QUARANTINE BLOG # 441

June 14, 2021

To borrow a phrase from Brother Dave Gardner (a stand-up comedian who started out as a one-semester Southern Baptist ministerial student, drummer and vocalist), “Rejoice dear hearts.  We is in the realm of the celestials.”  

I thought of Brother Dave yesterday when Bonnie and I stopped at Kroger on the way home from church to pick up a cantaloupe and some lettuce.  My mind was working in ways strange and wonderful to behold as we got out of Frank, my 2013 Sonata, put our masks on and headed for the grocery store.  We circled the parking lot twice looking for a spot, and the store, once we got inside, was just as crowded.  

The realm of the celestials was revealed as soon as the automatic doors swooshed open.  During our brief sojourn – we didn’t even pick up a buggy – I counted 4 Kroger employees wearing masks, and 9 shoppers wearing masks, Bonnie and I tallying up for 2 of the 9.  No one else was wearing a mask so I knew at once the pandemic was over.  All fear and concern have been banished and we are living in the realm of the celestials.

Or maybe not.  While the number of new cases are down a wonderful 31% in the last 14 days, and fewer deaths are being reported each day than at any point since March 2020, the month a pandemic was declared, the country’s vaccination campaign is sputtering, especially here in the South, where there are far more doses than people who will take them.  

“A lot of people have the sense, ‘Oh, dodged that bullet,’” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  She added, “I don’t think people appreciate that if we let up on the vaccine efforts, we could be right back where we started.”

Maybe the realm of the celestials is farther off than I imagined.

👉  Our son, Michael, who was one of the stars of yesterday’s blog, sent me a link to purchase an ad for the computer featured in the story, a Tandy 1000 TL, on sale at Christmas 1988 for $1099 (monitor $300 extra) which was $200 off the retail price.  We added in a second floppy drive, a modem and a printer and pushed the price to almost $2000.  And for that 2 Grand today ($4500 factoring in inflation) you could buy an HP OMEN 30L NVIDIA RTX 3090 Gaming Desktop PC with RGB Liquid Cooled Intel i9-10850K, Z490 Mobo, 750 Watt Platinum PSU, Windows 10 Pro, 2TB NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD, 64GB HyperX RGB RAM.  I have no idea what all of that means, but as best I can understand our Tandy 1000 TL was a Model-T Ford compared to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket.  No, closer comparison, our Tandy was stone knives and bear skins compared to the Falcon Heavy – and those stone knives and bear skins were immensely more powerful than the computer onboard Apollo 11.

Michael said that incident was preparing him for his future job as a manager in the computer banking industry.  He still has those “few clicks and back to bed” experiences.

👉  Today we finish our look at strange automobiles from the before time.

Hemmings Motor News has 5 Amphicars for sale, the least expensive is a 1967 model for $69,995.  At the top of the price scale is the 1964 Amphicar 770.  It has been 3 driven miles since completed.  A 6 year restoration (with $65,000 in parts and labor) was finished in December 2020.  The price is $98,500, and the seller says it is “museum quality or lake ready.”  There is no indication whether this one leaks like the originals did, but it does come with a life preserver and a paddle.

A 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 is for sale by DeLorean Motor Company Midwest for $63,500.  Odometer reads 23,981.  It comes complete with two file boxes of paperwork recording repair history back to 1981.

Or you may be interested in a 1981 DMC-12 which comes complete with flux capacitor for $160,000.  Only one screen used time machine – made for the movie Back to the Future – has ever been released by Universal Studios and it sold at auction in 2011 for $541,000 prior to restoration. This one is non-screen version.  The car has 37,000 miles, but if you want to make it a daily driver, you will need to buy new tires.  And you may want to replace the original windshield because it has a crack in it.  You’d think you could at least get new tires for $160,000.  Oh, there is no word whether the flux capacitor will produce the 1.21 gigawatts needed for time travel.  You buys your tickets and you takes your chances.

There were only three experimental prototypes of the Fuller Dymaxion produced.  Only one survives, and there are two semi-faithful replicas.  None are for sale.

And I could find no Yugos for sale.  I guess they were so bad that classic car collectors are not interested.  But super collector Jay Leno does have one in his 150 car accumulation.

Tomorrow a different car, advanced too soon, the Chrysler Turbine Car.

👉  Some more signs for the times:

👉  Today’s sermon, “The Second Greatest Story Ever Told” was preached from the Macedonia pulpit, March 17, 2013.

👉  Today’s close, “Drawing from the Source,” is by Charles Stanley.

For us as believers, contentment should be governed by inner attitude and the decisions we make rather than by external circumstances.  Because Paul had learned this secret, he was able to experience joy and peace in any kind of situation – whether he was surrounded by friends or isolated in a Roman prison; whether he had plenty or was in great need.

The apostle understood what it meant to live in Christ and to have Christ living in him.  He had made a simple but profound faith decision to draw his life from the Lord and, as a result, had the calm assurance that what he possessed inside could never be stolen.  He was confident in his identity as a child of the Almighty, with full access to the abundant life Jesus offers.

When something threatens to steal your contentment, choose to draw from God; decide to stop drawing from other sources and trying to be in control.  When you find yourself becoming flustered, anxious, or angry, stop and say, “Lord, You are my source, and I draw from You the capacity to be kind.  I draw from You the forgiveness I need to extend right now.  I draw from You the love I need to express.”  This decision is a matter of simple trust.

Watch and see how God will quiet your spirit and provide confidence when you draw only from Him as your source.  You’ll be surprised at your own attitude: when you respond from within – rather than from the flesh – Jesus will give you the ability to respond as He would.

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