Tuesday

                          Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. It is men’s last desperate attempt at supremacy.”

                                                 Bette Davis

                                 Miracle in Brooklyn

Here is an event that proves to me that the United States is here for a reason and that there is a God.

The Revolutionary war had been underway for a short while and things were not going well for the Continentals. In August of 1776 George Washington's army of about 10,000 was in Brooklyn, NY surrounded on three sides by the British army of about 30,000 with their backs to the East River near where the Brooklyn Bridge is today. It would take a miracle for the army to not be annihilated and sure enough a miracle showed up. A fiery Patriot mariner/fisherman named John Glover offered to shuttle the army over to Manhattan with 10 small boats. Not only would he have to take the soldiers, he would have to take their artillery, horses, gunpowder, musket balls, rifles and small arms and do it at night in near silence so the British patrols would not find it out. It was a full moon but a heavy overcast showed up. There was three British warships near the southern tip of Manhattan that could cut off this retreat but suddenly a wind blowing to the South arose preventing it. After nearly nine hours of at least 10 trips per boat it became daylight and a British patrol discovered them, ran to the riverbank and began firing but on cue a fog bank rolled in and the visibility went down to a few yards. There was four Continentals killed but the Continental army was in tact. All of these conditions could not be coincidental, it was an act of God and here we are for reasons yet determined. Yes indeed, we need to be thankful.

           This Date in History  January 3

1777 General George Washington pulled off a brilliant strategic victory over the British near Princeton, New Jersey. As we all know, Washington had crossed the Delaware River with 3,000 troops on Christmas day and crushed the British-led Hessians in Trenton, New Jersey. British General William Howe was deeply concerned and sent General Charles Cornwallis and 8,000 redcoats to Trenton to capture “The Fox”, George Washington. Washington discovered the oncoming British and knew his 3,000 exhausted but exuberant troops could not stand up to the 8,000 redcoats. Cornwallis assumed that Washington would back-track and cross the Delaware back into Pennsylvania and sent troops to protect against that. Washington knew that Cornwallis would assume this and on the night of January 2 he pulled out of Trenton by muffling the wheels of his rolling stock and the hooves of his horses and walked right by the encamped British and headed north to Princeton. On this morning Washington encountered Cornwallis’ rear guard that he had outnumbered by 5 to 1 near Princeton. Needless to say, the Patriots beat the hell out the rear guard to the tune of 40 Patriots killed to 275 British. After this Howe decided to abandon New Jersey to Washington and moved his army to the area between New Brunswick and the Atlantic coast. The Loyalists in New Jersey were in serious trouble now. Previously the British troops and especially the Hessians had been especially brutal and cruel to any Patriots they came across and the Loyalists had welcomed the British/Hessians with open arms. Well, now the Loyalists had no troops to protect them and the Patriots came after them with blood in their eyes. Many of the Loyalists went aboard British ships for protection. The ships eventually sailed for Canada and put ashore the Loyalists who became Canadian citizens and others left by wagon immediately for New Brunswick and the umbrella of General Howe’s troops. They became Canadian citizens….and don’t come back.

1990 In October of this year, a man named Charles Stuart made a desperate cell phone call to the police from the Mission Hills district of Boston. He claimed that a black man had walked by and shot both him and his wife while sitting in his car at a stoplight. Charles’ wound was not life threatening but his pregnant wife was killed. The Boston PD goes crazy as hell and began the indiscriminant strip search of nearly every black man in the Mission Hills area. The police finally arrest a black small time drug dealer named Alan Swanson by falsifying an arrest warrant. Alan was able to prove that he was miles away in the presence of 30 other people. The Boston PD was unapologetic but released Swanson. They then arrest another black man named Willie Bennett and it looked like Willie was going down for the murder. During all this time, the Boston PD failed to look into Charles Stuart’s background. If they had, they would have found that Charles had a thing for one of his co-workers and hit on her regularly, he was also really upset that his wife had chosen not to get an abortion when she found out she was pregnant. He had even talked with his friends about how to get rid of his wife. Anyway, on this date Charles’ brother Matthew went to the police and told them that Charles had killed his wife and shot himself in a non-fatal area. Matthew admitted that he had taken the pistol that Charles had used and threw it into the river at Charles’ behest. He said that he was OK with Charles killing his wife, but he drew the line at someone else going to prison for it. When Charles found out that Matthew had blown the whistle, he went to a bridge and jumped to his death in the river below. He left a suicide note saying that he was sorry for the trouble he had caused. Again the Boston PD without apology released Willie Bennett. The Boston PD was intent on convicting a black man come hell or high water, justice be damned.

1521 On this date a Catholic monk named Marin Luther is excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Luther was the professor of biblical interpretation at the Wittenberg, Germany University. What caused this was that Luther was teaching in his classes that the Catholic Church practice of selling “indulgences” was not sanctioned by God because it was not described in the Bible. Selling indulgences had been a practice of the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. This practice was that a person could be forgiven of their sins if they contributed to the Catholic Church, either before the commission of the sin or afterward. The Catholic Church received untold billions of dollars worldwide with this practice and the church knew that if this income was stopped they would be in serious trouble financially. I can assure you that the church’s interest in saving one’s soul was on the bottom of the priorities list when it came to this. Later on Luther was called before the head of the political machinery in that area of Germany along with a Papal emissary. In those days, affairs of state and the Catholic Church were unfortunately intertwined. This meeting was called the Diet of Worms. Worms was a city in Germany and Diet loosely means “trial”. At this gathering the Papal emissary and the politicos demanded that Luther recant everything he had said adverse to the Catholic Church. Since Luther’s teachings reached the public, the sale of indulgences had fallen off sharply in that area of Europe and the church was feeling the pinch. Luther asked for a day to think it over. The next day he announced that he would only follow and teach what was in the Bible and nothing else, indulgences and other non-biblical programs of the church, be damned. This essentially was a death sentence for Luther. Soon after leaving Worms, Luther was kidnapped and brought to the castle of a powerful Duke who was a follower of Luther. Luther began translating the Bible, which was written in Latin, into German. This panicked the Catholics even more because if this Bible got out into the gentry they could interpret the Bible for themselves rather that having it interpreted for them by the church. Luther’s Bible indeed made it out and the Reformation began in earnest. Thank you, Martin Luther, for being true to thyself and leading us out of a dark place.

               Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow.