Working On Fire Photos

Wednesday morning started with a doctor’s appointment where he gave me the usual dire warnings. The physician spends one month every year in Cameroon, Africa, caring for ailing folks there.

It wasn’t clear if this service is motivated by religious conviction or humanitarian feeling. Not that it matters to the sick folks; they’re getting care either way.

When I escaped from the doctor’s clutches after being diagnosed as needing two more appointments, I drove into Southside where it’s easier to park. Then I rode a water taxi back across the St. Johns River so I could photograph the spire which commemorated the Great Jacksonville Fire of 1901.

I’m working on a history of firefighting in Jacksonville. The text is written and now I’m gleaning photos to illustrate it. Actually, this book is a history of my hometown told from the vantage point of how many times the place has burned down.

The boatmen were enormously helpful when I explained what I was doing. They proved a wealth of information and pertinent questions.

Since no one else was in the water taxi except a young couple so busy smooching that they did not know if they were on the water or in a hotel room, the boatmen brought me close into the memorial and paused the boat there and allowed me to go outside the roped off area to take my photos.

This memorial marks the spot of the Market Street Horror.

When the city burned, hundreds of people crowed onto a dock at this spot to escape the flames. In the scramble for safety, in the press of people, some were shoved into the water and drowned. Not Jacksonville’s finest moment.

Anyhow I had a great time with the boatmen. Then I drove to Fire Station One to photograph a monument to firemen killed in the line of duty:

During our prayer time after supper, Ginny and I got into a long discussion about the meaning of the word ascribe in Psalm 29. In the version we read, ascribe is used several times in verses such as “Ascribe unto the Lord the honor due His name”. The King James the Hebrew word is rendered “Give” — which makes more sense that ascribe.

We broke out the dictionary and see the word has a lot of different connotations.

I’m only familiar with ascribe in a literary sense such as “The plays of Shakespeare are sometimes ascribed to Bacon”. In that way the word seems to mean “give credit to”.

Anyhow, we concluded that we have no idea what it means.

I agree with a quotation ascribed to Mark Twain, “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that give me problems, it’s the parts I do that bother me”.