Easter Hiatus

I'll be sailing across the Atlantic shortly, tracing a route from the Keys to the Barbary Shore.  This will take awhile and may result in folly.  It's good to be alive, isn't it?

Anyway, we'll speak of it upon our return in about three weeks.

An Update and Continuing Humble Request

As we noted last week, The Coracle is building electric guitars for use by schools and other institutions that no longer have the wherewithal to support music programs, or for those young people whose parents haven't the discretionary income to purchase an overpriced store guitar for their offspring. 

We have arranged for guitars to be built and given to two state school districts, a school on the Navajo reservation, and a school in Kenya.  Our projected goal is 200 guitars.

Thus far, we have received enough in donations immediately to begin work on five guitars.  We hope the first, The Jeanne Edition [she knows why it's named that], will be ready to present to a student at the end-of-year ceremonies at a local school.

To the right, you will see a button marked as such:

Even a few stray dollars will get us further towards our goal and, importantly, prevent the vagaries of our economy from robbing young musicians of a chance to participate and excel.

A Pungent Question, as Seen Online

When 50 Muslims were murdered at the Mosque in New Zealand, London Mayor Sadiq Khan instantly ordered extra policing to protect mosques in London
After 300 Christians are murdered in Sri Lanka, what additional policing resources has he made available to protect London's Churches?

— David Vance (@DVATW) April 23, 2019

Also, bub, I understand from our political elites, social justice knights, and thought leaders that they were, in fact, "Easter worshippers".  [The rare spelling of "worshippers", which is usually spelled "worshipers" in American English, was shared by all of those who used the phrase.  It was almost as if they were all copying from the same text.  Weird, huh?]

The Environmental Scolds Can't Go After Cows Anymore

Study Clarifies U.S. Beef's Resource Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

For people who claim to love science, they certainly have difficulty accurately reading scientific reports.

No, WaPo. It's Not Just the "Far Right" Who Care About This.

Analysis: Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West https://t.co/seWuJwgzwG

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 22, 2019

As it is something that affects all of us who are Easter worshipers Christians, it is beyond the tedious concerns of American politics.

As Seen Online

Imagine hearing about terrorist attacks killing ~300 people & realizing you can’t simply express sympathy for the victims because:
1. Identifying their beliefs upsets your base
2. Use of bombs means you can’t pivot to gun control
3. You’ve demonized expressing thoughts & prayers

— Jon Sanders (@jonpsanders) April 22, 2019

Apparently, the Word of the Day is "Easter Worshippers", Rather Than Christians

Click to Enlarge

Honestly, I've never heard Christians described as those who worship Easter.  We worship Christ.  Is it so hard for politicians to say "Christians"?

Easter Sunday Wave

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless others now.
- Teresa of Avila

O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Must See

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll

Holy Saturday Wave

New advent of the love of Christ,
Shall we again refuse You,
Till in the night of hate and war
We perish as we lose You?

From old unfaith our souls release
To seek the kingdom of Your peace
By which alone we choose You.

O wounded hands of Jesus, build
In us Your new creation;
Our pride is dust, our vaunt is stilled,
We wait Your revelation.

O Love that triumphs over loss,
We bring our hearts before Your cross;
Come, finish Your salvation.

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Good Friday Wave

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Carroll Shelby

I've always been asked, 'What is my favorite car?' and I've always said 'The next one.'

Once, on Ohio Route 322 in the rural part of the state east of Cleveland, when the flat two-lane blacktop gave me almost three miles of visibility, seeing no cars in front of or behind me, and knowing that none of the towns along that stretch had police departments, I scared myself silly getting that beast in the photo above up to 125 miles per hour with a simple tap on the accelerator.  Man, it was great.  I did, however, finally have to stop and turn around to help an Amish guy by the roadside pick up the cheese wheels and wedges that my draft had sucked off his farm stand. 

His first statement was, "Is that a Cobra?"

Maybe it was because I was exposed to it at an impressionable age, and with a couple of wrenches in my hands, but I've always thought that one of the world's great works of art is the carbureted V8 Cobra engine.  If form follows function in architecture and graphic arts, then surely this automobile engine, the pure product of mid-century American engineering, deserves a place in a museum.  [There actually is a Ford V8 museum in Auburn, Indiana.]

