NARFE Mtg; Eye Poke; President Trump; Joke; Ads; Lies

Cold, 40 degrees, but sunny mostly.

In the morning, I attended the monthly NARFE meeting for December.  The Board had voted to discontinue the Yankee Swap with me as Santa.  Instead, they brought in a "patriot", who sang and showed pictures of the flag, and recited Franklin Roosevelt's speech, which took place the day after December 7, 1941, 75 years ago today.  Very moving stuff.

In the afternoon, I went to my retina specialist for my periodic eye poke.  This time, during the procedure, I must have moved, because the doctor had to "poke" me twice, and now my right eye is all red.  He said that this should go away in a few days.  Meanwhile, I'll have to make up some story about Elaine punching me in the eye.

Trump' s Strategy

Hamilton Fish wrote in the December first issue of the Washington Spectator, and I quote:

"It's easy to guess at where a right-leaning Republican Congress is headed, but harder to intuit where a Trump presidency will take them.  Trump provided a window into his tactics in his 1987 book 'The Art of the Deal.'  'The final key to the way I promote is bravado.  I play to people's fantasies.  People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do.  That's why a little hyperbole never hurts.  People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.  I call it truthful hyperbole.  It's an innocent form of exaggeration.-- and a very effective form of promotion.'"

"Either we have elected an opportunistic, conservative businessman who is only just beginning to understand the constraints on his office, or we are standing on the doorstep of the apocalypse."

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Old Stuff:

Let's Be Friends

A woman telephoned a friend and asked how she was feeling.

"Terrible," answered the friend.  "My head's splitting and my back is killing me, and the kids are driving me crazy."

"Listen, " the caller said, "go and lie down.  I'll come right over and cook lunch for you, clean the house, and take care of the children while you get some rest.  By the way, how is Sam?"

"Sam?" the complaining housewife asked.

"Yes, your husband."

"I've got no husband named Sam."

"My heavens," gasped the first woman, "I must have dialed the wrong number."

There was a long pause.  "Then you're not coming over?" the other woman asked.

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Actual Advertisements (I think)

Ad for a reliable bed making company:

"We stand behind every bed we make."

I hope not.

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Ad in a showbiz paper:

"Lion tamer wants a tamer lion."

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Ad for a falsie manufacturer:

"Beware of imitations."
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The Best Lies

Back in 1989, Ann Landers posted some "big lies" that were sent to her by readers.  Here are a few:

"I promise to pay you back out of my next paycheck."

"But officer, I only had two beers."

"Of course I will respect you in the morning."

"You have nothing to worry about, Honey, I've had a vasectomy."

"The reason I'm late is because I ran out of gas."

"You don't look a day over 40."

"I gave at the office."

"You can tell me, I won't breathe a word to a soul."

"Our children never gave us a bit of trouble."

"Having a great time.  Wish you were here."

"The dog ate my homework."

Now... how many of these have you said over the years?  Be honest now.

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Cats; SuZee;

Very cool.  Our glass barometer has its lower portion filled with crystals.  That means that a frost is coming.  Brrrr.

SuZee


SuZee is our Siamese cat.  She is afraid of her shadow and throws up on the rug quite regularly.  But, we love her anyway.  Lately, a family of squirrels has been availing themselves of birdseed in some flower pots.  SuZee watches them motionless through the window, but she doesn't get excited and cry as she does sometimes when she see birds. 

I picked up a brochure with the title:  "Grooming your Adult Cat."  This is what it told me:

"Groom long haired cats daily!"  Now, there is no way SuZee is going to let us push a comb  or brush through her fur.

"All cats shed.  Heavy shedding occurs twice a year, in the spring and in the fall."

SuZee sheds all the time.  Today, I could vacuum a rug and fill the cleaner with gray hair.  Tomorrow, I could vacuum the same rug, and once again, the cleaner would be filled with gray hair.

"Clean the outer ear with a cotton swab dipped in baby oil.  Do not dig deep."

