QUARANTINE BLOG # 457

June 30, 2021

First of all, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to Matt and Carey!!  14 years ago today ...

This was right after the bridal kiss.  Carey had been offered $50 by her assistant pastor if she would make the “butt grab.”  She collected.

Before I begin our monthly look back at interesting historical happenings, here is the current link to the updated QB Index (January-June 2021).

On June 1, 1980, CNN (Cable News Network), the world’s first 24-hour television news network, made its debut. At the time of CNN’s launch, TV news was dominated by three major networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – and their nightly 30-minute broadcasts. CNN was the brain child of Ted Turner. In its first years of operation, CNN lost money and was ridiculed as the Chicken Noodle Network. Today, some call it the Clinton News Network because of the unabashed political slant it gives to the news.

On June 2, 1935, Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players in the history of baseball, ended his Major League playing career after 22 seasons, 10 World Series and 714 non-drug-assisted home runs. The following year, Ruth, a larger-than-life figure whose name became synonymous with baseball, was one of the first five players inducted into the sport’s hall of fame.

Major Edward H. White II opened the hatch of the Gemini 4 and stepped out of the capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space on June 3, 1965. Attached to the craft by a 25-foot tether and controlling his movements with a hand-held oxygen jet-propulsion gun, White remained outside the capsule for just over 20 minutes.

In May 1989, nearly a million Chinese, mostly young students, crowded into central Beijing to protest for greater democracy and call for the resignations of repressive Chinese Communist Party leaders. For nearly three weeks, the protesters kept up daily peaceful vigils, and marched and chanted. On June 4, 1989, Chinese troops stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters. Reporters and Western diplomats on the scene estimated that at least 300, and perhaps thousands, of the protesters had been killed and as many as 10,000 were arrested. This video, edited from a longer BBC report, was first broadcast in 2013.

Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Kennedy was shot by 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan.  He was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968.

On June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for the largest amphibious military operation in history: Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northern France, commonly known as D-Day. By daybreak, 18,000 British and American parachutists were already on the ground. At 6:30 a.m., American troops came ashore at Utah and Omaha beaches. By day’s end, 155,000 Allied troops – Americans, British and Canadians – had successfully stormed Normandy’s beaches and were then able to push inland. Within three months, the northern part of France was freed and the invasion force was preparing to enter Germany, where they would meet up with Soviet forces moving in from the east.

On June 8, 1966, the rival National Football League (NFL) and American Football League (AFL) announce that they would merge. The first “Super Bowl” between the two leagues took place at the end of the 1966 season.

On June 10, 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm and collected  ambient electrical charge in a Leyden jar, enabling him to demonstrate the connection between lightning and electricity. Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments.

John Wayne died on June 11, 1979, at age 72 after battling cancer for more than a decade. The actor was born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset. A football star at Glendale (California) High School, he attended the University of Southern California on a scholarship but dropped out after two years. After finding work as a movie studio laborer, Wayne befriended director John Ford, then a rising talent. His first acting jobs were bit parts in which he was credited as Duke Morrison, a childhood nickname derived from the name of his pet dog (In another cinematic moment, “We named the dog ‘Indiana.’”). In 1939, Wayne finally had his breakthrough when Ford cast him as Ringo Kid in the Oscar-winning Stagecoach. In 1969, he won an Oscar for his role as a drunken, one-eyed federal marshal named Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Wayne’s last film was The Shootist (1976), in which he played a legendary gunslinger dying of cancer. The role had particular meaning, as the actor was fighting the disease in real life.

On June 12, 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenges Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided Germany. With the wall as a backdrop, President Reagan declared to a West Berlin crowd in 1987, “There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.” He then called upon his Soviet counterpart: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” 

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes. In 1949 Congress officially designated June 14 as Flag Day, a national day of observance.

Following a revolt by the English nobility against his rule, King John puts his royal seal on Magna Carta, or “the Great Charter.” The document, formalized on June 15, 1215, was essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteeing that the king would respect feudal rights and privileges, uphold the freedom of the church, and maintain the nation’s laws. Magna Carta is a cornerstone in the development of democratic England by later generations.

