.  In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson’s “dream team” of lawyers convinced jurors that Simpson’s guilt had not been proved “beyond a reasonable doubt,” thus surmounting what the prosecution called a “mountain of evidence” implicating him as the murderer.  If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit.

👉  The Soviet Union inaugurated the “Space Age” with its launch, on October 4, 1957 of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite.  Sputnik, named for the Russian word for “satellite,” was launched from a launch base in the Kazakh Republic.  Sputnik had a diameter of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds and circled Earth once every 96 minutes.  America’s first satellite, “Explorer 1” was 6 inches in diameter and weighed 30 pounds.

👉  On October 6, 1866, the brothers John and Simeon Reno stage the first robbery of a moving train in American history, making off with $13,000 from an Ohio and Mississippi railroad train in Jackson County, Indiana.  Their method of robbing trains quickly became very popular in the West.  Some criminal gangs, like Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, found that robbing trains was so easy and lucrative that for a time they made it their criminal specialty.

👉  On October 9, 1974, Oskar Schindler – credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust – died at the age of 66.  A member of the Nazi Party, he ran a factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto.  When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp, thus saving them from deportation to the death camps.  In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia.  In 1962, he was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official agency for remembering the Holocaust.  According to his wishes, he was buried in Israel.

Watch this incredibly moving two minute clip from Stephen Spielberg’s movie, Schindler’s List, starring Liam Neesan.  “I could have saved one more person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQvUjXGAHXs.”

👉  On October 13, 1903, in the first World Series, the Boston Americans defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in a best-of-nine contest, with Boston prevailing five games to three, winning the last four.  Due to overflow crowds at the Exposition Park games in Allegheny City, the Pirates home park, if a batted ball rolled under a rope in the outfield that held spectators back, a “ground-rule triple” would be scored.  Seventeen ground-rule triples were hit in the four games played at the stadium.  Such a large comeback would not happen again until the Pirates came back to defeat the Washington Senators in the 1925 World Series, and has happened only 11 times in baseball history.  The Pirates themselves came back from a 3-1 deficit in 1979 against the Baltimore Orioles. 

👉  U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947.  Yeager flew the X-1 rocket plane over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California.  The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude).  The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis” after Yeager’s wife, had a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet (the X-1, not Mrs. Yeager).

👉  On October 18, 1867, the U.S. formally took possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre.  The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by William Henry Seward, the secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson.  The American public believed the land to be barren and worthless and dubbed the purchase “Seward’s Folly” and “Andrew Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden.”  Public opinion of the purchase turned more favorable when gold was discovered in a tributary of Alaska’s Klondike River in 1896, sparking a gold rush.  Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959.

👉  Hopelessly trapped at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, British General Lord Cornwallis surrendered to Franco-American forces, bringing an end to the American Revolution.  General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate, and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders.

👉  President John F. Kennedy announced on October 22, 1962,  that U.S. spy planes had discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba.  These missile sites housed medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington, D.C.  Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval “quarantine” of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place.

👉  On October 24, 1901, a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to successfully take the plunge over Niagara Falls (“Slowly I turned” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0) in a barrel.  In July 1901, while reading an article about the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, she learned of the growing popularity of two enormous waterfalls located on the border of upstate New York and Canada.  Strapped for cash and seeking fame, Taylor came up with the perfect attention-getting stunt: She would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.  After a brief flurry of photo-ops and speaking engagements, Taylor’s fame cooled, and she was unable to make the fortune for which she had hoped.  Since 1951, going over Niagara Falls is illegal, and survivors face charges and stiff fines on either side of the border.

👉  The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action on October 25, 1854 involving the British light cavalry against Russian forces during the Crimean War.  The orders were miscommunicated, and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against the wrong artillery battery.  The Light Brigade reached the battery under withering fire, but were forced to retreat immediately.  Of the 600 men who started the charge, only 195 were still with horses, 118 men were killed, 127 wounded, and about 60 taken prisoner.  Six weeks after the event, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s narrative poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” was published.

