The Friday Post ~ 12th January 2018

Hello there, and a very happy Friday the 12th of January to you!

How are you?  What have you been up to this week?  Done anything out of the ordinary?  Been a little bit naughty and spent some money in the January sales?

Me?  Well I’ve been cleaning my craft room and getting things into some sort of  ‘New Year = New Order!’  Every now and again I will go through these phases of changing things around and “getting things in order” – when I have actually come to realise that this ‘getting things in order’ routine, is simply a case of re-organising stuff I have.  At the time I’m doing it, this re-organising makes total sense, but then (roughly) six weeks passes and I need to re-organise all over again!  Tsk tsk …. this is the problem with cleaning.  Nothing ever stays clean, and within days of doing it you have to do it all over again!

But anyhoo ….  you haven’t come here to read about my domestic trials and tribulations, you’ve come for Fridays Edumacation Lesson, which your family has paid a princely amount of money for you to attend, so we’d better get on with it, eh?

Button up your coats.  Tighten your belts.  Seat belts on – exit doors duly noted to the left, right and under the floor … get ready …. we’re going in!

On This Day In History

1773 – The first public Colonial American museum opens in Charleston, South Carolina. The Thirteen Colonies were part of what became known as British America, a name that was used by Great Britain until the Treaty of Paris recognised the independence of the original United States of America. These thirteen British colonies in North America rebelled against British rule in 1775. A provisional government was formed which proclaimed their independence, which is now celebrated as having occurred on July 4, 1776, and subsequently became the original thirteen United States of America. The colonies were founded between 1607 (Virginia), and 1733 (Georgia), although Great Britain held several other colonies in North America and the West Indies.

1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London. Founded in 1866 The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the entire global aerospace community.

The objectives of The Royal Aeronautical Society include; to support and maintain the highest professional standards in all aerospace disciplines; to provide a unique source of specialist information and a local forum for the exchange of ideas; and to exert influence in the interests of aerospace in both the public and industrial arenas.

Throughout the world’s aerospace community the name of The Royal Aeronautical Society is widely known and respected. Many practitioners from all disciplines within the aerospace industry use the Society’s designatory post-nominals such as FRAeS, CRAeS, MRAeS, AMRAeS, and ARAeS (incorporating the former graduate grade, GradRAeS).

The Staff of the Royal Aeronautical Society are based at the Society’s headquarters at No.4 Hamilton Place, London, W1J 7BQ. Although centred in the United Kingdom, the Royal Aeronautical Society is a worldwide Society with an international network of 63 Branches

1895 – The National Trust is founded in Britain. The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust does not operate in Scotland, where there is an independent National Trust for Scotland.

According to its website:

“The National Trust works to preserve and protect the coastline, countryside and buildings of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We do this in a range of ways, through practical caring and conservation, through educating and informing, and through encouraging millions of people to enjoy their national heritage.”

History
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty was formed in 1895 and is a charitable organisation registered under the Charities Act 1993. Its formal purpose is:

The preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest and, as regards lands, for the preservation of their natural aspect, features and animal and plant life. Also the preservation of furniture, pictures and chattels of any description having national and historic or artistic interest.

The Trust was founded on 12 January 1895 by Octavia Hill (1838–1912), Robert Hunter (1844–1913) and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (1851–1920), prompted in part by the earlier success of Charles Eliot and the Kyrle Society. A fourth individual, the Duke of Westminster (1825–1899), is also referred to in many texts as being a principal contributor to the formation of the Trust.

In the early days the Trust was concerned primarily with protecting open spaces and a variety of threatened buildings; its first property was Alfriston Clergy House and its first nature reserve was Wicken Fen. Its first archaeological monument was White Barrow.

The Trust’s symbol, a sprig of oak leaves and acorns, is thought to have been inspired by a carving in the cornice of the Alfriston Clergy House.

Membership
The Trust is one of the largest membership organisations in the world and annual subscriptions are its most important source of income. Membership numbers have grown from 226,200 when the Trust celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1970 to 500,000 in 1975, one million in 1981, two million in 1990 and by 2007, membership had reached 3.5 million.

The members elect half of the Council of the National Trust, and periodically (most recently in 2006) vote on the organisations which may appoint the other half of the Council. Members may also propose and vote on motions at the annual general meeting, although these are advisory and do not decide the policy of the Trust.

In the 1990’s a dispute over whether stag hunting should be permitted on National Trust land caused bitter disputes within the organisation and was the subject of much debate at annual general meetings, but it did little to slow down the growth in member numbers.

There is a separate organisation called The Royal Oak Foundation for American supporters.
The Royal Oak Foundation is an alliance of American citizens supporting the mission of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The foundation is headquartered in New York City.

Founded in 1973 the Royal Oak Foundation is a United States tax-exempt non-profit organisation. The foundation supports the preservation and conservation of natural beauty, historic properties, houses and gardens in Britain.

In the United States, the foundation sponsors the Drue Heinz Lecture Series, which delivers lectures in major U.S. cities on the subjects of architecture, social history, landscape design, interior decoration, and decorative arts.

Membership is open to the general public, and includes free admission to historic properties operated by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.

External Links:  The National Trust Website   /   The Royal Oak Foundation Website

1908 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

1915 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is formed by an act of U.S. Congress. Rocky Mountain National Park is a National Park located in the north-central region of the U.S. state of Colorado. It features majestic mountain views, a variety of wildlife, varied climates and environments—from wooded forests to mountain tundra—and easy access to back-country trails and campsites. The park is located northwest of Boulder, Colorado in the Rockies, and includes the Continental Divide and the headwaters of the Colorado River.

The park has five visitor centres. The park headquarters, Beaver Meadows Visitor Center, is a National Historic Landmark, designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West.

The park may be accessed by three roads: U.S. Highway 34, 36, and State Highway 7. Highway 7 enters the park for less than a mile, where it provides access to the Lily Lake Visitor Center. Highway 36 enters the park on the east side, where it terminates after a few miles at Highway 34. Highway 34, known as Trail Ridge Road through the park, runs from the town of Estes Park on the east to Grand Lake on the southwest. The road reaches an elevation of 12,183 feet (3,713 m), and is closed by snow in winter.

The park is surrounded by Roosevelt National Forest on the north and east, Routt National Forest on the northwest, and Arapaho National Forest on the southwest.

Ecosystems
The lowest elevations in the park are montane forests and grassland. The ponderosa pine, which prefers drier areas, dominates, though at higher elevations Douglas fir trees are found. Above 9,000 feet (2,700 m) the montane forests give way to the sub-alpine forest. Engelmann Spruce and Sub-alpine Fir trees are common in this zone. These forests tend to have more moisture than the montane and tend to be denser. Above tree line, at approximately 11,500 feet (3,500 m), trees disappear and the vast alpine tundra takes over. Due to harsh winds and weather, the plants in the tundra are short with very limited growing seasons. Streams have created lush riparian wetlands across the park.

Climate
July and August are the warmest months in the park, where temperatures can reach the 80’s although it is not uncommon to drop to below freezing at night. Thunderstorms often appear in the afternoons, and visitors should plan on staying below tree line when they occur. Heavy winter snows begin around mid-October, and last into May. While the snow can melt away from the lowest elevations of the park, deep snow is found above 9,000 feet (2,700 m) in the winter, causing the closure of Trail Ridge and Fall River roads during the winter and spring. Most of the trails are under snow this time of the year, and snowshoeing and skiing become popular. Springs tend to be wet, alternating between rain and possibly heavy snows. These snows can occur as late as July.  The west side of the park typically receives more precipitation than the drier east side.  Rocky Mountain National Park (official Site)

1915 – The United States House of Representatives rejects the proposal to give women the right to vote.

1942 – President Franklin Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board.  The National War Labor Board, was reestablished by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on January 12, 1942.  It became a tripartite body and was charged with acting as an arbitration tribunal in labor-management dispute cases, thereby preventing work stoppages which might hinder the war effort. It administered wage control in national industries such as automobiles, shipping, railways, airlines, telegraph lines, and mining. The Board was originally divided into 12 Regional Administrative Boards which handled both labor dispute settlement and wage stabilisation functions for specific geographic regions. The National Board further decentralised in 1943, when it established special tripartite commissions and panels to deal with specific industries on a national base. It ceased operating in 1946, and thereafter labor disputes were handled by the National Labor Relations Board, originally set up in 1935.

1967 – Dr. James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation. James Hiram Bedford (20 April 1893 – 12 January 1967) was a University of California psychology professor who had written several books on occupational counselling. He is notable as the first human being to be cryonically preserved(frozen, in this case). Among those in the cryonics community, the anniversary of his cryonic suspension is celebrated as “Bedford Day”.

In June 1965, Ev Cooper’s Life Extension Society offered to preserve one person for free stating that “the Life Extension Society now has primitive facilities for emergency short-term freezing and storing our friend the large homeotherm (man).  LES offers to freeze free of charge the first person desirous and in need of cryogenic suspension” (For the Record). This ultimately turned out to be Dr. Bedford. He was frozen on January 12, 1967 in Glendale, California at age 73.

Bedford was frozen by Robert Prehoda (author of the 1969 book Suspended Animation), Dr. Dante Brunol (physician and biophysicist) and Robert Nelson (President of the Cryonics Society of California). Nelson then wrote a book about the subject titled We Froze the First Man. Modern cryonics organisations perfuse cryonics patients with an anti-freeze (cryoprotectant) to prevent ice formation (vitrification), but the use of cryoprotectants in Bedford’s case was primitive. He was injected with some DMSO, so it is unlikely that his brain was protected. He was truly “frozen”.