On June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel into space. Tereshkova was chosen to take part in the second dual flight in the Vostok program, involving spacecrafts Vostok 5 and Vostok 6. On June 14, 1963, Vostok 5 was launched into space with cosmonaut Valeri Bykovsky aboard. With Bykovsky still orbiting the earth, Tereshkova was launched into space on June 16 aboard Vostok 6. The two spacecrafts had different orbits but at one point came within three miles of each other. Tereshkova’s spacecraft was guided by an automatic control system, and she never took manual control. 

Twenty years and two days later, on June 18, 1983, Dr. Sally K. Ride became the first American woman to travel into space.  The space shuttle Challenger was launched n its second mission, and Ride was on board the shuttle as a mission specialist, becoming the first woman to operate the shuttle’s mechanical arm, having helped develop procedures for its successful use. Ride again made history when she became the first American woman to fly to space a second time on October 5, 1984, on shuttle mission STS-41G, where she was part of a seven-member crew that spent eight days in space.

To lessen the threat of an accidental nuclear war, the United States and the Soviet Union agree on June 20, 1963, to establish a “hot line” communication system between the two nations. The agreement was a small step in reducing tensions between the United States and the USSR following the October 1962 Missile Crisis in Cuba, which had brought the two nations to the brink of nuclear war. President Kennedy declared, “This age of fast-moving events requires quick, dependable communication in time of emergency.”

By 1786, defects in the post-Revolutionary War Articles of Confederation were apparent, and on May 25, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention convened at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Congress endorsed a plan to draft a new Constitution. The new U.S. Constitution created a strong federal government with an intricate system of checks and balances, was signed by 38 of the 41 delegates present at the conclusion of the convention. As dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the 13 states. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document.

On June 24, 1997, U.S. Air Force officials released a 231-page report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier. Roswell became a magnet for UFO believers due to the strange events of early July 1947, when ranch foreman W.W. Brazel found a strange, shiny material scattered over some of his land. He turned the material over to the sheriff, who passed it on to authorities at the nearby Air Force base. On July 8, Air Force officials announced they had recovered the wreckage of a “flying disk.” The Air Force soon took back their story, however, saying the debris had been merely a downed weather balloon. 

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, Lakota Sioux leaders, strongly resisted the mid-19th-century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. This betrayal led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans had gathered in a camp along the Little Bighorn River. On June 25, 1876, Native American forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeat the U.S. Army troops of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. 

On June 27, 1939, one of the most famous scenes in movie history was filmed: Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara parting in Gone with the Wind. Director Victor Fleming also shot the scene using the alternate line, “Frankly, my dear, I just don’t care,” in case the film censors objected to the word “damn.” The censors approved the movie but fined producer David O. Selznick $5,000 for including the curse. These may be the most famous 21 seconds in motion picture history.  Watch the end of the clip to see Scarlett's last words on the subject.

On June 28, 1953, workers at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan, assembled the first Corvette, a two-seater sports car that would become an American icon. Only 300 Corvettes made that year. In January 1953, GM debuted the Corvette concept car at its Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. It featured a fiberglass body and a six-cylinder engine and according to GM, was named for the “trim, fleet naval vessel that performed heroic escort and patrol duties during World War II.”

On June 29, 1995, the American space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir to form the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth. This historic moment of cooperation between former rival space programs was also the 100th human space mission in American history. Once the docking was completed, a formal exchange of gifts followed, with the Atlantis crew bringing chocolate, fruit and flowers and the Mir cosmonauts offering traditional Russian welcoming gifts of bread and salt.

On June 30, 1859, Charles Blondin became the first daredevil to tightrope walk across Niagara Falls. The feat, which was performed 160 feet above the Niagara gorge, was witnessed by some 5,000 spectators. Wearing pink tights and a yellow tunic, Blondin crossed a cable about two inches in diameter and 1,100-feet long with only a balancing pole to protect him from plunging into the dangerous rapids below. 

👉  Today’s close is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson

“I treasure your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).

The heart well-stocked with God’s word is like a well-armed arsenal.  Confident in the strength of its weaponry, it is fearless in the face of attacks from without or insurrection from within.

