QUARANTINE BLOG # 546

September 27, 2021

Covered by Petula Clark, Neil Diamond, Jay and the Americans, and almost two dozen other singers and groups, “Monday, Monday,” was the only Number 1 hit for John Phillips, Cass Elliot, and Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty, the “Mamas and the Papas.”  

One of those cover groups was “Wilson Phillips.”  It’s fitting that they performed “Monday, Monday,” because the trio is made up of Carnie and Wendy Wilson, the daughters of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and Chynna Phillips, the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas.

👉  QB offers some politically incorrect thoughts:

If Jesus had given Revelation 6 to the Apostle John today.

👉  From the Cherokee Rose and Brown Thrasher of Georgia to the Black Eyed Susan and Baltimore Oriole of Maryland, for our Northern readers, we cross the Mason-Dixon Line to the Keystone State and Pennsylvania’s Mountain Laurel and Ruffed Grouse.

Pennsylvania’s state flower actually grows from southern Maine to northern Florida and west to Indiana and Louisiana.  It is incredibly beautiful when it blooms from May through June, but I don’t know of any other state plant which matches the Mountain Laurel in one aspect – every part of the plant is poisonous.  Even honey which is made from its nectar is poisonous.  But it sure is pretty.

The General Assembly passed two bills each naming a different favorite shrub – Mountain laurel and the Pink azalea.  Governor Gifford Pinchot decided the choice of the official State flower and signed the bill into law on May 5, 1933. 

The ruffed grouse ranges in forests from the Appalachian Mountains across Canada to Alaska.  It is a popular game bird, but hunting it can be challenging because the grouse spends most of its time in thick brush, aspen stands, and second growth pines.  It is also very hard to detect a foraging grouse bobbing about in the thicket due to their camouflage.  With adequate snow cover, they will burrow under the snow.

Unlike Georgia legislators who eschewed the bobwhite quail as the state bird because they didn’t like the image of eating this state emblem, the ruffed grouse was adopted as Pennsylvania’s state bird on June 22, 1931, the same day its state tree – Eastern Hemlock – was adopted.  Little has been recorded about the grouse’s adoption.  Perhaps reaching back into history, Pennsylvania went with its popularity by early settlers who relied on this plump bird as part of their food supply. 

👉  Honoring a Sisler family tradition, Amy sent me this Instagram of Grogu:

👉  Almost only counts in horse shoes, quoits, hand grenades, atomic bombs, and first dates.  And so QB tips the hat to Iceland, who in their general election yesterday, almost elected a female majority parliament.  The initial vote count had female candidates winning 33 seats in Iceland’s 63-seat parliament.  Hours later, a recount in western Iceland changed the outcome, leaving female candidates with 30 seats.  Only a handful of countries, none of them in Europe, have a majority of female lawmakers. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Rwanda leads the world with women making up 61% of its Chamber of Deputies, with Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico on or just over the 50% mark.

Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir

👉  Looking for a side dish for your restaurant meal?  Perhaps an order of “Crème de la Crème Pomme Frites” will satisfy your appetite.  And perhaps you won’t faint when you look at your bill and see how much they cost – $200 for about a dozen slices of potato.  Guinness World Records rates them as the world’s most expensive french fries.  “Truffle, truffle, and truffle inside these fries,” Corporate Executive Chef Frederick Schoen-Kiewert of New York City’s Serendipity 3 restaurant, said while describing the pricey dish.

Truffle is the main star.  And the Pomme Frites are only made of the finest Chipperbec potatoes blanched in Dom Pérignon champagne vinegar.  And because regular oil is nowhere near good enough, they are cooked in goose fat.  And the cheese sauce is made of organic udder cream, black truffle butter and Gruyere.  If this is not decadent enough, the side dish is topped with flecks of edible 23-karat gold.

Connoisseurs interested in sampling this dish must be patient.  There is currently an eight- to 10-week wait list for the Crème de la Crème Pomme Frites.

👉  Thoughts from The Lockhorns before we close:

👉  Today’s close, “A Prayer to be Unshakeable,” is by Kelly Balarie.

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

God, help us. 

Where we are weak, make us strong.  Where we are wavering, help us lay our anchor down.  May we find strength through knowing you hold us. We no longer need to be held down by the world’s claws. 

May we believe you are so believable we see your hand in our everything. 

May we so fall into your arms of grace, so we never feel the pangs of condemnation rip us apart.  That is not you. 

And, truly, we want nothing that is not associated with you – it will only leave us empty.  God, you are one that leaves us on full.  Not once, but all the time.  

God, give us you.  Increase our faith; make us into fighters who don’t back down.  May we know, strongly, you are what we need to run after.  You are the answer to everything.  You are the only way.  Tie down our heart into you.  

In the strong name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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