Bedford’s body was maintained in liquid nitrogen by his family until 1982. Then it was moved to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, and has remained in Alcor’s care to the present day.  In May 1991, his body’s condition was evaluated when he was moved to a new storage dewar.  The examiners concluded that “it seems likely that his external temperature has remained at relatively low subzero temperatures throughout the storage interval.”

External Links:

• ‘Never Say Die’  Time Magazine, Feb. 3rd 1967
• The First Suspension
• Evaluation of the Condition of Dr. James H. Bedford after 24 years of Cryonic Suspension
• Letter to Bedford giving his history.

1971 – The Harrisburg Seven: The Reverend Philip Berrigan and five others are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.

The Harrisburg Seven were a group of religious anti-war activists led by Philip Berrigan. The group became famous when they were unsuccessfully prosecuted for alleged criminal plots during the Vietnam War era. Six of the seven were Irish Catholic nuns or priests. The seventh was Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani journalist, American-trained political scientist, and self-described “odd man out” of the group. In 1970, the group attracted government attention when Berrigan, then imprisoned, and Sister Elizabeth McAlister were caught trading letters that alluded to kidnapping National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and blowing up steam tunnels

Background
Father Berrigan was serving time in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, in central Pennsylvania. Boyd Douglas, who eventually would become a FBI informant and star prosecution witness – was a fellow inmate. Douglas was on a work-release at the library at nearby Bucknell University. Douglas used his real connection with Berrigan to convince some students at Bucknell that he was an anti-war activist, telling some that he was serving time for anti-war activities. In fact, he was in prison for check forgery.

Douglas set up a mail drop and persuaded students transcribe letters intended for Berrigan into his school notebooks to smuggle into the prison. (They were later called, unwillingly, as government witnesses.) Douglas was the chief prosecution witness.

The trial
U.S. Attorneys charged the Harrisburg Seven with conspiracy to kidnap Kissinger and bomb heating tunnels. They filed the case in the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Activist attorney and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark led the defence team for their trial during the spring months of 1972. Unconventionally, he didn’t call any witnesses in his clients’ defence, including the defendants themselves. He reasoned that the jury was sympathetic to his Catholic clients and that sympathy would be ruined by their testimony that they’d burned their draft cards. After an extraordinarily long deliberation, the jury remained hung and the defendants were freed.

Douglas testified that he transmitted transcribed letters between the defendants, which the prosecution used as evidence of a conspiracy among them. Several of Douglas’ former girlfriends testified at the trial that he acted not just as an informer, but also as a catalyst and agent provocateur for the group’s plans.

There were minor convictions for a few of the defendants, based on smuggling mail into the prison; most of those were overturned on appeal.

The trial gained some notoriety for the use of scientific jury selection – use of demographic factors to identify unfavourable jurors – to keep the defendants from being convicted.

1991 – Gulf War: An act of the U.S. Congress authorises the use of military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

1998 – Nineteen European Nations agree to forbid human cloning. Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human being, human cell, or human tissue. Although the possibility of cloning human beings has been the subject of speculation for much of the twentieth century, scientists and policy makers began to take the prospect seriously in the 1960’s. Nobel Prize winning geneticist Joshua Lederberg advocated for cloning and genetic engineering in a seminal article in the American Naturalist in 1966 and again, the following year, in the Washington Post. He sparked a debate with conservative bioethicist Leon Kass, who wrote at the time that “the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanise him.” Another Nobel Laureate, James Watson, publicised the potential and the perils of cloning in his Atlantic Monthly essay, “Moving Toward the Clonal Man,” in 1971.

Human cloning also gained a foothold in popular culture, starting in the 1970’s. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, David Rorvik’s In His Image: Toward Cloning of a Man, Woody Allen’s film “Sleeper” and the The Boys from Brazil all helped to make the general public aware of the ethical issues surrounding human cloning.

Ethical implications
The cloning of human beings is highly controversial. Advocates of human therapeutic cloning believe the practice could provide genetically identical cells for regenerative medicine, and tissues and organs for transplantation. Such cells, tissues, and organs would neither trigger an immune response nor require the use of immunosuppressive drugs. Both basic research and therapeutic development for serious diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as improvements in burn treatment and reconstructive and cosmetic surgery, are areas that might benefit from such new technology. New York University bioethicist Jacob M. Appel has argued that “children cloned for therapeutic purposes” such as “to donate bone marrow to a sibling with leukaemia” might someday be viewed as heroes.

Proponents claim that human reproductive cloning also would produce benefits. Severino Antinori and Panos Zavos hope to create a fertility treatment that allows parents who are both infertile to have children with at least some of their DNA in their offspring.

Some scientists, including Dr. Richard Seed, suggest that human cloning might obviate the human ageing process. How this might work is not entirely clear since the brain or identity would have to be transferred to a cloned body. Dr. Preston Estep has suggested the terms “replacement cloning” to describe the generation of a clone of a previously living person, and “persistence cloning” to descregligible SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) one of the considered options to repair the cell depletion related to cellular senescence is to grow replacement tissues from stem cells harvested from a cloned embryo.

Opponents of human cloning argue that the process will likely lead to severely disabled children. For example, bioethicist Thomas Murray of the Hastings Centre argues that “it is absolutely inevitable that groups are going to try to clone a human being. But they are going to create a lot of dead and dying babies along the way.”

There were, as of December 2008, no documented cases of a living human being produced through human cloning.  However, the most successful (though inefficient) common cloning technique in non-human mammals is the process by which Dolly the sheep was produced. It is also the technique used by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), the first company to successfully clone early human embryos that stopped at the six cell stage. The process is as follows: an egg cell taken from a donor has its cytoplasm removed. Another cell with the genetic material to be cloned is fused with the original egg cell, transferring its cell nucleus to the enucleated donor egg. vIn theory, this process, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, could be applied to human beings.

ACT also reported its attempts to clone stem cell lines by parthenogenesis, where an unfertilised egg cell is induced to divide and grow as if it were fertilised, but only incomplete blastocysts resulted. Even if it were practical with mammals, this technique could work only with females. Discussion of human cloning generally assumes the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer, rather than parthenogenesis.

In January, 2008, Wood and Andrew French, Stemagen’s chief scientific officer in California, announced that they successfully created the first 5 mature human embryos using DNA from adult skin cells, aiming to provide a less-controversial source of viable embryonic stem cells. Dr. Samuel Wood and a colleague donated skin cells, and DNA from those cells was transferred to human eggs. It is not clear if the embryos produced would have been capable of further development, but Dr. Wood stated that if that were possible, using the technology for reproductive cloning would be both unethical and illegal. The 5 cloned embryos, created in Stemagen Corporation lab, in La Jolla, were later destroyed.

The current law on human cloning
U.N.
On December 12, 2001 the United Nations General Assembly began elaborating an international convention against the reproductive cloning of human beings. Lawrence S. B. Goldstein, college professor of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California at San Diego, claims that the United States, unable to pass a national law, forced Costa Rica to start this debate in the UN over the international cloning ban. Unable to reach a consensus on a binding convention, in March 2005 a non-binding United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning was finally adopted.
Australia:  Australia had prohibited human cloning, though as of December 2006, a bill legalising therapeutic cloning and the creation of human embryos for stem cell research passed the House of Representatives. Within certain regulatory limits, and subject to the effect of state legislation, therapeutic cloning is now legal in some parts of Australia.
European Union:   The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine prohibits human cloning in one of its additional protocols, but this protocol has been ratified only by Greece, Spain and Portugal. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union explicitly prohibits reproductive human cloning, though the Charter currently carries no legal standing. The proposed Treaty of Lisbon would, if ratified, make the charter legally binding for the institutions of the European Union.
U.S.   In 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives voted whether to ban all human cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic. Each time, divisions in the Senate over therapeutic cloning prevented either competing proposal (a ban on both forms or reproductive cloning only) from passing. Some American states ban both forms of cloning, while some others outlaw only reproductive cloning.

Current regulations prohibit federal funding for research into human cloning, which effectively prevents such research from occurring in public institutions and private institutions such as universities which receive federal funding. However, there are currently no federal laws in the United States which ban cloning completely, and any such laws would raise difficult Constitutional questions similar to the issues raised by abortion.
U.K.  The British government introduced legislation in order to allow licensed therapeutic cloning in a debate in January 14, 2001 in an amendment to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990. However on November 15, 2001 a pro-life group won a High Court legal challenge that effectively left cloning unregulated in the UK. Their hope was that Parliament would fill this gap by passing prohibitive legislation. The government was quick to pass legislation prohibiting reproductive cloning Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001. The remaining gap with regard to therapeutic cloning was closed when the appeals courts reversed the previous decision of the High Court.

The first licence was granted on August 11, 2004 to researchers at the University of Newcastle to allow them to investigate treatments for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Religious objections:   The Roman Catholic Church, under the papacy of Benedict XVI, has condemned the practice of human cloning, in the magisterial instruction Dignitas Personae, stating that it represents a grave offence to the dignity of that person as well as to the fundamental equality of all people.

“Variations and voids:  The Regulation of Human Cloning around the world”  – an academic article by S.Pattinson and T. Caulfield.

2004 – The world’s largest ocean liner, RMS Queen Mary 2, makes its maiden voyage.
2005 – Deep Impact (space mission) launches from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 2 rocket.
2006 – The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany declare that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program have reached a dead-end and recommend that Iran be referred to the United Nations Security Council.

