Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Jon Gnagy’s Learn to Draw was among the most popular educational TV shows. I watched it regularly, and sent away for one of his instructional kits. And you know what? It really helped me learn to draw!
His lessons usually started by showing you the basic geometric shapes–cones, cubes, spheres, etc.–underlying the objects that you wished to draw; and then he’d show you how to build on those. For instance, you’d start with a cone and build it, step by step, into a sheaf of wheat, a teepee, or a church steeple. The kit had a variety of pencils, charcoal sticks, and this really cool “kneaded eraser” that was like a ball of Silly Putty. And it had a book of scenes that you could learn to draw–again, step by step.
Over the years, I got rather good at drawing all kinds of things. It was fun! We still have Patty’s Learn to Draw kit stowed upstairs. Still lifes, landscapes, people and animals–it’s all in there.
Yes, boys ‘n’ girls, we can get by just swimmingly fine without transgender, without “gay” activists, without feminism, without all those other isms they’ve unloaded on us.
And when we write fantasy, we can keep all that rubbish out of it.
In any fiction series, isn’t it disconcerting when the central character suddenly starts behaving in a way he never did before? But they did that in one of our all-time favorite TV series, Columbo.
I have no idea whether this post will go up or not. The guy is supposed to come tomorrow to install the new modem. The old one we could install ourselves. The new one, forget about it.
I get edgy whenever I hear anyone speak of “our entertainment needs.” Stories around the campfire are one thing. Lavishly-produced celebrations of atheism are another.
I enjoy Primeval because Tim Haines’ special effects are the closest I’ll ever come to seeing live prehistoric animals. (How could he have left out Uintatherium? They always leave out Uintatherium!) But the price of admission is to let the screenwriters write out God.
We have to start winning back cultural ground for Christ’s Kingdom. We’ve let it go for too long.
No, I’m not going to post a picture of a polyamorous “relationship.” Here’s a nice little bird instead.
R.J. Rushdoony used to say the only freedom statists mean to leave us is the freedom to fornicate–and that only because they want to wipe out the family, which competes with the state for an individual’s loyalty. He was right.
Speaking of America’s national character sliding down the pipe to the trash heap down below, the small city of Somerville, Massachusetts (pop. 80,000), has approved polyamory. That’s when a group of people have random sexual relations and call themselves a family. Feh. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/us/somerville-polyamorous-domestic-partnership.html) They’ve redefined “domestic partnerships” to include groups of three or more persons living together as a sexual oddity.
Now public employees there can get local government health benefits if there are more than two people in the “partnership.” Members of these aggregations can now visit each other in the hospital–a change that could easily have been made without approving polyamory. But this is only to be expected from a town that flies Organized Sodomy’s “rainbow flag” from City Hall.
Family, schmamily, everything’s a family because you are whatever you call yourself. Two men, two women, a dog, and a manual typewriter can all themselves a “family.” Just another thing for our country to be ashamed of.
We’re getting bombarded with robo-calls today, the same stupid calls we get all the time, every day (“This is an apology call…”, “This is your final notice…”, etc.). It’s pure annoyance for annoyance’s sake: you’re not going to buy their product.
The phone rings again. I answer it. Only instead of saying “Hello,” I say, “This had better be good.” Response: nothing. Silence.
It rings again. This time I say, “Who’s this?” Silence.
A third time. “What’s this, then?” And for the third time, silence.
And then it dawns on me! If you say “Hello,” you engage the robot to go into its spiel. If you don’t say “Hello,” it doesn’t engage.
This way you get the added benefit of a real caller hearing you and responding to your other-than-hello.
That’s how I’m going to answer the phone from now on.
America is great, said Alexis DeTocqueville in the early 19th century, because America is good. If she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
Bull’s eye for him.
Our esteemed colleague “Unknowable” has raised this issue lately in several comments. Just getting rid of the Democrat Party and slapping down the fake nooze media, he says, will not treat the root cause of our problems–an across-the-boards deterioration of our national character. This includes our penchant for “near-worship of celebrities.”
I think it’s important to recognize that our nation’s character has been debased on purpose by persons who are easily identifiable: the Democrat Party, the nooze and “entertainment” media (sort of a tautology), and teachers’ unions and other wicked “educators.” If we could somehow break them up and strip them of their power, they wouldn’t be able to carry on their mission to corrupt the country.
Things are done now that would have been utterly unthinkable when I was a boy. So why are they thinkable, and doable, now? Because certain people worked very hard, for a long time, to make them so. They never took “No” for an answer. No matter how many times they were defeated, they kept coming back–like the freakin’ Mummy. If one tactic didn’t work, they tried another. That’s how they finally got “gay marriage” intruded into our culture, through the Supreme Court. More specifically, through Justice Anthony Kennedy. They only had to swing one guy, and they got what they wanted. All other tactics had failed them. Even California voters turned it down. But they found the one judge who would give them what they wanted.
Yes, our national character needs re-Christianizing. We were a good country because we were a Christian country. D. James Kennedy once said that the most unserved mission field in the world was the churches in America. I’m afraid he was right.
Well, no one can say God didn’t give us enough work to keep us busy.
Midsomer Murders was at one time one of the most popular TV shows in the world. Then it sank into a swamp of Christian-bashing. I don’t know how popular it is now.
It is the contention, and possibly even the belief, of secular fools that they, not God, can and will create a perfect world. In the meantime they seem content to worship the National Health Service.
You know what? We need our national mythology! In fact, with all these varmints on the left trying to tear it down, we need it more than ever.
Paladin, played by Richard Boone in Have Gun Will Travel, was “a knight without armor in a savage land.” So we had a whole passel of westerns on TV–all about moral and physical courage, standing up for what is right, thinking independently, and doing what needed to be done to tame the savage land. Maybe they were no more strictly historical than the King Arthur legends; but they pointed us in a good direction.
And I remember one time, going into the bookstore in the mall, hearing this theme song sung with incredible sweetness by a guy stacking the bottom shelves. I thank you for that memory, whoever you are.
We need our heroes back. It was an act of cultural suicide to get rid of them.