Yes, if I try to touch SuZee's ear with anything other than the tip of my fingers, she will "dig deep" into my arm.

"Dental Care"    Forget that.

"Bathing your cat."   Are you kidding?

This brochure obviously does not pertain to us.  We can't even get SuZee to get into a carrying cage to get her to a vet.  She senses what we are about to do and disappears for a couple of days.  Luckily she is in good health.. and there are no fleas in our house.

Besides all that, she really is a nice cat, as long as you are nice to her.  Just like humans, I guess.

Hey, ya wanna see a big cat?

This is my daughter Elizabeth's cat.  She is so fat she can hardly walk.  She likes to sleep a lot.

This is a real grumpy cat.  He would scare our SuZee.

This is not a friendly pussy cat!

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This is a cool cat.

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Love Quotes; Letha Alston Quotes; Elaine Langliois Qotes; Trivia Quiz;

Very cool and partly sunny.

Old Stuff... found anew.

Love

Chris R. Warnken sez: ""Love is the happiness that comes in bringing happiness to others."

"Love is the peace that results from aiding others to find peace."

"Love is the affection given us because we have bestowed affection upon our fellow men."

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Quotes from my Secretary: Letha Alston:

"When trouble strikes, take it like a man: blame it on your wife."

"We can't all be shining examples, but we can  at least twinkle a bit."

"The way some people drive, you'd think they were late for their own accident."

"Don't be discouraged; it's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.":

"Make the most of life before most of life is gone."

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Quotes from Elaine Langlois Vaughan:

"There is nothing so frightening as ignorance in action."  Goethe

"Man's mind stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions"  Oliver Wendell Holmes.


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Quiz:

Q: What two great writers died on the same day.. April 23, 1616?

A:  Shakespeare and Cervantes.



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Family Genealogy; Serendipity; Elephant Joke; Train Joke; Sayings from 1994; Pearls of Wisdom; Emerson; Doyle; Wisdom; Kitchen Knowledge

Partly sunny, but coolish. We had a little "spitting" of snow last night.  Not enough to stick.

Genealogy

Yesterday, I spent a few hours at my son, Christopher's house, doing genealogy work with him and my two daughters.  They are building a book, to contain family information divulged by my Aunt Ella when she was 77 years old.  It would be a shame to lose this information, so it will be extracted and placed into a bound book which can also be downloaded. 

Someone just stopped me to say that I was missed at our monthly Genealogy Club meeting.  Apparently there was a question that they thought I would be able to answer.  I felt bad about missing that session, but other priorities made it impossible.

In my attempt to clean up all of my boxes of  "stuff" before I leave this planet, I am extracting genealogy material that I have collected throughout my life (yes, I never throw anything away).  So far, I have filled 3 boxes of said material and I have a lot more "stuff" to go through.

Serendipity

While I was living a fast-paced life, I did not have the time to completely read and study information that came across my bow and interested me.  But, I assumed that someday I would be an old dude and would have time to peruse this material while sitting in my rocking chair. So I kept this "stuff."

My assumption came true, except that I don't have time to sit in a rocking chair.  But, I do have a little time each day to "go through" each of my boxes of "stuff" and extract, read, subtract, sort, cut, and scan things that still interest me.  So, as I do so, I am encountering exciting (to me) articles and pictures and sayings and other neat junk that I can post to this blog.  And... here goes:

Jokes from 2006:

Elephant Food

Four young boys were standing before the judge.  The judge asks the first boy: "What did you do wrong?"

"My name is Bill, and I threw peanuts into the elephant cage."

The judge then asked the other boys what they had done.

The second boy said: "My name is Henry, and I threw peanuts into the elephant cage."

The third boy said:  "My name is Joe, and I threw peanuts into the elephant cage."

The fourth boy said: "My name is Peanuts.:

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The Train Trip

On a cross country train, through a mix up, a man and a woman who had never met before, found themselves in the same sleeping carriage.  After an embarrassing time, they both got to sleep.... the woman in the top bunk, the man in the lower bunk.

