cars 'n stars

 


It doesn't entirely work, but I'm trying to blog less because it's virtually impossible for a person of conscience and human decency to refrain from comment on the unspeakably evil political game going on; and though I'm of a mind to blog about politics, I'm not interested in +Time devolving into a forum. Besides my interest in People - - which is what both religion and politics are singularly about, People, therefore anyone who says religion and politics don't mix is ignorant of the gospel of Jesus Christ - - I have other interests, two of them, as folks who know me know, being automobiles and astronomy. 

Just so, opening email this morning, the first two things that catch my attention are 


https://earthsky.org


with an article and pictures "2021's best photographs of our Milky Way" and an automobile newsletter's pics of a 1958 Edsel that's up for sale or auction and I'm torn as to which to top this morning's blogpost. So eeny meeny miney mo catcha rabbit by the toe if he hollers let him go eeny meeny miney mo my mama told me to choose this ONE, and the Edsel wins. Or maybe I kept counting until the Edsel did win, GOK. Well, G and Me.


Even with a quarter-sphere sky above me as I look up from 7H, there's too much light around for me to get the good view of the Milky Way that I remember looking up and seeing back in the second half of the 1960s when we used to visit Linda's parents in Scottsdale, Arizona. 


What do I wish? I wish we hadn't sold that townhouse down the street from the pool in Villa Monterey. Well, heck, as long as I'm wishing 


I might as well wish for this Edsel too. It's


a good example of America's auto styling taste after the wonders of the 1930s and 1940s. And BTW, I know somebody'll ask: that dark colored car in the background facing the Edsel above is a 1949 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon. But


the Edsel, a startling FoMoCo car that didn't make it, so only lasted three model years. 


The timing was bad, and having to discontinue the car that he'd named after his dad broke Henry II Ford's heart. I was a fan of Henry II until he proved himself a petty, jealous jerk when he fired and humiliated Lee Iacocca, at which point my admiration evaporated. I was a fan of Henry Ford himself, and still am of his genius, but not his antisemitism or his imperious treatment of Ford employees, people getting disciplined if they were seen drinking alcohol and if they missed church on Sundays. Nor of his association with the Third Reich: 

Führer

We have sworn to you once,
But now we make our allegiance permanent.
Like currents in a torrent lost,
We all flow into you.

Even when we cannot understand you,
We will go with you.
One day we may comprehend,
How you can see our future. 
Hearts like bronze shields,
We have placed around you,
And it seems to us, that only
You can reveal God’s world to us.

This poem ran in an in-house magazine published by Ford Motor Company’s German subsidiary in April of 1940. Titled “Führer,” the poem appeared at a time when Ford maintained complete control of the German company and two of its top executives sat on the subsidiary’s board. It was also a time when the object of Ford’s affection was in the process of overrunning Western Europe after already having swallowed up Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in the East.

Nor of his internal gestapo headed by his stooge Harry Bennett. Nor of his shameful treatment of his son Edsel. As well as FDR's death, I remember the night Henry Ford died, and the report of his last day of life, including the tour his driver took him on, a ride around Fairlane that stormy day ... . 



 


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