By the end of the year, the Northwest Airline brand will pretty much disappear from the American landscape.  A few of the more distant stops may take a little longer, but the switch of the brand name to Delta creeps inevitably forward like the hands on a clock.

 

Having been born and raised in the Twin Cities, the Northwest name took a prominent place in the list of business names vital to the area.  General Mills, Pillsbury, 3M and Honeywell also graved the list.  Although most of the Northwest jobs will stay in the cities, the change in name strikes a sour chord of loss connected to fond memories.

 

In my school days, it was a Northwest commercial that sent me out the door.  WCCO radio hosted the CBS Morning news, and Northwest sponsored the newscast.  At about seven minutes after the hour of seven, the commercial for Northwest came on.  It was then known as Northwest Orient Airlines, and the finishing musical jingle on the commercial included a gong.  When the gong sounded it was time to be out the door.

 

So, another venerable icon of my past is about to go the way of Ipona toothpaste.  Though Delta will probably keep the flight schedule, the loss of a familiar name will undoubtedly come with a little sadness.  It’s been nearly 45 years since that gong signaled my school day, but I will remember it for the remainder of my life.

 

Pastor B.

(Warning: if you’re less that 50 years old, this blog may seem meaningless)

I was 20 years old and sitting in my parents’ house on the green sofa watching the television as it delivered live pictures from that place of dreams and fantasy - the moon.

Years earlier, President John Kennedy dared to suggest that the United States could put a man on the moon by the end of the 60's. The race with the Soviet Union was now set as the finish line was now defined. I don’t think anything since has solidified into such a national unity.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin put down on the lunar surface, an estimated 600 million people watched. A huge number, even by today’s standards. A camera on the side of the lander gave us a live picture of Armstrong jumping off the ladder and setting foot on a place no living thing had ever gone before. Can you imaging pictures of Christopher Columbus landing in the new world?

By the third manned flight to the moon, the excitement had worn off. Soon Apollo rockets lifted off with their human payloads, landed on the moon, came back with a box of rocks, and it played out on the back pages of the newspaper. Only during the intense events of Apollo 13 did the nation come together for space.

We are again talking about returning to the moon. We haven’t been back since 1972, and the technology we now have is way ahead of where we were in 1969. The computers on the lunar landing module weren’t a whole lot better than what we now have in our cell phones.

And what will be the next manned mission that will unify the nation if not the world? Mars!

There’s a certain poetry of history on this day as well because of the death of Walter Cronkite. The best known newsman of the 60's and 70's, Cronkite was the hub of our information on the assassination of Kennedy, the word from Viet Nam, and the latest happenings in the fight for civil rights. In all of this, Cronkite was enamored by the space program. When Armstrong stepped on the moon, Cronkite was, for the first time, speechless. So, it seems somehow seemly that his death should coincide with the 40^th anniversary.

Less newsworthy, but nonetheless interesting is the news that NASA lost the original footage of the first moon leap. Fortunately, there are many copies floating around, and much of it has been visually improved with methods no one even thought of 40 years ago. It makes me feel a little better when I can’t remember where I left things of importance.

So go out and enjoy the night sky. Look at all the places that await us. Give thanks for the pioneers and explorers among us who risk their lives for going to new places and trying new things. And give thanks for voices we can trust, voices like Walter Cronkite who was the most trusted man in America.

Pastor B.

So there I was in a local discount department store. I picked up about three things that I needed then meandered through the electronics to see what was new but outside my budget. A brief tour of the hardware area proved again that the Targets and Wal-Marts of this world will never mesmerize men into shopping. I can spend more time in one aisle at the local hardware store than I can in the entire discount department area that passes as hardware.

I digress. Sorry.

My penalty for wasting time in the store was long lines at the checkout registers. I didn’t think the place was that busy, but somehow all the customers decided at the same time to go home. The thing to do in these cases, assuming you can’t just drop everything and run out the door, is quickly peruse the various lines and get in the shortest one. Let me take that back. If the shortest one has a mom dragging three pre-school kids behind her, and her cart is overflowing with a thousand different things at least one of which will not have an intact UPC code on it, find a different line.