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Born on this Day

1904 – Fred McDowell, American blues musician (d. 1972)

1925 – Scottie MacGregor, American actress best-known for her comic performance as Harriet Oleson from 1974 to 1983 on the NBC television series Little House on the Prairie.

1926 – Ray Price, American singer. Some of his more famous songs include “Release Me”, “Crazy Arms”, “Heartaches by the Number”, “City Lights”, “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You”, “For the Good Times”, “I Won’t Mention It Again”, “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”, and “Danny Boy.” He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996.

1932 – Des O’Connor, British television presenter

1933 – Michael Aspel, English broadcaster

1944 – Joe Frazier, American boxer

1945 – Maggie Bell, Scottish singer (Stone the Crows)

1946 – Cynthia Robinson, American musician (Sly & the Family Stone)

1948 – Anthony Andrews, English actor

1951 – Kirstie Alley, American actress

1957 – John Lasseter, Academy Award-winning American animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering

1974 – Melanie Chisholm, British singer – best known as one of the five members of the pioneering pop group Spice Girls, where she was nicknamed “Sporty Spice”

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Died on this Day and Remembered here

1897 – Isaac Pitman, British inventor (Pitman Shorthand) (b. 1813)

1960 – Nevil Shute, English writer (b. 1899)

1976 – Agatha Christie, English writer (b. 1890)

2003 – Maurice Gibb, British singer, songwriter, and musician (Bee Gees) (b. 1949

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PLAYTIME BELL RINGS!

dinger dinger dinger ding!

These are the Jokes folks!

(a bunch of one-liners for you . . . )

I just bought underwater headphones and it’s made me loads faster. Do you know how motivating it is swimming to the theme song from Jaws? I mean my anxiety is through the roof but record times.
🙂

Red sky at night: shepherd’s delight. Blue sky at night: day

🤗

It all starts innocently, mixing chocolate and Rice Krispies, but before you know it you’re adding raisins and marshmallows – it’s a rocky road.

😀

The anti-ageing advert that I would like to see is a baby covered in cream saying, ‘Aah, I’ve used too much.’

😁

My friend said she was giving up drinking from Monday to Friday. I’m just worried she’s going to dehydrate

🤣

Jokes about white sugar are rare. Jokes about brown sugar, Demerara.

😆

My sister had a baby and they took a while to name her and I told her to  ‘Hurry up!’.  I didn’t want my niece to grow up to be one of these kids you hear about on the news where it says, ‘The 17 year old defendant, who hasn’t been named’.  

😅

I went to Waterstones the book store and asked the store assistant for a book about turtles,  she said ‘hardback?’  I said  ‘yes and with little heads”

😝

and finally . . . 

If anyone knows how to fix some broken hinges,  my door’s always open.   😂

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Thought for the Day

Too often I hear people say that in their lives they would like more time to just sit and think and enjoy.

We don’t practice simply enjoying ‘nothing’, do we?  It’s something that concerns me a lot …  because if we don’t do it when we are younger, we can be left not knowing how to do it in later life.

Part of the problem is our work ethic.  For some reason, we feel we must justify our existence by always being busy and useful.  Everything we do must have a purpose and we must constantly live with one eye on what we shall be doing tomorrow.  The old month by month tyranny of the calendar was replaced by the daily tyranny of the Filofax, which is now supplemented with the hourly tyranny of e-mail/twitter/whats-ap/skype/Facebook (other social media(s) are available), is really not doing any of us any favours

According to the book of Genesis, although human beings are ‘made’ to be able to work, more wonderful than work is the enjoyment of the ‘Sabbath’.  Sunday.  The day when even God himself rested in order to savour what he has made!  

We seem to have lost the capacity for that sort of enjoyment.  We seem to have forgotten how to just sit and do nothing but think about what we’ve achieved.  What have we done in our lives that is pleasing to us.  We seem to have forgotten how to do this and we need more than anything to recover it.  But how?

In the Christian Gospel, we are told to that to enter the Kingdom of God we must become as little children,  a reference not to their supposed innocence, but their capacity for self-forgetfulness in play.  They do something because it is fun and worthwhile in itself and not because it has some further justification.  This is what we tend to lose in our busy lives where everything must be done for a purpose.  If we are to reach an old age that we can enjoy and feel good about, we need to regain the capacity for enjoyment long before we are old.  Perhaps then, in our evening walk, we shall find ourselves enjoying God’s company in the cool of the day, and finding ourselves happy and fulfilled.

We don’t need to work from morning till night.  We need to work, rest, and play.  That’s what this whole life/existence thing was designed for.  That’s what we are meant to do.  That’s the whole point of it all.

Take a little time today to do nothing but sit.  Sit with your God, if you believe, or just sit with life if you don’t.  Spend a little time doing something that gives you joy.  Even if it’s going out, buying a children’s colouring book and crayons and colouring to your heart’s content.  There would be less illness . . .   less worry  . . .  less tension,  if only people allowed themselves to let their inner child loose once in a while.

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Thank you so much for coming and sharing a coffee moment with me.  I love being in your company.

I wish you a really great day.  Smile as much as you can.  Take time to have a little fun and laughs somewhere along the way.  You’ll feel better for it.  I know you will.  And remember …. to stop now and again and just allow yourself to ‘be’.  Stop doing.  Stop talking.  Stop thinking.  Just be.  Give yourself a minute or two away from your daily life, and instead give yourself a moment of a life of doing nothing – not even thinking.  Just BE.

Have a wonderful day, and a truly fabulous weekend.  Be good to yourself, and …  may your God go with you.

 

 

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The Friday Post ~ 1st December 2017

Well it’s here.  That day we were thinking was still miles away and we had plenty of time to do our Christmas shopping …. well today is the first day of December and Christmas day is just 25 days away.  Or … since you can’t actually count Christmas day itself,  24 days away.

But … if you discount today (1st December), because, well, it’s maybe not fair to include today since some of you reading right now will perhaps have just come home from a day at work, so let’s discount today too, – that makes it 23 merry Days, in which to buy the perfect presents for all those people you need to buy for,  and get them home, wrapped beautifully and labelled up, ready to give.  There.  23 days.  That’s ok, isn’t it?

So anyhoo … shall we get on with your Edumacation?  I know it’s Christmas soon, but you still need to be educationamalised so that you can come out with interesting facts at the works ‘do’, or just impress the boss with your magnificent intelligence.

On this Day in History

1824 – U.S. presidential election, Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task to decide the winner (as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution).

1913 – The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.
1919 – Lady Astor becomes first female member of the British Parliament to take her seat (she had been elected to that position on November 28).

1952 – The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation. 

1958 – The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire in Chicago, Illinois kills 92 children and three nuns.

The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire broke out shortly before classes were to be dismissed on December 1, 1958, at the foot of a stairway in the Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Illinois.  The elementary and middle school was operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.  A total of 92 pupils and 3 nuns lost their lives when smoke, heat, and fire cut off their normal means of escape through corridors and stairways.  Many perished while jumping from second-floor windows (which were as high as a third floor would be on level ground).  Another 100 were seriously injured.

The disaster led to major improvements in standards for school design and fire safety codes.

1960 – Paul McCartney and Pete Best arrested then deported from Hamburg, Germany for accusation of attempted arson. Former Beatles drummer Pete Best told Absolute Radio that he and Sir Paul had tried to use the condoms for extra lighting.

“We pinned them on the wall and they spluttered. Let’s get it clear, they weren’t used,”  he said. “We were charged with trying to burn our van down.”

Best said the pair were returned to the UK on suspicion of arson.

1964 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam.

1969 – Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II. On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States held a lottery to determine the order of draft (induction) into the U.S. Army for the Vietnam War.

Method
The days of the year, represented by the numbers from 1 to 366 (including Leap Day), were written on slips of paper and the slips were placed in plastic capsules. The capsules were mixed in a shoebox and then dumped into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time.

The first day number drawn was 257 (September 14), so all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number 1. Men of draft age (those born between 1944 and 1950) whose birthday fell on the corresponding day of the year would all be drafted at the same time. The highest draft number called from the 1969 lottery was number 195 (September 24).

A secondary lottery was also held on the same day, to construct a random permutation of the 26 letters of the alphabet. For men born on a given day, the order of induction was determined by the rank of the first letters of their last, first, and middle names.

The lottery was conducted again in 1970 (for those born in 1951), 1971 (1952) and 1972 (1953), although the 1972 lottery went unused as the draft itself was suspended in 1973.  Lotteries were also conducted in 1973, 1974 and 1975 although the assigned numbers went unused.

1973 – Papua New Guinea gains self-government from Australia.
1974 – TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport killing all 92 people on-board.
1974 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, crashes northwest of John F. Kennedy International Airport.

1981 – A Yugoslavian Inex Adria Aviopromet DC-9 crashes in Corsica killing all 180 people on-board.

1982 – At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart.

1990 – Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the seabed.

2001 – Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport bringing to an end 76 years of TWA operations following TWA’s purchase by American Airlines.

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Born on this Day

1761 – Marie Tussaud, French creator of wax sculptures (Madame Tussaud’s) (d. 1850)

1913 – Mary Martin, American actor and singer (d. 1990)

1932 – Matt Monro, English singer (d. 1985)

1935 – Woody Allen, American film director, actor, and comedian

1940 – Richard Pryor, American actor, comedian (d. 2005)

1944 – John Densmore, American drummer (The Doors)

1945 – Bette Midler, American actress and singer

1946 – Gilbert O’Sullivan, Irish singer

1958 – Charlene Tilton, American actress

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Thought for the Day

Christmas is coming and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.  We know it’s coming because the lights are already lit-up in the shops.  The trees are decorated and the Advent Calendars all have one door open.

