QUARANTINE BLOG # 379

April 13, 2021

This week we are going to ride some roller coasters, and I’ve found Point Of View videos of the ride, for a vicarious thrill, so throw your hands in the air, and scream for joy.  

The first three coasters are ones I’ve ridden.

Up first a roller coaster The Bro and I rode 9 times in a row (you know this was in the before times because the lines are so long here in the 21st century, that you’d have to go 9 days in a row to ride it 9 times in a row) – The Coney Island Cyclone.  

The Cyclone is a wooden roller coaster at Luna Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY.  It opened to the public on June 26, 1927.  The Cyclone reaches a maximum speed of 60 miles per hour (fast in 1927, not so fast today) and has a total track length of 2,640 feet, with a maximum height of 85 feet.  Each ride takes about one minute and fifty seconds.

The coaster was declared a New York City designated landmark on July 12, 1988, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 26, 1991.

Back to the 9 times in a row.  We had gone to New Jersey to visit aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Aunt Veronica (Uncle Mayo’s first of three wives, and my favorite) took us to Coney Island where I saw the “world famous diving horse” (horse jumps into a tank of water, boring) and I got lost (not boring).  Our cousins, Gary and Mike, accompanied us to the roller coaster and we kept riding.  The Bro wanted to get off some time before #9, but we were bigger.

Let's ride the Cyclone one more time, for old time’s sake.

Tomorrow, the Thunderbolt in Kennywood Park near Pittsburgh.

👉  A brief study of grammar as offered by Rat in Pearls Before Swine.

👉  And while we’re here, another strip from Pearls, no pun intended.

👉  And a couple of interesting photographs:

👉  From the jukebox, today’s song with a girl’s name is one written and made famous by legendary country music singer, Dolly Parton.  The song tells of Parton confronting, a stunningly beautiful woman, who she worries will steal away her lover/husband.  Let’s let Dolly tell the background story of “Jolene.”

Dolly told Act 2 Magazine about a time in the 1960s when she came home from a road trip to her home in Nashville, and found a box near her front gate.  Inside the box was a baby.  Dolly had just released “Jolene” and the note accompanying the baby said her name was “Jolene.”  The note asked Dolly to “please keep the baby,” but she immediately called child services.

👉  Speaking of Dolly Parton, she got her big break in country music performing on the Porter Wagoner TV show.  Several years later, she decided to go out on her own, and she wrote a song for Wagoner telling him about her decision.  The song was one that was later covered by Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You.”

In 1983, Dolly sang a duet with Kenny Rogers called “Islands in the Stream.”  Originally, Kenny didn’t even like the song until he sang it with Dolly.  Funny, because this song has been ranked as the #1 duet of all time, according to CMT’s 100 Greatest Duets.

Dolly is one of a small group of performers who have received at least one nomination from all four major annual American entertainment award organizations: Emmy, Grammy, Oscars, and Tony.  One last song, this from her Oscar nominated performance in “9 to 5,” also starring Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda.  “Fame” won the 1981 Oscar for best song.

👉   One Who Searched.

For our closing today, let’s go to my favorite section in Luke’s Gospel.

“Salt is good for seasoning.  But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again?  Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile.  It is thrown away.  Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand!”  

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.  This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people – even eating with them!”  So Jesus told them this story:  “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?  Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?” (Luke 14:34-15:4 NLT).

Jesus has been teaching about counting the cost of following him, and he finishes with the statement that flavorless salt is not good for anything.  Immediately after that, Luke records that tax collectors and other notorious sinners came to listen to Jesus teach.  These were people who knew they weren’t even good for the manure pile, but there was an attractiveness about Jesus that drew them.

Get the picture.  Sinners were coming to hear Jesus, and the saints complained!

So Jesus told three incredible stories wrapped up in one parable: The story of the lost sheep, the story of the lost coin, and the story of the lost son.

The shepherd searched for the one lost sheep until he found it.  

The woman searched for the one lost coin until she found it.

The father searched for the one lost and saw him coming home, while the son was still a long way off.

The key person in each of these stories is the One Who Searched, and that Person, Jesus wants us to know is the Lord God Almighty.  

In the overall scheme of things, one lost sheep is not worth much.  The shepherd still had 99 and sheep being sheep, before long, the count will be back to 100, but its value is revealed by what the man went through to find it.

In the overall scheme of things, one coin out of ten is only ten percent, but its value is revealed by what the woman went through to find it.

In the overall scheme of things, that one son caused his father great anguish, financial difficulty, and embarrassment in the community, but none of that mattered.  The young man was his lost son and he welcomed him back in a lavish fashion: the finest robe in the house was the father’s robe, sandals were for sons – slaves went barefooted, and the ring was a blank check to the father’s estate given to the son who had already wasted one-third of his father’s accounts.

We call this third story the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  “Prodigal” means “lavish,” “extreme,” “giving beyond measure.”  Who acts like a prodigal in each of these three stories?  It is God our heavenly Father, and Jesus wants us to know the length to which he will go to find and bring his lost and wandering child home.

You can trust a God like that – with your now, and with your forever!

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