QUARANTINE BLOG # 611

December 1, 2021

Why are barns often painted red?  Three reasons: it’s traditional, it’s practical and the color looks good. During the 1700s and early 1800s, barns on family farms in the Northeast U.S. were typically covered with thick vertical boards. When they were left unpainted, the boards would slowly weather to a brownish-gray color.

But after the mid-1800s, to improve the efficiency of their barns by reducing drafts to help keep their animals more comfortable in winter, many farmers tightened up their barns by having wooden clapboards horizontally nailed on the outside barn walls. These clapboards were sawed quite thin, so painting them provided needed protection and dressed up the appearance of the barns.

In the 1800s it was common for people to make their own paints by mixing pigments with linseed oil. The tint we see so often on older American barns was called Venetian red. Venetian red got its name because historically this pigment was produced from natural clays found near Venice, Italy. The clays contained an iron oxide compound that produced this red color.

But as people found similar iron oxide deposits in many other places, “Venetian red” became a generic term for light red pigments. By the 1920s, such “earth pigments” used to make red paints were being dug in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Alabama, California, Iowa and Vermont.

Today, many modern barns don’t resemble classic versions. Very large barns that hold hundreds of cows or pigs look more like hangars or warehouses, and may be built of metal. But the tradition of painting smaller barns red continues – so strongly that the U.S. Postal Service now celebrates them on postage stamps.

Tomorrow “barn advertising” and “beautiful Rock City.”

👉  Brian sent me a new collection of humorous pieces for the QB and this is one of the best:

What made it even funnier to me is a country and western song by David Allan Coe called “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.”

Now I know that DAC is singing “darlin’” when he says you never called me by my name, but to me it sounds like “Darlyn,” which is the middle name of our oldest child, Jennifer Darlyn.  You sing it your way, and I’ll sing it mine.

👉  Just when you thought sports couldn’t get any crazier, along comes PFC – Pillow Fighting Championship.  You read that correctly.  A professional pillow fighting championship will be held on January 29 in Florida as a pay-per-view event.  Steve Williams, the man with the dream of turning childhood horseplay into a professional combat sport, said PFC delivers all the drama of hand-to-hand combat without the gore of mixed martial arts or boxing.  Well, that’s a mercy.  Using specialized pillows male and female combatants will slug it out.  Williams says, “The fighters don’t like to get hurt.”  The bruise under that pf-er’s left eye says there is going to be some hurting going on.  I’ll pass.

👉  Santa’s working on his list, seeing who’s naughty or nice, and you’ve probably started on yours.  Here are a few suggestions you may or may not want to purchase to fill someone’s stocking.

First up, a Smart Landline Multimedia Telephone with Android 7.9-inch Display.  You just re-read that and asked, “But why?”  If you are like me, you haven’t had a landline phone in a decade, maybe two, and with this thing going for $259 – and you can’t even use Google Store to download apps – “but why” is a great question.  The advertiser says it is a “re-invented desktop phone that combines traditional telephone and the user experience of an Android tablet to offer an all-in-one voice, video, data and mobility solution.”  Yup.  But why?

I am a fan of Legos.  Really big.  Huge.  If you’ve been to 233 and seen the room formerly known as my office and now known as the Lego Room, you already knew that.  Behind me are at least 100 Lego kits, fully assembled and engaged in our own version of Star Wars (most of them are Star Wars kits, but there is the Saturn V moon rocket, the International Space Station, and the RMS Titanic is under construction).  So I was intrigued by a double deck of Lego playing cards for $16.95.  My mouse was heading for the “buy now” button until I looked at the face of the cards.  The back is a wonderful picture of Lego bricks, but the fronts are all one color – blue – and the suits are not pictured with their correct colors.  Make the faces white and the suits correct, and I’m in.

For only $19.95 plus shipping and handling this last gift will help you tinkle better in a dark bathroom at night.  GlowBowl has a motion sensor that turns on any one of 13 colors, or rotates them all, when you approach it for a late night pee.  No more bashing your toes in the dark or searching for a place to aim.  This battery operated device even has a built-in air freshener.  Now if it just came with an attachment that would raise the seat for those who need it up, or lower it for those who need it down.

👉  Some more smiles for your day:

Don't you tell me you that you don't get this one!

👉  As I said in Sunday’s blog, Advent is 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.”

For the close these next 24 days I’ll be sharing Advent thoughts from Unwrapping the Names of Jesus by Asheritah Ciuciu.

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

The name Jesus is a transliteration of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “the Lord is salvation.” In Bible times, it was not an uncommon name, just like Jesus Himself didn’t appear out of the ordinary to those who grew up with Him. Yet His given name holds great significance to who He is and what He did on earth.

In the Old Testament, Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan. He saved the people through courageous leadership, charging into battle upon bloody battle, leading hundreds of thousands into the Promised Land. In contrast to the first Joshua, the second Joshua (Jesus) saved through an epic battle that He fought alone, making the way for His people to enter the Promised Land of God’s presence.

Jesus came to save people from their sins. What the first Joshua was powerless to do, the second Joshua was born to accomplish.

During Jesus’ lifetime, the Israelites were waiting for a political leader like Joshua who would free them from the yoke of Roman oppression and allow them to live in the land God had promised them, just as their forefathers had been freed from Egyptian slavery and led into Canaan. They wanted a macho man who would reinstate Israel as an autonomous country and make the Romans run in fear.

But Jesus’ perspective is always bigger than ours. His gaze was set on the universal dilemma of sin. His battle was one of cosmic proportions, to deliver all who believe in Him from the bondage of soul-deadening sin and welcome us into the family of God.

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