QUARANTINE BLOG # 610

November 30, 2021

Today’s blog is our monthly feature “This Day in History.”  And the updated Quarantine Blog Index is now online.

👉  On November 1, 1950, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate President Harry S. Truman at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. Truman escaped unscathed. In the autumn of 1950, the White House was being renovated and President Truman and his family were living in the nearby Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue. The would-be assassins never made it past the entry steps. Secret Service Agent Leslie Coffelt was mortally wounded in the shootout, but not before he managed to kill Torresola. Oscar Collazo was sentenced to death, but in an admirable act of forgiveness on July 24, 1952, Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

👉  On November 2, 1948, in one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history, Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeated his Republican challenger, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, by just over two million popular votes. In the days preceding the vote, political analysts and polls were so behind Dewey that on election night, long before all the votes were counted, the Chicago Tribune published an early edition with the banner headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”

👉  The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space on November 3, 1957 – a dog name Laika – aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika, part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. Laika survived for a few hours as a passenger in the USSR’s second artificial Earth satellite. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel. She died from overheating and panic.

👉  A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary was viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, the national uprising. Vicious street fighting broke out, but the Soviets’ great power ensured victory.

👉  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected for an unprecedented third term as president of the United States on November 5, 1940, with the promise of maintaining American neutrality as far as foreign wars were concerned: “Let no man or woman thoughtlessly or falsely talk of American people sending its armies to European fields.” But as Hitler’s war spread, and the desperation of Britain grew, and then the Japanese bombed of Pearl Harbor, “a day that would live in infamy,” the next day Roosevelt requested, and received, a declaration of war against Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

👉  On November 6, 1869, Rutgers beat Princeton, 6-4, in the first college football game. The game, played with a soccer ball before roughly 100 fans in New Brunswick, New Jersey, resembled rugby instead of today’s football. In 1866, Princeton walloped Rutgers, 40-2, in baseball. Wanting to even the score, Rutgers challenged Princeton to a three-game football series for 1869. Each school had 25 players. Every score counted as a “game” – the contest was supposed to end when the teams combined for 10 “games.” Rutgers finished with six games to Princeton’s four.

👉  On November 7, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected – 432 electoral votes to 99 for Thomas Dewey – to an unprecedented fourth term in office.  The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified on February 27, 1951, insures that FDR will be the only president to serve  more than two elected terms. 

👉  Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible. Röntgen's discovery occurred accidentally on November 8, 1895, in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.

👉  At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ended. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

👉  On November 13, 1982, near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.

👉  On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the moon, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr.; Richard F. Gordon, Jr.; and Alan L. Bean aboard. Thirty-six seconds after takeoff, lightning struck the ascending Saturn 5 launch rocket, which tripped the circuit breakers in the command module and caused a power failure. Fortunately, the launching rocket continued up normally, and within a few minutes power was restored in the spacecraft. On November 19, the landing module Intrepid made a precision landing on the northwest rim of the moon’s Ocean of Storms. About five hours later, astronauts Conrad and Bean became the third and fourth humans to walk on the surface of the moon.

👉  Microsoft released the Xbox gaming console on November 15, 2001, dramatically influencing the history of consumer entertainment technology.  Microsoft CEO Bill Gates decided to venture into the video game market because he feared that gaming consoles would soon compete with personal computers.  At the time, Japanese companies Sony and Nintendo dominated the field, and no American company had challenged them since Atari ceased selling its Jaguar console in 1996.  Microsoft is said to have lost $4 billion on the initial Xbox, but its successors have sold over a hundred million units.

👉  Did the young Austrian nun named Maria really take to the hills surrounding Salzburg to sing spontaneously of her love of music? Did she comfort herself with thoughts of copper kettles, and did she swoon to her future husband’s song about an alpine flower while the creeping menace of Nazism spread across central Europe? No, the real-life Maria von Trapp was indeed a former nun, and she did indeed marry Count Georg von Trapp and become stepmother to his large brood of children, but nearly all of the particulars she related in her 1949 book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, were ignored by the creators of the Broadway musical her memoir inspired. “The Sound of Music” premiered on Broadway November 16, 1959.