The prophets of anxiety (in the newspapers and on TV) are predicting a difficult time for the shoppers and retailers of our over-stretched, debt-ridden lands.

Some of us feel the imminence of Christmas in the sensations of excitement and dread:  of wishing it would never end … and wanting it to be over with now.  Of the need to be at home, with family and friends – and the desire to escape it all and get as far away as possible.

The Grinch, in Dr. Seuss says:  “Christmas!  It’s practically here!”  …  Then he growled with his fingers nervously drumming.  “I must find a way to keep Christmas from coming!”

Advent means the arrival  – or coming  –  of an important person or thing.  But break it down into its compound words:  ‘ad’  and  ‘vent’  and it looks alarmingly like something to do with advertising and windows.  It sounds like a big commercial wind!  Which of course it is, and it has been, and probably always will be.  Which is why Grinch-like, seasonal rants about the commercial aspect of Christmas will do nothing to change it.

Priests asking us not to throw out the baby Jesus with the bath water should save their breath.  If they want us to question anything at Christmas it should be the baby:  Do we need the baby?  Do we want the baby?  What is this baby for?  It’s easy to see that Christmas  “doesn’t come from a store;  easy to guess it means a little bit more” [the Grinch again] .  But the question for all of us is:  What???

Isaiah, a prophet who lived before Christ, framed our need in this way:  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down”.  There was an ache for a saviour long before one appeared.  As to what this saviour is for – Isaiah put it in these startling terms:  …. “… for those living in darkness, a light has come.”  and later …  “…he will be pierced for our transgressions and by his wounds we are healed”.

For Isaiah it took 600 years and a thousand advent calendar windows before the double doors opened on the baby in the manger he predicted would be  “the Saviour of the World”.  That’s a kind of patience – a kind of expectation and waiting – which is hard to grasp.  In theory, for us,  the waiting is over.  The baby – whether we like it or not, is here.  God is with us.

As the Grinch discovered, we can’t stop Christmas from coming:  “Somehow or other, it came just the same”.  The challenge for us this advent is finding the space to think about why it came at all in the first place.   And that applies to those who believe, and those who don’t.

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Well.  I’m all puffed out now and have talked so much that my throat is sore!  I think it must be coffee time, for I need lubrication to the vocal chords.

This last week for me has been another one of crafting up a storm,  but making things I can’t share because I made some things for some lovely people who come and read my blog….  goodness knows why they come and read it. Kindness is the first thing that springs to mind.  lol.

But … I can start on other things now, so can share and will be doing so.  HURRAH!

In the meantime …  I want you to be good.  Don’t eat too many sweets.  Not too much chocolate.  And don’t do that thing which you’re Mother told you would make you blind.  Oh … and don’t stick peas up your nose.

That last one … I should perhaps explain…  Apparently – this was said by an Irish mother many, many moons ago.

She had to go out but had no one to look after her large brood of children, so she gathered them all together and told the three eldest that they were going to be ‘in charge’ for the next half an hour while she was out of the house.  She put her coat and hat on, gathered up her shopping bag and handbag, and put her hand on the door knob …. but paused and looked at them all in a very stern, Irish mother way, saying:  “Be good.  Don’t be getting yourselves into trouble.  Don’t be making too much noise – we don’t want someone calling the police!  And …  DON’T STICK PEAS UP YOUR NOSE!”  …  and with that she left.

20 minutes later she was back in the house to find a row of children all sat upon the work tops in the kitchen, with the three eldest children trying to do something which the one child was crying about.  Upon taking in the scene she saw that one of the eldest had his arms tightly wound around a child, so holding the childs arms down.  The second eldest had the child’s head in her hands and was tipping the childs head backwards.  And the eldest of the children had the mothers tweezers from her dressing table and was attempting to shove them up the little childs nose.

“What the divil are you doing to that child?!!”  She yelled.  “… and why they all on the kitchen tops?”

The three eldest children explained . . .  there had been no trouble until they found out that the youngsters had popped the pea pods on the kitchen table, and pushed peas up their noses and couldn’t get them down again.

“Why the dickens did you do that?”  she demanded to know, looking at them very sternly  …..

“Because you told us not to!” came a crying reply.

Hence I say to you ….  “Be good.  Don’t be getting yourselves into trouble.  Don’t be making too much noise – we don’t want someone calling the police!  And …  DON’T STICK PEAS UP YOUR NOSE!” 

Have a wickedly wonderful Friday, and a truly fabulous weekend.  May the force be with you.

Sending love and squidges ~

 

 

The Friday Post

Hap-pee Friday!  Where has this week gone?  How very dare it rush past in a flash!  If it’s going to come and visit, then a week should surely hang around long enough for tea and cakes!  I’m coming to a conclusion that weeks have no manners what-so-ever.  The arrive, don’t wipe their feet, don’t take their coats off, and they leave without saying a word, don’t thank you for opening your home to them and don’t even say goodbye.  No … they just up and off, leaving us with yet another Friday.  How VERY dare it!

Anyhoo …  before I get into edumacationing you, I’ve learned some fun things this week and I thought you might like me to share them with you:

I’ve learnt:

• Lions can get hair-balls the size of footballs.  Thankfully I don’t have to clean those off my carpet.
• The letter Q was illegal in Turkey for 85 years.
• Wherever a leaf is in the world, its internal temperature is always 21oC.
• A popular way to cure impotence in the 14th century was to wear your trousers on your head for 24 hours.

You couldn’t make it up, could you?  LOL.

Right .. enough of this giggling.  Let’s get you into the classroom and start your expensive edumacation!

On This Day in History

1558 – Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England, – England’s first queen (also known as ‘Bloody Mary’), dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth I  (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death.  Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess,  Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty.  The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed three years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her brother, Edward VI, cut her out of the succession. His will, however, was set aside, and in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister, the Catholic Mary, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

1603 – English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial. Falsely accused of treason, he had been offered a large sum of money by Lord Cobham, a critic of England’s King James I, to make peace with the Spanish and put Arabella Stuart, James’s cousin, on the throne. Raleigh claimed he turned down the offer, but Lord Cobham told his accusers that Raleigh was involved in the plot. Sir Walter Raleigh or Ralegh (c. 1552 – 29 October 1618), was a famed English writer, poet, soldier, courtier and explorer.

Raleigh was born to a Protestant family in Devon, the son of Walter Raleigh and Catherine Champernowne. Little is known for certain of his early life, though he spent some time in Ireland, in Killua Castle, Clonmellon, County Westmeath, taking part in the suppression of rebellions and participating in two infamous massacres at Rathlin Island and Smerwick, later becoming a landlord of lands confiscated from the Irish. He rose rapidly in Queen Elizabeth I’s favour, being knighted in 1585, and was involved in the early English colonisation of the New World in Virginia under a royal patent. In 1591, he secretly married Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, without requesting the Queen’s permission, for which he and his wife were sent to the Tower of London. After his release, they retired to his estate at Sherborne, Dorset.

In 1594, Raleigh heard of a “City of Gold” in South America and sailed to find it, publishing an exaggerated account of his experiences in a book that contributed to the legend of El Dorado.  After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, Raleigh was again imprisoned in the Tower, this time for allegedly being involved in the Main Plot against King James I who was not favourably disposed toward him.  In 1616, however, he was released in order to conduct a second expedition in search of El Dorado.  This was unsuccessful and the Spanish outpost at San Thomé was ransacked by men under his command.  After his return to England he was arrested and after a show trial held mainly to appease the Spanish, he was beheaded at Whitehall.

1800 – The United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C.
1820 – Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica (the Palmer Peninsula was later named after him).
1827 – The Delta Phi fraternity, America’s oldest continuous social fraternity, was founded at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
1855 – David Livingstone becomes the first European to see Victoria Falls in what is now present-day Zambia-Zimbabwe.
1869 – England’s James Moore won the first cycle road race, an 83 miles race from Paris to Rouen.
1880 – The first three women to graduate in Britain received their Bachelor of Arts degrees at London University.
1882 – The Royal Astronomer witnessed an unidentified flying object from the Greenwich Observatory. He described it as a circular object, glowing bright green.

1903 – The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits into two groups; the Bolsheviks (Russian for “majority”) and Mensheviks (Russian for “minority”).

1911 – The Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the first African-American fraternity at a historically black college or university, is founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

1922 – Britain elected its first Communist Member of Parliament, J T Walton-Newbold standing for Motherwell, Scotland. He eventually joined the Labour Party.

1945 – Britain’s H J Wilson of the RAF set a New world air speed record 606 mph.

1950 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was enthroned as Tibet’s head of state at the age of fifteen. Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub is the 14th Dalai Lama. He is the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamshala, India. Tibetans traditionally believe him to be the reincarnation of his predecessors.

The Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader revered among Tibetans. The most influential figure of the Gelugpa or Yellow Hat Sect, he has considerable influence over the other sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The Chinese government, whose occupation of Tibet in 1959 forced him into exile, regards him as the symbol of an outmoded theocratic system.

Tenzin Gyatso was born fifth of 16 children to a farming family in the village of Taktser, Qinghai province, China. His first language was the regional Amdo dialect.

He was proclaimed the tulku or rebirth of the thirteenth Dalai Lama at the age of two. At the age of fifteen, on 17 November 1950, one month after the Chinese army’s invasion of Tibet, he was formally enthroned as Dalai Lama. He thus became the country’s most important spiritual leader and political ruler.

