Perhaps Lesson Learned?

The other day a Pennsylvania couple was arrested.  Seems their ten-year-old daughter was in a cage in the back of their pickup and they were driving along on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The couple explained this away:  "She wanted to be with her dog.  She plays with him in there all the time."
As it works out, the dog was in the cage too. 
That's legal and even desirable.  The dog in the cage, that is.
What isn't legal, as the Carlson couple now know, is to lock your child in a cage in the back of the pickup with or without her pet dog.
Concerned motorists apparently alerted law enforcement and law enforcement responded with arrests.
For some reason this whole thing doesn't bother me as much as those folks in pickups who haven't caged their dogs and in some cases their children.  There they are ears flapping in the breeze defying gravity to hold them onto the truck. 
That's terribly dangerous for man, child, and beast.  This other thing is just weird.  Illegal, also, as it works out.

Tuesday Tips For Well Being

Let it be known that I am not a doctor and in no way qualified to give out medical advise.  What I can do, though, is share some interesting tid bits with you.
Today's tid bit is from a magazine I never read before and may never read again.  The magazine is called 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' which is apparently quite a bit.  However, in an article called 'The gain without the pain' we are advised that walking gives us as many if not more benefits than does running.
I'm all for that. 
Here's what I learned.  Walking uses up about the same amount of energy as running.  Walking is as good for our over all health as is running.  Walking is really good for our hearts.  We don't have to be speed walkers to gain health benefits and we don't have to walk all day either.  Thirty minutes broken up into three ten minute walks works as well as thirty solid minutes.
Hmm.  Maybe I will read that magazine again

We Remember and We Honor

 We fly the flags and we sing the songs for all of our fallen.

"No Man's Land" is a song written in 1976 by Scottish-Austrian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle about a young man who died at the age of nineteen in World War I.  In his words, It's a song that was written about the military cemeteries in Flanders and Northern France.  In 1976 my wife and I went to three or four of those military cemeteries and saw all the young solders."
According to the song and the grave stone, Willie McBride died when he was nineteen years old.  I never met him.




I never met this young man, either -- a casualty of World War II.  He died in the South Pacific when he was also nineteen years old.

He was my uncle and his name was Jerry Walker.

Please Heal

This week’s Torah portion Behaa’lot’kha (Num. 8:1 – 12:16) has many remarkable events, but perhaps none more remarkable than Aaron’s and Miriam’s confrontation with their brother, Moses.  They speak against Moses because he married a Cushite woman. God’s anger is stirred against Aaron and Miriam, and he calls all three of them into the Tent of Meeting, backing Moses completely and thoroughly.  And when God’s presence left the sanctuary, Miriam was stricken with leprosy, covered in snow-white scales.  And Moses cried out to God with a simple but fervent five-word prayer: “God, please heal her, please.”

In his early years, Miriam saved Moses’ life by placing him in the basket of reeds to avoid Pharaoh’s death decree for newborn Israelite boys.  Now, Moses’ heartfelt prayer moves God to heal Miriam, and God does heal her.

The prayer that Moses uttered to heal his sister is still used as a prayer of healing today.  Songwriter Debbie Friedman, of blessed memory, wrote a lovely melody for it, and it is inscribed on wall hangings, amulets, scarves, blankets and other objects of comfort.   It is the best we can do for those we love: to pray these simple words for what we desperately want.

Another Day To Live In Infamy

On this day in 1886 Dr. John Styth Pemberton invented a carbonated beverage that would later be named Coca-Cola.  On this infamous day, Dr. Pemberton carried a jug of his 'stuff' down the street to Jacobs' Pharmacy and asked the folks there to sample it.  They pronounced it 'excellent'.  The pharmacy started selling it for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink.  Customers declared the drink to be both "Delicious and Refreshing."
The good doctor's creativity went beyond liquid concoctions into advertising.  He decided that two Cs would look good together and started calling the drink Coca-Cola.

The first newspaper ad for Coca-Cola soon appeared in The Atlanta Journal, inviting thirsty citizens to try "the new and popular soda fountain drink." During the first year, sales averaged a nine drinks per day.  (Just an fyi-in 2010 worldwide 1.7 billion servings of Coca-Cola were sold each day.)
The good doctor never made much money from his creation because he gradually sold off all of his rights until he had none.
And so it is that today we might choose to hoist one in honor of Dr John Styth Pemberton, the little known pharmacist who gave us a dietary staple.
Before we hoist too many, though, we might consider that Dr. Pemberton was born in 1831 and died a mere 57 years later in 1888.  While he survived the Civil War serving in the Confederate Army he might not have done so well enjoying his own drink.

Thank you, Delaware

Delaware has made same sex marriage legal.  Little, tiny Delaware -- a David to the hate mongering Goliath.  And still we wonder what is happening to California.  It's too late to lead the pack but at least this once follow me state might at least decide to join it.

And Then The Rains Came

First the fires came.  Friday afternoon a fast moving brush fire broke out near our home.  Even Saturday the mountain now blackened by fire continued to smolder and fire fighters worked their hoses with water pumped from a major street.  This morning we woke up to rain.  It had rained all night and continued to rain throughout today.  Nature has at the very least a sense of humor and possibly even a sense of irony.  Had the rains come Friday morning the fire would never have started.  Always mud slides come after the rains which come after the fires.  Had it rained Friday morning not only would we not have had a fire, we wouldn't have to worry about mud slides.
Yo!  Nature!  It's okay to change the order or things. Just because You've always done things this way doesn't mean you have to keep doing them the same way.  Just a suggestion.  Do what you wish.

May Day Magic

So here it is the first day of the month of May and life begins again.  The fruit tree bears sweet fruit, the blossoms fill the air with fragrance and hope looks out of its dark hole to take a tentative look around.