QUARANTINE BLOG # 344

March 8, 2021

If you are planning your next dream vacation, and you like winter sports venues such as a private ice rink, tubing track, dog sledding, and world-class skiing, or warmer activities like horseback riding, hiking, fishing, archery lessons, hitting a few baseballs, kayaking and paddleboarding, have I got a place for you.  Oh, and have I got a price for you – $36,000 a night.  But if you divide that among the 34 guests you can invite it’s comparable to block booking the best rooms at a five-star hotel.

Ready to sign up?  It’s Kevin Costner’s 160-acre ranch, just a 10-minute drive from downtown Aspen, Colorado.  Dunbar Ranch, named in honor of Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” character, Lieutenant John Dunbar, features three standalone properties – a main house, a lake house, and a river house.  The star of the show is the six-bedroom, six-bathroom main house, which has a disguised trapdoor in the master suite that leads down a flight of stone steps to an enormous hidden Jacuzzi straddling the Continental Divide.  Oh, and there is a private chef.  To inquire about renting click over to http://www.dunbarranch.co/.

👉  My favorite married cartoon couple, Edda and Amos from 9 Chickweed Lane, were having dreams that put them into famous movie scenes.  Bonus points for naming the movies.

👉  The governors of Texas and Mississippi – Republican Greg Abbott and Republican Tate Reeves – have earned President Joe Biden’s designation of “Neanderthal” when they removed state-wide requirements to wear masks in public situations.  The pandemic is not over.  You wearing your mask keeps me safe, and me wearing mine helps protect you.  So why the rush to undue the good that is being done?  Especially in light of recent comments by Chris Murray, a University of Washington disease expert whose projections on COVID-19 infections and deaths are closely followed worldwide.  

Murray is changing his assumptions about the course of the pandemic.  Data from a vaccine trial in South Africa showed that a rapidly-spreading coronavirus variant could dampen the effect of the current vaccines.  But he acknowledges that the outlook could improve.  The vaccines still appear to prevent hospitalizations and death even when new variants are the cause of infection.  Many vaccine developers are working on booster shots and new inoculations that could preserve a high level of efficacy against the variants.  In the meantime, wear your mask!

**  Back in the before-time, I wrote several cruise talks about art and artists, and have some more outlined for the day when we can sail again.  Bumbling around on the Internet a while back I came across a blog called “Comrade Kiev,” and a story on Soviet murals.  Here are two from that blog:

The article caught my attention because I used to see these almost every where I traveled in Russia – in the Detski Doms (orphanages), in government offices, in metro stations, at railway and airplane terminals, even on the sides of buildings.  They were not just decorations, in fact, they were probably not meant to be decorations at all, but were cheap ways of spreading Soviet propaganda.  They appeared where people lived, worked and played.  They were in escapable (just like radios in the old Soviet apartments – they received one station, and you could not turn them off; you could turn down the volume, but the radio was always on).

Today they are disappearing, and along with them a unique look at history.  Vanishing are scenes of dramatic accomplishments, heroes of labor, scenes of family life, and equality in the workplace (where women are depicted as equals, even among the more demanding physical jobs).  

👉  I need to start paying closer attention at yard sales.  A buyer stopped at a yard sale in Hartford, CT and paid $35 for white bowl with cobalt blue designs.  It turns out to be one of only seven such bowls known to exist, a rare, 15th century Chinese artifact worth between $300,000 and $500,000 that is about to go up for auction at Sotheby’s next Wednesday.  Experts suggest that it may have been passed down through generations of the same family who did not know how unique it was.

Somewhere around 50 years ago, the Bro stopped at a yard sale and spotted a pink Royal Lace butter dish with lid, a collectible piece of Depression Glass.  Knowing that it was “my pattern” he asked the price.  The seller said, “$5.00.”  Kyle fumbled in his pocket and came up with $4.65.  The seller said, “I’ll have to have all of that.”  It was worth $85 then and close to $300 today.

👉  We haven’t played any tunes on the jukebox for a while, so let’s spin a sentimental golden oldie from 1996, a song Bob Carlisle wrote for his daughter Brooke’s 16th birthday (I thought about this song when I knocked a little Golden Book off of the dresser while rearranging some odds and ends).  It reaching the top 10 of Hot 100 Airplay and becoming a number-one single on the Adult Contemporary chart.  The song also received a Dove Award for Song of the Year, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Country Song.  My best memory of the song was hearing it at a wedding almost 25 years ago.  “Butterfly Kisses.”

👉  Heartaches and Helplessness.

Heartaches and helplessness – if only we could do something about them.  Does God care?  Where is God when my heart aches?  If he cares, why doesn’t he do something about it, why doesn’t he take it away?

An aching heart is a hungry heart and it is, according to C. S. Lewis, “the megaphone of God.”  It is an announcement that something is missing.  When God gets our attention, we can listen to the words of Jesus, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

The day before Jesus made that incredible statement his disciples witnessed two unbelievable occurrences: Jesus fed 5,000 with 5 barley loaves and 2 small fish, and then walked on water.  And perhaps even more inconceivable, the people who were following Jesus asked, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do?” (John 6:30).

In other words, what is the next thing you will do to prove you are the Messiah, the Christ?  They were thinking only about temporal needs and temporal solutions which do not last.  “Our fathers ate the manna in the desert,” they said to Jesus, “as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus redirected their thoughts: “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

Then they said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”   And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

Lloyd Ogilvie writes, “The Bread of Life saves us from fear of death, worry over our welfare, anguish over the welfare of others, frustration over our failures, fears about the future.  There is not a heartache I know which does not stem from a failure to accept the unchangeable fact that we belong to Christ.”

Does God care?  If you ever have any doubt, look at the cross.  Turn your eyes upon Jesus.  Look full in his wonderful face.  And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

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