Mental Age Test
It was six am on thanksgiving wednesday morning. PG was eating breakfast. In an hour and forty five minutes, it would be time to get on the road. This should be time to take the Mental Age Test, write about the test and the results, and do the other human chores needed to function in polite society. If not, then the post will be there this evening.
The test is multiple choice. The first question asked what birthdays are for. PG tries to ignore this day, and that was an option. The next four questions had no good answers, and required the least bad answer. If you recognize this, you get ten years added to your score.
Question five is whether baseball hats look better with the bill in front, or in the back. There is no qualification. If it it is raining water, then the bill keeps rain out of your eyes. If a flock of birds is overhead, then the bill keeps the droppings off a red neck. It is a case of situational ethics.
Politically, you are …Select from… Conservative ~ Green ~ Liberal ~ Socialist.
This is number six. What if you think these labels are dishonest red herrings? There is no good answer. For politics, this is appropriate.
You see someone fall over in the street. Do you … Select from… Laugh ~ Run over to make sure they are OK ~ Thank the heavens it wasn’t you ~ Shake your head and think ‘muppet’
There is not enough information given. You don’t know who the person is, how much they weigh, why he/she fell over, or what street it is. If it is I 85, then the person will be smushed into the pavement before you get to the side of the road. If it is Culduhsack Drive, then you pick them up, and ask if they are ok. If they don’t answer the situation is probably more serious than most people can deal with.
Before you skip over this, and go look at the pictures, (from The Library of Congress.) we will not be discussing all twenty questions. If you want to see them, there is a link above to the test. Question thirteen is something you might expect from a british test. It’s hot. You want an ice cream. You buy … Select from… A magnum ~ A cone with a chocolate flake ~ An ice lolly.
The ad below this question is for McCormick seasoning. When you click on the ad, a window comes up. It has a recipe for Italian meat loaf. Something says this would not go well with an ice lolly.
And so on and so forth. The final screen gives the answer. The device says “The My Mental Age Test Your mental age is 42.” The option to share on facebook is respectfully declined.
Shut Up Franklin Graham
PG was researching a previous post, and decided to check up on little Ralphie Reed. His group’s website has a headline video, Franklin Graham: America Has Turned Its Back on God. It does not mention why anyone should care.
Franklin Graham’s claim to fame is his father. Billy Graham is a TV preacher superstar. The elder Graham is still alive, so it is fair to make negative comments. PG walked through the living room countless nights, and saw parents glued to the tube. The Billy Graham crusade was a staple of television. The blow dried superpreacher stood in front of a football stadium full of admirers, telling people how not to go to hell. Sin, salvation, send money. Is that all there is?
If Franklin Graham did not have a superstar father, he would be nobody. Life is not fair, and the opinions of Franklin Graham, and his sister, Anne Graham Lotz, are treated with the reverence Catholics give to the thoughts of the Pope. Franklin Graham has gotten a lot of attention with some rude comments about Muslims. Islam and Christianity use the same G-d.
It was some comments about G-d in the video that annoyed PG. “We’ve turned out back on G-d. We’ve taken G-d out of our schools. We’ve taken G-d out of our government.” Apparently, Franklin Graham and PG have different thoughts about G-d.
G-d is in everything and everybody. If you turn your back on G-d, she will still be looking you in the eye. If you have a room full of children, then G-d is present in that room. This idea of a puny G-d, that you can turn your back on, may be the most offensive thing ever said by the Graham family, Inc.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Fifty Years
Fifty years ago, John Kennedy went to the oval office in the sky. Did Marilyn Monroe greet him?
The bullets hit Mr.Kennedy at 12:30. He arrived at the hospital at 12:37. He had a faint heartbeat on arrival, but quickly succumbed to his wounds.
In Georgia, PG was nine years old. He was in Miss Mckenzie’s fourth grade class. There was going to be an assembly soon, and the class was going to perform. There was a rehearsal in the cafetorium, and some of the kids were acting up. They went back to the class, and PG thought they were going to be chewed out about the misbehavior in the cafetorium. Instead, Miss Mckenzie came into the room, and told the kids that President Kennedy had been shot during a parade in Dallas Texas. She did not say anything about his condition. One kid cheered the news.
School let out at the regular time, and PG walked home. His mother and brother were crying. He was told that the president had died. The cub scouts meeting that afternoon was canceled.
Later that night, a plane arrived in Washington. The tv cameras showed a gruesome looking man walk up to a microphone. He was introduced as President Lyndon Johnson. This may have been the worst moment of that day. Pictures by “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Silly Remarks Of The President
Tuesday was the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address. This is seven and a half score years ago, which is not as poetic as four score and seven. The famous speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride to the battlefield was too bumpy to write on, so it was written elsewhere. No one is sure what happened to the original.
The text was published in newspapers, and became famous. Relatively few people heard the actual speech. Not everyone was impressed. The Harrisburg Patriot & Union said “We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.” The descendent of this paper, The Patriot-News, printed a retraction a few days ago. Better late than never.
Other contemporaries were critical. Presidents are politicians, with allies and enemies, and are not often beloved in their own time. The New York World accused Lincoln of “gross ignorance or willful misstatement” with his declaration of “four score and seven years ago.” The Democratic Chicago Times called the address “a perversion of history so flagrant that the extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.”
H.L. Mencken had a few unkind things to say about the affair. “But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—”that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. “
As the rest of the linked essay points out, one motivation for the Confederates desire for self determination is to maintain the ability to own other human beings. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These are Union Soldiers from the War Between the States.
Turn Turn Turn
The word Ecclesiastes has a poetic tingle. It’s place in the Old Testament is between the poetry of Proverbs, and the enticements of the Song of Soloman. Richard Brautigan counted the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes, and found no errors. Ecclesiastes 3 was even the lyrics for a top forty song.
Turn Turn Turn is taken almost verbatim from the book of Ecclesiastes. Pete Seeger wrote a melody, and added a line. “There is a time for peace, I swear its not too late”. TTT became a hit for the Byrds in 1965, as the escalation of the Vietnam war was in full bloom.
TTT is about the dualities of life, and how there is a place for all these things. When PG was collecting rocks from destroyed houses, it was a time to gather stones together. TTT can serve as a companion to the vibrations of day to day living.
Pete Seeger is still alive, at the age of 94. PG first heard of him when he was on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was during Vietnam, and Mr. Seeger did a song…”Waist deep in the big muddy”… about how “The big fool said to push on, push on”. The CBS censors did not allow this the first time he appeared. Many thought he was talking about Lyndon Johnson.
“Pete Bowers” was a stage name for a young Pete Seeger. This was to avoid making trouble for his father. The band he played in, the Weavers, popularized a gullah spiritual, “Kumbaya”. This is a repost, edited for inclusion in the trifecta writing challenge. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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