Corny Jokes

 🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽

Why do you eat sausage on February 2nd?
Because it's "ground hog."🐷🐷🐷🐹🐹🐹

What's a baby's motto?
If at first you don't succeed, cry, cry again.👶😢😭

What kind of craft does a pine tree do? 🌲
Needlepoint!   😝

What did the tomato say to the mushroom?
"You look like a fungi [fun guy]."  🍄

Where does the trombone stay off the merry-go-round?
Because it likes the slide.   🎵🎵🎵

Why aren't the trumpets on the slide?
Because they like to swing.  🎺🎺🎺 

Why don't Dalmatians like baths? 
They don't like being spotless.  🐶

Why did the hamburger quit answering questions?
If felt like it was being grilled.  🍔🍔

What did the cake say to the knife? 🗡
"You want a piece of me?"  🎂

What's the cleanest section in the choir?  
The soap-ranos.   🎶🎶🎶

On a stoplight, red means "stop" and green means "go."
When does red mean "go" and green mean "stop"?
On a watermelon!  🍉🍉🍉😏

E-mail circulars were a common social phenomenon from the 1990s until about 2015. For a short time, this sort of listing was fairly popular on Facebook but it seems that this has reduced there, also. This blog has been curating and editing such lists for a while.  Such things are societal markers. 

Epiphany Day & Carnival Season

   This is a "King Cake" I made for Epiphany Day, January 6th. This marks the coming of the Wise Men in liturgical churches. This is the kick-off of Carnival Season across Europe, Latin America, and parts of Louisiana and Alabama. 

  Three colors became emblematic of this season in New Orleans: Purple for Justice, Green for Faith, Gold for Power.  The season culminates in Mardi Gras, which is French for "Fat Tuesday." This is the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, though the term has come to be applied to the entire Carnival Season.     

  The King Cake is named for the presumed Three Kings (really, an unknown number of Magi, or "seers").  A plastic Baby Jesus is put inside, and whoever gets Him brings the next King Cake.

     Here is some information about the Magi from my other blog.  Christian Nature Poetry: The Magi

This Blog: Some of my amatuerish birthday cake decorating

Wisdom from a Spiritual Source

     The work of William Cowper (pronounced "Cowper"; 1731-1800) is featured on both my blogs this month. For more information, see the Christian Nature Poetry blog.
     Below are some timeless quotes from Cowper. Source material provided when possible.

"Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour." --"The Timepiece", 1785; lines 606-607

"I am monarch of all I survey..." --Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Seldirk, 1782; line 1

"But still remember, if you mean to please, To press your point with modesty and ease." --William Cowper, John William Cunningham; “The works of William Cowper: Poems : with an essay on the genius and poetry of Cowper”, p.158 (1835)

"Absence of proof is not proof of absence."

"Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse, too." --“The Task: A Poem. In Six Books”, p.89 (1810)

"God made the country, and man made the town." --"The Sofa" line 749 (1785)

Cowper Summer Home, Olney, England

"Misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case." --“The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence”, p.446 

“If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.” --Letters

"A little sunshine is generally the prelude to a storm."

"A life of ease is a difficult pursuit." -- “Poems”, p.290 (1815)

"No one was ever scolded out of their sins."

"When nations perish in their sins, 'tis in the Church the leprosy begins." --“Poems of William Cowper, Esq”, p.57 (1824) 

"The darkest day, if you live till tomorrow, will have past away."

"Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God." -- "The Winter Walk At Noon”

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still..." --“The Life and Works of William Cowper: His life and letters by William Hayley" (1835) 

"No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach."

Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons to love it, too. --“The Poetical Works of William Cowper”, p.143 (1854)

"A fool must be right now and then, by chance." --"Conversation" line 96 (1782)

“Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much. Wisdom is humble that he knows not more.”

“Satan trembles, when he sees the weakest Saint upon his knees.” --“Olney Hymn 29: Exhortation To Prayer” 

"Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, but God never will."   --"The Winter Walk At Noon” 

"A self-made man? Yes, and one who worships his Creator."

"We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works die too." “The Works of William Cowper: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations. With a Life of the Author”, p.83 (1835).

"Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in White and Black the same." --joint works & letters with James Thomson (1850)

     Cowper was an ardent abolitionist. He wrote a poem, "The Negro's Complaint." [old-fashioned terminology] A couple centuries later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted Cowper.

Bio from The Poetry Foundation

Cowper: "Light Shining Out of Darkness"; Christian Nature Poetry blog

Cowper: Seasonal Poem, Christian Nature Poetry Blog 

This Blog: "The Negro's Complaint"

Why Did That Chicken Cross the Road?

(Some of this is a bit behind the times, but you all still know the references.)

SARAH PALIN: The chicken crossed the road because, gosh-darn it, he's a maverick!
BARACK OBAMA: Let me be perfectly clear, if the chickens like their eggs they can keep their eggs. No chicken will be required to cross the road to surrender her eggs. Period.

JOHN McCAIN: My friends, the chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
HILLARY CLINTON: What difference at this point does it make why the chicken crossed the road.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or against us. There is no middle ground here.
DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?
BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken.
AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white?
DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he is acting by not taking on his current problems before adding any new problems.
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross the road so badly. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a NEW CAR so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
ANDERSON COOPER: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.
NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way the chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.
DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.
GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.
BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish it's lifelong dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2014, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2014. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

Refreshment

   Photographs from the White River, a tributary to the Salt River in Arizona.  This area lies on the boundary between two Apache Indian Reservations.  We made this trip on the 4th of July, 2019.

     We had some "interesting turns", as the old Jeep had a fuel issue, and we ended up stranded coming out of the canyon the river forms. But the residents of the White River Apache Reservation were gracious as we resolved the situation.  One very nice gentleman helped us get much closer to the rim before we had to give up and call the tribal game & fish officials for assistance. The initial gentleman who helped us had his elderly father along for the ride, also a Lutheran.  [Later addition:  when the father passed away, the son who had helped us contacted us about funeral information, since we are all in the Lutheran world.]

Walking, American Style

An American author for this Fourth of July, from one of his lesser-known works:

"He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river... 

No wealth can buy the requisite leisure freedom, and independence which are capital in this profession... You must be born into the family of Walkers...  the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day... " 

 ---Henry David Thoreau in "Walking", from the Atlantic Monthly, 1862.  

     Like many high school students, I was assigned Walden to read. While it suited my temperament and interests, I ended up purchasing a book of Thoreau's work.  In it I found this "Walking" essay and a separate account of a trip he made with his brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.  I ended up preferring both of these to Walden. 

Route 66 Tour

"66 is the mother road..."  --John Steinback in The Grapes of Wrath  

Route 66, where it splits off from I-40 in northwest Arizona

Wild Burros in Oatman

Colorado River, Grand Canyon

Different than in National Park

Permit to drive down (!)