In the middle of the night, the woman leans over and says: "I'm very cold, could you pass me another blanket?"

The man leans out and says: "I've got a better idea, let's pretend we're married."

The woman giggles and says: "Why not?"

"Good," he replies, "Get your own Goddamn blanket!"

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(I didn't say they were going to be "good" jokes.)

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Wisdom from 1994:

Janice Davies, a fellow Toastmaster, had this to say one cold January day:

"No Winter lasts forever.
No Spring skips its turn."

Friends are those who ask how your are, and then wait to hear the answer."

"Instead of putting others in their place, put yourself in their place."

"The woods would be very silent if only the best birds sang."

(I wrote about this phrase in another blog and how it helped a friend of mine govern her life as a manager.)

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Pearls by Dr. Albert W. Morris

Of all the pearls of wisdom
This is the purest gem.
There are two ways to handle a woman;
No man knows either of them.

(Amen, brother!)

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Wisdom from Famous People

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children...
to leave the world a better place...
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is  to have succeeded."

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Conan Doyle

Holmes' Remark to Watson in "A Study in Scarlet"

"From long habit the train of thought ran so swiftly through my mind that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of the intervening steps.... there were such steps, however."

(Was Sherlock the first Mensa member?)

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Wallace Fridy

"Real wisdom is more than knowledge.  Knowing is the accumulation of facts: wisdom is the interpretation of facts.  Knowledge is culled from textbooks; wisdom comes out of life."

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Kitchen Knowledge Passed On

When a newlywed served baked ham to her husband, he noticed that she had cut the ends off, and asked why.  "That's the way Mother always did it," she replied with a shrug.

When his mother-in-law came to visit, he asked her the same question.  "That's the way my mother did it, " she replied.

Finally, he asked his wife's grandmother, who answered, "That's the only way I could get it to fit into the pan."

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A "certified" nut case. Maybe I'll grow a beard and hide.

Christmas; AARP; The Magi; Fisherman's Luck; Jingle Bells; Rudolph; White Christmas; Santa is Coming to Town; Let it Snow!

Cool, but a little sunny.  Not many birds around, but we did see a nuthatch at one of our feeders,  Also, a sparrow with a yellow beak and yellow stripes on its back.  I'll have to look that one up.

Christmas at the December AARP Luncheon Meeting

Elaine and I attended and through some quirk of luck, won two of the three free dinners offered as door prizes.  And, in a further quirk... the guy sitting next to us won the last of the three.  What are the odds of that happening?  Perhaps the person who pulled the tickets did not mix them enough. However, there were twelve poinsettia plants  to give out, and they were distributed all around.

Since I did not have a Santa gig this year, I decided to wear my Santa hat while I told a couple of jokes.  Here they are... I stole them from a Readers Digest Joke Book:

The Magi (attributed to Dan Bennett)

A small boy in kindergarten was assigned by his teacher to make a Christmas drawing of the three Wise Men riding their camels across the desert.   When the drawing was finished, the youngster took it to the teacher for her approval.  She studied it and then pointed to an item -- a square box with a couple of wires sticking out of it -- that was being carried by one of the men.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Oh, that," said the boy. "That's the portable TV set.  I didn't want them to miss "Gunsmoke!"

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Fisherman's Luck (attributed to Jim Kimball)

Ice-fisherman Floyd Colburn, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, got tired of catching and throwing back small perch.  Finding a Christmas ribbon in his pocket, he began tying pretty red bows on each perch before throwing it back.  It wasn't long before another fisherman came dashing up to him, wide-eyed, and cried, "You won't believe what I'm going to tell  you!"

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For entertainment at our AARP luncheon, we were serenaded by the Standard Delivery Duo, two real good musicians.  They played as we ate and then passed out song lyrics so that we could have a Christmas sing-along.  Lots of fun.  Some of the songs were ones that I had forgotten since my youth as a good Christian. 

I love Jingle Bells, but I always got confused about some of the lyrics, for example:

"The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
We got into a drifted bank
And then we got up-sot."

