QUARANTINE BLOG # 675

February 25, 2022

Here are a few more questions to test your IQ:

If the professor on Gilligan’s Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can’t he fix a hole in a boat?

Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no human would eat?

Why is “bra” singular and “panties” plural?

Why do the “Alphabet Song” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” have the same tune?

Why did you just try singing the two songs above?

👉  A couple of quotations:

👉  Two Blackouts:

👉  A trio of Smilies:

👉  There is very little documentary evidence of dance being practiced in Ireland prior to the 7th century; this could be due to the destruction of written records in Ireland during Viking raids.  The first native Irish documentary evidence of dancing is an account of a Mayor of Waterford’s visit to Baltimore, County Cork in 1413, where the attendees “took to the floor” to celebrate Christmas Eve.  By the 1760s, the distinctive rhythm of the Irish dance tradition had developed.  The step dance is probably the most widely known style of Irish dancing.  Sometime in the early 19th century, a dance teacher had his students dance with arms held firmly down to their sides, hands in fists, to call more attention to the intricacy of the steps. 

The Irish step dance was popularized from 1994 onwards by shows such as “Riverdance.”  “Riverdance” – featuring Irish dancing champions Jean Butler and Michael Flatley – was first performed during the seven-minute interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at the Point Theatre in Dublin on April 30, 1994.  The performance was transmitted to an estimated 300 million viewers worldwide and earned a standing ovation from the packed theatre of 4,000 people.

Flatley is credited with reinventing traditional Irish dance by incorporating new rhythms, syncopation, and upper body movements, which were previously absent from the dance, as well as including influences from tap and contemporary dance.  He is in the Guinness World Records for tap dancing 35 times per second and his feet were at one time insured for $57.6 million.  Flatley retired in 2016 due to constant spinal, knee, foot, and rib pain.

👉  And now, the Candy Bomber.

Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen, an Air Force transport pilot, was on the grounds of West Berlin’s Tempelhof airfield on a mid-July day in 1948, taking part in a historic confrontation of the early Cold War years, when he spotted some 30 German children in ragged clothing outside a fence. He reached into his back pocket, extracted a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint and handed out the last two sticks of gum in the pack.

“The look in their eyes, I could see their appreciation for something so small,” he recalled long afterward. “I wanted to do something more, so I told them to come back later.”

He promised to drop candy to the youngsters on his flight the next day, carrying food and other vital supplies in a massive relief mission known as the Berlin airlift.

“They asked how they would know it was me,” he said. “I told them I’ll wiggle the wings.”

Lieutenant Halvorsen and his two crewmen joined with fellow American airmen to drop a total of 23 tons of candies, chocolate and chewing gum wrapped in tiny parachutes from their planes while preparing to touch down at Tempelhof airfield with vast quantities of other supplies in an effort to break a Soviet land blockade of Berlin’s Allied-occupied western sectors.

When Mr. Halvorsen died February 15, at 101, he was remembered as the original “Candy Bomber” of the airlift, a defiance of Soviet power by the United States, Britain and France that also symbolized reconciliation between the German people and the Allies in the wake of World War II.

Lieutenant Halvorsen, a native of Utah, flew 126 Berlin airlift missions, joined by his co-pilot, Capt. John Pickering, and his navigator, Sgt. Herschel Elkins.

In September 1948, the Air Force sent Lieutenant Halvorsen back to the United States to publicize his efforts, and he appeared on the CBS-TV program “We the People.” American candy manufacturers began donating sweets, and schoolchildren volunteered to wrap them in simulated parachutes, made from handkerchiefs and twine, for shipment to Allied-occupied West Germany.

At least two dozen pilots from Lieutenant Halverson’s squadron were among those who took part in the candy drops. They all became known as Candy Bombers.

A 9-year-old named Peter Zimmerman sent him a homemade parachute and a map providing directions to his home for a candy drop. Lieutenant Halvorsen searched for the house on his next flight but couldn’t find it. Peter sent another note reading: “No chocolate yet. You’re a pilot. I gave you a map. How did you guys win the war anyway?”

Lieutenant Halvorsen sent Peter a chocolate bar in the mail.

“Gail Halvorsen enchanted the children of Berlin,” recalled Ursula Yunger, who had been one of those children and later settled in the United States. “It wasn’t the candy,” she told The Tucson Citizen in 2004. “It was his profound gesture, showing us that somebody cared.”

Ms. Yunger met Mr. Halvorsen for the first time at a reunion of airlift veterans in Tucson in September 2003. “I was just shaking,” she said. He hugged her and handed her a Hershey bar.

On the 50th anniversary of the airlift, Mr. Halvorsen flew to Berlin in a restored cargo plane that had been used in the mission and was introduced by President Bill Clinton at commemorative ceremonies. In May 2009, he was honored at the Pentagon when it unveiled a display telling of humanitarian efforts by the armed forces. He attended a ceremony in Frankfurt in 2013 marking the 65th anniversary of the Berlin airlift’s beginning, and he was also present that year for the naming of a school for him in Berlin.

“The airlift reminded me that the only way to fulfillment in life, real fulfillment, is to serve others,” Mr. Halvorsen told CNN on the Berlin airlift’s 40th anniversary. “I was taught that as a youth in my church, and I found when I flew day and night to serve a former enemy that my feelings of fulfillment and being worthwhile were the strongest that I’ve felt.”

🛐   The close today is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy” (Psalm 30:11).

Anger becomes favor. Weeping is exchanged for joy. Mourning is turned into dancing. Grim sackcloth is discarded for God’s garment of gladness. The silent soul suddenly becomes loquacious with praise. These are just some of the changes we experience when we begin, in prayer, to open ourselves to God.

Prayer: “O for a heart to praise my God! a heart from sin set free; a heart that always feels Thy blood, so freely shed for me.... Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart; come quickly from above; write Thy new name upon my heart, Thy new, best name of love” (Charles Wesley, “O for a Heart to Praise My God”). Amen.

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