Happy anniversary to me, or What happened to the Aral Sea shouldn't happen to a blog

At one time the Aral Sea in Central Asia was the fourth-largest freshwater lake in the world. Almost as big as Ireland, it covered 26,300 square miles (68,000 km2) and appeared on maps of Asia just east of the Caspian Sea in what was then the USSR (or, if you prefer Cyrillic, the CCCP). If the Aral Sea were still there, today it would straddle the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, it isn't there any more.

It began shrinking around 1960, and its slow disappearance over the last half-century is illustrated in the following map:

Not much remains but the rusting hulls of ships atop the dry desert sands, many miles from towns that once bustled with activities related to the fishing industry .

Although I like to think I keep up with current events, I had no idea that this long decline had occurred. It was off my radar completely.

Did you know that the Aral Sea has a middle name?

Well, it does. It’s Stockra. I made it up just now so that I could mention a book written in 1990 by David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aral Stockra Sea, you know, those people portrayed on Downton Abbey and their friends.

Well, I thought it was funny.

What happened to the Aral Sea is not due to global warming. But it was caused by humans when the government decided to divert the water from the rivers that fed the huge lake to irrigate the land for the growing of cotton. In the process, the Aral Sea has just about disappeared.

Today, on the eleventh anniversary of this blog (yes, friends, it began on September 28, 2007), it is my fervent hope that it will continue for a long time and not dry up like the Aral Sea. I have learned far more from you, dear readers, than you have learned from me during these eleven years, so I will bring this post to a close with a little something from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, the opening of a song that Deborah Kerr sang to the children of the king of Siam:

It's a very ancient saying
But a true and honest thought
That if you become a teacher (or blogger),
By your pupils (or readers) you'll be taught.

As a teacher/blogger I've been learning,
You'll forgive me if I boast,
But I've now become an expert
On the subject I like most:

Getting to know you.

At this point, all the children of the King of Siam say, 'Ahhhhhh'.

In this metaphor, sometimes I am Deborah Kerr (no snickering in the back) and you are the children of the king of Siam, and sometimes you are Deborah Kerr and I am the children of the king of Siam.

Now that I think about it, eleven years is a long time not to know from one day to the next whether you are Deborah Kerr or the children of the king of Siam.

But at least we haven't dried up and disappeared like the Aral Sea.

Not yet.

For extra credit, read "When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be" by John Keats and write a 500-word essay using personificaation to compare the poem to the Aral Sea.

The jury is still out on whether a thing of beauty is a joy forever

My mother used to say things like "Pretty is as pretty does" and "Beauty is only skin-deep". Those sayings may be true, but it is also rumoured that ugly goes all the way to the bone.

I think that Leonardo da Vinci captured the quandary nicely in his famous painting Mona Feldman:

It was a day like all other days, except you weren’t there

On January 19th, I didn’t blog about Robert E. Lee on his birthday.

On January 20th, I didn’t blog about Martin Luther King, Jr., on the observance of his birthday, which actually occurs on January 15th but is not observed until the Federally-sanctioned holiday (usually a Monday to give Federal workers a three-day weekend) that occurred this year on January 20th.

As Pat (an Arkansas stamper) might say, January 21st is also a day.

On this date in 763, the Battle of Bakhamra between Alids and Abbasids near Kufa ended in a decisive Abbasid victory.

On this date in 1525, the Swiss Anabaptist Movement was founded when Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and about a dozen others baptized each other in the home of Manz’s mother in Zürich, breaking a thousand-year tradition of church-state union.

On this date in 1535, following the Affair of the Placards, French Protestants were burned at the stake in front of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.

On this date in 1720, Sweden and Prussia signed the Treaty of Stockholm.

On this date in 1793, after being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France was executed by guillotine.

On this date in 1840, Jules Dumont d’Urville discovered Adélie Land, Antarctica.

On this date in 1861, Jefferson Davis, who would become the President of the Confederate States of America, resigned from the United States Senate.

On this date in 1887, 465 millimetres (18.3 in) of rain fell in Brisbane, a record for any Australian capital city.

On this date in 1908, New York City passed the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public, only to have the measure vetoed by the mayor.

On this date in 1925, Albania declared itself a republic.

On this date in 1941, sparked by the murder of a German officer in Bucharest, Romania, the day before, members of the Iron Guard killed 125 Jews.

On this date in 1948, the Flag of Quebec was adopted and flown for the first time over the National Assembly of Quebec. The day is marked annually as Quebec Flag Day.

The Wikipedia article that contains all of the preceding information also lists hundreds of famous and not-so-famous persons whose births or deaths occurred on January 21st. Perhaps you will recognize some of them.

Just thank your lucky stars I did not publish a post yesterday. If I had, you might have been subjected to a poem called The Eve of St. Agness by a Mr. John Keats (1795-1821) which is almost as long as the list of births and deaths for January 21st.

I dare you to read it.

Who is this man? (Helpful hint: It is not Jefferson Davis):

September thoughts

It’s a long, long way from May to December.

John Donne may have said in 1624 that no man is an island, but I have come to the conclusion that many people are definitely peninsulas. They try to cut themselves off from the rest of the world, and there is not a dadblamed thing the rest of the world can do about it.

We are all interconnected (especially if you are a United Methodist), but sometimes it feels like just barely. Sometimes the connectedness feels very intrusive. And sometimes it is very welcome.

We are peculiar creatures.

We have private thoughts that we don’t want to share with anybody, and private fears that we (in the words of John Keats) may cease to be, and private demons that come to us in the dark of night.

Thank God for Jesus.

I don’t know what this post means, but I’m going to post it anyway.

Maybe someone out there will explain it to me.