👉  On October 26, 1881, the Earp brothers faced off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.  The famous gunfight lasted 30 seconds, and around 30 shots were fired.  Most reports say that the shootout began when Virgil Earp pulled his revolver and shot Billy Clanton, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom McLaury.  When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded.  Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne had run for the hills.

👉  October 29, 1929, will forever be known as “Black Tuesday.”  Wall Street investors traded 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day.  Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading.  In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.

👉  On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther approached the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nailed a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation.  In 1521 Pope Leo X formally excommunicated Luther from the Catholic Church.  That same year, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, issued the Edict of Worms declaring Luther an outlaw and a heretic and giving permission for anyone to kill him without consequence.  Prince Frederick protected Luther by faking a highway attack on Luther’s way back to Wittenberg, abducting and then hiding him at Wartburg Castle.

👉  These monthly recaps always run long, but if you have seven and a half minutes, and want the best laugh of the day, maybe of the month, watch this video of an invocation offered at Home Instead Senior Care’s 2009 Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPFCn3itBFE.  You will thank me.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 213

October 29, 2020

New episodes of our favorite TV shows will be premiering next month.  There is one catch: there won’t be as many new episodes as we are used to.  Rather than air up to 24 episodes in the 2020-2021 season, CBS has set 16 for Blue Bloods, Bull, Magnum P.I., NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, and SEAL Team and 18 for NCIS: Los Angeles.  Fewer episode are ordered because of the new protocols in effect to film due to the coronavirus pandemic, including testing and social distancing.  It’s more expensive and takes more time to produce an episode as a result.  Fingers crossed that they will be worth the wait.

👉  Forget water on the moon, as reported in QB 211, NASA has now struck gold.  NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare, heavy and immensely valuable asteroid called “16 Psyche” in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.  Asteroid Psyche is located roughly 230 million miles from Earth and is about the size of West Virginia.  What makes it special is that, unlike most asteroids that are either rocky or icy, Psyche is made almost entirely of metals.

“Psyche – the target of the NASA Discovery Mission Psyche, expected to launch in 2022 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket –  could be unique in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel,” said Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.  Given the asteroid’s size, its metal content could be worth $10,000 quadrillion ($10,000,000,000,000,000,000), or about 10,000 times the global economy as of 2019.

👉  Europe’s second wave of coronavirus infections has struck well before flu season even started.  Spain this week declared a state of emergency for Madrid amid increasing tensions between local and national authorities over virus containment measures.  Germany sent soldiers to help with contact tracing in newly flaring hotspots.  Italy mandated masks outdoors and warned that for the first time since the country became the European epicenter of the pandemic, the health system was facing “significant critical issues” as hospitals fill up.

Protesters have clashed with police in northern Italy, as demonstrations erupted across the country over government restrictions aimed at quelling a second wave of Covid-19.  A group of “hooded men” smashed shop windows and looted luxury boutiques, including Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores.  Milan police said 28 people were taken in for questioning following the clashes.   Eighteen were Italians and 10 were foreigners [emphases mine].

👉  A couple who met at a Dunkin’ was married at that Dunkin.  John Thompson, 45, a recently retired Marine working as a car salesman, was a drive-thru regular at the Dunkin’ in Edmund, Oklahoma.  He arrived every morning at 7:15 to order the same thing: a large hot coffee (cream and sugar) and a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant.  And Dunkin’ employee Sugar Good, 49, was always the one to hand him his order.

Thompson looked for her name on the receipt, but thought “Sugar No. 7” was a reference to his order.  He never imagined it was her name.  Then one day, Good tucked her card in with Thompson’s order.  Three years later, Thompson proposed in the location’s parking lot while dropping off Good for her morning shift.  They were married October 13 in the same drive-thru.  The bride wore Dunkin’ uniform.  Sweet.

👉   This one is just too stupid – and selfish – for 26 letters to adequately describe, but since that’s all I have, here it is.  