In 1959 the Dalai Lama fled through the mountains to India following a failed uprising and the effective collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement. He had at first, in 1951, ratified under military pressure a Seventeen Point Agreement to coexist alongside China. In India he set up a Tibetan government-in-exile. Among the 80,000 or so exiles that followed him Tenzin Gyatso strives to preserve traditional Tibetan education and culture.

A noted public speaker worldwide,Tenzin Gyatso is often described as charismatic. He is the first Dalai Lama to travel to the West, where he seeks to spread Buddhist teachings and to promote ethics and interfaith harmony. In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.. He was given honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and was awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.

1953 – The remaining human inhabitants of the Blasket Islands, Kerry, Ireland are evacuated to the mainland. The Blasket Islands (Na Blascaodaí in Irish – etymology uncertain: it may come from the Norse word “brasker”, meaning “a dangerous place”) are a group of islands off the west coast of Ireland, forming part of County Kerry.

They were inhabited until 1953 by a completely Irish-speaking population. The inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland on 17 November 1953. Many of the descendants currently live in Springfield, Massachusetts and some former residents still live on the Dingle peninsula, within sight of their former home.

The islanders were the subject of much anthropological and linguistic study around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries and, thanks partly to outside encouragement, a number of books were written by islanders that record much of the islands’ traditions and way of life. These include An tOileánach (The Islandman) by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Peig by Peig Sayers and Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years A-Growing) by Muiris Ó Súilleabháin.

Cathedral Rocks at Blasket Islands

The Blasket Islands have been called Next Parish America, a term popular in the United States.

1955 – Anglesey became the first authority in Britain to introduce fluoride into the water supply.
1959 – Two Scottish airports, Prestwick and Renfrew, became the first to offer duty-free goods in Britain. London Heathrow followed soon after.

1964 – Britain said that it was banning all arms exports to South Africa.

1967 – Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports he was given on November 13, US President Lyndon B. Johnson tells his nation that, while much remained to be done, “We are inflicting greater losses than we’re taking…We are making progress.”
1968 – NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the final minutes of a game to air a TV special, “Heidi,” on schedule. Viewers were deprived of seeing the Oakland Raiders come from behind to beat the New York Jets 43-32.
1969 – Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki to begin SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.

1970 – Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai massacre. William Laws Calley, Jr. (born June 8, 1943, in Miami, Florida) is a convicted American war criminal. He is the U.S. Army officer found guilty of ordering the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.

Of the 26 officers and soldiers initially charged for their part in the My Lai Massacre or the subsequent cover-up, only Calley would be convicted. He was seen by some as a scapegoat used by the U.S. Army for its failure to instill morale and discipline in its troops and officers. Others, knowing nothing about his education or background, sought to excuse his actions because of his allegedly low intelligence and cultural background. Many saw My Lai as a direct result of the military’s attrition strategy with its emphasis on “body counts” and “kill ratios.”

1970 – Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and was released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.
1970 – Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse.

1973 – Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, US President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook”.

The Watergate scandals were a series of political scandals during the presidency of Richard Nixon that resulted in the indictment of several of Nixon’s closest advisors and ultimately his resignation on August 9, 1974.

The scandals began with the arrest of five men for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Office complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1972. Investigations conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and later by the Senate Watergate Committee, House Judiciary Committee and the press revealed that this burglary was one of many illegal activities authorized and carried out by Nixon’s staff and loyalists. They also revealed the immense scope of crimes and abuses, which included campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal break-ins, improper tax audits, illegal wiretapping on a massive scale, and a secret slush fund laundered in Mexico to pay those who conducted these operations. This secret fund was also used as hush money to buy silence of the seven men who were indicted for the June 17 break-in.

Nixon and his staff conspired to cover up the break-in as early as six days after it occurred. After two years of mounting evidence against the President and his staff, which included former staff members testifying against them in a Senate investigation, it was revealed that Nixon had a tape recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. Recordings from these tapes revealed that he had obstructed justice and attempted to cover up the break-in. This recorded conversation later became known as the Smoking Gun. After a series of court battles, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in United States v. Nixon that the President had to hand over the tapes; he ultimately complied.

With certainty of an impeachment in the House of Representatives and of a conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned ten days later, becoming the only US President to have resigned from office. His successor, Gerald Ford, would issue a controversial pardon for any federal crimes Nixon may have committed while in office.  Click here for the link to the New York Times story

1989 – Riot police arrest hundreds of people taking part in the biggest show of public dissent in Czechoslovakia for 20 years.
BBC News complete with Video footage of the news from that day

2000 – A catastrophic landslide in Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia, kills 7, and causes millions of SLT (Slovenian Tolar – the currency of Slovenia) of damage. It is one of the worst catastrophes in Slovenia in the past 100 years.
2003 – An ex-soldier who served in the Gulf War was found guilty of at least one of the Washington sniper killings in October the previous year.
BBC News story complete with Audio from the court room
2003 – Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.
2004 – Kmart Corp. announced it was buying Sears, Roebuck and Co. for $11 billion USD and naming the newly merged company Sears Holdings Corporation.

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Born on this Day

1887 – Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, English soldier who was a painstaking planner, which contributed to his most successful battle in North Africa when he broke through Rommel’s lines during the Second World War. ‘Monty’ was also a superb communicator, which assured his popularity with his men.

1923 – Mike Garcia, American baseball player (d. 1986)

1925 – Rock Hudson, American actor (d. 1985)

1937 – Peter Cook, British comedian (d. 1995)

1934 – Fenella Fielding, English actress

1942 – Martin Scorsese, American film director

1943 – Lauren Hutton, American actress

1944 – Danny DeVito, American actor

1951 – Dean Paul Martin, American singer and actor (d. 1987)

1960 – Jonathan Ross, British presenter

1960 – RuPaul, American drag entertainer

1980 – Isaac Hanson, American musician (Hanson)

1981 – Sarah Harding, English singer (Girls Aloud)

 

Thought for the Day

Isn’t it funny (?) how people go searching for happiness, travelling the world, or buying things that they feel will make them happy . . . and yet  . . . their happiness is there all the time.  They just have to sit for a moment and go inside themselves and look at what they have.

Try it.  When you are done reading this, close your eyes and sit quite still for a moment and ‘see’ all the people you love surrounding you.  See all the blessings you have in your life:

• The place where you live
• Your family and friends
• Your pet(s)
• Your job
• Your television;  your computer;  your kitchen equipment which enables you to make a drink and cook food to eat.

Think about these things and more.  And then … imagine that someone or something suddenly takes it all away from you.  Everything – gone.  Forever.  Washed away by some sort of hurricane.

How would you feel?  What would the feeling be like to be totally all alone in the world with no one who know you.  No one who YOU know.  No one to talk with except strangers in the street who don’t know you and who are rushing past you every day, without giving you a thought or care.

Now imagine that I come in and one by one, I give everything and everyone back to you.  One by one, the people you love and who love you, walk in through a door and back into your life.

Bit by bit I give you back your home, your kitchen equipment, your clothes … everything.  All those things that you take for granted, every day in your life.

Your family, friends, pets, your car …  everything.  All suddenly back.  Just when you thought you wouldn’t ever see them ever again …  there they are.

Can you get an idea of how that would feel?

Now …  why are you looking for happiness in things that you don’t have …  when your happiness is right there all the time.

Stop searching for your happiness.  You already have it.  All you have to do is ‘see’ it.  Recognise it.  It’s all around you.  Right there.  Right now!

Wishing you a great, and thoroughly blessed day.

Have a wonderful weekend.  Sending you squidges and love ~

 

The Friday Post ~ 27th October 2017

HAAA PEE FRI-Daaaay!

Now if that didn’t wake you up, nothing will! 

As we bring another week to a close, I’ve come to educationamalise you with some useless  useful information that you can impress your friends with.  If you can come out with three of the things you are about to learn, I think you’ll definitely go up in their estimation and they’ll think you’re really Edumacationed.  Perfick.

So … shall we crack on?  Ready?  Fasten your seat-belts, we’re going in!

Friday Edumacation

On this Day in History

312 – Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross. Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, commonly known as Constantine I, Constantine the Great, or Saint Constantine was Roman Emperor from 306, and the undisputed holder of that office from 324 to his death. Best known for being the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine reversed the persecutions of his predecessor, Diocletian, and issued (with his co-emperor Licinius) the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious toleration throughout the empire.

On the evening of October 27, with the armies preparing for battle, Constantine had a vision which lead him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. The details of that vision, however, differ between the sources reporting it. It is believed that the sign of the cross appeared and Constantine heard “In this sign, you shall conquer” in Greek.

Lactantius (an early Christian author) states that, in the night before the battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to “delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers”. He obeyed and marked the shields with a sign “denoting Christ”.  Lactantius describes that sign as a “staurogram”, or a Latin cross with its upper end rounded in a P-like fashion.

1662 – Charles II of England sold the coastal town of Dunkirk to King Louis XIV of France.

1880 – Theodore Roosevelt married Alice Lee.

1904 – The first underground New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.

1936 – Mrs Wallis Simpson filed for divorce from her second husband Ernest, which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.
1938 – Du Pont announced a name for its new synthetic yarn: nylon.

1952 – The BBC screened part one of the 26 part series ‘Victory At Sea’, Britain’s first TV documentary.
1954 – Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first African-American general in the United States Air Force.
1958 – First transmission of the BBC children’s television programme Blue Peter.

1962 – Major Rudolph Anderson of the United States Air Force became the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane was shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

1964 – Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as “A Time for Choosing”.