It has certainly captured the imagination of many different types of men and women through the years.  Some have been actual engineers, some garage or shade tree mechanics, weekend hobbyists, farmers with something rusty and discarded in the corner of a barn, Southern California hot rodders, or a 20-year-old in Ohio who has just purchased a 1969 Ford Torino GT with the 390 c.u. Cobra package from a neighbor for $100.  This writer even knows a professional poet who has about a dozen cannibalized V8's scattered about his garage in various conditions, all waiting eventually to be consolidated and fitted into a 1932 Ford pickup truck.  Whatever their background, they're all motorheads; and motorheads love V8's.

There is a bit of an "attitude" about a Cobra V8, too, that's rather hard to describe unless you take into account the guy who managed to make a simple auto engine an international corporate statement and the rallying point for a kind of asphalt patriotism. 

Imagine, if you will, a collection of Detroit auto executives in the 1960's gathered in a top floor office: Brooks Brothers sack suits, horn-rimmed glasses, skinny ties, button-down shirts, the full Mad Men look.  At least one has a pocket protector.  Their boss, Henry Ford II, and his hatchet man, Lee Iaccoca, have just given them a directive to build an American car that can compete with the best that Europe has to offer in both the showroom and the race track.

As the last innovation of these men was the Ford Edsel, the most unpopular car in U.S. automotive history, the room is rather glum.  Then in walks a tall, rangy, drawling Texan wearing a suede, western-style sport coat with no tie.  He looks around the room for the whisky decanter, rests his cowboy boot-shod feet on the nearest side table, and tells "the fellers" that he is "fixin'" to build them a car like no other.

I'm sure they thought he was either some kind of turbo-powered savior or a complete lunatic.  In reality, Carroll Shelby was a little of both.

He had done a number of things in the automotive world, mainly selling cars, building cars, repairing cars, improving cars, and racing cars.  Perhaps you will notice the leitmotif in his activities?  Born in a small town in Texas in 1923 and having spent his childhood in bed with a heart ailment, the teenage Shelby was told by doctors that he had "outgrown" his malady [ah, early century medicine] and thus indulged his interest in machines by attending the Georgia Institute of Technology [whose president at the time was my wife's grandfather, by the way].  Unfortunately, Shelby's academic career was interrupted by WWII.

After the war, during which he served as a sergeant in the air corps, he sought to recapture the thrill of aerial derring-do by entering as an amateur in auto races, performing so well that he became semi-professional and then fully professional, driving for several of the leading teams of the 1950's in competitions as significant as the Le Mans 24 Hour race, which he won in 1959 driving for Aston-Martin.  During the race he came to admire the sturdiness and style of the British AC automobiles against which he competed.  So much so, that when he retired from racing at the end of that year, Shelby received the license to sell AC autos in the USA as part of his new company, Shelby-American.

Even snazzier than James Bond's Aston-Martin.

There was just one problem, though.  Shelby thought that the 2-liter engine that AC installed in its cars resembled more a sewing machine than a high performance motor, so he replaced it by fitting, barely, a robust, bulletproof Ford V8 under the hood.  The Shelby Cobra, as it came to be known, would become the hottest and most desired high performance automobile in the United States, outselling similarly priced models from Ferrari, Porsche, and Mercedes. 

Not to mention making it the car of this writer's dreams

The mid-'60's were a wonderful time for flexing on the world stage the competitive muscles of American manufacturing.  For some time, Henry Ford II had been annoyed at the perceived superiority of the European racing marques, knowing that American cars could be faster and more reliable than anything produced on the continent.  The only way to prove that was to go to Europe and roundly defeat the European racers on their home ground.  In Carroll Shelby, Le Mans victor and car innovator, he found the perfect champion to lead this effort.

Shelby was hired by Ford to take their newest car, a Ford Falcon with a jazzed body, known at that time as "the car for secretaries", and turn it into a street and race track powerhouse.  This new car, eventually labeled the "Mustang", would prove to be as popular with young men as with secretaries, and the Shelby version, the GT350, would become the stuff of which dreams are made.

