Alligators, Crocodiles, Naked Women, Old Diary, New Lawn Mower, & The King James Bible

All the stuff mentioned in this post’s title came into play in my life Thursday.

Believe it or not, it’s all interrelated.

Makes no sense.

But then the happenings in my brain and in my life seldom do.

Downstate where my brother lives (he called yesterday) four sheriff’s deputies waded neck-deep in swamp mud to rescue a drunk from the jaws of an alligator. They could not shoot the gator because this happened in the dead of night and they feared hitting the thrashing man, so they entered the swamp and fought off the gator by hand, got the guy back on dry land, and discovered he was drugged high on crack and had wandered into the swamp in a stupor. When they killed the attacking gator yesterday, it measured 12 feet long.

Now, instead of working editing my book, I decided to read yesterday. Since earlier this week I finished Stephen King’s latest, Lisey’s Story, and Sturat M. Kaminsky’s. Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery, I chose to expand my mind with some nonfiction by delving into Adam Nicolson’s excellent book, God’s Secretaries: The Making Of The King James Bible. I’m finding it every bit as exciting as King or Kaminsky!

About 150 pages into God’s Secretaries I came across a reference to a diary kept in the early 1600s by a young Puritan named Samuel Ward; he mentions his thoughts on seeing an alligator for the first time. It had been captured in Virginia and taken to London for exhibit.

Old diaries fascinate me.

Just last month I published that Civil War diary that had been hidden away for 150 years (it’s in my online book catalog at www.bluefishbooks.info ) And for the past 15 years or so I’ve been working on another project involving an old diary.

So naturally I wanted to see a copy of Samuel Ward’s diary.

I began searching on-line and when I found a reference to Samuel Ward’s Diary, I clicked on the site to discover that it is mentioned at http://postednotes.blogspot.com/ in the blog of a young man named Iain MacDonald — who was also reading the same book I am!

Of course I could not resist browsing in his archives where I found this odd, odd bit of information in his April 22, 2006, posting:

The worst crocodile attack in history took place on an island in the Bay of Bengal. In the battle for Burma, over 1,000 Japanese soldiers had been trapped in the mire, cut off from rescue and pounded with artillery and mortar fire by the assembled British forces. As darkness fell, another 'army' of huge and voracious crocodiles was attracted to the swamp by the smell of blood on the tide. All night long the British troops could hear the turmoil in the water as the huge reptiles snapped up the quick, the injured and the dead. By morning the battle was over and just twenty Japanese survivors could testify to the victory of the strangest allies the British have ever had. (PS The Guinness World Records site confirms it.)

I had never heard of such a thing before!

Anyhow, I finally tracked down two copies of that 1600s diary and made arrangements for an Interlibrary Loan to read it.

Even in 1600, Samuel Ward’s conscience bothered him about having lustful thoughts.

I identify with that.

While I was on-line I browsed several porno sites looking at naked women. I have this fantasy about a dream girl, a lady between 30 and 60 years old, in a specific pose, with a specific hairstyle, and with a specific expression on her face.

I have no idea why what I envision obsesses me so.

I doubt if such a person really exists.

My wife says I’m a 67-year-old, dirty-minded, adolescent boy.

Wow, she has me pegged.

Conscience or no, the easy availability of pornography on-line is a constant pesteration to me, so I can identify with my Puritan brother’s struggles from 400 years ago.

Sometimes just knowing that another person struggles with the same temptations helps.

I try to excuse myself by thinking that I’m concerned about ending up impotent and dangling from my impending prostate biopsy. But I know that’s rationalization and no excuse for my browsing porno sites.

Oddly enough in my search for Ward’s 17^th Century .diary, I stumbled across an article by William Martin about his own prostate surgery at http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/prostateandme3

Although Martin writes a light tale filled with good humor, believe me, Stephen King has no corner on horror stories!

But, I’m wandering far afield from my thoughts as a dedicated Christian wanting to know more about the transmission of the English Bible.

It’s all part of the same package.

And my blog purports to show nothing more that what God is doing in one ordinary guy’s life, so I do try to be thorough.

On two happier notes: Ginny came home exhausted from an all day meeting in government offices downtown. She expects to get a promotion tomorrow and maybe her Christmas bonus too.

Whoot!

Even though it was not the night for our regular weekly date, we went out to dinner and enjoyed a long conversation about our days’ work.

Another cool thing: as I worked late this afternoon, my neighbor passed my window pushing a lawnmower cutting my grass.

I went out to see what that was about and found that he’d bought himself a new lawnmower as an early Christmas present and he was playing with his new toy testing it by mowing his grass and mine as well

I think he should buy a new mower every two weeks!