The following post is from October of 2009! No....I have not yet learned to speak a foreign language....as I mentioned in the post below that I had hopes of doing.....but....probably half of the visits to these posts are from outside the United States....so maybe I am sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with people from other countries as I always had hoped to be able to do?
It was September 7, 1860 and Abraham Lincoln was furiously campaigning for the office of President of the United States. He would win that election less than a month later. A baby was born in Greenwich, New York to the Robertson family and they named her Anna Mary. Seventy-seven years later in 1937 Anna decided to take up painting, and paint she did until she died in 1961! I've heard her described as a master, her work being rural American scenes.
Now I'm not an expert in art, my only claim to fame, as I have related before, was working on temporary assignment from Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh to the historic Pittsburgh Playhouse. They had donated old records and materiel from their heyday....and two students (myself and a nice young lady) were sorting through boxes and boxes of playbill's and dinner menus for anything the Special Collections might consider valuable. On the wall was a mural from famed caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. There were about fifteen or so famous people caricaturized in the mural and the director of the Playhouse was naming them one by one. He stopped at the last one saying that they have never been able to determine just who that was. My first impression was that it was either King Edward VIII of England...or Dagwood Bumstead. I opt to go with royalty. The director's jaw dropped as the mystery was solved. The young lady looked at me and said...."You're smart!" It was one of my greatest days.
I'm not concerned about repeating stories like this for probably the only person that will read all of my blogs is the Homeland Security agent assigned to read them because of my description of Hillary's wardrobe as Mao pant suits. Actually, I have another story about my experience in the world of art. It was 1981 and my wife and I were walking slowly through the Louvre, in Paris.....France. The same country the Coneheads were from. We were in front of the Mona Lisa ( I have three paintings in my house better than this and one has little holes in it with Christmas tree lights behind the canvas.) It was packed and quiet. My wife suddenly shouted out Special Dog! (she actually used my real first name)...It's Natalie Wood! She and Robert Wagner were next to us. Now for one of the proudest moments in my life. Here was the actress from West Side Story standing next to us....and she was smiling and looking into my eyes! I had two choices on what to do, one, start softly singing Maria, or two, politely ignore them and give them their privacy. For once I kept my big mouth shut.
Now where was I and what was this blog about? Grandma Moses started painting at 77 years old!! So I've got 18 years, Lord willing....(only five years now)....to figure out what I want to do in life. I felt guilty on our two trips to Europe that I never learned the language of the people we visited (especially in England.) It is a rap that Americans have had for some time. We are considered to be too arrogant to learn their languages. Now this may be changing today but it does behoove the concerned American citizen to try to learn the language of at least one other people. In my own life, I did have a slight working knowledge of Vietnamese at one time....toi noi tieng Viet....mot it. I had five years of Spanish in school and can say Yo soy un hombre sincero. De donde crece la palma. Actually I can only sing it and have no idea what it means. I also went through a couple of Japanese tape sets and watched The Bridge on the River Kwai 30 times.
I'm not, Lord willing once again, going to give up on this. I would like to be able to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with someone in their own language. As I understand it, Japan is only 1% Christian. How they need Christ, and there are numerous wonderful missionaries working there! I'd like to talk to a German about Christ in the language of Martin Luther, and when I meet Spanish speaking people on the streets, especially on vacation, it would not be are you here legally that I would ask them, but may I talk to you a little bit about Jesus Christ. The Democrats are making a big mistake here, politically, for they believe they are fighting for an expanded political base but the Mexican people may hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ clearly, and this generally does not lead one into Democratic Party causes.