A Time for Choosing, also known as “The Speech,” was presented on a number of speaking occasions during the 1964 U.S. presidential election campaign by future-president Ronald Reagan on behalf of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.
Many versions of the speech exist, as it was altered during many stops, but two are best known:

• 1964 Republican National Convention – San Francisco, California – Given as a nomination speech for Goldwater.

• As part of a pre-recorded television program titled “Rendezvous with Destiny”, broadcast on October 27, 1964.

Following the speech, Ronald Reagan was asked to run for governor of California. To this day, this speech is considered one of the most effective ever made on behalf of a candidate. Reagan was later called the “great communicator” in recognition of his effective communication skills.

1967 – Britain passed the Abortion Act, allowing abortions to be performed legally for medical reasons. The Abortion Act 1967 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate abortion by registered practitioners, and the free provision of such medical practices through the National Health Service (NHS).

It was introduced by David Steel as a Private Member’s Bill, but was backed by the government, and after a heated debate and a free vote passed on 27 October 1967, coming into effect on 27 April 1968.

The act made abortion legal in the UK up to 28 weeks gestation. In 1990, the law was amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act: abortion became legal only up to 24 weeks except in cases where it was necessary to save the life of the woman, there was evidence of extreme fetal abnormality, or there was a grave risk of physical or mental injury to the woman.

As of 2005, abortions after 24 weeks were extremely rare, fewer than 200 a year, accounting for 0.1% of all abortions.  There are continual pushes to reduce this time limit greatly, but so far, no changes have been made.

The act does not extend to Northern Ireland. Abortion is illegal there unless the doctor acts “only to save the life of the mother”. The situation is the same as it was in England before the introduction of the Abortion Act. The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Criminal Justice Act remain in full force.

1968 – In Great Britain, Police clashed with anti-war protesters as trouble flared in Grosvenor Square, London, after an estimated 6,000 marchers faced up to police outside the United States Embassy.
BBC News Report on the Day complete with Timeline of Events

1986 – The United Kingdom Government suddenly deregulates financial markets, leading to a total restructuring of the way in which they operate in the country, in an event now referred to as the Big Bang.

1992 – United States Navy radio man Allen R. Schindler, Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmates for being gay, precipitating first military, then national debate about gays in the military that resulted in the United States “Don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy.
1997 –  The 1997 mini-crash: Stock markets around the world crash because of fears of a global economic meltdown. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 554.26 points to 7,161.15. For the first time, the New York Stock Exchange activated their “circuit breakers” twice during the day eventually making the controversial move of closing the Exchange early.

Born on this Day

1782 – Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1840)

1728 – Captain James Cook, English naval officer and one of the greatest navigators in history. His voyages in the Endeavour led to the European discovery of Australia, New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands. Thanks to Cook’s understanding of diet, no member of the crew ever died of scurvy, the great killer on other voyages.

1811 – Isaac Singer, American inventor (d. 1875) made important improvements in the design of the sewing machine and was the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

1854 – Sir William Smith, Scottish founder of the Boys’ Brigade (d. 1914)

1858 – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1919)

1873 – Emily Post, American etiquette author (d. 1960)

1896 – Edith Brown, survivor of the Titanic (d. 1997)

1914 – Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet (d. 1953)

1939 – John Cleese, British actor and writer

1951 – K.K. Downing, English guitarist (Judas Priest)

1953 – Peter Firth, British actor

1957 – Glenn Hoddle, English footballer

1958 – Simon Le Bon, English singer (Duran Duran)

1978 – Vanessa-Mae, Singapore musician

1984 – Kelly Osbourne, English television personality and daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.

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Thought for the Day

Attitude.  The longer I live the more I realise the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude to me, is more important than facts.  More important than the past, education, money, circumstances, failure, success, that what other people think, or say, or do.

It’s more important than appearance,  giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a hobby;   a business;  a friendship;  a relationship;  a love;  a marriage;  a Church;  a home;  a nation.

The remarkable thing is that we have a choice, every day, regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way and sometimes the way they act is inappropriate.

We cannot change the inevitable – nothing I can do will stop the hands of time from turning my hair grey;  my body ageing;  a wrinkle appearing on my face;  getting older and developing the aches and pains that come with age …  but just because I have a pain, doesn’t mean I have to BE a pain!

We cannot change the fact that bad things will happen to good people.  A great deal of life happenings are beyond our control.

The one thing we can do though, is play on the one string we have … and that, is our attitude.

I’m convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it.  And so it is with you.  We are each in charge of our own attitude.

What attitude are you going to choose today?  And …  when you’ve chosen it,  remember – people will react to your attitude – so if they react badly, maybe it isn’t down to them, but down to you and your attitude.

Remember this, and if you find yourself continually getting what you don’t want . . .  maybe you need to change your attitude towards people, and towards your life in general.

If you keep doing what you’re doing – you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.​

PLAYTIME!!!

No edumacation facility is worth its weight unless it gives it’s pupils something to play with,  so …. here it comes:

Want to make a glass of water freeze instantly on command? What is this supernatural power and who can use it? Discover the secrets to Ice-bending … in real life.  Watch the video in the following link.  It will teach you all you want to know, and then you’ll REALLY be able to amaze friends and family, and they’ll all wonder how on earth you did it! (link will open in a new window for you):   My Science Academy

I learnt this week that Potatoes have two more chromosomes than people, the same as gorillas!  And … that Rice has almost twice as many genes as human beings!  Not sure how this fit’s into the lives of people I know but there is a relative I would perhaps call a couch potato.  But … now I’m wondering if I’m paying them a compliment! LOL. 

Did you learn anything new this week?  Do share … you can edumacate me then!

I hope you have a truly fabulous Friday, and a remarkable weekend. 

Sending squidges ~

 

 

The Friday Post ~ 8th September 2017

Happy Friday!  This week has flown by in one way, and yet it’s dragged it’s feet in another.

Something was missing in my life.  It’s seemed to be a long stretch of a week.  Then I realised what it was.  It was Little Cobs.  He went back to school on Tuesday so I haven’t seen him since last Saturday.  He’s a joyous handful when he’s here, but when he goes home my heart goes with him.   He’ll be here again on Saturday, and no doubt drag his  HUGE bag of cars out of his bedroom here, then he’ll search for the length of black drain pipe which I got Grandad to rub the ends of so that it wasn’t sharp, and he’ll prop the one end up on the footstool, and his cars will zoooom down the tube and we’ll find out who’s the winner!  It’s kind of his early introduction to betting.  LOL.  (No, we don’t use money or anything else.  We just use our eyes and guess which one will go the furthest)

Oh anyhoo …  look at me chatting away when what you’ve come for is some edumacation.  So let’s get going shall we?

On this Day in History

1504 – Michelangelo’s David is unveiled in Florence. Michelangelo’s David, sculpted from 1501 to 1504, is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture and one of Michelangelo’s two greatest works of sculpture, along with the Pietà. It is the statue of the young Israelite king David alone that almost certainly is one of the most recognizable stone sculptures in the history of art. It is regarded as a symbol both of strength and youthful human beauty.

Michelangelo’s David

The 5.17 meter (17 ft) marble statue portrays the Biblical King David in the nude, at the moment that he decides to battle with Goliath.

However; the proportions are not quite true to the human form; the head and upper body are somewhat larger than the proportions of the lower body. The hands are also larger than would be in regular proportions. While some have suggested that this is of the mannerist style, another explanation is that the statue was originally intended to be placed on a church façade or high pedestal, and that the proportions would appear correct when the statue was viewed from some distance below.

The apparently uncircumcised form would be at odds with Judaic practice, but would be consistent with the conventions of Renaissance art.

To protect it from damage, the sculpture was moved in 1873 to the Accademia Gallery in Florence, where it attracts many visitors. A replica was placed in the Piazza della Signoria in 1910.

The cast of David at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), had a detachable plaster fig leaf, added for visits by Queen Victoria and other important ladies, when it was hung on the figure using two strategically placed hooks; it is now displayed nearby.

In 1991, a deranged man attacked the statue with a hammer he had concealed beneath his jacket, in the process damaging the toes of the left foot before being restrained. The samples obtained from that incident allowed scientists to determine that the marble used was obtained from the Fantiscritti quarries in Miseglia, the central of three small valleys in Carrara. The marble in question contains many microscopic holes that cause it to deteriorate faster than other marbles. Because of the marble’s degradation, a controversy occurred in 2003, when the statue underwent its first major cleaning since 1843. Some experts opposed the use of water to clean the statue, fearing further deterioration. Under the direction of Dr. Franca Falleti, senior restorers Monica Eichmann and Cinzia Pamigoni began the job of restoring the statue. The restoration work was completed in 2004.

By the 20th century, Michelangelo’s David had become iconic shorthand for “culture” David has been endlessly reproduced, in plaster, imitation marble fibreglass, and lends an atmosphere of culture even in some unlikely settings, such as beach resorts, gambling casinos and model railroads.

1888 – In London, the body of murder victim, Annie Chapman, is found, disembowelled in an East London street, the second victim of ‘Jack the Ripper’.

1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited.

1900 – Galveston Hurricane of 1900: a powerful hurricane hits Galveston, Texas killing about 8,000 people.

1921 – 16-year-old Margaret Gorman won the Atlantic City Pageant’s Golden Mermaid trophy;  pageant officials later dubbed her the first Miss America.

1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch transparent tape.