My choice ended with a decision to take my place at the rear of the line with five folks ahead of me, and only one had a cart which he used for something or another that was heavy. There were three men and two women before it would be my turn to get my three small items scanned. Line #6, I believe.

It went like clockwork for the first four folks in the line. Each presented the items quickly, the cashier scanned them easily, the total popped up in no time, the customers reached into their wallets to fish out enough greenbacks to make the purchase, got their change, and headed for the door.

Except for the guy immediately in front of me. He had three or four items that all beeped through the scanner as if all was well on heaven and earth. Then it happened. He reached in his pocket, lifted out his wallet, and grabbed something plastic. I knew right away that trouble was abrewin’. First he swiped the card with the magnetic strip on the wrong side. He couldn’t figure out which button to push for credit rather than debit. The card did not validate, and he mumbled something about his wife going over the limit again. He tried a second card and pushed the credit button. Oops! Sorry, this one’s a debit card, let’s start again.

Meanwhile, my antsy feet (I confess to having very little patience for standing in lines) told my brain to look for a way out. The lady with the pre-school kids was heading out the door pushing the cart and towing her entourage. Two other checkout lines had opened. But I was trapped. Two people were behind me, and I did not want to seem unsociable or angry or whatever you seem to be when you burst out of a checkout line. Besides, he had to be finished soon, didn’t he?

He did finish, but never moved forward as he maneuvered the various pieces of plastic into his wallet with all the effort of parallel parking. He also felt it necessary to look through the receipt before taking a maddening amount of time to fold it neatly so he could add it to the wallet.

I made it through finally. Paid cash and was out the door before the credit/debit card dude could get is wallet back in his rear left pocket. On TV the commercial shows a free flowing retail business that hums along until someone tries to pay with cash. It’s a lie.

Pastor B.

It’s quiet around here today. Because we are always closed on Friday, today is our holiday for waged workers. The stillness lends itself to musing about many things - at least until my several appointments start showing up a little later.

The offices are empty, but the office Sue Nitz occupied for nearly 13 years feels like a dungeon. All her personal items are gone and the sense of emptiness speaks of the many talents she had that she shared with us. We spent a lot of last week saying good-by to a friend and colleague.

If you listen to the darkened office very closely, you will also hear the whisper of anticipation. Sometime soon a new person will occupy the desk. That person will bring new talent, different gifts, and another way of looking at things. I know the excitement will soon be there, and I am looking forward to it.

The opening days of July mark the beginning of the second half of the year. How has it been going for you thus far? For most of us, I suppose, it has been a mixture of things we expected and things we didn’t. The unexpected items that fall into our lives both invigorate us and exhaust us. Sometimes it’s a little of both.

Independence Day is my favorite secular national holiday because it honors men and women who put their lives on the line for an idea. The hot summer of Philadelphia drew representatives of English colonies together to form a governing body free of ties to the church or the aristocracy. The many freedoms we enjoy were not all planted in 1776 because the Constitution came several years later. Still, the idea of those freedoms were planted on July 4.

Here’s a musing for you. We’re quickly coming up to Susan’s (my wife, Susan) birthday. Any bright ideas for a cool gift? And our 36^th anniversary follows soon afterward. Where do you look for intriguing and interesting gifts? Email me: pastorb@oslc-elca.org.

Health care. You have probably been on the sidelines keeping abreast of health care reform issues in Washington like I have. I do not have all the answers, but it sure seems to me that even an imperfect reform is better than no reform at all. The cost of health care is killing us.

It’s finally warmed up a bit. Last week it was so cool that the heat came on the chapel as we prepared to have our Wednesday morning devotions. Heating in July. I think that may be a first for me.

So, Family Circle magazine has crowned Sun Prairie as a top family friendly city. They must have been here before Main St. got all dug up. Actually, I think we can be pretty proud of ourselves. I am interested in seeing if the criteria for this honor included anything about religious life.

Enough musing.

Pastor B.