This Time of Year

"Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile."   --William Cullen Bryant

Groan-Fest (email puns)

(from an e-mail circular)

• I changed my I-Pod’s name to Titanic. It's syncing now. 
• When chemists die, they barium. 
• Jokes about German sausage are the “wurst.” 
• A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. 
• I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time. 
• I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. 
  
• This girl said she recognized me from the Vegetarian Club, but I'd never met herbivore. 
• I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I can't put it down. 
• I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words. 
• They told me I had type A blood, but it was a Type-O. 
• PMS jokes aren't funny, period. 
• A class trip to the Coca-Cola factory: I hope there's no pop quiz. 
• Energizer bunny arrested. Charged with battery. 
• I didn't like my beard at first. Then it grew on me. 
• Did you hear about the cross eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils? 
• When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble. 
• I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me! 
• Broken pencils are pointless. 
• England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool. 
• I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx. 
• I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough. 
• Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes. 
• Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.
• Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.
• I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
• Never fall in love with a tennis player because to a tennis player, love means nothing.
• I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
• All the toilets in New York 's police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.

Experience

I stepped from plank to plank

So slow and cautiously;

The stars about my head I felt,

About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next

Would be my final inch,---

This gave me that precarious gait

Some call experience.  ---Emily Dickinson

This poem is about "gaining sea legs" as a metaphor for gaining life experience. There is risk as we gain experience.

Blessed Easter

"For I passed on to you what I received as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; that He was buried; that He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures..." ---St. Paul, (I Corinthians, 15: 3-4)

Centrist Politics

"I am a man who believes with all fervor and intensity in moderate progress. Too often men who believe in moderation believe in it only moderately and tepidly and leave fervor to the extremists of the two sides -- the extremists of reaction and the extremists of progress. Washington, Lincoln . . . are men who, to my mind, stand as the types of what wide, progressive leadership should be."—Theodore Roosevelt

Mount Rushmore National Park, South Dakota

  "I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them." —George Washington

"I have always sought for the middle ground."—James Madison
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, it to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."—John Adams
"We [must] hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other."—Theodore Roosevelt
"Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground."—Theodore Roosevelt
"Partisanship must end at the waters edge."—Harry S. Truman
"The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters." —Dwight D. Eisenhower

Fortunate, Cookie

"Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better."

"Don't wait for success, start ahead without it." ---Chinese fortune cookies

Love Deeply & Loved Deeply

"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His One and Only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the payment of our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we ought to also love each other.... If we love each other, God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us.... We love because God first loved us." ---St. John (from I John 4:7-12; 19)

Happy St. Valentine's Day!!!