Prayer: “Thy word is like an armory, where soldiers may repair, and find for life’s long battle day all needful weapons there.  O may I find my armor there: Thy Word my trusty sword, I’ll learn to fight with every foe the battle of the Lord” (Edwin Hodder, “Thy Word Is Like a Garden, Lord”).  Amen.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 456

June 29, 2021

Tomorrow is the last day of Pride Month, and as it comes to a close, the NFL has released a new commercial that makes clear its support and embrace of the LGBTQ+ community.  The 30-second spot begins with the line, “Football is gay” as cheering plays in the background.  Football is lesbian.  Football is beautiful.  Football is queer.  Football is life.  Football is exciting.  Football is culture.  Football is transgender.  Football is queer.  Football is heart.  Football is power.  Football is tough.  Football is bisexual.  Football is strong.  Football is freedom.  Football is American.  Football is accepting.  Football is everything.  Football is for everyone.”

And I always thought football was a game, not a political platform!

👉  At the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, they’ve played the national anthem one time every night.  On Saturday, the song happened to start while outspoken activist Gwen Berry was standing on the podium after receiving her bronze medal in the hammer throw.  While the music played, Berry placed her left hand on her hip and shuffled her feet.  She took a quarter turn, so she was facing the stands, not the flag.  Toward the end, she plucked up her T-shirt with the words “Activist Athlete” emblazoned on the front, and draped it over her head.  “I feel like it was a set-up, and they did it on purpose,” Berry said of the timing of the anthem.

USA Track and Field spokeswoman Susan Hazzard said “the national anthem was scheduled to play at 5:20 p.m. today. We didn’t wait until the athletes were on the podium for the hammer throw awards. The national anthem is played every day according to a previously published schedule.”

Berry said. “But I don’t really want to talk about the anthem because that’s not important.  The anthem doesn’t speak for me.  It never has.”

“We don’t need any more activist athletes,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said during an appearance on Fox News.  “She should be removed from the team.  The entire point of the Olympic team is to represent the United States of America.  It’s the entire point.”

👉  Let’s continue our look at misquotes with one that colored a potential Vice President of the United States as less than bright.

“I can see Russia from my house,” is attributed to Sarah Palin when she was on the Republican ticket with John McCain.  Sarah Palin didn’t actually say that she “could see Russia from her house.”  This quote was  attributed to her after Saturday Night Live aired its first sketch featuring Tina Fey doing a Sarah Palin impression in 2008. 

During her first sit down interview as John McCain’s running mate, ABC newsman Charlie Gibson asked about Sarah’s foreign policy credentials. 

Gibson: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

Palin: They’re our next-door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

The actual quote is quite different from Tina Fey’s, but the facts made little difference (Does it ever when you are a Republican being covered by the lame stream media?).

👉  Would you be surprised to learn that Dorothy Gale did not say, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore”?  Maybe a bunch of people in the 1940s got sucked up by a tornado and bumped their heads, but instead of dreaming about a visit to Oz, they dreamed Dorothy said, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”  What Dorothy actually said is, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”  Poor Toto’s been dropped out of the quote.  Don't forget the little dog, too.

👉  I found a great list of “Strangest Foreign Rules Banning Things that are Normal in the US.”  We’ll finish them over several days, but here’s a start.

Reincarnation without permission is prohibited in Tibet.  Buddhist monks must obtain special permission from the Chinese government in order to reincarnate.  If a person or organization fails to obtain permission to reincarnate, the state can legally pursue a criminal action against them.  They’ll face administrative sanctions, which could involve paying a fine or other punitive measures.  However, the exact punishment someone might face is unclear.  I guess it depends on what or who you are when you come back.

Certain male hairstyles are forbidden in Iran.  Certain looks, which were described as “homosexual” and “devil-worshipping,” were banned within the country.  Some of these hairstyles include spiky cuts, mullets, ponytails, and long gelled hair.  Shops who cut and styled these “un-Islamic” hairstyles could be closed, and plainclothes militia could intercept and punish individual members of the population who did not follow the rules.  An Islamic-approved haircut has been known to be very close to the shoulders, and the head ends up missing.

Being overweight in Japan could incur a fine.  Japan actually polices the waistlines of their citizens.  In 2008, Japan instituted a law that forces companies to regularly measure the waistlines of employees who are 40 to 74 years of age.  If their waistlines are too large, the company they work for could incur a fine.  In addition, the individual will be given dieting guidelines in order to get their measurements back to the government-mandated guidelines.  And if you don’t make your government prescribed weight, then what?

