Ten Things I STILL Haven’t Done Yet. . . .
Mamacita says: You’d think I didn’t get out much. . . .
1. I have still never used an ATM machine. I think this knowledge would only have negative consequences for me.
2. I haven’t been addicted to a television show in over 20 years. I do, however, wait until the complete season dvd’s are available when something seems interesting. TV just seems like such a waste of time. says the internet addict
3. I’m still not tired of hearing Jim Dale read Harry Potter to me. I don’t think I’d get tired of Jim Dale doing anything. And by “anything,” what I really mean is. . . anything.
4. I have not outgrown my love of Disney songs. I may have 289 original soundtrack Disney songs on my iPod in my car. The more obscure the song, the better I tend to like it. (Flitterin’, anyone?)
5. I still don’t like coffee. Or tea. Any kind. In any weather. I associate coffee and tea with old people. (Shut up.)
6. I haven’t conquered my intense addiction to Diet Coke, although as soon as my stash is gone, I’m switching to Diet Pepsi because Coke isn’t making 24 oz bottles any more.
7. I haven’t quite memorized the last three Harry Potter books yet, although it won’t be much longer. Yes, I memorize things I love. Then, they are with me always. Teachers who think memorizing is useless are not my kind of teachers. I’m not sure what kind they are, but I hate them.
8. I still don’t like rock salt with eyeballs anchovies. This doesn’t bother me in the least. I also hate onions.
9. I will never go over to the Dark Side. Intense standardized testing is evil.
10. I am glad and proud to state that I have never received a speeding ticket. For a while, it looked like I’d have to delete this one, as I was pulled over Thursday morning, on my way to school, in the midst of freezing white fog with visibility of pretty much nil. I’d been driving between 15-30 miles per hour as even the stoplights were not remotely visible. I couldn’t turn around and go back home because I couldn’t see any place to turn around in. My headlights barely made out the lines in the highway where the stoplights were; otherwise, I’d have drifted right across the intersection without stopping. When the police car’s lights finally broke through the snow white impenetrable wall behind me, I pulled over into the unknown. The officer told me he’d clocked me at 52 mph, which was a total crock. Being no fool, I did not argue with him, but sat meekly and received my ticket with no comment. To be accused of going 52 – in a construction zone at that – was pretty devastating to someone who knew perfectly well I’d been going well under 30! I had actually decided to go to jail rather than pay an unfair ticket. I’m not kidding. Then, on Saturday morning at 7:45, the phone rang. It was the officer, apologizing for ticketing the wrong car! In the fog, he hadn’t noticed the actual speeder turning off, and since I was the only car on the road that he could see, he assumed it was me! So now I can still state, with absolute honestly: I have never received a speeding ticket.
Am I the only one who didn’t know that police officers shoot videos? It was the video that told the officer he’d pulled over the wrong car. So, thank you, modern law-enforcing media!
I have never received a speeding ticket.
The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month
Mamacita says: This day used to be known as Armistice Day, in honor of the armistice that was signed on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”. This year, 2012, marks the 95rd anniversary of Armistice Day.
This term also refers to the fact that back in ancient times, a worker who was hired at the eleventh hour of a twelve-hour workday was paid the same as those who had worked all twelve hours.
After World War II, Armistice Day was changed to Veterans’ Day. Many people do not realize that this is an international holiday, observed by many other nations as well as by the United States.
Perhaps you have wondered why veterans often wear a poppy in their lapel on this day? Let me introduce you to Flanders Fields:
Schools do not teach students much about World War I, and I have never really understood why. Most social studies classes, unless it’s a specialized elective, study the Civil War (Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn) and then make a giant leap over everything else so they can briefly mention World War II (Hitler was bad) and then leap again and remind students that JFK was assassinated (“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris”) (“I am a jelly doughnut!”) all just in time for summer vacation. I learned most of what I know about World War I from reading L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside, and yes, it’s another Anne book; this one is mostly about Anne and Gilbert’s daughter Rilla. I cry every time I read it, even though I know what’s going to happen. You’ll cry, too. This book was written eighteen years before Anne of Ingleside, which takes place when the children are very young and was was sort of “inserted” into the list of Anne books, but that’s all right. I would imagine, though, that at the time the books were being written and published, that might have been confusing to readers. Anne of Ingleside has an ominous vision in it, that comes true in Rilla of Ingleside. I have not been able to re-read Anne of Ingleside ever since I realized this.
i wonder how many of YOU realized that Anne of Green Gables is the first of a series? Run, don’t walk, to the library THIS MINUTE. Or click and go to Amazon. You need these books in your home.
L.M. Montgomery is one of my favorite authors.
My favorite L.M. Montgomery book is Jane of Lantern Hill. If you aren’t familiar with these titles, my goodness, SHAME ON YOU, and get yourself to the library right away. This is unacceptable! Anne might be Montgomery’s best-known heroine, but there are many others! Jane Stuart has only book book to tell part of her story, but my favorite Montgomery heroine-with-a-series is Emily Starr; her story is told in a lovely trilogy that thrills me to the core.