👉  On November 17, 1968, the Oakland Raiders scored two touchdowns in nine seconds to beat the New York Jets – and no television audience saw it, because they were watching the movie “Heidi” instead. With just 65 seconds left to play, NBC switched off the game in favor of its previously scheduled programming, a made-for-TV version of the children’s story about a young girl and her grandfather in the Alps. Viewers complained so vociferously that network execs learned a lesson they’ll never forget: “Whatever you do,” one said, “you better not leave an NFL football game.” NBC news anchor David Brinkley showed the final seconds of that game the next evening.

👉  On November 18, 1966, Sandy Koufax, the ace pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, retired from baseball. He was just 30 years old, but he had chronic arthritis in his pitching arm, and he was afraid that if he kept playing baseball, eventually he wouldn’t be able to use his left hand at all. Koufax threw one no-hitter every year from 1962 to 1965, and in 1965 he threw a perfect game. His pitches were notoriously difficult to hit; getting the bat on a Koufax fastball, Pittsburgh’s Willie Stargell once said, was like “trying to drink coffee with a fork.” But what Sandy Koufax is perhaps most famous for is his refusal, in 1965, to pitch the first game of the World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. (Don Drysdale pitched instead, and gave up seven runs in the first three innings; “I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too,” he said when the team’s manager pulled him out of the game.) In 1971, the 36-year-old Koufax became the youngest person ever to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

👉  On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivered  one of the most memorable speeches in American history.  Charged by Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, to care for the Gettysburg dead, an attorney named David Wills bought 17 acres of pasture to turn into a cemetery for the more than 7,500 who fell in battle.  Lincoln’s address lasted just three minutes.  In fewer than 275 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War. 

👉  Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis went on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II beginning on November 20, 1945. The Nuremberg trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain. The defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. The proceedings lasted 10 months and consisted of 216 court sessions. On October 1, 1946, 12 architects of Nazi policy were sentenced to death. Seven others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life, and three were acquitted. Trials of lesser German and Axis war criminals continued in Germany into the 1950s and resulted in the conviction of 5,025 other defendants and the execution of 806.

👉  At 12:20 p.m., on November 24, 1963, in the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. Oswald was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit. On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.

👉  On November 26, 1942, Casablanca, – my personal vote for best motion picture of all time – a World War II-era drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered in New York City.  Bogart played Rick Blaine, the owner of a swanky North African nightclub, who is reunited with the beautiful, enigmatic Ilsa Lund (Bergman), the woman who loved and left him. Casablanca was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Bogart.  It took home three Oscars, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.  The film featured a number of now-iconic quotes, including Rick’s line to Ilsa: “Here’s looking at you, kid,” as well as “Round up the usual suspects,” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”  And in one of the best scenes from a great movie, Sam (Dooley Wilson) plays and sings, “As Time Goes By.”

👉  On November 30, 2004, after winning 74 straight games and more than $2.5 million – a record for U.S. game shows – Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings lost.  Jennings’ extended winning streak gave the game show a huge ratings boost and turned the software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah into a TV hero and household name. Nancy Zerg, a realtor from California, toppled Jeopardy!’s most famous contestant after seven months of his domination – a feat aided by Jennings getting both Daily Double answers wrong.

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

“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken” (Psalm 62:1-2).

Silence sinks a shaft to bedrock. It is the soul’s means for descending through the gravel of rebellion and doubt to the solid, quiet reality of God’s word.

Prayer: “Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake to guide the future as He has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake; all now mysterious shall be bright at last. Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below” (Katherina von Schlegel, “Be Still, My Soul,” translated by Jane L. Borthwick). Amen.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 609

November 29, 2021

Amy asked me for a series of stories about the songs of Christmas, and so I will begin with the well-known story “Silent Night.”  It is a story I know, because in June 1993, I was asked to write it for Reader’s Digest.  I had sent a query letter to the publisher in February or March giving them a little teaser, and asking if they were interested in the story.  The letter was an old-fashioned snail mail letter – handwritten, sealed in an envelope, addressed and posted with a stamp.  Internet was modems and dial-ups; high speed was a long way off.  

