Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster: (N) (1782-1852) U. S. statesman and orator

I’m often hesitant to talk about historical figures because I realize that many Americans are unaware of anything that happened in the cosmos before the day of their birth.

Now look at me—two days in a row: Daniel Boone and now, Daniel Webster.

But there’s something very significant to take out of the archives on Mr. Daniel Webster.

He was considered such a great orator and debater that they wrote a short story called “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”

I shall not take your precious time by going too deeply into the premise of the tale. Let’s just say it exalted one idea:

 Daniel Webster was so smart that he could out-think the devil.

I will tell you that if there were an actual being called Satan, then perhaps we could prepare to square off against him and win the day.

But since the devil has leased property in our own brain, we are usually not very successful at avoiding temptation and foolishness—because the actual dangling sin has been offered to us from us.

Therefore I would have to tell you, the possibility of the great orator, Daniel Webster, defeating the devilish orator, Daniel Webster, is slim to none.

 

Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone: (N) 1734–1820, an American pioneer, especially in Kentucky.

There’s a lot of things that can be said about Daniel Boone.

Like many historical figures, I don’t know if any of us would be comfortable sitting down and having a conversation with him, nor trying to adjust to his particular interpretation of hygiene.

It is a blessed realty that we are better off enjoying the deeds of our forefathers instead of actually having to put up with their attitudes.

But there are several things I like about Daniel Boone.

When he was floatin’ around, the frontier didn’t go any further than Kentucky. Beyond that was considered Indian country—and therefore, no need to cause trouble, since there was good land right under his feet.

I like that about him.

Something I could learn from Mr. Boone:

Stop complaining about where I am, thinking that a change of residence would do me better.

The second thing about old Daniel was that he shot, gathered and ate what was available to him.

I understand that a healthy diet is important, but sometimes, for a variety of reasons, the things we want to eat are not immediately accessible.

So if Daniel came across a bunch of rabbits, he was suddenly a great fan of bunny.

A whole bushel of wild blackberries could temporarily turn him into a vegetarian.

And he grew what the ground would allow.

The final thing about Daniel Boone that touches my heart is that he was encompassed by Native Americans—who were there long before he was. History tells us that Daniel chose to get along with them instead of trying to kill ’em all off. Matter of fact, he made friends with some of them. The natives became his buddies. They respected his frontier ability and were grateful that of the white people they had encountered, he seemed to be least offensive.

Many of the white men who joined him in Boonsboro married up with the Native Americans and didn’t feel they were slumming at all.

Now there’s three things I can learn:

  • Enjoy where you are and at least pretend it’s where you want to be.
  • Eat what’s available to you.
  • And get along with the people and creatures who are your neighbors.

I will guarantee you—if you do this, just like Old Daniel Boone, you can make the history books.

Daniel in the Lion’s Den

Daniel in the lion’s den: Bible story about bravery.

Mark, Sandra, Jackson, Benjamin, Bartholomew, Crystal, Jesse and Thomasina also found themselves cast into the lion’s den.

They were just as brave as Daniel.

They were equally as faithful to their God and their purposes.

But they got eaten.

The writer of the book felt that their stories would not be quite as dramatic as Daniel—who survived a full night with lions without being devoured.

We don’t know why.

It could have been that the lions picked up a stomach virus and couldn’t keep anything on their tummies.

It could be that the cave he was thrown into was darker that evening because of a rainstorm outside.

Yet we choose to believe that Daniel was spared because Daniel was special.

But if you choose to believe that scenario, then you have to assume that all the good saints and souls who have lost their lives for a cause selected to be self-sacrificing on a week when God found them somewhat mediocre.

I don’t think that’s the way it works.

The big stories always make the news–and a man surviving a night with lions is certainly worth some print.

But let us not forget those who were faithful, whose deeds were not rewarded on this side of mortality—did hopefully receive great prominence in eternity.

Dangling

Dangling: (part) to hang

Life is about one thing and one thing only.

Try to end up in situations where you’re considering choices instead of offering reactions.

Pause and think about that.

I ask you to reflect on the statement because I’ve been doing it a lot myself lately.

In this season, there’s a gigantic pandemic hanging over our world, threatening the lives of the human race, placing all of us in suspended animation.

Dangling.

There is a tendency to want to react, respond or reclaim a former lifestyle instead of waiting until choices are real and options, legitimate.

Otherwise you just have reactions—unwarranted or knee-jerk.

We are all trying to avoid dangling.

I had to put several things to rest in my mind this year. Although I’ve been dutiful to my faith, I had to resort to a sweet calmness, allowing me to be indifferent to whether that spiritual pursuit has any legitimacy.

Why?

Because it leaves me dangling.

Also I had a parcel of sour relationships which I frequently tried to heal. Very little progress has ever been made. I opted to let them float away. I’m no longer evaluating myself on the outcome of the negotiations.