👉  Some signs for the times:

This was not an exchange between my sons and me.  But it could have been!

👉  Today’s close is from “First 15.”

Isaiah 48:17-18 offers a hopeful yet heart-wrenching promise of God: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”  What would it be like to experience peace like a river?  What would it feel like to float on a continual stream of rest and contentment?  How would past circumstances have turned out differently if only we would have listened to the commandments of God? 

Isaiah makes it clear that a lifestyle of peace and righteousness is readily available to us if we will simply follow the Lord our God “who leads [us] in the way [we] should go.”  Let’s open our hearts and minds to the Spirit of the living God today and ask him to mold and shape us into followers of his direction.

What situation lies before you today in which you need the direction of your all-knowing, loving heavenly Father?  Where do you need peace and righteousness today?  Where do you need your path illuminated?  Dive into the word and God’s heart under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and search out his commandment for your life.  Tune your ears to the frequency of God’s Spirit and listen to whatever he would say to you. 

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 455

June 28, 2021

The highly contagious Delta variant could soon become the dominant strain of coronavirus in the U.S., the director of the CDC said Friday.  “It’s more transmissible than the Alpha variant, or the U.K. variant, that we have here.  We saw that quickly become the dominant strain in a period of one or two months, and I anticipate that is going to be what happens with the Delta strain here,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.  Delta is more infectious and appears to be more effective at evading vaccines, though fully vaccinated individuals are believed to have significant protection against illness. 

“Our COVID 19 vaccine public education efforts have continued in earnest and, in fact, with even greater urgency given the spread of the Delta variant, which is significantly more transmissible, may be more dangerous than prior variants, and which serves as a stark reminder that if you are vaccinated, you are protected.  “If you are not, the threat of variants is real and growing,” said Vivek Murthy, surgeon general of the U.S. [emphasis added].

👉  June 23 was the first day Major League Baseball checked pitchers for “sticky stuff,” something that they are alleged to be applying to the ball to make it spin more and therefore be harder for the batter to hit.  Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer was the first one to be examined (the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, Dodgers’ Trevor Bauer, and the Astros’ Justin Verlander join Scherzer as being the top suspects).  Not once.  Not twice.  But three times – and Scherzer, in disgust, appeared to be ready to drop his pants so the umpire could give a very thorough inspection.  This video shows how ridiculous this may become, but it seems obvious that MLB has to do something to stop the cheating.

👉  A blog reader in Edgewater, Maryland sent me two “awww” pictures, and included a caption, for your enjoyment:

Bros rule in cuteness and awwwsomeness!

👉  The Colosseum, the towering 2,000-year-old stone amphitheater, the biggest in the Roman empire, is Italy’s most popular tourist attraction, but the underground passages, cages and rooms where prisoners, animals and gladiators waited to pass through trapdoors to enter the arena above their heads was only opened to the public on Friday after lengthy renovations.

More than 80 archaeologists, architects and engineers worked on the 162,000 square feet “hypogeum” for two years to complete the work.  The balconies, long accessible to tourists, used to accommodate up to 70,000 spectators to watch gladiator fights, executions and animal hunts.  Now a new walkway reveals a part of the monument that has not been accessible to visitors.

👉  Matt sent me this cartoon.  Save it for next year’s Father’s Day.

👉  Some strips from “Pearls Before Swine” for your Monday enjoyment:

👉  Next up in our look at Disney Renaissance films is Aladdin, which is based on the Arabic folktale of the same name from the “One Thousand and One Nights.”

The story of the “1001 Nights,” or the “Arabian Nights,” as it is sometimes called, is a fascinating one by itself.  The story goes that the monarch Shahryar, on discovering that his first wife was unfaithful to him, resolved to marry a new virgin every day and have her beheaded the next morning before she could dishonor him.  Eventually the vizier could find no more virgins of noble blood and offered his own daughter, Scheherazade, as the king’s next bride.  Once in the king’s chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved younger sister, Dunyazad, who had been prompted to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night.  

The king lay awake and listened with awe as Scheherazade told her first story, stopping in the middle, as dawn was breaking.  So, the king spared her life for one day to finish the story the next night.  The following night, Scheherazade finished the story and then began a second, more exciting tale, which she again stopped halfway through at dawn.  At the end of 1,001 nights, and 1,000 stories, Scheherazade finally told the king that she had no more tales to tell him.  During the 1,001 nights, the king had fallen in love with Scheherazade, sparing her life permanently and making her his queen.  Aladdin was one of those 1,000 stories.

