There were a lot of things I was going to write about today. But something always seemed to get in the way of the “through-idea,” the thing that would see it to the end.
The first was Christian Science. I saw that today was the birthday of the founder, one Mary Baker Eddy, born in 1821, in a town called Bow, in New Hampshire. I am not sure if it is pronounced bow like you do when you curtsey, or bow, like you do with an arrow. Anyway, that’s where she was born.
I stopped my piece on Christian Science because it all became too complicated in my mind, the notion that “God and the mind have ultimate reality, and that sin and illness are illusions which can be overcome by prayer and faith.” That is the premise of the religion, I read.
The first person who came to mind was John Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston, who died after a two year battle with breast cancer, at the young age of 58. They are (were) Christian Scientists. I wondered how that worked. Were they not any good at praying, or did the god they believe in pick someone better to survive that day? There would be no way for me to resolve these questions, so Mary Baker Eddy will have to wait for some other time.
The next prospect for writing was about paint. Not just any paint, but the ready-mix kind. It was invented in Ohio, by a man named D.R. Averill. He figured this out in 1867, not long after the Civil War. I guess a lot of people may have been painting things then. And before Averill came along, all we had was not-so-ready-mix paint. But there wasn’t much history on this fellow, other than his discovery. Sherwin Williams really gave this the big push and made a better formula by 1880. But again, this story was a dead-ender. I even tried Ohio inventions, but the main ones listed were the usual suspects. Cars, airplanes, cash registers, light bulbs, and such. Painted in a corner, you might say.
There were also the birthdays of Ginger Rogers, in 1911. And Orville Redenbacher, four years prior, in 1907. She danced like crazy and was married four times. He was interested in raising corn and married twice. There were no show stoppers with either one of them.
Also on this day, was the first “test detonation” of an atomic bomb, in 1945. It was set off at Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico as part of the US Manhattan Project. Once again, there was little excitement about this. An atomic bomb went off in the desert, and we all know the story from there. One kid on the block gets a slingshot, and suddenly every kid needs a slingshot. Or ten, with bigger sling rocks.
So, today, as you can see, was one dead end after another, bringing me to this, yet another dead end. Which, by the way, originated some time ago. The expression “dead end” first appeared in the 1880s to describe a closed water pipe. Then, by the 1920s the term came to be used as an idiom to mean a situation from which there is no escape.
Yet, here I go. I’m escaping now.
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“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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“Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform
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“The bad news is nothing lasts forever,
The good news is nothing lasts forever.”
― J. Cole
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