QUARANTINE BLOG # 331

February 24, 2021

Today, by request, we begin with Peppermint Patty, and a math problem:

At breakfast yesterday morning the wife of my youth handed me a scrap of paper and said, “Here is the answer to the math problem.”  I thought she meant the Calvin strip in a recent blog with a math poem, but she was referring to yesterday’s edition of Peanuts.

So your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to solve the above problem and put the answer in the comments below.  As always should you or any of your math team be determined to have submitted the wrong answer, the QB will disavow any knowledge of your action.

👉  After checking out yesterday’s Bermuda weather rock, the Bro sent me another weather rock picture.  Be sure to check out the last line.

👉  If your initial definition of a cowboy (or a “cowpoke”) is a gun-slinging, rugged fellow on horseback, then you’re not alone!  Over the past century, cowboys have taken on a mythic status.  When Americans developed a taste for beef in the late 1800s, cattle ranchers hired cowboys to guide the animals to railroad depots, and the cattle were then shipped across the country.  

The concept of the cowboy eventually came to symbolize much more than cattle herding.  A romantic hero portrayed in books, movies, and songs, they’ve become a symbol of the American West.  There is a bit more to the history of the cowboy than skilled marksmanship and cattle wrangling.  And many cowboys were Black.

Cattle herding in the western states became a way to escape the racial discrimination of the South.  Many Black cowboys and cowgirls, such as Nat Love, Bose Ikard and Mary Fields, had once been slaves. 

After emancipation, many African American men and women sought a new life out west.  They established a number of all-Black towns, including Nicodemus in Kansas.  Some of these men and women worked as cowpokes.  While not totally free from racial discrimination, many did well in this profession and were respected for their skills.  Working as a cowboy or cowgirl was a way to earn decent wages without a great deal of oversight from white employers, and fellow white cowboys were usually friendly with their Black coworkers.

In the 1860s, white cowboys Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving partnered to herd Texas Longhorns across the state of Texas.  Hiring a group of 18 cowboys, including Black cowpoke Bose Ikard, Goodnight and Loving forged a trail from Fort Belknap, Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  While the trail is named in honor of Goodnight and Loving, Ikard performed the important work of tracking and wrangling cattle across the several hundred mile trail.  Ikard also protected Goodnight’s valuables, and he often carried thousands of dollars in cash that he kept safe from bandits and raiding parties.

Cowboying could be profitable, but it was also dangerous.  One section of the trail was particularly unpleasant; the men had to cross approximately 100 miles of desert relying on whatever food and water they had with them (Charles Goodnight is  credited with inventing the chuckwagon).  Ikard retired after a few years, purchased his own ranch and raised a family in Parker County, Texas.

“The Goodnight-Loving Trail” is a song by Utah Phillips about the cattle trail of the same name.

Tomorrow another Black cowboy story.

👉  In recent weeks, COVID-19 deaths have fallen from more than 4,000 reported on some days in January to an average of fewer than 1,900 per day.  But the death toll has topped 500,000.  That is greater than the population of Miami or Kansas City, Missouri.  It is roughly equal to the number of Americans killed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.  It is akin to a 9/11 every day for nearly six months.

By late last fall, 54 percent of Americans reported knowing someone who had died of COVID-19 or had been hospitalized with it, according to a Pew Research Center poll.  Deaths have nearly doubled since then.  In some places, the seriousness of the threat was slow to sink in.

When a beloved professor at a community college in Petoskey, Michigan, died last spring, residents mourned, but many remained doubtful of the threat’s severity, Mayor John Murphy said.  That changed over the summer after a local family hosted a party in a barn. Of the 50 who attended, 33 became infected. Three died.

“I think at a distance people felt ‘This isn’t going to get me,’” Murphy said.  “But over time, the attitude has totally changed from ‘Not me.  Not our area.  I’m not old enough,’ to where it became the real deal.”

Concerning the following picture, no comment:

👉 All In

“To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.  O my God, I trust in You; Let me not be ashamed; Let not my enemies triumph over me” (Psalm 25:1-2 – NKJV).

It’s an old story about a man in simpler times, flying on an airplane for the first time.  The fellow was very unsophisticated, and had never even seen a plane before boarding for his first flight.  All went well, and at the end of the flight he was met by a friend who asked him how it was.  “Well,” he said, “I suppose it was all right, but I held onto the arms of the seat and never put my full weight on the thing.”

We laugh at the simplicity, the naivety of that non-frequent flier.  Once you’re on board you are all on board.  And while that may seem comical, how many times do we, as Christians, not put our full weight on the Lord God Almighty?  We are like another traveler who, in desperation, asked God for relief from his situation.  When it all worked out, he looked up towards heaven and said, “It’s okay, God.  I can take it from here.”

Neither of these two fanciful examples measure up to David’s statement.  His is an expressive figure of speech that speaks of full surrender, total submission, and expectant waiting upon God that David directed toward the Lord.  It was as if David held his soul in outstretched hands up to heaven saying, “Here I am LORD, completely surrendered unto you.”

Charles Spurgeon said, “When the storm winds are out, the Lord’s vessels put about and make for their well remembered harbor of refuge.  What a mercy that the Lord will condescend to hear our cries in time of trouble, although we may have almost forgotten him in our hours of fancied prosperity.”

When telling God, “I trust in you,” God demands that this trust be exclusive.  Alexander Maclaren said, “All in all or not at all is the requirement of true devotion.” 

If you’ve been holding back, don’t you think it’s time to go all in.

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