The Dodgers won the World Series (after the Rays management made one of the most bone-headed moves in baseball history – removing their starting ace, Blake Snell, in the 6th inning, having thrown only 73 pitches, striking out 9, and giving up no runs, because some statistic showed that was the best move and then the pitcher who relieved him gave up the tying and winning runs – but that’s not the stupid move I’m talking about).  Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner tested positive for COVID-19 and, when the results came in, was removed from the game after the 7th inning and told to go into isolation.  After the Dodgers won, he came out maskless, and sat with his team.  

He removed his mask to pose for pictures with his wife, whom he kissed.  He planted himself on the ground as the team gathered for a photo to commemorate the Dodgers’ first championship in 32 years.  To his right sat Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, who 10 years ago was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, and to his left is the World Series trophy.  Turner ignored the protocol that calls for COVID-positive players to isolate.  Dodgers president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, defended Turner’s actions.

Many are wondering if Turner will receive any fines or suspensions for being so reckless.  As of this posting I have not read a word from baseball commissioner Rob Manfred about Turner’s selfish, self-aggrandizing, stupid behavior, other than to acknowledge Turner broke protocol.  Whoopee.  With Manfred’s history of ignoring egregious behavior (see Houston Astros, 2017), Turner will face nothing more serious than, “Bad boy.  Shame.  Shame.”

👉   A trio of comic strips before we close.

👉  Today’s close is by Meghan Kleppinger.

“But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God’” (Psalms 31:14 NKJV).

Whether it be financial, relational, spiritual, or physical troubles (and don’t they all seem to come at the same time?), it’s easy to find ourselves questioning God and His plan for our lives.

Babbie Mason’s song, “Trust His Heart,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQUw53AXlZ0 addresses these times of hardship.  I heard this song for the first time when I was a preteen, and its moving lyrics continue to encourage me now in my adult years.  I sing the chorus whenever I’m going through one of life’s rough patches.

    God is too wise to be mistaken

    God is too good to be unkind

    So when you don’t understand

    When you don’t see His plan

    When you can’t trace His hand

    Trust His heart

These aren’t just lyrics of a song, they’re descriptions of God’s character and reminders of His promises.  He is a God we can trust.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 212

October 28, 2020

We last talked about SpaceX in August (QB 129) when they flew a full-size prototype of their Starship Mars-colonizing spacecraft for the first time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcW8kKICBWI.  They are gearing up for another historic astronaut launch next month.  The plan is to send four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on November 14.  Called Crew-1, the mission will be the first operational flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut taxi and the second Crew Dragon mission to carry passengers on board.  

Riding the Dragon will be NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who will spend about six months at the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth.  The first Crew Dragon passengers were NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who spent 62 days at the International Space Station as part of the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission which launched on May 20, with the astronauts returning to Earth on August 2.

Note to NASA: This time, don’t announce the landing site (or at least have security vessels in place) so we won’t see the dangerous spectacle of private vessels getting close to the Dragon and its crew!  Remember this scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpxqg9B58JM?

**  From our “Need We Say More? Department.”

**  Your chance of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is roughly 1 in 302.6 million.  A longer shot than both the Science Officer and the Captain of the USS Enterprise being killed while hunting for the mother Horta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA6ffuQauJc.  But what are the odds of buying two tickets with the same numbers, and winning the jackpot twice?  As our favorite Vulcan scientist might say, “I’ve never computed them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw1vcQpVsbc.”

Nevertheless, that’s what Samir Mazahem, 56, of Dearborn Heights, Michigan did.   He was saving numbers on a lottery app after buying a $2 ticket for the Mega Millions game.  He then realized that he had purchased a second ticket with the same numbers.  “I was a little bummed but didn’t think much about it,” Mazahem said.  Until he logged onto the app later and found he had two $1 million winners.  Go figure!

**  This one is from our “If You Didn’t Already Had Enough Things to Be Concerned About Department.”  Murder hornets have been discovered in two places in North America: Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia.  The invasive insect is normally found in China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries.

