The Death of Nannie
This is a detail of a drawing I did of Nannie back in 1983. You can see from her face that she was full of life - so much so, that it took 109 years for her to let go of it. Her body just wore out.
This is the full drawing. Nannie loved roses, so I overdid them in my drawing. They look more like one of her bouquets than roses growing on a bush. The cat sitting at her feet was typical. She loved cats - she had 20! - but this was her favorite - Missy.
My grandmother of 109 years of age died on Easter Sunday morning, 2011. We buried her on the Saturday before Mother's Day, two weeks later. It was appropriate. She was the end of an era.
I know that phrase has been over-used to describe a variety of different national and international figures; but my grandmother really was the end of an era; not only because her life spanned five generations, but also because she saw the introduction of nearly every major invention and discovery since the gasoline-powered automobile:
radio (1901,1916), air conditioning (1902), airplane (1903), plastic (1907), color photography (1907), Model T (1908), talking motion pictures (1910,1912), insulin (1922), 3-D movies (1922), television (1923,1925,1927), liquid-fuel rocket (1926), color motion pictures (1927), penicillin (1928), jet engine (1930,1937), ballpoint pen (1938), helicopter (1939), color television (1940), electronic digital computer (1942), atomic bomb (1945), microwave oven (1946), hydrogen bomb (1952), laser (1958), microchip (1959), first manned spacecraft (1961), audio cassette (1962), compact disc (1965), first manned lunar landing (1969), video cassette (1971), cell phone (1979), personal computer (1981), Apple Macintosh (1984), Microsoft Windows (1985), HD TV (1989), World Wide Web (1990), DVD (1995), etc.
Because she was a voracious reader and a perennial student, I know she read about all these breakthroughs with interest. When my cousins and I visited her house growing up, we always found stacks and stacks of magazines - everything from National Geographic and Smithsonian, to Look and Life. Those magazines were a big part of our education, and Nannie was always a ready teacher to answer any questions we had.
In spite of her many interests - which included art, music, writing, cooking, gardening, teaching and church work - her greatest love was nature: she was a true naturalist. Everything else that she did centered on that love: so when she painted, it was flowers or landscapes; when she wrote poetry, it was about her garden or birds or her neighbor's yard; when she sang, it was about creation or the Creator. Always nature. That was what made her soul sing; and so she began each day with an eagerness to learn, an inspiration about life and beauty, and an expectation of what she would find in her garden.
Saint Patrick and How The Irish Saved Civilization
Perhaps the greatest missionary since St. Paul gets little more than green beer from most of us. There's not even a major motion picture about him. He deserves better.
Saint Patrick was a very simple man. Most of the artwork of him makes him look like a typical bishop from the period. He was anything but.
The Irish didn't just copy books, they illuminated them, creating fabulous works of original art. The Irish imagination was given full vent on the pages of these codices. This one is from the Book of Durrow.
The Irish landscape is both harsh and fanciful, stark and idyllic. These contrasting qualities show themselves in the Irish people as well.
There are far more Irish living outside Ireland than inside. Many came to the United States in the 19th Century and settled in cities like New York, Boston and Chicago. This is Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, an excellent example of the Gothic style of architecture. (Photo used courtesy of A Day Not Wasted. See link at end of article.)
Once again, the rivers are running green (at least in Chicago), the parades are being held, green beer is being dispensed in Irish pubs, people are wearing shamrocks, Irish jokes and limericks are being recited, and idiotic artwork is being sent back and forth across the Web. But does any of this have anything to do with Saint Patrick? Very little.
George Mueller
George Mueller and Bible
George Muller Orphan Houses, Ashley Down, Bristol, England
The Orphanages Today
The Greatest Man of Prayer of the Past Two Centuries
George Mueller (also spelled Müller) was born less than a decade before Charles Dickens in 1805; so he was certainly aware of all the horrors of society that the famed novelist describes in his works: workhouses, prisons, filth and disease, lack of concern for the poor and homeless - all the things about which Ebenezer Scrooge in his unredeemed state could care less. But Mueller did care, deeply; and in 1834 he decided to do something about it. He and his best friend, Henry Craik, founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution (SKI) in Bristol, England, with one of their prime objectives being to establish Orphan Homes for the many homeless children in Great Britain.
But Mueller and Craik had no money, nor did they intend to ask anyone for it: they believed that God would provide everything they needed - without patronage, without requests for contributions and without debts. All they had to do was pray, and God would provide. For 64 years, that was how George Mueller operated. In that course of time, he built The Orphanage campus at Ashley Down, where he cared for and educated over 18,000 children; educated over 100,000 more in other schools at the Orphanage's expense; distributed hundreds of thousands of Bibles and tens of millions of religious tracts; supported about 150 missionaries; travelled over 200,000 miles as a missionary himself; and shared the Gospel with over 3 million people around the world. And in all that time, he never asked for one penny from anyone, his children never missed a meal, and he never had a debt. That is the remarkable record of George Mueller.