Show and Tell
Mamacita says: Many years ago, I was teaching Public Speaking in a small farmland high school in southern Indiana. My students’ assignment, one week, was to give an informal “how-to” presentation, a brief demonstration of something they personally knew how to do.
That week, we all learned how to crochet a chain stitch, how to do macrame, how to carve a simple wooden toy, how to change a tire, how to juggle, how to put a belt on a broken vaccuum cleaner, how to put a zipper in a skirt, how to make various color combinations of Easter egg dyes with food coloring and vinegar, and how to make homemade ice cream.
We also learned how to put a suppository up a cow’s butt, how to take a horse’s temperature with a rectal thermometer, and how to neuter a bull calf.
It was a really interesting week. I’ve never been able to look at a rubber band or a razor blade the same way since.
Why Does Martin Luther King, Jr, Merit A Holiday?
Mamacita says: Why is Martin Luther King Day a holiday in most communities? Why does Martin Luther King, Jr. merit a holiday?
This day is a holiday because intelligent, sensitive, educated people understand that today deserves respect because a man who dedicated his entire life to peaceful means of acquiring freedom for all people fully deserves to be recognized, and there are still, shamefully, communities that do not consider this of any importance. Making it a holiday forces people to look at his name on their calendar, if nothing else.
If he had advocated violence, it would have been different. Violence does not deserve recognition. If he had advocated “something for nothing,” it would have been different. Bums do not deserve recognition.
But Dr. Martin Luther King advocated equal rights for all people, not just for whites and not just for blacks and not just for whites & blacks. He dedicated his life to gaining equal rights for EVERYONE.
And I can’t help but listen to a speaker with such beautiful grammar. His grammar enhances his message.
May we all have this same dream.
Careful, grammatically-correct language and an almost poetic speaking style will always get my attention. It’s an assumption on my part, of course, but I associate good grammar with people who actually know what they’re talking about. In fact, I am convinced that this is so.
Martin Luther King, Jr. definitely knew what he was talking about, and he knew HOW to present it.
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I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Many thanks to Norm Reeves Hyundi Superstore for creating this graphic.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Another Christmas Day Has Come and Gone. . . .
Mamacita says: . . . and so another Christmas Day has come and gone. The day after Christmas always seems sad to me. Christmas itself takes such a long time to get here; the calendar turns to fall and fall brings thoughts of winter and winter without Christmas would be exactly the horror C.S. Lewis paints it to be. We need December in all of its holy and secular incarnations. It gives us hope. Reasons to go on. As Allison Kitchell says, in the Christmas novel What Child Is This that I’ve already quoted several times but am not finished quoting yet because it’s packed so full of great ones, “December is the crown.”
Christmas takes a long time getting here, but it’s over in the wink of an eye. It’s over. 24 sixty-minute hours made up of sixty-second minutes, but the day went by so fast it made my head spin. On Christmas Day, we live in hyperspace. I could almost see the clock hands spinning around and around, and it seems as though the chimes were ringing every few minutes instead of on the hour. It comes too fast and it’s over too soon.
It’s over, but it’s the crown. December is the crown.
December is the crown.
Einstein was right: it’s all relative. Days like today yesterday go so fast. Christmas Day has the same shelf life as any other day, but it’s always thus with the things we love most: time passes so much more quickly when we don’t want it to. If only we had the power to slow time down a bit when wonderful things are happening. . . but then, when wonderful things are happening to somebody, someone on the other side of the world, or the street, is weeping and broken-hearted. It’s all relative. And when we know something lovely is fleeting, we tend to appreciate it more.
A helping hand is never amiss.
We are all fleeting. Therefore, let us all try harder to be kind, and honest, and considerate, and helpful, slower to pass judgment, quicker to assume the best of people, more inclined to work hard, be braver, more trustworthy, and cleaner, so that anyone and everyone we encounter is encouraged by our lives. Let us all try to pay attention to each other, and bolster each other, and do our fair share and then some, and extend a helping hand whenever we possibly can. Today, it’s someone else who needs help. Tomorrow, it might be us.
Because it’s fleeting. It’s all so very fleeting.
Let’s do the Time Warp again.