On May 24, 1993, I boarded a Delta airplane in Augusta with the terminating stop in Международный аэропорт Шереметьево (Sheremetyevo International Airport) Moscow, Russia.  A reply from Reader’s Digest arrived at 4214 Cap Chat Street, our residence at the time, several weeks after I left for a 90 day life-changing mission trip to Samara, Russia.  Bonnie called me, read the letter, and I asked her to call the magazine and ask them for a week to see what I could do.  I was using AOL (America On Line) dial-up, and it was very slow and very unreliable because of the very old telephone system in my Russian apartment.  Before the week was up, I knew I would not be able to complete my research and satisfy the upcoming holiday deadline, so I declined the invitation (the publisher did give me a $200 fee for suggesting the story – and the person who did the story for that December 1993 issue did a great job).

The basic story is very simple.  Josef Mohr, an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and writer, on Christmas Eve in 1818, walked from his home in Salzburg to visit his friend Franz Gruber in the neighboring town of Arnsdorf.  Mohr brought with him a poem he had written two years earlier.  He needed a carol for the Christmas Eve midnight Mass that was only a few hours away, and hoped his friend, a school teacher who also served as the church’s choir master and organist, could set his poem to music.  Gruber composed the melody for Mohr’s “Stille Nacht” in just a few hours.  The song was sung at Midnight Mass in a simple arrangement for guitar and choir. 

Some accounts, and one that I was trying to track down for that 1993 version, had Gruber writing the music for the guitar because the bellows on the church organ were old and cracked, and desperately needed repair to in order to make beautiful music (some stories said the organ wouldn’t even play).  The truth seems more simple – Mohr’s favorite instrument was the guitar.

The only known handwritten copy by Mohr and Gruber

Before we go on, and there is one more story – almost unbelievable – that goes with this beautiful song, listen to this incredible version of “Silent Night” as performed by the group, Celtic Woman.

Perhaps the most unusual singing of “Silent Night” took place on Christmas Eve, 1914.  The War to End All Wars had started 5 months earlier, and the two sides, Allied and German, were firmly dug into trenches facing each other across the deadly territory called “No Man’s Land.”  The guns became silent and there was an unofficial truce.  Officially, both sides denied the event until The New York Times broke the story a week later.  British papers quickly followed, printing numerous first-hand accounts from soldiers in the field, taken from letters home to their families.  Coverage in Germany was more muted, with some newspapers strongly criticizing those who had taken part and no pictures were published.  In France, press censorship ensured that the only word that spread of the truce came from soldiers at the front or first-hand accounts told by wounded men in hospitals.

A photograph of British and German soldiers in No Man’s Land during the 1914 Christmas Truce

Here is the story as I tell it in a Christmas sermon entitled, “Christmas Is For Children.”

It was a cold night in 1914, and on the Western Front.  Over in this elongated trench were the Germans, and here in this elongated trench were the British.

It was bitter cold and there was snow.  In both trenches the men huddled together, trying to get warm.  Overhead there was the burst of guns, the cannons.  But as midnight – Christmas Eve – neared, strangely the guns stopped.

From the German trenches there was singing: “Stille Nacht!  Heilige Nacht!  Aless schlaft, einsam wacht.”

Then from the British trenches, the response in English: “Silent night, holy night.  All is calm, all is bright.”

Then again from the German trenches: “Oh, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.”

And the antiphonal singing continued, from one trench to another.

Suddenly out of the German trenches the soldiers poured out, and raced across “No Man’s Land.”  The German officers, always seeking to maintain order, if nothing else, screamed at them to return to their posts, but they paid them no attention.

And where to run just a few moments ago would have meant certain death, no where was not a sound except joking, laughter, joy.

And the British troops poured out of their trenches.  They met in No Man’s Land, and they embraced each other and they fraternized for two or three hours.

Repeatedly they made this statement: “Let the war stop.  It’s Christmas Eve!”

Of all the incidents in World War I probably none was more unusual.  You see, it’s at Christmas time that men do unusual things.  It’s at Christmas that the best comes out in us and the worst is pushed aside.  It’s at Christmas that we feel the kindest feelings, and toward those we don’t even like.  It’s at Christmas time we think like children, and children are so naive.

Coming up are links to two videos, each showing an imaginative version of that Christmas Eve Truce.  Take the time to watch them, they are well worth the time invested.  The first piece is 3 minutes 15 seconds long.  The second is 13:30.