Ahem. Sorry. In any lesson, often the tangents are more interesting and teach us more than the actual lesson.
On this day, let us honor the men and women who keep us safe, both past and present.
I’m not a Clinton fan, neither him nor her, but I do like this quotation by him: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
I also like this one by Calvin Coolidge: “The issues of the world must be met and met squarely. The forces of evil do not disdain preparation, they are always prepared and always preparing… The welfare of America, the cause of civilization will forever require the contribution, of some part of the life, of all our citizens, to the natural, the necessary, and the inevitable demand for the defense of the right and the truth.”
And I’ll end this post with this one, by FDR: “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”
God bless America.
Quotation Saturday: More Thises and Thats (No apostrophes!)
Mamacita says: I ramble. Let’s get right to it this time.
1. Circumstances never made the man do right who didn’t do right in spite of them. — Coulson Kernahan
2. You cannot make a crab walk straight. — Aristophanes
3. Civilization is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the things of the mind, of love, of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables are the things of first importance, there is the height of civilization. — Edith Hamilton
4. A child is a person who can’t understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten. — Doug Larsen
5. I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension. — Disraeli
6. It takes great courage to faithfully follow what we know is true. — Sara E. Anderson
7. Curiosity is certainly one of the chief guarantees of life’s enjoyment. And the older one grows the more vitally necessary it is to preserve one’s curiosity. Middle age begins with its decline, and the first failure of curiosity you detect in yourself must be jumped upon ruthlessly. — Compton Mackenzie
8. Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society. — Joan Ganz Cooney
9. Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones. — Phillips Brooks
10. Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of the lowest and basest of the people. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness. — Jones of Nayland
11. If criticism had any real power to harm, the skunk would be extinct by now. — Fred Allen
12. To change and to change for the better are two different things. — German proverb
13. A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle on his mind’s eye. — Carolyn Wells
14. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and what never will be. — Thomas Jefferson
15. The dust we tread upon was once alive. — Lord Byron
16. In order to see Christianity, one must forget almost all the Christians. — Amiel
17. Those whose conduct gives room for talk are always the first to attack their neighbors. — Moliere
18. Capitalism is what people do if you leave them alone. — Kenneth Minogue
19. The greatest part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances. — Martha Washington
20. There’s not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs than with his children, servants, and neighbors. — H.W. Beecher
21. Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of man. — Disraeli
22. Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. — G.K Chesterton
23. The Devil is easy to identify. He appears when you’re tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn’t grant. — Fiorello la Guardia
24. Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent. — Marilyn Vos Savant
25. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you. — Woodrow Wilson
26. A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. — John Le Carre
27. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. — Ingersoll
28. Diplomacy gets you out of what tact would have kept you out of. — Brian Bowling
29. One trouble with the world is that so many people who stand up vigorously for their rights fall down miserably on their duties. — Grit
30. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. — Annie Dillard
31. Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. — Mark Twain
32. A dog is a dog except when he is facing you. Then he is Mr. Dog. — Anon.
33. How can there be so much difference between a day off and an off day? — Doug Larsen
34. Diamonds are chunks of coal that stuck to their job. — Forbes
35. . . . though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest. . . . — Plutarch
36. One of these days is none of these days. — H.C. Bohn
37. The way some people drive you’d think they were late for their accident. — Eddie Cantor
38. You can take the day off, but you can’t put it back. — Unknown
39. Cosmic upheaval is not so moving as a little child pondering the death of a sparrow in the corner of a barn. — Thomas Savage
40. Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. — Kin Hubbard
41. Democracy is a government of bullies tempered by editors. — Emerson
42. There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. — Tennyson
43. Dawn is the time when men of reason go to bed. — Ambrose Bierce
44. . . . as bad as marrying the devil’s daughter and living with the old folks. . . . .– G.L. Apperson
45. A clash of doctrines is not a disaster; it is an opportunity. — Whitehead
46. The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism. — Osler
47. Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster they call destiny. — Unknown
48. I guess we’re all hunting like everybody else for a way the diligent and sensible can rise to the top and the lazy and quarrelsome can sink to the bottom. But it ain’t easy to find. Meanwhile, we do all we can to help those that can’t help themselves, and those that can we leave alone. — Thornton Wilder
49. Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce. — Schiller
50. One must never be in haste to end a day; there are too few of them in a lifetime. — Dale R. Comas
51. Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? — Nietzsche
52. In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it. — G.B. Shaw
53. Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing. — Zoe Akins
54. Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. — Theodore N. Vail
55. Never despair. But if you do, work on in despair. — Edmund Burke
56. Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability. — Roy L. Smith
57. No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty. — George Eliot
58. Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share, and sought advantage over no one. — Robert Brault
59. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. — Poe
60. Drudgery is as necessary to call out the treasures of the mind as harrowing and plating those of the earth. — Margaret Fuller
