Sunday Drive: The Lord's My Shepherd

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Today's readings from the Episcopal Lectionary speak to me in a special way; but today I wish to focus on another reading.

Yesterday, September 19th, was the fourth anniversary of the funeral of H. M. Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, which was broadcast and streamed worldwide to billions of viewers.  It was deeply moving for me, and I particularly liked the rendition of the 23rd Psalm from the Scottish Metrical Psalter, set to the tune Crimond.  It was a favorite of the Queen's, who was raised by a Scottish nanny, who later served as her dresser (lady's maid) for many years.  

The Queen's Christian faith was the bedrock of her life and long reign, as she expressed many times in her annual Christmas broadcasts to her peoples around the world.  Here is the Psalm as performed at the funeral by the  Choir of Westminster Abbey:

The 23rd Psalm is, of course, deeply meaningful to all Christians, and is frequently used in funeral services.  It is dear to my heart because I learned it by heart in kindergarten at a Christian school, and it has comforted me through all the sad or lonely or grieving times of life.  And in my mind, it ties in with another comforting passage from the New Testament:

My grace is sufficient for thee: 

for My strength is made perfect in weakness.

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Waitin' for the Weekend

"Knowns + Unknowns #2" by Clint Collide:

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The Most Beautiful Train in the World

SP Daylight baggage sticker, 1937.

Postcard showing the SP Daylight on the Pacific Coast route, circa 1938.
Click to enlarge.

The California State Railroad Museum sponsored this 2005 documentary about the fabled Daylight streamliners of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which plied the rails between Los Angeles and San Francisco from 1937 until the formation of Amtrak in 1971. This video is a treat for the eyes and ears, and a must-see for all railfans.

You could eat plain or fancy fare, as you pleased, aboard the Daylight - from sardines to caviar.  Multiply the prices by a factor of 20 to get a rough approximation in today's dollars.  (Yes, it was and still is expensive to eat in the dining car - go look up Amtrak prices.)

SP Daylight lunch menu, 1937.
Click to enlarge.

The SP and its subsidiaries formed a gigantic enterprise with over 16,000 miles of track, stretching from Portland, Oregon, down through California and over to New Orleans, as well as eastward to Ogden, Utah, and Tucumcari, New Mexico.  There was also a Mexican subsidiary as well as a steamship line from New Orleans to New York.  

Southern Pacific system map at its greatest extent in 1929.
Thicker lines are SP routes; thinner lines are other railroads.
Click to enlarge.

SP's famous "Sunset Route" herald, used for decades
in publications and on billboards and railroad cars.

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Sunday Drive: Somewhere, The Texas Tenors

This widely acclaimed group got started on America's Got Talent in 2009 and went on to fame and fortune, winning three Emmy Awards, among other honors.  M.P. and I agree that "Somewhere" is a song gay men can easily relate to.  See what you think, fellas.

Encore:  I never heard this song before, but the boys sure do a beautiful job with it:

 

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Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?

The Pearl Harbor of our time:  Twenty-five years ago today, the unthinkable happened.  Alan Jackson sings:

President Bush addressed the nation that evening, calmly and resolutely:

It was a very fine speech except for one thing.  That sentence about "they attacked us because America is a beacon of freedom and opportunity" is no explanation at all - it's mythology.

But I will say that he did an excellent job as Comforter-in-Chief in the dark days that followed. That was before he got completely off track and perverted our military response in the wrong direction.

And I will add that what goes around, comes around. No leader, no nation is so high and mighty that it cannot be brought low. Especially one that fights with its friends and cozies up to its enemies.

As the Good Book says, Pride goeth before a fall.

I'll stop right there.

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Homosexuals in Dallas, 1984

From the SMU Jones Film & Video Collection, a report by KERA, the local PBS station, on some lesbians and gay men living more or less openly in the Dallas area in 1984, and the antigay officials at Southern Methodist University who had a problem with that.  It may be hard for youngsters to realize how very different the world was back then, but just the fact of seeing real, live homos on TV was still shocking to many straight people.  

(Just so you know, SMU is a very prestigious school, often considered part of the unofficial Southern Ivy League.  It's located in the top-drawer Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas, and is home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.)