Celtic Thunder is an Irish singing and stage show group.  This clip features “Christmas 1915” (I don’t know why their video is entitled 1915 instead of 1914.  There was another Christmas truce in 1915, but it was smaller in scope).

Next, this piece is from Joyeux Noel, a 2005 movie. This film dramatizes one section the Truce (the good feelings of Christmas Eve spread all along the Western Front) as the French, Scottish and German sides partake, even though they are aware that fraternization is cause for court martial.  Strange note: when I wrote this blog last night, the link went to a clip that was in English.  Now the English is in subtitles.  The original clip is no longer available.

    Silent night, holy night!

    All is calm, all is bright.

    Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.

    Holy infant so tender and mild,

    Sleep in heavenly peace,

    Sleep in heavenly peace

    Silent night, holy night!

    Shepherds quake at the sight.

    Glories stream from heaven afar

    Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia,

    Christ the Savior is born!

    Christ the Savior is born

 

    Silent night, holy night!

    Son of God love's pure light.

    Radiant beams from Thy holy face

    With dawn of redeeming grace,

    Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

    Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

Finally, here is a simple rendition of this beautiful carol performed by 3 women with incredible blending harmony and accompanied, as it was originally written, by guitar.  Enjoy.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 608

November 28, 2021

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the time when Christians focus on three things: we remember the birth of our Savior in Bethlehem’s manger, look forward to his Second Coming in power and in glory, and examine our preparations for living in “the time between already and not yet.”

The first Sunday is called Hope.  The scripture text is Matthew 24:36-44.

This devotional is from The Word in the Wind, by Bruce L. Taylor.

“God’s Time in Our Time”

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). So Jesus spoke to his followers concerning the close of the age, impressing upon them the suddenness of its coming, describing God’s searching out those who are preserved and those who are left to their doom, and encouraging the disciples to be prepared and watchful for the coming of the Lord. 

They should not be like the people living in the days before the flood, when all but Noah and his family were so entirely immersed in their ordinary occupations, heedless of the impending deluge, that they were swept away unprepared and unrepentant. Absorbed in the habits of the world, so busy with the routine of their lives, they had no sense of how irrelevant that routine was about to become. Their attention all focused on their own comings and goings, they failed to perceive God’s coming. They could think only of human time, and were unable to see God’s time.

The original language of the New Testament uses two very distinct words to express the idea of time. English has no precise counterparts for them. The Greek word chronos (from which we get our word “chronology”) refers to time in the sense of the clock and the calendar – time that can be measured in minutes and hours and in days and years. Chronos is time as perceived and measured by the daily activity of human affairs, by the rise and fall of kings and empires, by the deposit of the monthly paycheck and the payment of monthly bills, by births and by deaths, by profound sorrows and intense joys.

In contrast, the Greek word kairos is used in the New Testament to mean the appropriate moment; not a measure of hours and days and weeks, but of readiness. Kairos is time as God conceives of it, seeing all of human history unlimited by calendars. It is a King born in a cattle stall and laid in the straw of a manger. It is the return of the same King, once executed for speaking and doing God’s truth but raised from the dead, to consummate his dominion over all creation.

Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been people who insisted that God’s kairos was capable of being measured by human chronos. In spite of Jesus’ declaration that not angels, not even he himself knew the day and hour when God will close history, there have been those who were unwilling to permit the times and places to remain in the knowledge of God alone.

To understand time in the sense of kairos is to move beyond the matters of daily routine, of interpreting life as merely days crossed off a calendar. It is to see that God is concerned with creation in a personal way. 

It is to believe that, in spite of discouragement and disappointment in ourselves and others and in the events around us, God can break into any one of our moments with the experience of eternal life. 

It is to have faith that God can enter into our world, whether it be at home or at work, at school or at leisure, in the town hall or in the voting booth, and hallow the mundane with the possibility of the holy. 

It is to understand that God alone is the one who can and does give enduring peace through his judging and forgiving word, and that God will finally bring history to its culmination.