The Ford Motor Company took this...



And, keeping the same chassis and engine, put a new body on it to make this:

Otherwise, it was the same car.  Not the same price, of course.

This appalled Shelby, so he took the Mustang and made this:

To the naked eye it looks like any other Mustang of the mid-'60's, but motorheads know that the back seat is missing [Who needs that?], the Falcon engine was replaced with a 289 cubic inch V8 racing engine, and, for good measure, big sedan suspension, an overhead camshaft, aluminum headers, and a large barrel carburetor were added.  Oh, and a chrome fire extinguisher mounted to the drive train hump, because you never know, especially when it's putting out 225 horsepower.  

It was almost impossible to drive, rather uncomfortable, and everyone wanted one. [In fact, two are currently listed for sale by Hemmings' Motor News for $140,000.]   While it was "street legal", with minor modifications it could handily compete on the track. 

And that was just the street car.  In order to show the Europeans who was boss, Shelby designed for Ford what was probably the best sports prototype racing machine of its era.  Designated the GT40, it fulfilled Henry Ford II's desire to prove American cars the best regardless of where, when, and in what conditions.

The GT40 at rest.

And at work.

To give the novice an idea of how dominant Ford became, and how much it changed the world of European road racing, from 1923 until 1965, Italian, German, British, and French cars won the 24 Hours of Le Mans each year, with Porsche, Ferrari, and Jaguar the teams with the most victories.  From 1966 to 1969, the Ford factory team won every race, with Fords also finishing to either place or show in the same races.

By 1970, Henry Ford II had proved his point, and anyone with even a casual interest or knowledge in automobiles knew that the Cobra trademark stood for speed, victory, torque, and good old-fashioned American attitude.  Seriously, what could be better than that?

Carroll Shelby would move on to work with Chrysler-Plymouth when Lee Iacocca took over that company in the 1980's, producing Shelby Cobra versions of the Dodge Viper, Charger, Daytona, and lesser models.  He would also make his own line of Shelby Cobra cars, based on existing models but serving the motorheads everything they could want in a car that was barely legal to drive in suburban America.  In 2003, he would return to Ford and produce 21st century versions of the Shelby Mustang and a street model based on the GT40.  He would also make a fortune with his own...chili sauce.

He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992, and the SCCA Hall of Fame posthumously in 2013.  Shelby would die at the age of 89 in 2012, leaving a remarkable legacy in auto craft and racing engineering, reminding us of the glory days before cars looked like jelly beans stuffed with unnecessary electronics.

There are many, many books about Shelby, the Cobra lineage, and Ford's dominance in all forms of racing in the 1960's.  If I were to suggest one, it would be Go Like Hell, which chronicles the battle between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II in endurance racing; a book that prominently features Shelby and his contributions.  There is also an authorized biography entitled [What else?] Carroll Shelby.

If that's not enough, his chili sauce is tasty and more popular than ever and, if you're ever in Las Vegas, you can visit the Carroll Shelby Museum just outside the gates of the Vegas Speedway.







That's Been Happening for a Couple of Millennia Now

Punched priest believes cross around his neck 'Enraged' suspect

When wearing clericals in public, brothers and sisters, practice situational awareness.  Also, sprays, blades, and collapsible batons are worth having on your person.

Maundy Thursday Wave

"You can't change the shape of a wave; you can only ride it.  So, choose your wave and surf it."

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Thursday's Place: Cornelia Street Cafe

The Cornelia Street Cafe

Greenwich Village, NYC

The quintessential place of verse and song, along with free espresso refills guaranteed to keep you going for 36 hours while on a very tight budget.

The Cafe was on my original lists of places to include on these Thursday musings, written as they are as a writing workout and also to mark places that have been significant in literature, history, music, or surfing.  [Those are the things that interest me, along with Christianity and Christendom so, if you're reading this, that's what you're stuck with.]

It was at the bottom of the list, though, as I wanted to get to the places that no longer exist or are in danger of disappearing for good.  No chance of that happening to the Cornelia Street Cafe, of course, as it has become a fixture in Greenwich Village and the place that started a hundred careers in the arts.  Yeah, about that.