Did the lyricist make up a new past tense word for upset?  Why not?

"Take the girls tonight
And sing this sleighing song;
Just get a bob-tailed nag
Two-forty for his speed,
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack you'll take the lead."

I guess this means that the horse would have his tail cropped a bit, which probably helps him to cover a mile in two minutes and 40 seconds.  Right?

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Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

I've written about this before.  Kids love this song, but I think it gives kids the wrong impression about life.  The other reindeer poked fun at him because of his red nose.  But, suddenly, Rudy became a celebrity  because Santa used him for an important job.

What does this teach kids?  It's ok to poke fun at someone who is different.  It won't hurt them because at some point in their life they may do something that the boss likes.  Then the little "ass-kissers" start fawning over the new celebrity in order to get "in good" with the boss.

I hope that our schools are teaching that "diversity" should be welcomed everywhere.  There are "different" kids everywhere in our diverse society.  They all have something to teach us if we would only drop our prejudices and observe.

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Christmas for the Alt-Right Folks

Yes... that would be "White Christmas"...

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Santa Trump is Coming to Town

"He's making a list
And checking it twice
He already knows whose been naughty or nice."

With control of the CIA,
"He'll see you when you're sleeping
He'll know when you're awake
He'll know if  you've been good to him,
So, be good for goodness sake."

"So, you better watch out,
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why.
Santa Trump is Coming to Town."

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Let it Snow!

What a wonderful song!  It's like a tone poem that pints pictures in our minds.

Every time I hear these lyrics, I tear up, because they remind me so much of the first years in New England with my fiancé and later my wife Elaine.  These words could be a script for many many a Winter's night that I enjoyed..


"The weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful.
And since we've no place to go
Let it snow!  Let it snow!  Let it snow!

It doesn't show signs of stopping
And I've brought some corn for popping,
The lights are turned way down low
Let it snow! Let it snow!  Let it snow!

When we finally kiss goodnight
How I'll hate going out in the storm!
But if you'll really hold me tight
All the way home I'll be warm.

The fire is slowly dying
And, my dear, we're still goodbying
But as long as you love me so
Let it snow! Let it snow!  Let it snow!

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Volunteerism; Leo Buscaglia; Calvin Coolidge; Abraham Lincoln; Thomas Jefferson; Eleanor Roosevelt; Robert Kennedy; Ronald Reagan

Cold (40's) and windy.  Winter is getting ready to arrive.

Some nice quotations.

Maryann Leckron, the Volunteer Coordinator here at Carroll Lutheran Village recently hosted a volunteer appreciation luncheon.  I was pleased to attend and receive a Presidential Award.

On the program for the function was contained some nice quotations as follows:

Dr. Felice Leonardo Buscaglia: 

"Too often we under-estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

(Professor Leo Buscaglia was an expert on LOVE.  His lectures were attended by all kinds of people yearning to put LOVE into their lives.  I taped some of his lectures and each time I see and hear them I learn something that moves me.  Now that I have plugged into YOUTUBE, I should be able to see some of his lectures that I may have missed.  I am looking forward to that.  It is indeed unfortunate that Leo died very young.  The world would be a much better place if he were still here with us lecturing, especially during the recent Presidential campaign.)

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Calvin Coolidge:

"No person was ever honored for what he received.  Honor is given by what he gave."

(Perhaps this is why Dylan does not want to be honored by the Nobel judges.)

(I think I have this right:  Someone once said to the notoriously taciturn Coolidge that he had bet a friend that he could make him say more than two words.  Coolidge's reply was: "You lose.")
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Abraham Lincoln:

"To ease another's heartbreak is  to forget one's own."

(I doubt that anyone had more heartbreak than President Lincoln.)

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Thomas Jefferson:

"May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond  to the needs of others with kindness and compassion,."

(I was surprised to read some historian's recent entry on Facebook that Jefferson wanted to marry Sally Hemmings, his slave mistress, but was thwarted by the conventions of the time.  Comments on this entry poo pooed that.  Who knows?)