Sometimes, when life’s perplexities give rise to doubt, it is easy to wonder whether God has not abandoned the creation after all. When a marriage has lost its joy and has dissolved into bitter resentment, when a child seems determined to discard every moral principle that we have tried to instill, when the vigor of our youth has left us and we fear the prospect of a long decline of health, when it seems that no one is listening to our cries of despair, it’s hard to rouse ourselves to expect an advent of God in our lives. But scripture tells us over and over again that it is just at such moments that God is likely to infuse our chronos with divine kairos, to shout or whisper his presence in the humble birth of his own Son or the glorious return of the risen Lord.

The New Testament urges us to be vigilant, always ready for Christ’s advent. We are called to watch for the Lord’s coming, not because we know when it is, but because we know what it means. The truth of God is on its way into our world. The light of God’s promised deliverance is intense enough to break through the darkness of human time; the birth of Christ was its first dawning and his second coming will be the full glow of the mid-day sun. “The night is far gone, the day is near” (Romans 13:12). That is the promise! Thanks be to God!

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 607

November 27, 2021

A few miles down the road from Norman Manley International Airport, you reach the limits of old Port Royal. There is a brass plaque. 

Most people do not stop to read the words.

Port Royal lived a short, fast life. It was like Rick’s Café in Casablanca: Sooner or later everyone came to the city. Slave traders, spies, and English dukes brushed shoulders with plantation owners and common whores. 

Port Royal was famous for sexual excess. Men paid 500 pieces of eight just to see “a common strumpet” naked. Some had unique names like No-Conscience Nan, and Salt-Beef Peg. The most famous of them was Mary Carleton. Of her, a contemporary said: “A stout frigate she was or else she never could have endured so many batteries and assaults.” The sights so disgusted one cleric that he left by the same ship that had brought him, declaring: “This town is the Sodom of the New World.”

But people like these can be found throughout the history of the Caribbean. What makes Port Royal special are the pirates. These men altered the fate of the New World but, after having brought the Spanish Main to its knees, they became disposable and were hunted down. Port Royal became the crossroads of two empires because of Henry Morgan and his men. 

The original city lies 15 feet under the surface of the Caribbean Sea, a once rich and vibrant city now fallen silent. Her story begins in England over three centuries ago.

Oliver Cromwell ruled the short-lived Commonwealth of England from 1649 until his death, by natural causes, in 1658. He was buried in Westminster Abbey until the Royalists returned to power in 1660. 

They had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. His head was reburied 300 years later, in 1960.

In the winter of 1654, Cromwell fitted a fleet for an expedition that was aimed at the heart of the great Spanish world empire. There was one man on the ships, anonymous as yet to history. In the space of eight short years, this brilliant leader would be known. His name was Henry Morgan.

The New World had been Spain’s ever since 1493 when Pope Alexander VI  divided the world between Spain and Portugal. England, France, and the Netherlands – the other players in the great game of empire – never agreed to the terms. 

King Francis I of France remarked acidly, “I should like to see the clause in Adam’s will that excludes me from a share in the new world.”

King Francis I of France

When the English reached their goal of Hispaniola they were quickly turned back. The Spanish soldiers, with indulgences around their necks granting them instant entry into heaven should they die fighting the English devils, peppered them with shot and ball. Twenty days after their landing, a retreat from Hispaniola was called. 

The English turned to the lightly defended island of Jamaica which lay in a crucial position along the Spanish treasure routes. It was the choke point between the Central American collection spots and the sea routes to Spain. The English had stumbled on a strategic windfall. They took Jamaica in 5 days, putting themselves in a position to wreak havoc with the stream of gold that helped sustain the Spanish Empire.

It was indeed a rich man's world. This was Spain’s golden age. And gold it was. The amounts of Americas’ wealth are staggering: between 1500 and 1650, 180 tons of gold flowed through the port of Seville.

But it was the 16,000 tons of silver that allowed for uniform coins to be made and distributed throughout the world, creating the global economy. 

The estimated value of the treasure taken from the Americas ranges from $4 to $6 billion in unadjusted dollars; its present-day worth would be $200 billion.

In spite of those staggering sums, Spain was radically overextended; Every mile of territory that was conquered had to be pacified, guarded, supplied, and administered. King Philip IV, in October 1643, the king wrote, “Any disturbance in the flow of gold could threaten the very existence of the empire.”