In December I learned that the Cafe was closing, another victim of NYC's absurd rents.  Let's face it, keeping the graft flowing to pols and unions is expensive, and the Cafe's rent of $33,000 a month was a bit ridiculous.  One has to admire the dedication of its owners for keeping it going and even expanding it for over four decades.  When I read of its closing, I felt yet another potion of my youth surrender.  Is that too melodramatic?  Again, you chose to read this.

During my New York years, I knew times of plenty and times when my budget forced me to choose between eating or buying a subway token.  I always lived in Manhattan and, save for a period as a hospital chaplain in Queens, always worked there, too.  Through all of those changes in attire, attitude, hair style, and artistic taste, the Cornelia Street Cafe was always there and always affordable.

The first time I was there was to hear a local poet recite his works and have what turned out to be my first real cappuccino.  That was all I could have as the Cafe's offerings came from a sole cappuccino machine and a toaster oven.  Those brioche did smell good, though, but, at $1.50, they were out of my price range [that was the equivalent of two subway tokens].

The last time I was there it had expanded to the space next door and the space next door to that.  It had a bar, two kitchens, and a full menu.  There was still poetry, though, and music of all sorts; now with a green room for the performers.  As the independent voice in poetry and song became more popular, the cafe appeared to become more prosperous, but still fulfilling its original mission of supporting the local creative community.

From their self-written history:

Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega started out here, as did Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues; senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and attorney-activist William Kunstler have read their poetry; Dr. Oliver Sacks continues to read his prose. Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann presents a monthly Science Series; members of Monty Python & the Royal Shakespeare Company intermittently perform. Cornelia Street now offers some 700 shows a year, two a night, ranging from science to songwriting, from Russian poetry to Latin jazz, from theatre to cabaret. In 1980 Stash Records released the award-winning album, Cornelia Street: The Songwriters Exchange, a collection of songs born at the café.

Through the years, my favorite part of time spent at the Cafe was listening to people of whom you had never heard.  It didn't matter, as they all brought some verve to the place.  Some were better than others, but all of them were serious and were trying to do something original and entertaining.  That's increasingly rare, isn't it?

I left New York in 1986, when there were still a number of the locales that had produced what the rest of the 20th and early 21st century would appreciate in terms of art, verse, music, and literature.  One could lean against the same wall by the same sign under which Jack Kerouac had been photographed, listen to The Ramones and Blondie perform live, sit in front of Allan Ginsburg as he recited his latest, hear Joe Walsh give an impromptu performance in the Sam Ash music store when he was looking for a new axe, and wander down Bleeker Street and read the signs in front of establishments that had served as the settings and references in a dozen dozen songs and books.

Now, Greenwich Village looks like an outdoor shopping mall with a disturbing sameness to the street vibe.  Ah, well, such it is to live in the stream of history.  It seems, with the closing of the Cafe, like I'm trying to listen to the Peter Gunn theme without the bass line.

More may read here and here.

One Will Never Go Broke Predicting the End of the World

10 Apocalypses That Didn’t Happen This Century

A Pungent Confession

Whenever someone uses the terms "re-think" or "re-imagine" when speaking of the re-building of the Cathedral de Notre Dame, I require great moral stamina not to bop them on the nose.

Also, I wonder if a 12th century cathedral needs a re-created 19th century spire.

He's Not Wrong

Seriously, given how much today's architects seem to hate both beauty and the general public, why you'd let them near anything to do with a new spire for Notre Dame is beyond me.

— James Morrow (@pwafork) April 17, 2019

Holy Wednesday Wave

“If I am mistaken, that means that I exist.” —St. Augustine

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Humble Request Update

We had a very strong overnight reaction to our appeal, enough that we can begin working on the first of the 200 guitars this week, with a projected five completed by the end of May.

For those wondering, it costs about $100 to manufacture one guitar for our purposes.  The cost is kept to a minimum because we don't charge for labor and we harvest some of the parts from former guitar renovations.  We have drawers filled with tuners, knobs, ferrules, tremolos, and such, so we don't have to buy all of the parts required.

Any amount donated will be used, however, even if it's just $5.  Please help bring music to those who would otherwise be denied that form of artistic expression.

The button is to the right and looks like this: