Luke 1:31-33 (KJV)
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Jeremiah 23:5-6 (KJV)
5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.
6 In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Luke 2:16-20 (KJV)
16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.
"Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces ALREADY in DISSOLUTION. You have mistaken the hour of the night. It is already morning."
--G.K. Chesterton 'Orthodoxy'
Isaiah 1:2-3 (NIV)
2 Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth!
For the LORD has spoken:
"I reared children and brought them up,
but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows his master,
the donkey his owner's manger,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand."
Isaiah 11:1-3 (NIV)
1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD -
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
Born on 13 October:
1934, Nana Mouskouri, multi-lingual vocalist
1942, Paul Simon, songwriter & vocalist
Not I. The name of the music.
Excerpts from 17 May, 2006, travel journal.
The esplanade laid below the gentle grassy slope a short distant from the Club Hotel. In about a minute I was ready upon the seawall. The glow of sunset was fast dissolving; silhouetted black against the shorelines were the thick quills of the salt marshes. With the distant Ocean Highway-Bridge still in view, I drank in this unfettered moment of serenity from God’s cup. Photo: Sunset at Jekyll Island.
Tucked away here on Jekyll Island, the Club Hotel is the epitome of the Industrial Age’s edifice complex; le style du moment, the Queen Anne style architecture. Walking back from the seawall under the farewell gleam of the evening light, I saw for the first time the solitary and peerless grandeur of the hotel. Photo: The Jekyll Island Club Hotel.
Curiously, the Queen Anne architectural style bore little attributes or connection to the 18th century English monarch other than her name sake. Nevertheless, this vogue came into being and flourished splendidly a century ago on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Club Hotel was built between 1872 and 1902 in the American Queen Anne style. Charles Alexander, the principle architect of the building, incorporated in the design extensive verandas, a medieval-like turret, oak wainscoting, heart-of-pine floors, bay windows, and leaded art glass panes, and 93 fireplaces. I should not hesitate to mention, one such fireplace had been cozily settled...
...The evening air carried a whiff of flourishing bloom and fragrance; perhaps a tribute to the nourishing bosom of the subtropical clime. Sans the din and winged insects of the night, a dreamy quietness crept over the landscape...
Log Date: 17 May, 2006
Log Time: ~ 2300 H EDT
Location: Jekyll Island Club Hotel, GA
2nd Floor Guest Room
As we approached the turn-off on Route 520- Highway 17 North onto the Jekyll Island Causeway leading to the island, we saw an abundant growth of salt marshes and Spartina grasses along the road. These were the anchor plants of the marine-estuarine ecosystems commonly found in the Georgia and South Carolina low country. Surely, the early trans-Atlantic settlers had had to wade through the mud flats, marshes, insects, and what not to go ashore. Would they have been as beholden to these confounding natural wonders as we do today? Then again, when all things considered, having survived a long and perilous ocean voyage to reach the New World, muddy salt marshes and other natural impediments were of little significance to the settlers.
When we arrived at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, William said, if we could, we should view the sunset at 8:18 PM. Why would a hotel shuttle driver bothered with celestial events, much less to impart such knowledge to strangers? He was a rare bird, indeed. As the twilight glare of a slowly consuming ember spreading wide and deep over the island, William’s invitation beckoned me to stray from checking in at the front desk...
Log Date: 17 May, 2006
Log Time: 1930 H EDT
Carrier: Jekyll Island Club Hotel Shuttle
Ambient Temp: 80°F/27°C. Humid.
Destination: Jekyll Island Club Hotel, Jekyll Island, GA
ETA: 2030 H EDT
Present Ground Space: North Interstate 95, Jacksonville, FL
I am impressed. A Jekyll Island Club Hotel shuttle is waiting for its guests, while the passengers are disembarking the plane.
We are onboard the shuttle heading north on Interstate 95. It is about 60 miles from JAX to Jekyll Island. Tooling along on the expressway, both sides of the verdant freeway are pleasing the eyes. There is about three or four cars traveling north beside us. A hotel guest asks William, the driver, why the traffic is so sparse. On peak commute hours, William says, there would be about eight cars on the road. Funny man is he.
It's now 5:30 PM on the west coast. Here in Florida and the eastern seaboard, the evening tinct is already setting over the shores. It’s been a long day. Here we are, finally. Georgia's Jewel, Jekyll Island, awaits us.
My music server is down. No new music posts until further notice. Thank you for your patience.
A poem the white-guilt harboring liberals, Islamofacists hugging, and America hating Democratic Left, and the down in the gutter Old Gray Lady, The New York Times, would love to hate.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling, 1919
Aa I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.
But where is my neighbor's cat, Mocha?
Current outdoor temperture: 110°F/43°C.
Romania was the last country to break away from the defunct Soviet controlled Eastern European communist bloc in the late 1980s. During the last gasps of the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime, the state had decreed that each married couple must produce seven children by the age of forty, or else they would be taxed heavily. The scheme was to have increased Romanian's population with sufficient manpower to work at the state-run factories. Any couple who have bored the children but couldn't support them, the state would raise them. That was the plan.
Yet, the harmful communistic ideology in general with Ceauşescu population mandates in particular, have literally spawned generations of orphans and abandoned children. One of the tragic results of the failed communist utopian dream. Today, it is estimated there are 400,000 of these homeless children in a country of 20 million people. Romania provides the equivalent of $10 USD per month per institued orphan.
Founded in 1990, the non-sectarian Christian organization, Carminul Felix (The Happy Home) was setup to ameliorate the spiritual and physical depravities of these unclaimed and unwanted young souls. In the latter part of June 2006, one of our church groups and two-chapter representatives of the California and Nevada Rotary went to the Carminul Felix Village at Oradea, Romania.
For nine days, this team of twenty-one people, including some young people and three physicians, helped finished and furnished two apartment houses for orphans-now-turned adults (18-years and older). These are transitional housing for the young adults who would eventually leave the Village and find their ways about the world. The two buildings finished just in time to receive at least twenty-five young adults, as they are preparing to leave the children-side of the orphanage in September.
'For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.' -- Matthew 25:35. New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Today, 10 June, is American musical composer and lyricist Jerry Herman's birthday.
"After sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account of their journey, and of all that had happened in London, Mr. Collins invited them to take a stroll in the garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of which he attended himself. To work in his garden was one of his most respectable pleasures;"
-- Chapter 28, "Pride and Prejudice", Vol. III, Part 2, Jane Austen.
Richard Rodgers (28 June 1902 - 31 December 1979)
The Summer solstice has come, and so is the heat wave. The outside temperture at this writing is 103°F/39°C.
The first day of summer is very warm here in the valley.
At the time of his post on 20:23 Hours PDT, the temperture is 93°F/34°C. A warm breeze is wafting through the leaves and summer blooms. Tomorrow's forecast: 101°F/38°C.
Friday, May 19, 2006, 9:21:00 Hours EDT
Friday, May 19, 2006, 6:42:10 Hours EDT
Sunset, Thu., May 18, 2006, 20:13:32 Hours EDT
Sunset, Thu., May 18, 2006, 20:11:54 Hours EDT
Sunset, Thu., May 18, 2006, 20:10:06 Hours EDT
Villa Miriana,Thu., May 18, 2006, 14:08:10 Hours EDT
Gator Basking, Dirt Bike Trail, Thu., May 18, 2006, 10:12:08 Hours EDT 
Jekyll Island Club Hotel Pool, Thu., May 18, 2006, 09:00:54 Hours EDT
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