remember the Maine

Remember the Maine, Remember the Alamo, Remember Pearl Harbor, most recently Remember 9/11. Nobody remembers the Alamo, but when I was a boy plenty of people remembered the battleship USS Maine exploding in Havana harbor on this date in 1898 and the national outrage and the Spanish American War. In my early days at Cove School, Pearl Harbor was fresh in every mind, and we loved singing the song as part of our daily devotional in class

Let's REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

As we go to meet the foe.

Let's REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

As we did the Alamo.

We will always remember how they died for Liberty.

Let's REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

And go on to victory."

If you don't know the tune, ask me and I'll sing it for you one of these days. My octogen-voice isn't so great, but early as a priest I used to chant part of the liturgy back and forth with choir and congregation, and it was fun and nice. The rector I "trained" with in the early 1980s required it of me, saying "it's part of the territory" and he was right, certainly for the Time. That fellow also required that my sermon manuscripts be copied and placed in the sermon rack in the narthex - - which leads to another story, about my shamefully manipulating the sermon rack to goad him, that would be for another Time except that I've already told it here in several blogposts over the years.

What besides the history date of the Maine brings this to mind?

A news line this morning, "Russian news agencies said that the forces are returning to the bases “after completing their tasks”. After the pullout, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, "February 15 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed,” she wrote. Ms Zakharova further said that the West has been “shamed and destroyed without firing a single shot"."

So yes, okay, now the Russian knows how to jerk our chain. And now we know why Russia, China and North Korea get so exercised when we conduct war games near their borders. We also know not to mess around too much too close to Russia's borders, because they won't be intimidated.

Third teacup of perfect black coffee this morning from my Xmas treat coffees, and another bag arrived in yesterday's mail: haven't opened it yet.

What? spent some time this morning trying to find new fonts, typefaces that may show up darker and more legible on my blogger page. Scrolling through scores, maybe hundreds of font. I like a sans font that isn't noticeable, isn't quirky and distracting. Have been using Helvetica for years, but when published on blogger it fades. Have also been using Helvetica for other regular uses such as sermon notes, but for that I recently rediscovered Wunderlich, which has a "medium" setting that gives darker print without having to select Bold, but couldn't find Wunderlich available for blogger.

Tuesday then, great excitement, big excursion planned: driving to the downtown postoffice to check the mailbox, and to the battery store north of Target to replace the batteries in the key-fobs for Linda's car.

Sitting here in bed typing, and something shows up on the tv news: New Warning About Kids and Screen Time. It isn't just kids, addiction to screen time has completely changed the social dynamic of our society, surely you've noticed?

Which reminds me, I need to review the screening of last weekend's Sunday School class, trying to figure out how to improve the audio. Maybe it's not all that important.