Didn’t know just what I had

Here is your open thread for January 9, 2020.

Today is, among other things, the 69th birthday of Brenda Gail Webb — better known as Crystal Gayle.

Speaking of changing brown eyes to blue, January 9 is also the annual day of the Translation of the Black Nazarene. This is a big Catholic festival in the Philippines with a huge procession venerating a 400-year-old wooden statue of Jesus.

As you can guess from the name, the statue doesn’t try to pretend that Jesus was a white guy.

I’ve got an instinctual Baptist aversion to the veneration of statues, but I like this festival because not pretending Jesus was a white guy is something we American Christians really need to learn.

Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, was born on January 9, 1859. She campaigned for women’s right to vote, fought against child labor, and took up the cause of German Jewish refugees while most of America was intent on turning them away. Another icon deserving of veneration.

Carrie Chapman Catt was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, just five years after the Republican Party was born in that same town. Today, of course, they’re both long dead and mouldering in the ground.

Talk amongst yourselves.