I have never been in Brooklyn. But I would like to go there. In all of the old WWII movies, there was one scruffy, down-to-earth sergeant with a thick Brooklyn accent. He was always the symbol of the solid blue-collar, ‘regular’ guy. The one you wanted in your foxhole. In 1990 I got to know and become friends with a great woman, the late Rita Klimova. She was then the Czech Ambassador to the United States. She was the woman who coined the phrase “Velvet Revolution” while interpreting for Vaclav Havel. She was a professor of economics with a very practical view of world affairs. Once at a luncheon in San Francisco someone at our table asked about the possibility of Czechoslovakia breaking up. “Well,” she said diplomatically, “it is like a divorce. Sometimes it happens, and nothing can stop it. But who ever heard of both sides coming out richer after a divorce?”
Nice line, but the reason I repeat it and speak of Rita is that she said it with a pronounced Brooklyn accent. And that accent, after one got over the surprise of it, tended to sooth her audiences. This was someone you could trust. A straight talker and a straight shooter. Rita’s family had escaped Hitler, and she learned her first lessons in economics by selling Girl Scout Cookies in the neighborhood of their wartime Brooklyn home.
One of my favorite writers of all time is Don Marquis, who wrote: “. . . the Brooklyn Bridge, that song in stone and steel of an engineer who was also a great artist . . .” Don also said: “Politeness, rooted in the soul, is the only true politics.” President Obama has tried to live up to that adage, I believe. But there are limits. I have been waiting for someone to speak up about the pure political obstructionism of the Republican Party; the new incarnation of Newt Gingrich’s “Shut Down Congress.” Someone more like Harry Truman. Someone who would finally get up and remind us of the line from the movie Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
I took a congressman from Brooklyn to do that. My hat is off to him. Give’m Hell, Tony!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Solid Rock Church
In 2000, Pastor Lawrence and Darlene Bishop have pastored Solid Rock Church since 1978. The stories of how they began in ministry are quite interesting. Lawrence Bishop has a powerful testimony of how God called a prosperous Christian businessman with a heart to serve to pastor a thriving New Testament church. Pastor Bishop began in the horse business at the age of twelve and has built one of the most successful Quarter Horse ranches in the nation. The LB Ranch is home to many famous stallions and other championship horses. Horsemen come from across the United States and all over the world to buy quality horses from the LB Ranch.
In 1975, Lawrence reached a desperate point in his life. While building a successful horse business and traveling as a highly sought-after auctioneer, he found himself putting his family and God behind his business ventures. He knew that his priorities had to change. One night, after much prodding by his wife, he attended a local church service. During that meeting, he felt as if the preacher was speaking directly to him and even suspected that Darlene had spoken to the preacher concerning his situation. Lawrence recommitted his life to Christ that night and a short time later surrendered to the call of ministry. Lawrence preaches in churches around the world and promotes the gospel through Bluegrass music. He has recorded several cd’s including Traveling Preaching Man, White Horse Rider, and Three Dollar Baby.
Darlene made her commitment to Christ at fourteen years of age and felt the call to preach shortly thereafter. After marrying Lawrence at the age of seventeen, she began to work with him in the horse business. As they became more and more successful, Darlene still had a burning desire to preach the gospel, often getting up in the middle of the night to rehearse the messages God had given her. This led her to answer the call to preach and now she ministers not only along side Lawrence at Solid Rock Church, but also as founder of Darlene Bishop Ministries. Darlene is the author of such works as Your Life Follows Your Words.
They have many things to sell you:
They built this:
God replied with lightning:
Lesson: God has a sense of humor
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Final Word, Final Solution?
.
Politness, rooted in the soul,
is the only true politics.
~~~ Don Marquis
I created this blog because I was very sorry to see that the underpinning of Erik Best's "Final Word" (which has unfortunately become a Spenglerian “Decline of the West” rant) is based partly on Pat Buchanan’s horrible piece of tripe "The Unnecessary War." Were the Czechs really better off under Heydrich than Masaryk and Benes? Buchanan thinks so. The man is so much the antithesis of the quote above I attach to my e-mails that I have to reply. He is more than bad, he is evil. This is the very worst of Nixon’s White House still raising his ugly head. The man who called Watergate:
The lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will ... To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital — ... there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office.
He is nothing less than a neo-Nazi; a malevolent spirit of hate. This is the man who pushed the always flawed Nixon from the moderation that had begun to come with age and experience into the nether world that destroyed him. This is the man who then saved himself by getting Nixon to burn the White House Tapes . . . destroying Nixon, but preventing Buchanan’s part in those tapes from coming out. Spengler, at least, despite being the philosophical underpinning of Nazism, rejected the most extreme views of Hitler and did not buy into true Nazism. He was not a base, hate mongering rabble-rouser like Buchanan; the American version of Josef Goebbels.
This country especially (The Czech Republic) but also the world in general have had too much of pseudo-religious ‘philosophies’ where followers look at every turning leaf and say:
“Look! . . . . . Capitalists!/Jews!/Communists!/ Nazis!/The Market!/Decline of the West!
And then they warp whatever they see to fit their pre-conceived notions.