King Philip IV of Spain

Pirates like Henry Morgan were about to disturb that flow of gold. Next week, “Morgan’s First Raid.”

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

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:3-5).

In physical size human beings are midgets; in the stellar universe they are barely noticeable, a speck of cosmic dust. In spiritual significance they are giants; set in the purposes of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, they are gloriously majestic.

Prayer: Lord, I look at the skies and am humbled – I am such a minute item in your creation. Then I listen to your word and am exalted – I am such an honored child! “How majestic is thy name in all the earth!” Amen.

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QUARANTINE BLOG # 606

November 26, 2021

👉  Two blogs ago we looked at the first TV Dinner, which had to be cooked in a conventional oven, because the commercial microwave oven was a little ways off.  With all of the Thanksgiving leftovers, the microwave, that we take so much for granted, will be getting a workout today.

This modern convenience did not start out to warm our food or pop our corn.  It was an invention, developed by defense contractor Raytheon Technologies, that helped British radar in World War II better detect approaching Nazi fighter planes and bombers.  Engineer Percy LeBaron Spencer was working on an active radar set when it accidentally melted a candy bar in his pocket.  He figured microwaves could cook food.  Spencer then tried popping popcorn and cooking an egg using microwaves.  

Raytheon had filed a patent for the microwave cooking process by 1945.  Two years later, it built “Radarange,” the first microwave oven in the world.  The “Radarange” was as large as a refrigerator, but heavier.  The tubes in the device had to be water-cooled, so plumbing installation was required.  Result: The first microwave oven weighed about 750 pounds and was nearly 6 feet tall.

Raytheon introduced a commercial microwave oven, the “1161 Radarange,” in 1954.  It was expensive –$3,000 (the equivalent of $24,000 in today’s cash).  The first home microwave oven, introduced in 1955, sold for $1,295 ($10,500 today).  While expensive and with few features, roughly 25 percent of U.S. households owned a microwave oven by 1986.  Today, almost 90 percent of American households have a microwave oven.  If you need a new one, Black Friday deals start at $49.98 at Home Depot.

👉  It feels like they’re everywhere.  You get them all the time: a warranty on your car has expired, your insurance has expired, and on it goes, those urgent emails that sound like it’s so serious and it turns out that it’s just another way to try to extract money from you.  ‘Tis the season.  So a couple of tips, maybe just a reminder of things you already know to keep your money in your wallet and not in the hands of some scammer.

The first sign that you should watch for is when the message asks you to pay in gift cards.  If anyone is asking you to pay for something through gift cards, that is an immediate hang-up-the-phone warning, or delete the email, and just walk away.

Another sign to look out for are those urgent messages that demand you do something right away.  The best thing to do is take a deep breath, take a step back and review those things.  Where is the email coming from?  Roll your mouse over any clickable link and look at the bottom of the screen.  The address to which you will be responding is now visible, and in those scams, it becomes immediately obvious that your response is not being directed to the company whose name is in the address.

If the solicitation is from a company or an agency with whom you regularly deal, and you are still concerned about it, call or email them direct.  Don’t use the solicitation you just received.  Go the site that you know is legitimate and contact them through official channels.

Protect yourself so you can have a happy holiday without any of the drama involved in getting scammed.

👉  I’m too stuffed with turkey and stuffing as I write today’s blog, so let’s have a few chuckles:

👉  A Star Wars-WWE mashup.  A folding chair match between Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader:

👉  Mixing religion and politics:

👉  Dennis the Menace embarrasses his parents.  Again:

👉  When your GPS needs to recalculate:

👉  Some “black” and “gold” (but not from Pittsburgh):

👉  Today’s close is by Bryan Chappell.

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26)

Don’t worry, be happy. We all know that song, and if a Caribbean singer with a big smile and a melodic voice says those words, we smile. But if the Creator, who examines our hearts says, “Don’t worry,” then we worry. We can’t help it. How can we not? It’s almost as if we’re hard-wired to do the very thing we’re told not to do.

God knows our struggles. Jesus tells us, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”

So, today – really – don’t worry! Trust that God is taking care of everything in his gracious timing.

Prayer: Lord, help me to trust that you not only care for the birds of the air but also for me and my family. Amen!

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