1943 – World War II: United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly announces the Allied armistice with Italy.
1944 – World War II: London is hit by a V2 rocket as the first German V2 flying bombs fell on Britain, exploding at Chiswick in London, killing 3 people.

1960 – Publishers Penguin Books were charged with public obscenity for publishing D.H. Lawrence’s controversial book – ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’.
1960 – In Huntsville, Alabama, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).

1966 – In England, the Severn Bridge was officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, linking south Wales with south west England.
1966 – The first Star Trek,  the landmark American science fiction television series, premieres with the first-aired episode, “The Man Trap”, on NBC.

1968 – The Beatles perform their last live TV performance on the David Frost show. They perform their new hit Hey Jude.
1968 – British tennis player Virginia Wade beat American Billie Jean King to win the US Open.

1974 – Watergate Scandal: US President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office.

1975 – Gays in the military: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, appears in his Air Force uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the headline “I Am A Homosexual”.  He is given a general discharge, which was later upgraded to honorable.

2004 – The NASA unmanned spacecraft Genesis crash-lands when its parachute fails to open. The Genesis spacecraft was the first ever attempt to collect a sample of solar wind, and the first “sample return mission” to return from beyond the orbit of the Moon. It was launched on August 8, 2001, and crash-landed on September 8, 2004 after a design flaw prevented the deployment of its drogue parachute. The crash contaminated many of the sample collectors, but subsequent processing was able to isolate useful samples, and as of March 2008 all of the mission’s major science objectives are expected to be achieved successfully.

Born on this Day

1921 – Harry Secombe, Welsh entertainer (d. 2001)
1922 – Sid Caesar, American comedian (d. 2014)
1925 – Peter Sellers, English actor (d. 1980)
1932 – Patsy Cline, American singer (d. 1963)

1979 – Pink, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress

  🌷  🌷  🌷

OK… now it’s playtime.  (All schools have a playtime, and this one is no different) …

I will only give you links to click on that I’ve tried and tested and know for sure that there is nothing bad hiding in them.  So please rest assured that any link you find on this blog has been tested before I load it here.  I’ve been playing around with most of these links for … oh my goodness, around ten years, so I know for sure that they’re safe.

Today …  instead of a game, I share with you something that I have tons of fun on every now and again.

If you don’t have a Gravatar picture of yourself,  or a photo of yourself on your blog – in your sidebar – then you can ‘build’ yourself on this website!  It’s not really you as such, but it’s ‘you’ in a cartoony sort of way.

You can build a body, a skin tone, hair, lips, teeth, eyes, glasses, facial hair,  even tattoos!  You can make it look like you … but if you were stood in a line up, no one would be able to pick you out based on that image.  lol.  Aww … look, I’ll give you the link so that you can have a play with it yourself.  It’s lots of fun… BUT …  have a look around first, and click on the things so that you know what they look like… because once you have chosen some of the things there, you can’t undo them  (some you can change – but not all of them). . . and you’ll have to start from the beginning.  Other than that, it’s a great little time waster.

click —> http://www.sp-studio.de/  …  it will open in a new window for you.

Well we’ve come to the end of the school day, here in Cobweborium Land.  Don’t you wish all your school/work days were as short as this?  A bit of fun, over a cup of coffee and time to go off and relax!  lol

Wishing you all a truly wonderful weekend.  Thank you so much for coming and spending a little time with me.  I love seeing you here.

May your weekend be everything you want it to be.  🌹

Friday School:- like Sunday school but more entertaining.

Haaaappy Friday!

Well …. we made it through another week, so I think we’re doing OK.  None of us got run down by an Emu, or exploded for eating too many sweeties.  So we’ll score this week as a 10 out of 10.  Yes, I know that some of you have had gremlins creep into your week, and I know that at least one of you has had a day or two of feeling really rather miserable.  But … I’m here to put things on the right track again and do my job of not only Educationamalising you, but also going to fulfill my obligation to make you smile – even if you don’t want to!!!

So then … do you all have your pencils, crayons and books ready to take notes?  Then we shall begin .. ..  ..  ..

On this Day in History

1858 – First ascent of the Eiger.

The Eiger is a mountain in the Swiss Alps. The peak is mentioned in records dating back to the 13th century but there is no clear indication of how exactly the peak gained its name. The three mountains of the ridge are sometimes referred to as the Virgin (German: Jungfrau, lit. “Young Woman” – translates to “Virgin” or “Maiden”), the Monk (Mönch) and the Ogre (Eiger). The name has been linked to the Greek term akros, meaning “sharp” or “pointed”, but more commonly to the German eigen, meaning “characteristic”.

The first ascent of the Eiger was made by Swiss guides Christian Almer and Peter Bohren and Irishman Charles Barrington who climbed the west flank on August 11, 1858.

1909 – The first recorded use of the new emergency wireless signal SOS.

1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

External Link:
Babe Ruth.com – The Official Website of the Sultan of Swat

1934 – Federal prison opened at Alcatraz Island.

Alcatraz Island, sometimes informally referred to as simply Alcatraz or by its pop-culture name, The Rock, is a small island located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California, United States.

It served as a lighthouse, then a military fortification, then a military prison followed by a federal prison until 1963. It became a national recreation area in 1972 and received landmarking designations in 1976 and 1986.

Today, the island is a historic site operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

External Link:
Alcatraz History

1941 – President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill  signed the Atlantic Charter, largely to demonstrate public solidarity between the Allies.

1942 – Great Britain’s Barnes Wallis patented his ‘bouncing bomb’, used successfully to destroy German dams in the 2nd World War.

1968 – The start of National Apple Week in England.  …  and ….  The Beatles launched their new record label, Apple.

1968 – The last steam passenger train service runs in Britain.

A selection of British Rail steam locomotives make the 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle and returns to Liverpool before having their fires dropped for the last time – this working was known as the Fifteen Guinea Special.

I’m thrilled to bits to have found a short film that was taken from the window of the Fifteen Guinea Special, showing how people came out of their houses and ran to the railway lines to watch this final last journey of this wonderful locomotive.

1971 – The Prime Minister, (of the day) Edward Heath, steered the British yachting team to victory in the Admiral’s Cup.

1975 – The British Government took ownership of British Leyland, the only major British-owned car company.

1982 – The notorious East End gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed out of prison for the funeral of their mother.

1999 – Up to 350m people throughout Europe and Asia witnessed the last total solar eclipse of the century.

2003 – A heat wave in Paris resulted in temperatures rising to 112°F (44° C), leaving about 144 people dead.

~ ~   💩   ~ ~

We have reached the limit of my brain cell.  Please wait a moment while my user presses the re-set button.

~ ~  🚨  ~ ~

Now, although your edumacation for Friday School this week has been completed, please be aware that you will, at some point, be tested on these snippets of information, so if you skipped any dates you might want to go back and read them …. and even make notes in your book.  After all…  you don’t want to get a big F for FAIL in your test results.  Noooo.  Only those with passes over 8 (eight) will get an award [of a lollipop] and those with a score over 70 will get:  a lollypop, a tube of fruit Polo’s AND ….  a STICKER!!!

Ohhh ho ho ho (she laughs like Santa???) … we don’t skimp around here for prizes!  We go way over the top, as you can clearly see!

And finally ….  I have to fulfill my contract by making you laugh…  so get your chuckle muscles ready . . . . . .

(this is just a teensy bit rude … but only a little bit … however,  if you’re really easily offended then perhaps stop reading now)…

To celebrate their 7th anniversary, a man and his wife spend the weekend at an exclusive golf resort. He is a pretty good golfer, but she only just started. When they head down to the golf course after a lavish lunch and a bottle of champagne, they notice a beautiful mansion a couple of hundred yards behind the first hole.

“Let’s be extra careful, honey,” the husband says, “If we damage that house over there, it’ll cost us a fortune.”

The wife nods, tees off and – bang! – sends the ball right through the window of the mansion.

“Damn,” the husband says. “I told you to watch out for that house. Alright, let’s go up there, apologize and see what the damage is.”

They walk up to the house and knock on the door.

“Come on in,” a voice in the house says.

The couple open the door and enter the foyer. The living room is a mess. There are pieces of glass all over the floor and a broken bottle near the window. A man sits on the couch.

When the couple enter the room, he gets up and says, “Are you the guys who just broke my window?”

“Um, yeah,” the husband replies, “sorry about that.”

“Not at all, it’s me who has to thank you. I’m a genie and was trapped in that bottle for a thousand years. You’ve just released me. To show my gratitude, I’m allowed to grant each of you a wish.  But – I’ll require one favour in return.”

“Really? That’s great!” the husband says. “I want a million dollars a year for the rest of my life.”

“No problem – that’s the least I can do. And you, what do you want?” the genie asks, looking at the wife.

“I want a house in every country of the world,” the wife says.

The genie smiles. “Consider it done.”

“And what’s this favour we must grant in return, genie?” the husband asks.

“Well, since I’ve been trapped in that stupid bottle for the last thousand years, I haven’t ‘been’ with a woman for a very long time. My wish is to sleep with your wife.”

The husband scratches his head, looks at the wife and says, “Well, we did get a lot of money and all these houses, honey. So I guess I’m fine if it’s alright with you.”

The genie and the wife disappear in a room upstairs for an hour, while the husband stays in the living room.

When they are done, the genie rolls over, looks at the wife and asks, “How old exactly is your husband?”

“31,” she replies.

“And he still believes in genies? That’s amazing!”

❤

Hey … don’t blame me, I’m just the deliverer of jokes.  I don’t make ’em up!

Well, that’s me done and dusted.  All that’s left for me to say is…..

