During the pandemic, my wife and I have found ourselves catching up on a lot of Jeopardy! reruns. In that time, we have seen some exciting moments, such as James Holzhauer’s stunning $2.4 million, 32-game winning streak or the currently re-airing Million Dollar Masters. But my favorite part hasn’t been any of the contestants; it’s been the host Alex Trebek.
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“Wake up, Sheeple!” This once was a cri de guerre reserved for the back alleys of Twitter and the blogosphere. But by now, if you wear a mask, you have probably heard someone call you “sheeple” or “sheep,” just walking around downtown Three Rivers. I know I have.
“I’ll be honest. I still don’t think sports should be resuming. But if there’s going to be baseball in 2020, then the Tigers might as well win the World Series.”
“I never imagined I’d live to see a rap battle about the National Bank, but that’s 2020 for you. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is fun, exciting, and, true to the man himself: ambitious, not just in its rhymes, but in its agenda.”
“In so many ways, we have refused to pay the price of liberty over the years: eternal vigilance. If we ever speak of the cost of freedom, it is almost always in the sense of our servicemen and -women serving abroad. They indeed pay the price overseas, but there is also a cost to be paid by the rest of us here at home, and so often we don’t exercise our rights.”
In high school, I bought a few DVDs called Speeches That Changed the World. It’s around this time […]
“America, God is not our scapegoat. God did not create these problems; we did. And whether you are holding up the Bible as a magical talisman or whether you think the president is the Antichrist, God wants no part of our partisan fiddling as the nation literally is burning. In another time of national crisis, President Lincoln once said, ‘Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.'”
“As a fan, as a Little League alum., as a ‘stat nerd,’ baseball has provided me more joy over the years than I can put into words. But for MLB to play ball right now would be greedy, foolhardy, and dangerous; and worst of all, it would be our national pastime sending a terrible message to the rest of the country precisely at the time when we need moral leadership the most. So in the words of a century of Cubs’ fans, I’ll ‘wait ‘til next year.'”
This week Watershed Voice columnist and Midland, Michigan native James Smith writes about the recent Edenville Dam failure in Midland County, and poses the question, “Act of God or Human Inaction?”
“For my small part, one movement that struck home for me was the #IRunWithMaud campaign, in which people ran 2.23 (in memory of the date on which Arbery was killed) in honor of his birthday on May 8. I am a runner, so I thought that this was something I could do.”
“Are we capable of the self-sacrifice that generations of Americans before us have made? Are we going to do our part? Can we still join together to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for our fellow Americans now and for generations to come?”
James Smith reviews Disney-Pixar’s Onward, quotes J.R.R. Tolkien, and references Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jesus in the same sentence in this week’s edition of Gutenberg.
“What I am seeing when I look around the church and society is Easter in the truest form it’s been practiced in a long time.”