Aladdin, an Arabian street urchin, finds a magic lamp containing a genie.  He disguises himself as a wealthy prince, and tries to impress the Sultan and his daughter – featured in the song, “Prince Ali.”   Released in 1992, Aladdin was the last film by Disney to be entirely based on a fairytale or folklore until the release of Tangled (based on Rapunzel) in 2010, 17 years later.

The most popular character in the animated film is Genie.  The role was written for Robin Williams, and, when Williams resisted signing, the directors asked Eric Goldberg, Genie’s supervising animator, to animate the character over one of Williams’s old stand-up comedy routines to pitch the idea to the actor.  The resulting test, with Williams’s stand-up about schizophrenia translated into Genie growing another head to argue with himself, convinced Williams to sign on for the role.

Well, let’s listen to some more of the music beginning with “One Jump Ahead.”

Next, “Friend Like Me.”

And of course, the Academy Award Winning “Whole New World.”

👉  I was invited to preach yesterday at Macedonia while Pastor Roger Canuel is on vacation.  “Let Me Touch Him” is from the same text (Luke 8:40-48) I used June 6 at Crawfordville UMC, but with a different slant on the story.

👉  Today’s close is by Jack Graham.

There was a man from Russia who came over to the U.S. years ago on business.  His partners wanted to show him a little American culture, so they took him to experience a football game.  He saw the crowds, the extravagance of the stadium, and the passion of the fans.

After the game was over, the men were walking back to their car when one of them put his arm around the Russian and asked, “So what did you think?”  The man looked down, thought for a moment, and said, “Well, I’ve never seen such first-rate enthusiasm wasted on such a second-rate cause.”

Now I love sports, but I wholeheartedly agree with that Russian man.  As a culture, and even as a church, we waste so much enthusiasm and energy on things that don’t matter.  We get angry about traffic but stay silent about human trafficking.  We’re passionate about our style of worship but often couldn’t care less about living a lifestyle of evangelism.

I wonder what would happen if the church today channeled her enthusiasm toward things that mattered!  Not only would we be more attuned with the concerns of God, but we’d also make a bigger impact on the world as we give others a real taste of His Kingdom on earth!

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 454

June 27, 2021

Super Secrets

Many men have held the offices. Many more will ascend to those same lofty positions. Of all of their qualifications, of all of their reasons for taking on the responsibilities of those positions, there is one thing for certain – they never travel together. They always make separate arrangements, even if they are going to the same place and are to be there at the same time. If disaster should strike their aircraft, it would be an unspeakable disaster if they were all on board. They never even travel in the same car together, for fear of the unthinkable. They are not the President and the Vice President of the United States. They are the company executives and the chief chemist of a company whose name is known around the world: Coca Cola.

What they are protecting is the secret formula for the world’s most popular soft drink. Somewhere in a bank vault in Atlanta is a slip of paper with seventeen or eighteen mostly common ingredients. Mix them in the proper amounts and under the proper conditions and you have Classic Coke. These men know where the bank is and they know what is written on the paper. Only these men know the secret – or so the rumor goes.

Robert Baskin, a spokesman for Coca Cola was once asked to reveal the location of the bank. He graciously declined, saying, “It’s like asking a security company how they keep a building secure. They’re just not going to tell you or it wouldn’t be secure anymore.”

In his book Big Secrets, William Poundstone says the number of people who know the Coca-Cola formula is just two. He also claims to have discovered that the bank vault holding the secret formula is owned by the Trust Company of Georgia. Poundstone goes even further to print a recipe based on an analysis of Coke that produces “a gallon of syrup very similar to Coca-Cola’s.” Among the 17 ingredients in his recipe are nutmeg oil, lemon oil, cassia oil, alcohol and coca leaves from which the cocaine has been extracted. That last ingredient might make it difficult to recreate Coke at home.

Somewhere in a bank vault in Lexington, Kentucky, is another closely guarded secret: the Colonel’s eleven herbs and spices which make Kentucky Fried Chicken.