Apocalyptic visions of the “End of the World” are not new. They have been used over and over again by those who fear change most of all; but who also fear those different than themselves, racially, religiously, or politically. They breed fear and hatred, not understanding. They are almost always destructive, not constructive. That is why I twitched when “The Final Word” began, a year or so ago, to veer into polemic; not recommending policy or change but attacking almost everybody for aiding and abetting “Decline.” It became an almost paranoid window viewing plots under every leaf, and in doing so lost credence as did “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It has gone from clear-eyed watchdog to mean-spirited diatribe. I we need to take a good look at where all this xenophobia is leading us. When Buchanan's book is a best seller, the fertilizer that Hitler's brooding hatred grew from is still plentiful, and the Spenglerian structure Goebbels put to use is still a wickedly useful tool.
I quoted Don Marquis above. He was a newspaper “Colyumist” in the teens and twenties in New York; and a poet; and a playwright (His “The Old Soak” had a long run on Broadway in 1922 opposite Capek’s “RUR”.) Read one of his columns below, and another I will link to, if you will. I think they are pertinent today . . . and in the present discussion . . .
I pray Thee, make my colyum read,
And give me thus my daily bread.
Endow me, if Thou grant me wit,
Likewise with sense to mellow it.
Save me from feeling so much hate
My food will not assimilate;
Open mine eyes that I may see
Thy world with more of charity,
And lesson me in good intents
And make me friend of innocence ...
Make me (sometimes at least) discreet;
Help me to hide my self conceit,
And give me courage now and then
To be as dull as are most men.
And give me readers quick to see
When I am satirizing Me....
Grant that my virtues may atone
For some small vices of mine own.
Don Marquis on New York; the good, bad, and the ugly
(note: The link above is part of a little book about Christopher Morley I wrote, and the comments at the bottom of the second page are directed to him in first person. The photo is Marquis.)
Politness, rooted in the soul,
is the only true politics.
~~~ Don Marquis
I created this blog because I was very sorry to see that the underpinning of Erik Best's "Final Word" (which has unfortunately become a Spenglerian “Decline of the West” rant) is based partly on Pat Buchanan’s horrible piece of tripe "The Unnecessary War." Were the Czechs really better off under Heydrich than Masaryk and Benes? Buchanan thinks so. The man is so much the antithesis of the quote above I attach to my e-mails that I have to reply. He is more than bad, he is evil. This is the very worst of Nixon’s White House still raising his ugly head. The man who called Watergate:
The lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will ... To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital — ... there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office.
He is nothing less than a neo-Nazi; a malevolent spirit of hate. This is the man who pushed the always flawed Nixon from the moderation that had begun to come with age and experience into the nether world that destroyed him. This is the man who then saved himself by getting Nixon to burn the White House Tapes . . . destroying Nixon, but preventing Buchanan’s part in those tapes from coming out. Spengler, at least, despite being the philosophical underpinning of Nazism, rejected the most extreme views of Hitler and did not buy into true Nazism. He was not a base, hate mongering rabble-rouser like Buchanan; the American version of Josef Goebbels.
This country especially (The Czech Republic) but also the world in general have had too much of pseudo-religious ‘philosophies’ where followers look at every turning leaf and say:
“Look! . . . . . Capitalists!/Jews!/Communists!/ Nazis!/The Market!/Decline of the West!
And then they warp whatever they see to fit their pre-conceived notions.
Apocalyptic visions of the “End of the World” are not new. They have been used over and over again by those who fear change most of all; but who also fear those different than themselves, racially, religiously, or politically. They breed fear and hatred, not understanding. They are almost always destructive, not constructive. That is why I twitched when “The Final Word” began, a year or so ago, to veer into polemic; not recommending policy or change but attacking almost everybody for aiding and abetting “Decline.” It became an almost paranoid window viewing plots under every leaf, and in doing so lost credence as did “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It has gone from clear-eyed watchdog to mean-spirited diatribe. I we need to take a good look at where all this xenophobia is leading us. When Buchanan's book is a best seller, the fertilizer that Hitler's brooding hatred grew from is still plentiful, and the Spenglerian structure Goebbels put to use is still a wickedly useful tool.
I quoted Don Marquis above. He was a newspaper “Colyumist” in the teens and twenties in New York; and a poet; and a playwright (His “The Old Soak” had a long run on Broadway in 1922 opposite Capek’s “RUR”.) Read one of his columns below, and another I will link to, if you will. I think they are pertinent today . . . and in the present discussion . . .
I pray Thee, make my colyum read,
And give me thus my daily bread.
Endow me, if Thou grant me wit,
Likewise with sense to mellow it.
Save me from feeling so much hate
My food will not assimilate;
Open mine eyes that I may see
Thy world with more of charity,
And lesson me in good intents
And make me friend of innocence ...
Make me (sometimes at least) discreet;
Help me to hide my self conceit,
And give me courage now and then
To be as dull as are most men.
And give me readers quick to see
When I am satirizing Me....
Grant that my virtues may atone
For some small vices of mine own.
Don Marquis on New York; the good, bad, and the ugly
(note: The link above is part of a little book about Christopher Morley I wrote, and the comments at the bottom of the second page are directed to him in first person. The photo is Marquis.)
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