QUARANTINE BLOG # 697

April 6, 2022

Today would have been Mom and Dad’s 76th wedding anniversary.  They are celebrating in a house that is eternal in the heavens, not made with hands (see 2 Corinthians 5:1).

👉  Tomorrow is the 136th opening day for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  With hope springing eternal (spring, when a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of baseball) QB offers some pictorial scenes:

And another great season gets underway!

God bless Papa an' Mama, an give the home team a look at the pennant.

👉  The last forbidden place we won’t visit may or may not be there – the Moscow Metro-2, Russia.

Metro-2 is the informal name for a purported secret underground metro system which parallels the public Moscow Metro (known as Metro-1 when in comparison with Metro-2).  

The system was supposedly built, or at least started, during the time of Joseph Stalin and was codenamed D-6 by the KGB.  It is supposedly still operated by the Main Directorate of Special Programs and Ministry of Defense.

A platform which is said to service Metro-2

Metro-2 is said to have four lines which lie 160–660 feet deep. It is said to connect the Kremlin with the Federal Security Service (formerly KGB) headquarters, the government airport at Vnukovo-2, and an underground town outside of Moscow, in addition to other locations of national importance.

I am not sure if the KGB/FSB would rank the Izmailovo Flea Market as a place of national importance, but one time I was there, our guide told me that an entrance to Metro-2 was located nearby.  I guess you need to be able to get a matryoshka of Big Ben and the Pittsburgh Steelers in case of an emergency.

One vendor's supply of matryoshkas at Ismailovo Park.

👉  Speaking of Matryoshka dolls, also known as stacking dolls, nesting dolls, or  Russian tea dolls are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another.  The name matryoshka, means “little matron.”  

A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure, which separates at the middle, top from bottom, to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on.

The first Russian nested doll set was made in 1890 by wood turning craftsman and wood carver Vasily Zvyozdochkin and painted by Sergei Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter. 

Vasily Zvyozdochkin

Sergei Malyutin

I found several references which say the largest set of matryoshka dolls in the world is a 51-piece set hand-painted by Youlia Bereznitskaia of Russia, completed in 2003, with the tallest doll in the set measuring 21.25 inches; the smallest, 0.12 inches, and  arranged side-by-side, the dolls span 11 feet 2.25 inches.  I could not find a picture which identified that set, but the picture below – if I didn’t miscount – has 71 dolls.

To finish up, a video I found which displays  3 incredibly small matroyshkas (and they are proper stacking dolls).

👉  Some questionable wisdom:

●  Tip: Save business cards of people you don’t like.  If you ever hit a parked car accidentally, just write, “Sorry” on the back and leave it on the windshield.

●  If you see me talking to myself, just move along.  I’m self employed.  We’re having a meeting.

●  Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon?  Great food, but no atmosphere.

●  Becoming an adult is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

👉  More British businesses:

👉  And two newspaper headlines:

👉  We haven’t been to the jukebox in a while, and this meme that Matt sent me, generates an oldie but a goodie.

“California Dreamin’” is a song written by John Phillips and Michelle Phillips and first recorded by Barry McGuire.  However, the best-known version is by the Mamas and the Papas, who sang backup on the original version and later released it as a single in 1965.  The song is No. 89 in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  The lyrics of the song express the narrator’s longing for the warmth of Los Angeles during a cold winter in New York City.

One more.  The Mamas and the Papas were the third group to release “Dedicated to the One I Love” which reached # 2 on the Billboard Top 100.

🛐  Today’s close is from Morning by Morning, by Charles Spurgeon.

“The Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23).

Quietly contemplate the Lamb as the light of heaven. 

Light in Scripture is the emblem of joy. The joy of the saints in heaven is comprised in this: Jesus chose us, loved us, bought us, cleansed us, robed us, kept us, glorified us: we are here entirely through the Lord Jesus. 

Light is also the cause of beauty. Nought of beauty is left when light is gone. Without light no radiance flashes from the sapphire, no peaceful ray proceeds from the pearl; and thus all the beauty of the saints above comes from Jesus. As planets, they reflect the light of the Sun of Righteousness; they live as beams proceeding from the central orb. 

Light is also the emblem of knowledge. In heaven our knowledge will be perfect, but the Lord Jesus himself will be the fountain of it. Dark providences, never understood before, will then be clearly seen, and all that puzzles us now will become plain to us in the light of the Lamb. Oh what unfoldings there will be and what glorifying of the God of love! 

Light also means manifestation. Light manifests. In this world it does not yet appear what we shall be. God’s people are a hidden people, but when Christ receives his people into heaven, he will touch them with the wand of his own love, and change them into the image of his manifested glory. They were poor and wretched, but what a transformation! They were stained with sin, but one touch of his finger, and they are bright as the sun, and clear as crystal. 

All this proceeds from the exalted Lamb. Whatever there may be of radiant splendor, Jesus shall be the center and soul of it all. Oh! to be present and to see him in his own light, the King of kings, and Lord of lords!

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