That Estelle Hunter. She sure is a crack-up in her Personality Development, Unit Three: Voice and Expression. I mean, that salesman joke ~ hilarious! 1939: When and How to Tell Jokes It is not unusual for a group to spend an hour or more in exchanging jokes or stories, but such conversation soon becomes wearisome and […]
Category: Random Advice
Grab bag of wisdom.
Building a Fire
I admit it. I’m a camping snob. Thanks to trips as a youngster to a favorite spot by a pond near the Finger Lakes in New York State, I prefer real camping: the Grotke family tent, the roaring fire, wading in the creek, peeing against the trees. Alas, many urbanites are a bit fearful of the […]
Gardening
Pink geraniums, orange marigolds, sonata mix cosmos, sunscape daisy nasinga white, snow crystals alyssium, brachycomb, a tomato plant, and some herbs. They should be outside enjoying the spring, but tonight they sit in my living room waiting for the season’s last frost to pass us by. I’m certainly an amateur gardener, only filling a few […]
Worry-Monger Identifier
A little worry is not harmful, as author David Seabury reminds us in the preface to How to Worry Successfully: “It is only when apprehension is ruled by nervous anxiety, and imagination distorted by fear, that worry injures us.” And that’s why I’m worried ~ it sure seems like people are just freaking out these days. […]
The Wise Use of Leisure
I am heading out on vacation tomorrow ~ taking a roadtrip with my crazy dog Frieda to New England. Since there is much traveling going on during these fine summer months, I decided to find some words on one of my favorite activities ~ leisure. This one is from a home ecomonics textbook entitled Everyday Living for […]
Make Success Visible
I won’t go into details, but last week my coworkers and I were in need of a little cheering up so I turned to Edith Mae Cummings’ Pots and Pans and Millions: A Study in Woman’s Right to Be in Business; her Proclivities and Capacity for Success (whew!) and found the following. It was published by […]
Things I Must Do To-day
[Note to Readers: This was obviously written just after 9/11…] No joking around this week, dear friends. As the helicopters pass over my Washington, D.C., home just blocks from the Capitol, I think endlessly of the friends and family and strangers touched by the horrible tragedy that was September 11. I struggled tonight to find […]
How to Distinguish Death
This week’s selection is from Professor T. W. Shannon’s Nature’s Secrets Revealed: Scientific Knowledge of The Laws of Sex Life and Heredity or, Eugenics. You never know ~ this might come in handy someday. 1916: How to Distinguish Death As many instances occur of parties being buried alive, they being to all appearances dead, the great importance […]
Building a New Disposition
This one seems appropriate to start out the new year. It’s from Vivilore: The Pathway to Mental and Physical Perfection, which was written in 1904 by Mary Ries Melendy. I wonder if folks one hundred years ago resolved to do this or that around December 31st? 1904: Building a New Disposition I. Never look on the […]
Hints To Those Who Would Have Fun with Magic
Wow! The Fun Encyclopedia certainly does cover it all: “Fun with Icebreakers,” “Fun with Mental Games,” “Fun Outdoors,” “Fun with Music,” and “Fun with Puppets,” just to name a few. There is so much fun here that I didn’t know where to begin, but then I stumbled across the introduction to the chapter titled “Fun with […]