To ensure that spice vendors don’t know the formula for this famous fried chicken coating, the secret blend of eleven herbs and spices is mixed at two different locations and then combined elsewhere with the aid of an IBM processing system. All this technology and secrecy and security safeguards a formula that was originally mixed by KFC’s founder, Colonel Harlan Sanders, in a container, on the concrete floor of his backyard porch.

William Poundstone lists what he thinks are the ingredients for this well-kept secret recipe. He says he came by the recipe thanks to a KFC employee who smuggled out a sample of the coating and then he had it analyzed by a laboratory. What he found was shocking – only four ingredients: salt, ground black pepper, flour and monosodium glutamate. KFC Spokesperson Jean Litterst insists there are eleven ingredients.

But it wasn’t just the ingredients that made the Colonel’s Southern Fried Chicken so special. To speed up the cooking process, Harlan Sanders used a “new-fangled device” he first saw demonstrated in the 1930’s. He found that frying the chicken with a pressure cooker shortens the time, locks in moisture, and keeps the chicken juicy.

Another author who has uncovered some delicious secrets is Todd Wilbur. He has written Top Secrets, More Top Secrets, and Top Restaurant Secrets. He says the incredible taste of “Cheddar Bay Biscuits” at Red Lobster may be the result of one and three-fourths cups of cheddar cheese to every two cups of biscuit mix. If you get all of the spices right, have the ground beef and the two kinds of beans, you still won’t have Olive Garden’s “Pasta e Fagioli” unless you have ditali pasta — regular macaroni just will not do. When cooking up your own hamburger with two all-beef patties it won’t be “special sauce” if you make it with ketchup. Sure it looks like ketchup, but it’s really French dressing.

As long as I’m giving away secrets, we have room for one more, from the author of fourteen books, the Apostle Paul, Romans 16:25-27: “Praise God! He is the one who can make you strong in faith. He can use the Good News that I teach to make you strong. It is the message about Jesus Christ that I tell people. That message is the secret truth that was hidden for ages and ages but has been made known. It has now been shown to us. It was made known by what the prophets wrote, as God commanded. And it has now been made known to all people so that they can believe and obey God, who lives forever. Glory forever to the only wise God through Jesus Christ. Amen.”

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 453

June 26, 2021

The story of the most stolen artwork in history continues.

NAPOLEON AND THE LAMB

With the French Revolution came a new attitude towards art collection and looting.  The scale of art theft – systemized looting – was unprecedented.

The execution of Louis XVI sparked the Reign of Terror, spearheaded by the director of the Committee for Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre. Archives record the deaths of 16,594 people, most by guillotine, though some historians place the total at nearer 40,000.

The revolutionaries stripped France of those art treasures owned by the former oppressors – the church and the aristocracy – and brought the plunder back to Paris. It was an art-looting spree, the scale of which had never before been seen. Public museums were established displaying art to anyone who cared to see it.  The Louvre opened on August 10, 1793, and was popular from its inception.

In 1794, the French Republican army conquered the city of Ghent, and the central panels of The Lamb fell into their hands. It is not known why the French did not take the entire altarpiece, but it would take a team of European military superpowers to stop the spread of the French army and Napoleon Bonaparte and ultimately lead to the return home of the central panels of The Ghent Altarpiece.

In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed by Napoleon on April 13, 1814, much of the looted art was returned to its countries of origin, but more than half of the art looted by Napoleon and by the revolutionaries remain in the Louvre today. Here are just 3 looted pieces from that collection.

Royalist factions reinstated the French monarchy, in the person of Louis XVIII. Louis returned the stolen central panels of The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb to the city of Ghent, and The Ghent Altarpiece was whole once more, proudly displayed in the cathedral of Saint Bavo. It would remain there – for barely a year.

PRUSSIANS AND THE LAMB

On December 19, 1816, barely a year after the restitution of the central panels, The Lamb was dismembered again. While the bishop of Ghent was out of the city, the vicar-general of Saint Bavo Cathedral, Jacques-Joseph Le Surre stole 6 of wings of the altarpiece.

Le Surre was hired by Lambert-Jean Nieuwenhuys, a wealthy and influential pirate among art dealers, and a notorious profiteer. For his theft, Le Surre received the paltry sum of $3,600 in 21st century money. Nieuwenhuys found a buyer in Edward Solly, an English collector, who bought the wing panels of The Lamb for $120,000. Nieuwenhuys made a profit of $116,400.

