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« Daily Tech News 25 December 2024 | Main | Mid-Morning Art Thread »
December 25, 2024

The Morning Report — 12/25/24

Mauldinxmas.jpg

Good morning kids. Here's wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah. Hope you are all surrounded by loving family and hip deep in wrapping paper and enjoying a big mug of cocoa. As per usual, after a glance at the links that cocoa is bound to be topped off with a healthy dollop of gin.

On a more positive note, I've put the Christmas-related links at the top for easy perusal and thankfully they are all in the main generally positive in their outlook. As a Jew, though not-terribly devout, while I do not celebrate Christmas in a religious manner, I nevertheless recognize and respect the life of Christ, its meaning and his words and deeds as truly a man of God, perhaps the greatest to ever walk the earth.

For me personally, there are two historical events that occurred at Christmastime, one that many of us personally experienced which made a lasting impression. From friend and friend of the blog Bob Zimmerman, his thoughts on the iconic image of the Earth as seen from Apollo 8 as it orbited on Christmas of 1968 before heading towards the moon:

When we here are on Earth frame the image with the horizon on the bottom, we immediately reveal our limited planet-bound perspective. We automatically see ourselves on a planet’s surface, watching another planet rise above the distant horizon line.

This difference in perspective is to me the real meaning of this picture. On one hand we see the perspective of the past. On the other we see the perspective the future, for as long humanity can remain alive.

I prefer the future perspective, which is why I framed this image on the cover of Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 the way Bill Anders took it. I prefer to align myself with that space-faring future.

And it was that space-faring future that spoke when they read from Genesis that evening. They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Yet, they were also still mostly Earth-bound in mind, which is why Frank Borman’s concluding words during that Christmas eve telecast were so heartfelt. He was a spaceman in a delicate vehicle talking to his home of Earth, 240,000 miles away. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” They longed deeply to return, a wish that at that moment, in that vehicle, was quite reasonable.

Someday that desire to return to Earth will be gone. People will live and work and grow up in space, and see the Earth as Bill Anders saw it in his photograph fifty years ago.

And it is for that time that I long. It will be a future of majesty we can only imagine. Merry Christmas to all, all of us still pinned down here on “the good Earth.”


While 18 months later, witnessing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin actually walking on the moon was something else entirely, to this day, that shot of the earth as seen from Apollo 8 is no less mind-blowing when you get right down to it.

The other seminal event that shaped my life, though it occurred 16 years before I was born, that some of our parents and grandparents actually lived through, and sadly perhaps did not because they had a front row seat to history as they became a part of it, was in and around a place called Bastogne, in Belgium.

[80] years ago this Christmas Eve, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe wrote this letter to his troops during the Battle of the Bulge. . . McAuliffe’s letter began with the heading “Merry Christmas”:
What’s Merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting — it’s cold, we aren’t home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West. We have identifications from four German Panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division.


When the Germans pounded our lines and the civilians of the area with artillery and blockbuster bombs demanding our surrender, McAuliffe's one word response is as iconic and historic, and quintessentially American, as that photo of the earth from Apollo 8:

22 December 1944 “To the German Commander: N U T S !

The American Commander”

Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: “Well Done!”

We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.

And just before Christmas of '44, the weather cleared, Allied fighter-bombers took to the skies and with rocket, cannon and machine-gun fire decimated German armor, artillery and troops, paving the way for Patton's tanks, led by Creighton Abrams to break through the German lines, sweep into Bastogne and relieve the beleaguered 101st holding on for dear life in that freezing hell known as the Bulge.

No, I did not personally live through it, but having been raised by parents and family who directly endured their own hell on earth such as my mother of blessed memory or my father whose beloved brother gave his life in the tropical hell called Saipan six months earlier. And so I was fortunate enough to have been born and raised in a land of liberty and taught the meaning of living in darkness and having an abiding faith that brings us at long last into the light of freedom, love and redemption.

On that note, I reference the estimable Daniel Greenfield and his reflections on Hanukkah this year:

On this Chanukah, menorahs will be lit not only in the land of Israel, from Jerusalem to Gaza, but in Lebanon and on the heights of Mt. Hermon overlooking Syria. Vacationing families will visit the waterfalls of the Hermon Stream in the Golan Heights from which the Syrian Greek armies had descended thousands of years ago to conquer Israel leading to the events of. Chanukah.

The lights of the menorahs over darkness are a reminder that miracles can still happen here. . .

Over two thousand years ago, Judah Maccabee walked among his men, hungry and dressed in rags, and urged them, “O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully, you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshiping God.”

“You must either recover that liberty, and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws, and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if ye be defeated in this battle. Fight therefore manfully; and suppose that you must die, though you do not fight; but believe, that besides such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall then obtain everlasting glory.”

Over two thousand years later the descendants of the Maccabees once again stand watch.

In the days of the Seleucid Empire, Israel existed as a beleaguered encampment surrounded by the Syrian-Greeks, Romans, Edomites and Arabs. That much has not changed. But neither has the will of a small people to keep the light of truth and faith burning against all enemies.


Considering the times in which we live, and what we have seen and endured in a nation that was founded by decent and righteous God-fearing men in response to tyranny, that despite the foibles and failings of men in its relatively 248-year-long microsecond of comparative human history, continues to endure, despite the latest rendition of human evil that seeks to extinguish it, the metaphor of a light among the darkness keeps hope alive that we too shall endure.

We shall overcome this evil that seeks our souls and the destruction of that which we hold dear for their own personal gain and undeserved glory.

The above examples of deliverance from the darkness to the light are a comfort. But as evil indeed never rests, so the struggle to keep it in check if not vanquish it goes on.

May God bless all of you on this Christmas and Hanukkah of 2024 and give us the strength and courage to endure, as well as the faith in ourselves and each other to carry on and make a better world for our loved ones, to restore the promise of America as the last great hope for humanity.

Okay, before I go completely over the top with the schmaltz . . . just a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. Have a great day! See you tomorrow and for the remainder of the week.

God bless us, everyone!!!



NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.

ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.

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