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Disussion Question:   A commenter on this video says, "You’ve gone from, 'We’re just two people that love each other and want to be accepted' to indoctrinating kids in school with drag queen story hour." 

Frankly, I see a great big difference between responsible adults and impressionable little children. I'm not on board with the drag queen story hour idea. I say there's something very insidious about that. But I'm an old man with no power to control anybody, not even M.P. -- oh, certainly not M.P! 

What do you say?

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The "How Hard Can It Be?" Gene

It is an enduring truth of human life that few things are as satisfying as watching other people hard at work whilst you sit comfortably at a distance, sipping your favorite brew.  

We enjoyed watching this play-by-play video the other night over dinner.  A young, unemployed civil engineer did a brilliant job from top to bottom over a four-year period.  It's a great way to take your mind off the state of the world for an hour, not to mention your own troubles. I suggest, however, that you lower the playback speed to about 80 percent if you want to keep up with Speedy Andy.

BTW, here at Blue Truck HQ, the plumbers are supposed to come today to fix our runaway toilet.  Somehow, the fasteners on one side of the base have disappeared.  You haven't really lived until you've taken a ride on a rock 'n' roll toilet!  I tell you what.

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Sunday Drive: Ravel, Boléro

This well-known piece was written in 1928 by French composer Maurice Ravel.  M.P. - who had some vocal training in his youth and loves operatic tunes - sent it to me the other day, and though I had heard the melody many times, I guess I'd never heard the entire work played all the way through.  I was astonished to realize it is just the same intro repeated over and over again, never leading to anything else.  WTF??

Frankly, I thought it was absurd.  Come to find out - Ravel himself agrees with me!  He planned it that way.  Oh well, you know how those highbrow composers are . . . .

Here it is, from the BBC Proms in 2014, under the baton of Daniel Barenboim:

FYI:  Boléro would seem to have been an inspiration for the popular tune "Andalucía," aka "The Breeze and I," written by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, which was a big hit for Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra in 1940, featuring a vocal by Bob Eberly:

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Waitin' for the Weekend: World's Best Nude Gay Beaches

Your Head Trucker shows off his treasure trail on a Florida beach, 35 years ago.  
My summer lover and I spent nearly every weekend at one beach or another.
We got quite brown and had a lot of fun while it lasted.  A happy memory.

Something different for this Labor Day weekend:  Experienced travelers Andy and Trai take us on a tour of their favorite nude gay beaches here, there, and yonder.  I hope all my truckbuddies have fun in the sun with the one they love, wherever you are.

And if you can't be with the one you love -- love the one you're with. There are only so many summers, babe.

Update 9/5/26:  Wow, this post has gotten a shipload of views.  Overnight, the count went from 725 to 9530 14,828, and more all the time.  At first I thought - Damn, I was hotter than I thought.  Aw, but then I remembered the f*kn video.

Oh well.  If it's the vid you like, Andy and Trai have lots more to see on YT.  On the other hand, if it's the pic of me in my glory days (?) you like, just stuff a bill or two in my Speedo.  *Grin*

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The World Our Parents Made

"You don't know what you've got till it's gone."

If you can put your modern-day complaints aside for a moment, here's a look at the glory days of the postwar era, when American civilization was at its height, a benign colossus bestriding the world without a rival.  As Shakespeare wrote, But me no buts.  Just hush up and watch - and then weep for all we have lost.  It wasn't a perfect country or a perfect world - but it some ways, it was the highwater mark of humanity.  

Go read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Power Behind the Nation, 1947:

Your Head Trucker remembers well how the tiny tots of this peaceful era - some of them - grew up to hate and despise and cry down "the world our parents made." But now, just what kind of world have we made?  

And in particular, I refer to the 80-year-olds who have, collectively, sat in the seats of power and wealth for forty years now - they were once the golden boys and girls of the sixties.  What have they done with that power?

"We can change the world, rearrange the world" . . . "we" certainly have. For good or ill?  

Are we happy now?

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It's Time

Here's a sweet treat for you, fellas. Yesterday, YouTube threw me something I'd never seen before:  a beautiful ad for marriage equality from GetUp! Australia that aired in 2011, starring studly actor and filmmaker Julian Shaw.  After years of debate and campaigning by both sides, the Australian federal parliament finally legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in December 2017.

And here is the making-of video:

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