After many decades of battling obesity, I’m trying to focus on putting good things in my mouth to swallow—and doing a little bit less of it. I’m no longer dangling “slender” before my yearning eyes, criticizing myself for the present shape of things.

For what we want to do is make choices.

What we need to avoid is giving a reaction.

And what we wish to dispel is all the terror and uncertainty of dangling.

Dangerous

Dangerous: (adj) full of risk, perilous

You shouldn’t call something dangerous unless you really give a shit about people.

You shouldn’t declare some activity potentially lethal just to establish some sort of superiority over your fellow-travelers.

But every once in a while, there are dangerous things—maybe better phrased, dangerous tendencies or unhealthy trends.

I feel unqualified to speak on the subject (which I feel compelled to address) mainly because I don’t want anybody to think I’m drawing a moral equivalency or being judgmental about the issue.

I don’t drink. (I’ve established that before.)

I don’t think this does anything for me except eliminate a liquor bill from my budget and spare me a few morning headaches.

Yet I must be honest and say that there’s a dangerous complicity from entertainment all the way through religion and everything in between.

We have just made it too cool to drink.

Alcohol is too common.

It seems to have morphed from being an adult beverage into an elixir for depression, stimulation for fatigue and a truth serum to get friends and neighbors to open up.

It has also become the favored confidante of young females who portray that coming home to a glass or two of wine is the ecstasy of the day.

Unfortunately, alcohol is a drug.

Alcohol has a very bad history with humans—not that dissimilar from the Nazi Party. In the case of both, alcohol and Nazis, there is a great rally that builds up a wave of confidence, leading to faltering returns and ending up with self-destruction in a bunker of solitude.

Let me tell you what is dangerous:

  • Alcohol is an intoxicant. As long as it’s presented in that fashion, it is completely permissible and even acceptable.
  • Alcohol is not fun—that’s dangerous.
  • Alcohol is not necessary. Once again, dangerous.
  • Alcohol is not a cure for anything, but rather, the symptom of many devastating sorrows. Dangerous to the fourth power.

If I felt that young men and young women were partaking of alcohol for the purpose of social interaction, I really would have no case to make.

But alcohol is the only “spirit” I see being promoted in a faithless society.

We are heading toward forty- and fifty-year-old alcoholics, who thought they were socially drinking in their twenties and thirties until the realization of getting older drove them deeper into counseling with Jack Daniels—on a horrible cruise with Captain Morgan.

 

Danger

Danger: (n) risk, peril

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

Perhaps danger is in the heart of the fearful.

There is legitimate danger. Becoming too familiar with a tiger during feeding times is not faith, but rather foolishness lending itself to lethal danger.

But some things are not dangerous. Some things are poorly marked that way, by the timid minds of those who are afraid of human freedom.

My last year of attending church camp was froth with controversy.

The counselors were convinced that the best way to avoid difficulty was to cut any danger off at the pass. “Danger,” in this case, referred to activities which might stimulate teenagers to think about sex.

It is fascinating to me that once people cross the age of twenty-one, they forget that sex, to a teenager, is not a thought nor a temptation but instead, oxygen to breathe. Curiosity, sensuality, raging hormones and immense amounts of energy always collide in some way to manipulate an indiscretion.

We were given five simple rules for high school campers:

  1. Boys and girls were never to be left alone without supervision.
  2. Girls could not wear bathing suits around boys, only knee-length shorts and appropriate tops.
  3. Dirty jokes were forbidden, and if continued, would result in expulsion from camp.
  4. Girls would dine with girls and boys with boys.
  5. When swimming in the lake, a distance of two feet must be maintained between a girl and a guy.

The list ended with this admonition:

“In following these guidelines, we hope to avoid the danger of promiscuity and illicit behavior.”

Yet, nature always makes a way.

That summer, all the guys and girls learned of a cave just outside the camp, which was quickly referred to as “The Humping Hole.”

The girls—adorned in their knee-length shorts—would go in with their favorite guy, and hump through their clothes.

I will tell you—it was much more popular than the class on the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul.

Girls and guys also learned how to sit in such a configuration that they could hold hands behind their backs, and counselors never saw what was going on.

There was always a way, where there seemed to be no way, for teenagers to be horny.

For you see, the only danger in life is ignorance.

The more you know about a situation and the greater the knowledge you can possess, the better chance you have of escaping tragedy and forming a plan that is blessed by honesty and truly works.

Dang

Dang: (v) euphemism for the word damn 

Added into the anthology of my journey through the ridiculous and sublime is a one-hour class I was required to sit in on when I was a sophomore in high school, with the subject being, “Better Choices.”

According to the principal, there was an outbreak of bad language in the school, and he wanted to explain how frustration could be handled with much more grace, using terms that, although meaningless, were also unoffensive.

I don’t know how this man knew there was a plague of naughty talk all over the campus.

I think he was fuckin’ stupid.

But speaking of that word, three suggestions were made for when the inclination might rise up to use the word “fuck.”

  • “Fudge.”
  • “Forget it.”
  • And “feathers.”