Scientists in Washington state discovered the first nest of the so-called murder hornets in the United States and wiped it out Saturday to protect native honeybees.  Despite their nickname and the hype that has stirred fears in an already bleak year, the real threat from Asian giant hornets – which are 2 inches long – is their devastating attacks on honeybees.  Farmers depend on the honeybees to pollinate crops. 

The nest was found in the cavity of a tree on private property.  The cavity was filled with foam, and covered with plastic wrap to prevent the hornets from escaping.  Then the hornets were extracted, and killed by workers wearing thick protective suits that can prevent the 6-millimeter-long stingers of the hornets from penetrating.  They also wore face shields because the hornets can spit a painful venom into the eyes.

**  Here are a couple of smiles from Baby Blues:

**  “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.  When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you” (Isaiah 43:2 NKJV).

During the Great Awakening of the 1700s, the preaching of Jonathan Edwards renewed Christian zeal and swept multitudes into the kingdom in America.  In England, the open-air evangelism of George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers did the same.  In Wales, it was the electrifying preaching of Howell Harris and William Williams.

Williams had intended to become a medical doctor.  But hearing a sermon that Harris preached while standing on a gravestone in Talgarth churchyard, he was converted. Soon thereafter, he changed professions to become a physician of the soul – a preacher.  During his 43 years of itinerant ministry, Williams traveled over 95,000 miles, drawing crowds of 10,000 or more.  Best remembered for his hymns, he composed more than 800.

Many years later, when President James Garfield was dying of an assassin’s bullet, he seemed to temporarily rally and was allowed to sit by the window.  His wife began singing “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” and the president, listening intently, began to cry.  To his doctor, Willard Bliss, he said, “Glorious, Bliss, isn’t it?”

Guide me, O my great Redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land; I am weak, but you are mighty; hold me with your powerful hand.

Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me now and evermore, feed me now and evermore.

When I tread the verge of Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside. Death of death, and hell’s Destruction, land me safe on Canaan's side.

Songs of praises, songs of praises I will ever sing to you, I will ever sing to you. 

“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2QvFKKCzzs is performed by Fountainview Academy, Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 211

October 27, 2020

Yesterday at 12:05 p.m., NASA announced on their live stream a much-awaited piece of space news, and I, your favorite space nerd, was watching.  The “Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy” (SOFIA) detected, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the moon.  This discovery suggests that water may be scattered across the lunar surface and not limited to shadow areas near the lunar poles.  As NASA finally looks back to the moon (it’s almost unbelievable that we went to the moon 51 years ago, and we haven’t been back in almost 48 years!) this is an important discovery for the goal to establish a permanent base on the moon.

**  It’s less than 2 months until Christmas, and I know you will want spread the smell of fried chicken in your fireplace.  This year, for the first time, Walmart will sell KFC’s highly coveted Herbs and Spices Firelog – created in partnership with Enviro-log – for the holiday season.  This is the third consecutive season for the fried chicken-scented firelogs, but the first time they’ll be available at the nation’s largest retailer.  They went on sale yesterday, and sold out the first two years KFC offered the 11 herbs and spices logs, so dash right out to your favorite Big Box or surf over to  Walmart.com.  The regular price is $19.98, but they are $15.88 online.

Side Bar, your Honor.  Does anyone know why the sudden move by Sam Walton’s descendants to get into the chicken business?  First Truett Cathy’s special sauce.  Now, Harland Sander’s fire logs.  Look out, Frank Perdue.

**  In the never ending search for great Winter Shopping Frenzie Gifts, the Quarantine Blog is constantly on the lookout for that must have item for you to wrap and put under someone’s tree or stuff it in their stockings.  Today we alert you to an auction coming up soon.  Prop Store, a leading auction house based in the United Kingdom, will host its annual live auction of movie and TV memorabilia for the seventh consecutive year starting December 1 (I know it’s cutting it close to the WSF deadline, but it is “their” auction).  Here are three treasures from the more than 900 items in stock.