Have a terrific Friday.  Share your smile with everyone.  Even if you don’t feel like smiling, try your best and you’ll soon see that having a smile plastered to your face actually does make you feel so much lighter and brighter inside.

Try it.  You’ve got nothing to lose!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend. 

Sending love and squidges from my corner here, where I’m sat., to your corner there, where you’re sat.

 

The Friday Post ~ Classified Ads . . .

Happy Friday!   Again, yet another week has passed and I still haven’t found the secret to stopping the clocks so that I remain the child I am at heart.  One day I’m going to crack that secret and I’ll share it with you, so you can all stay young along with me.  I’m pretty sure the world would be able to handle it.  (although mind … there are a small handful of us who the world might just struggle with …  lol)

Well …  I hope you have your Chuckle Muscle in good shape, for this is the required item you’ll need for this weeks Friday Post.

It’s the Summer,  and people are looking to sort out their houses and get rid of things they’re no longer using,  by putting an advert in a newspaper in order to sell those things.  Or some folks have a business which they are looking to promote and add a few pennies to the holiday fund.

All this is leading me to sharing some of those folks adverts with you.  Are you ready with your chuckle muscle?  Sure?  Ok … let’s go . . .

CLASSIFIED ADS
Actual genuine excerpts from classified sections of city newspapers:

ILLITERATE?  WRITE  TODAY FOR FREE HELP.

AUTO REPAIR SERVICE.  FREE PICK-UP AND DELIVERY.   TRY US ONCE, YOU’LL NEVER GO ANYWHERE AGAIN.

OUR EXPERIENCED MOM WILL CARE FOR YOUR CHILD. FENCED YARD, MEALS, AND SMACKS INCLUDED.

DOG FOR SALE: EATS ANYTHING AND IS FOND OF CHILDREN.

STOCK UP AND SAVE.   LIMIT: ONE.

SEMI-ANNUAL AFTER-CHRISTMAS SALE.

3-YEAR-OLD TEACHER NEEDED FOR PRE-SCHOOL.  EXPERIENCE PREFERRED.

MIXING BOWL SET DESIGNED TO PLEASE A COOK WITH ROUND BOTTOM FOR EFFICIENT BEATING.

DINNER SPECIAL — TURKEY $2.35;  CHICKEN OR BEEF $2.25;  CHILDREN $2.00.

FOR SALE: ANTIQUE DESK SUITABLE FOR LADY WITH THICK LEGS AND LARGE DRAWERS.

NOW IS YOUR CHANCE TO HAVE YOUR EARS PIERCED AND GET AN EXTRA PAIR TO TAKE HOME, TOO.

WE DO NOT TEAR YOUR CLOTHING WITH MACHINERY. WE DO IT CAREFULLY BY HAND.

HAVE SEVERAL VERY OLD DRESSES FROM GRANDMOTHER IN BEAUTIFUL CONDITION.

TIRED OF CLEANING YOURSELF?   LET ME DO IT.

VACATION SPECIAL: HAVE YOUR HOME EXTERMINATED.

MT. KILIMANJARO, THE BREATHTAKING BACKDROP FOR THE SERENA LODGE. SWIM IN THE LOVELY POOL WHILE YOU DRINK IT ALL IN.

THE HOTEL HAS BOWLING ALLEYS, TENNIS COURTS, COMFORTABLE BEDS, AND OTHER ATHLETIC FACILITIES.

TOASTER: A GIFT THAT EVERY MEMBER OF THE FAMILY APPRECIATES. AUTOMATICALLY BURNS TOAST.

MAN, HONEST. WILL TAKE ANYTHING.

USED CARS: WHY GO ELSEWHERE TO BE CHEATED? COME HERE FIRST.

CHRISTMAS TAG-SALE. HANDMADE GIFTS FOR THE HARD-TO-FIND PERSON.

WANTED: HAIR CUTTER. EXCELLENT GROWTH POTENTIAL.

WANTED. MAN TO TAKE CARE OF COW THAT DOES NOT SMOKE OR DRINK.

OUR BIKINIS ARE EXCITING. THEY ARE SIMPLY THE TOPS.

WANTED. WIDOWER WITH SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN REQUIRED TO ASSUME GENERAL HOUSEKEEPING DUTIES. MUST BE CAPABLE OF CONTRIBUTING TO GROWTH OF FAMILY.

WE WILL OIL YOUR SEWING MACHINE AND ADJUST TENSION IN YOUR HOME FOR $1.00.

MAN WANTED TO WORK IN DYNAMITE FACTORY. MUST BE WILLING TO TRAVEL

And just in case you still have a little coffee in your cup and want a tad more entertainment, I share with you…  Signs, as found on You Tube:

Well that’s me done and dusted for another ‘Friday Post’.

All that’s left for me to say is …  have a truly blessed rest of your day, and I hope your weekend is peace filled and leaves you feeling contented.   And,  finally, …  remember to be a little kinder than you might think necessary.  Each one of us is fighting our own battle.  I may not see your battle, and you don’t know what mine is, but I’d like people to be kind to me in the same way I’m kind to them.  So … be a little kinder to all that you meet and interact with this weekend.  Who knows . . .  your kindness could just be the thing which enables someone to carry on carrying on.

Sending my love and a bucket full of squidges ~

 

Something I wish to share with you

I don’t normally make two blog posts in one day, but this is important, so I am.

I know that when you want to share a blog post which someone else has made on their own blog, you can do a little gizmo thing to share their post with your own followers.  So yes, I do know I can do that.  However, in this circumstance, I don’t want to do that, and the reason for this might become clear when you read this ‘story’.

A dear blogging friend, Michelle, has been going through a really heart aching time of recent.  In the last 6 months Michelle has had her youngest Son, just three years old, go through surgery;   Her young daughter (aged just 7) had to go through heart surgery;  and since August  1st  her eldest son has been very, very poorly indeed and is in hospital.

Yesterday Michelle posted this:

When Tears Become A Way Of Life

Sometimes, tears become normal because life can be hard. So very, very hard.

The photo above is the view from my son’s hospital room. His illness first started on August 1st and he is still desperately sick. He now has post surgical meningitis and his pain is immense. Tears are never far from my eyes as I watch, helpless to ease his suffering. But do you know what he does?

He sings praise.

His spinal column and brain are filled with bacteria and pain, but he sings praise.

His hope has never grown dim and yesterday, when he could barely speak and was going in and out of delirium, he said to me

“Mom, I love you. Never lose faith.”

 Can you imagine? In the midst of his suffering, he was encouraging me. Tears still come, but I wipe them away and carry on for him because if he can be that strong, so can I.

To all of my wonderful readers, customers and team, I have been pretty missing in action due to all of this. Thank you for sticking by me. I have so many Stampin’ Up! things I need to share with you, but they have to wait because my boy needs me. Thank you for your support, your business and your understanding, and thanks for stopping by today.

Many of you have shared your own stories of personal health struggles or watching loved ones suffer, and some of you have even recently lost those closest to you. My heart is with each of you who have shared. If you are in the middle of a season of tears, my message to you is the same as my son’s:

Friend, I love you.

Never lose faith.

Michelle

Michelle is the most incredible person.  She’s a very soft and gentle girl, – and if you’d have been at school with her, you know you’d have protected from any bully, and made sure she knew she was fantastic, whatever someone else might say, and quite possibly thumped anyone who hurt her.  (no matter how much a scaredy cat you actually are.  – or is that just me I’m talking about here? lol).  But she’s built of sturdier stuff than I, for I think I would have caved in under the weight of what she’s had to bear.  She amazes me with her positivity and ability to keep going long after others would have been on the floor.

So, why am I here sharing blog post with you?  Well, I have a favour to ask.  Would you please go to Michelle’s blog page and post a message for her?

If you pray, would you tell her that you’re praying for her son?

If you don’t pray –  that’s fine  …  tell her that you’re thinking positive thoughts and pushing your hopes and wishes out into the world.  That way those good wishes and hopes and thoughts can join up with all the other people who are doing the same thing, and make one great big positive, thought, prayer, love and … oh lots of other things.  And together,  all those things make something so powerful and so good and, who knows ….  maybe out of this could come something wonderful which we’re all hoping for.

The reason I didn’t want to do that gizmo ‘share’ of her post is because to do so seems wrong.  The blog post, on this occasion, should stand alone, out of a deep respect for her and her family and the situation they are in right now.  I didn’t want Michelle being notified that someone had shared her post on their own blog.  There’s something wrong in doing that.  Somehow it felt like a tacky thing to do.

But … If however you yourself have followers that you would like to encourage to visit Michelle’s blog and post something truly uplifting and which will give her an even greater hope that something good is happening,  then that would be brilliant – and yes, you can do the quote of this blog post.  I don’t mind.

You can visit   Michelle’s blog post HERE.

When the page loads (in another window) scroll all the way down to leave a comment for her.

I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for posting words of encouragement on her blog;  showing her your support;  telling her that you’re praying;  or telling her that you’re thinking of her son and the family, and pushing good thoughts out into the ether, wishing and hoping that her sons health improves soon, and that he’s back home, fully recovered as soon as possible.

Thank you to all the wonderful people of blog land.  Praying or Wishing or Hoping may seem like only be a little thing for you to do  … but all those little things add up and eventually they become something BIG.   And sometimes, all those little things bundled up together contain miracles that can amaze you.  Those things really can make incredible things happen.  They can change the world.  Or a boy’s life.

As Arthur Conan Doyle said:  “the little things are infinitely the most important.“

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

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