(Could Jefferson have become our first Mensa member?  Visit his Montecello home and look around at all the inventive features that sprang from Tom's creative

brain.)

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Eleanor Roosevelt:

"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself."

(Then, what is this thing called: delegation?  Would President Elect Trump be willing to do any of the thousands of jobs for which he will be compelled to assign to "underlings."  Well, you get my point., and I do understand what Eleanor was getting at.)

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Robert F. Kennedy:

"Some people see things as they are and say 'why'.  I look at things that never were and say 'why not.'"

(I'm in a quandary about Mr. Kennedy.  I'm reading a book about the so-called "suicide" of Marilyn Monroe, and a possible cover-up deal between him and J. Edgar Hoover.  Interesting.)

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Ronald Reagan:

"We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone."

(Yeah, even the Sandonistas.)

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I'm sure that you can detect a slight bit of skepticism by me at some of the words that a couple of these folks said, but they are good words, even if they have to be separated from the persons who spoke them, and Maryann is to be congratulated for giving us these words to think about.

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Orange Juice; New Scam; Olmsted and Parks; The Uptick; Brain Age; Sleep; Bananas

Sunny most of the day.. a little coolish.

A New Scam

One of the major orange juice manufacturer has been having a sale.  The bottles of juice look just like the ones before the sale.  I bought a bottle and as I placed it on the kitchen counter, it made a funny noise.  I couldn't figure it out until I turned the bottle over and saw that the battle bottom had been pushed in (plastic of course) so that the new version of the juice product held a few ounces less than the original one.  Clever scam!  The bottle looks exactly the same until you turn it over.  The noise that I heard was some kind of suction made by the concave bottom interacting with the flat surface.

I guess the manufacturer felt that taking the sales "hit" would be offset when people get used to using their product and not realize that they've been scammed.  IMHO.

A Creator of Beauty

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) wore lots of hats, but the one that affected everyone was his job of creating acres of beauty in American cities.  Central Park in New York.  Boston's "Emerald Necklace" which consists of over 1,000 acres of parkland.  Baltimore's Druid Hill Park.  New Bedford's Buttonwood Park.  Once, he wrote:

"The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system."

Now... get up off your dead ass and get out and enjoy our wonderful parks!

(This is me, enjoying Buttonwood Park in 1957)

The Uptick

I've mentioned this a lot. It continues to bother me.  I don't know why. Whenever I hear it, I want to say something to the speaker.  I guess it is my Toastmasters training.  In that organization, one gets to criticize, in a nice way, of course, the speech patterns of fellow members.  Ah's, Um's, Like's, You Know's, Repetitions, Bad Grammar, Usage, etc.  So, when I hear women use the uptick (and some men, but mostly women), I want to point out to them that the "uptick" should only be used when you are asking a question.

When I hear a woman use an uptick as they speak, it sounds to me as though they are afraid that men will not take them seriously and will discount what they are saying.  It's as though a scared little mouse is speaking.  I notice the use of the uptick mostly by people on the West Coast.. California usually.

Of course, who am I to talk.  These days, when I don't get a chance to speak in public so often as I used to, my speech tends to return to my Massachusetts twang.  You know, just like the Tappet Brothers.  So, I'd best shut up and live without being so critical of others.

Climb Those Stairs!

At one of my "Train  Your Brain" classes, we discussed an article that gave tips for "decreasing you brain age."  In other words, the author suggested that certain activity will make you think like a person a lot younger in age that you are.  Let's see:

For each set of stairs that you climb, your old brain is decreased .0058%  or half of one percent.  And if  you attend a class, a massive .0095% could be the decrease earned, almost one percent.

The author also says that 20% of our sleep should be "deep sleep."   And one should get at least 1 1/2 to 2  hours of deep sleep each night.   He suggests eating a banana before retiring, to take in tryptophan which can help you sleep.

(Like I told my Facebook friends: 

Time flies like the wind;
Fruit flies like bananas.

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Bye for now!

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