The most valuable item in this year’s auction is Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber from 2005’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.  It is estimated to sell between $103,000 to $155,000.

Top Gun fanatics also will have the chance to get their hands on the bomber jacket worn by Tom Cruise in his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell from the 1986 classic.   It’s anticipated to fetch between $15,000 to $21,000.

There was no estimated price given for the boots worn by Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman, but if you miss them, it will be a big mistake.  Big.  Huge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgeiZY2H7zc.

**  Enquiring minds want to know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r3Xs9sBEVg, or they did in 1986.  But that doesn’t matter now.  We were watching a great program on Amazon Prime called “The Booksellers” (two thumbs up) and one of the sellers was Rebecca Romney.   “Rebecca Romney,” you say?  You remember.  The rare book expert on Pawn Stars.    Curious to see if she had written any books – she did Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History – I also found that she does a blog.  It’s not a daily.  In fact, her most recent post was January 2, 2020 (http://www.rebeccaromney.com/).  

One of her posts, from October 3, 2018, was “The Art of the Painstaking Sherlock Recreation.”  It is about one man, Denny Dobry of Reading, Pennsylvania who recreated Sherlock Holmes’ 221B Baker Street flat down to the last detail.  Dobry is one of those fans of Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective who is a Sherlockians.  These folks are to the Conan Doyle character what Trekkies are to Star Trek and Wookies are to Star Wars: fans who are on the verge of forgetting William Shatner’s admonition – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwolZbfRwlA.

If a Sherlockian reads the above paragraph, he or she will, with some justification, be insulted.  Sherlockians are serious Holmes scholars.  They do not wear pointed ears to conventions (serious Star Trek fans, like your humble blogger, are Trekkers, not Trekkies).  They study the “Canon” – Conan Doyle’s 60 original stories – with great passion.  Many become collectors of Holmes paraphernalia.  Stories are memorized.  Some, like Dobry, build rooms, and the pieces in them are collected from the stories time period.  

His 221B is built in his basement, a compromise with his wife who demanded that first he build her a large screened-in porch.  After getting the “go ahead” from his spouse, Dobry’s next problem was how to create a second floor flat in a basement.  He was already two floors too low to start.  The solution was to paint a facade of the buildings on Baker Street on the back wall of the basement.  Leaving a narrow “dead” space from the facade, he constructed a wall containing the two board windows mentioned by Watson in “A Study in Scarlet,” and placed a hidden tape-recorder playing London street sounds.

**  I almost forgot.  Today is Stamen Grigorov’s 142nd birthday.  Born on October 27, 1878, Grigorov was a prominent Bulgarian physician and microbiologist. In 1905, at the age of 27, discovered the Lactobacillus bulgaricus bacillus, which is the true cause for the existence of natural yogurt.  In recognition the strain was called by the scientific community Lactobacillus bulgaricus.  

The original variety of Bulgarian yogurt can only be produced in Bulgaria and in some neighboring regions on the Balkan peninsula.  In other natural climatic conditions the bacteria quickly degenerate, lose their qualities and die.  The unique blend of bacteria native to Bulgaria cannot be reproduced in other countries, so those that want to create their version of Bulgarian yogurt must constantly import new starter cultures.

And now you are ready for Jeopardy!

**   Today’s close is from Phil Ware.

“The word of God is living and active.  Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NIV).

How often do you let God do major surgery on your spirit as his Spirit uses the Word to encourage, judge, motivate, convict, instruct, and inspire?  With such a great tool so readily at hand for most of us, let’s not let a day go by that we don’t let God use his word on hearts.

Prayer: Almighty God, your will is my heart’s desire.  But I realize that I need to be fed more consistently by your Word revealed in Scripture.  Give me strength and consistency in my walk with you through your Word.  Through your Spirit, inspire me to change what needs to be changed and to be blessed and encouraged in the areas that I need it most.  I turn to you and trust in your Word to point me in the way of life.  Through Jesus I pray.  Amen.

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