In 1821 the Prussian king, Frederick William III, bought Edward Solly’s entire collection of over 3,000 paintings, and the six wing panels of The Ghent Altarpiece would remain on display in Berlin until 1920.

THE LAMB AND THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

The onset of the First World War saw a change in how art would be handled in wartime. Previously, the conqueror plundered the conquered. Then with the rise of the Roman empire, artwork became trophies to be seized by conquest. The First World War was the first war in which both sides at least claimed that monuments should be preserved, and that plunder of artworks should never occur.

When Germany invaded Belgium, the officials of Ghent and Brussels feared that their respective panels from The Lamb would become targets. An unlikely hero stepped forward to protect the altarpiece during the Great War: Canon Gabriel van den Gheyn of Saint Bavo Cathedral.

With genuine concerns about the safety of the altarpiece, The Lamb was smuggled out of Ghent and hidden until the war ended. To conceal the four enormous cases containing a painting the size of a barn wall and the weight of an elephant, they hired a junk merchant. Nothing would look suspicious on a portable flea market on wheels, as it wheeled its way through town.

The Canon and his friends drove it through town by night, its contents clattering along the cobbled streets with no one paying any attention. The cart stopped at two private homes. At each stop, two of the cases were pulled out from under the junk heap and hidden inside the houses.

When the German army arrived, polite inquiries were made regarding the location of The Lamb. The Germans claimed to want to ensure its safety – if they didn’t know its location, it might be bombed inadvertently. 

The Canon presented forged a document stating that The Lamb had been shipped to England for safekeeping. When the Germans read it, they laughed aloud. Of all the stupid plans to safeguard artwork, what could be worse than sending it to the English, who would certainly never give it back? The Germans had a point. 

England had gathered and retained a significant quantity of art not their own. In 1816, for instance, the Parthenon Marbles were purchased by Lord Elgin from the hostile Turks occupying Athens. When Greece regained sovereignty of its capital city and  requested the return of their national treasures, England refused. The sculptures remain in the British Museum to this day and will almost certainly never be returned, even though there is evidence to suggest that the documents used to remove them from Greece were fraudulent.

With the war nearing its end, the outcome in little doubt, Germany announced that they would blow up the entire city of Ghent as they withdrew. But they withdrew, leaving the city intact. The Lamb was safe. 

On November 11, 1918, the war ended. Nine days after the Armistice, the panels were brought out of hiding and displayed once again in Saint Bavo Cathedral.

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles laid out the final terms of surrender. Article 247 dictated that the reparations would include return The Lamb to Ghent. 

The return of the six wing panels from Berlin was triumphant, the panels borne like a wounded war hero. A special railcar decked with Belgian flags was fitted to transport the panels safely. The train stopped at each Belgian town along the trail from Berlin to Brussels. The entire altarpiece was reunited for the first time in over a century.

And that reunion would cause, in 20 years, a call for retribution. But first, there would be a curious, and still unsolved theft. That story, next week.

👉  Our close today is the backstory of “America the Beautiful.”

The lyrics to “American the Beautiful” were written by Katharine Lee Bates, and the music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward.  

In 1893, at the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College.  Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings; the wheat fields of America’s heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon’s Pikes Peak.   On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her. 

The poem was initially published two years later to commemorate the Fourth of July. Samuel A. Ward composed the music.  Ward’s music combined with Bates’s poem were first published together in 1910 and titled “America the Beautiful.”  At various times there have been efforts to give “America the Beautiful” legal status either as a national hymn or as a national anthem equal to, or in place of, “The Star-Spangled Banner” – but with its unabashedly Christian words and message, it will take a national revival to Jesus Christ for that to happen.

The prayer in the second verse, “God mend thine every flaw” is powerful because God’s mending is needed now more than ever.  As a country, we have sinned and strayed from obeying God’s precepts.  As a nation we have forgotten that God did shed His grace on us in the past.  May we return to Godly principles and recognize His grace on us.

Here is “America the Beautiful” performed by Hillsdale College Choir, Hillsdale, Michigan, under the direction of James A. Holleman.  Expand the video to full screen and enjoy the beauty of the amber waves of grain and the purple mountain majesties.  

And keep a Kleenex handy.

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