Now, I don’t know how one was supposed to restrain the tongue from spitting the original gem, substituting the new language, but the instructor explained that if it was accomplished and sweeter sayings could be offered, then it was generally regarded among the American populous that your morality was immediately deemed honorable, and you gained at least thirty IQ points.

Shit was shoot.

Goddamn was golly.

Ass was bottom.

Bullshit was baloney.

Dick was private areas.

Pussy skipped vagina and went to lady’s parts.

And of course, damn was dang.

At the end of the session, four students were called up to do a demonstration, with the first pair using the foul words and the second pair, the more respectable lingo.

They probably could have gotten through the whole class without too much ridicule–but it was really a bad choice to do the demonstration. All the gathered students hooted and howled with the ala natural dialogue, but not nearly as much as they squalled in laughter over the dainty terms, which seemed as awkward as a Baptist family having an audience with the Pope.

Because of that forum, I have never used the word dang.

I don’t think that was the goal.

So I apologize to the educators.

Dane

Dane: (n) a native or inhabitant of Denmark.

Some words get swallowed up by just one definition.

For instance:

  • “Appaloosa” always finds you horsing around.
  • “Rockies” brings mountains to mind.
  • And for me, the word “barbecue” will always be linked with ribs.

The “Dane” that always comes to my mind is Hamlet.

Actually, it’s a vision of a very distraught young man, eating cheese Danish.

With my limited understanding of the Shakespearean play, what we have here is a whiny millennial from the sixteenth century, upset because his life is miserable, everybody’s lied to him and he seems to be trapped in a family of the hysterical. (And I don’t mean funny.)

So his answer is to consider suicide.

And he’s very noisy about it.

I guess I would kind of assume that anyone who’s noisy about trying to kill himself is hoping that someone will lodge an objection. Otherwise, you open the door one morning and they’ve already gone to it.

Hamlet whines.

I suppose there’s some level of interest in the style of his complaint—his wording—and you may even think that his character explores the depths of human despair and depravity.

But he doesn’t do much to promote the cause of the Dane—especially since there are people like me, who don’t have any other reference about a whole nation of people, other than their twisted, perhaps unfavored son, Hamlet.

To be or not to be?

That is…

Depressing.

Dandy

Dandy: (n) a man who is excessively concerned about his clothes and appearance; a fop.

I’m a Yankee Doodle one.

Yes, the British soldiers were so intent on getting under the skin of the American Revolutionists that they accused them of being gay.

That was it.

This the whole meaning of the Yankee Doodle song.

In 1776, a dandy was a man who over-dressed, stuck feathers in his hat—which was a style in France known as macaroni—and was so prissy that every woman, upon encountering him, gave up on any possibility of a night of pleasure.

So what did the Americans do?

Did they go in a corner and cry?

Did they punch people in the nose and throw a fit? (Or maybe throw a fit and punch people in the nose.)

Did they curse? Did they swear?

No. They didn’t even claim they weren’t gay.

They just decided to use the song as a rallying cry for the cause, which certainly must have made the British dandies awfully angry.

When I was a kid, the worst thing you could call someone was “a fag.”  But I will tell you—the kids who survived such ignorance are the ones who didn’t throw a fit, but instead, made fun of their attackers. 

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

A Yankee Doodle do or die.

Yankee Doodle went to town

Riding on a pony

Stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni.

You’ll never get people to stop being bigoted and offering lame attempts at humor to punctuate their prejudice.

You do have the power, though, to absorb their attacks, and turn them into your new marching song.

 

Dander

Dander: (informal) Anger; temper

Bruce Banner generously offered a warning before he turned into the Incredible Hulk.

“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like it when I’m angry.”

It gets me thinking.

Do we really like it when anyone’s angry?

Men have been known to say they think girls are cute when they get miffed. (But I just think that’s the horniness talking.)

If you stop and think about it, is anyone on Earth improved with the implementation of anger?

So even though the old phrase, “get your dander up” is no longer used, it’s modern-day equivalent of “you piss me off” is equally bizarre.

Because “dander” is nothing more than the dried flakes of the scalp, which we normally refer to as dandruff.

And “piss” is just something we squeeze out of our body several times a day, so we don’t bust.

Nobody is better when they’re angry.

Even people who think they have a righteous indignation almost always end up overdoing it—either getting too ferocious with their temper, or verbose with their complaints.

And although anger is an unattractive portion of the human experience, it seems to be written about, portrayed, discussed, displayed and commiserated more than any other emotion.

I think, deep inside us, we enjoy getting angry. It lets off some of the steam that’s been simmering because we feel cheated, left out or disrespected.

I guess that’s the power of saying yes when you mean yes and saying no when you mean no.

Because if you don’t, all that frustration piles up in your little head and eventually—sometimes unexpectedly—it pours out in some of the ugliest displays imaginable.

So maybe “get your dander up” is an excellent term for being angry.

Because generally speaking, after we get angry, we sure do feel like a flake.