Three-Inch Maple Leaf

 

“Many years ago, as I was reading a biography on Thomas Edison, I came across this statement he made: ‘Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious mind.’ During sleep your conscious mind is not engaged in thought. It takes a much-needed break to rest and heal.  But the subconscious never sleeps. The mind is like an iceberg. The conscious mind is the little part we see about the surface of the water.  The subconscious is the part under water. It’s by far the biggest part, but we must use our conscious mind to direct it.  If we don’t, it’s like a powerful car without a steering wheel.  If we just feed it our worries and fears we’re directing it toward our worries and fears. What Edison was trying to say is we must consciously direct the subconscious to work on what we want—thereby enlisting its great power in our cause and for our benefit.” – Stewart Hughes

Betty's Basket

 

Betty White died a week ago today, just a few weeks short of her hundredth birthday. There aren’t many entertainers who can die at ninety-nine years of age and still “leave ‘em wanting more.” Here are a few of my favorite Betty White quotes:

“Get at least eight hours of beauty sleep, nine if you’re ugly.”

“People have told me that Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with old friends. At my age, if I wanted to keep in touch with old friends, I’d need a Ouija board.”

“I have a two-story house and a very bad memory, so I’m up and down those stairs. That’s my exercise.”

“My mother always used to say, ‘The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana.’”

“Butterflies are like women — we may look pretty and delicate, but baby, we can fly through a hurricane.”

Nine Green Pinwheels

 

The best vacations – for me – always inspire creativity in the kitchen afterwards. The surprising thing here is this inspiration didn’t come from our Disney cruise. The food on board the Magic was, as always, wonderful. But this particular “aha” moment came from the otherwise uninspiring fare at Landscape of Flavors in the Art of Animation resort. At breakfast there, John stumbled upon what he thought was muesli. When he asked, he was told they were overnight oats. They’re delicious and so easy! Before bedtime, stir 1/3 cup old fashioned rolled oats, a tablespoon each of peanut butter and chia seeds, a pinch of cinnamon and half a cup of milk in a half-pint Mason jar. Top it with a handful of walnuts and blueberries, and a drizzle of maple syrup. Put the lid on and refrigerate it until morning. It’s good for five days, so you can make enough Sunday night to last through Friday.

Irish Chain

 

Fun Foot Facts: There are twenty-six bones in your right foot. Add twenty-six bones for your left foot, and that’s a total of fifty-two bones. In your whole body, there are only 206 bones. That means that one-quarter of your bones are in your feet! Each foot has thirty-three joints, nineteen muscles, and 107 ligaments – all to help you walk, run and jump. The skin on the bottoms of your feet is thicker than anywhere else on your body. Each foot has more than 250,000 sweat glands, and they can produce up to half a pint of moisture every day. (Remember that next time you’re tempted to go sockless.) Seventy-five percent of us suffer from foot problems like ingrown toenails, fallen arches, corns, bunions, neuropathy, hammer toes and heel spurs. Most of these problems can be avoided with proper nail care, good arch supports and well-fitted shoes. Do take care of your feet. There’s a lot riding on them!

Four Green Pinwheels

 

Sylvia and Alvaro Fernandez were high school sweethearts. When they met, Sylvia was just fifteen. Last year they celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary. NBC Los Angeles reports they both passed away December 19 – victims of COVID-19 and of misinformation. The CDC reports more than 70% of Americans have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but that blacks and Hispanics are less likely to have been vaccinated. Alvaro had heard his diabetes put him at higher risk for complications, but felt he couldn’t believe everything he heard on the news. Instead of being vaccinated, he said he wanted to “wait and do more research.” “This is an eye-opener for everybody,” said Alvaro’s sister. “Whoever is not vaccinated definitely should have their vaccinations." Alvaro and Sylvia (also unvaccinated) died within hours of one another, days after testing positive. They leave behind four children; the oldest are seventeen-year-old twins. Alvaro was just forty-four years old, and Sylvia was forty-two.

Forty-nine Economy Blocks

 

"In December 1976, my father suffered a major heart attack that he would not recover from. I spent several nights in the hospital with him. You’ll forgive me if I admit somewhere in the early hours of Christmas morning, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Of all the times to lose your dad, did it have to be the time when dads are the greatest guys in the world? Then and there, Heaven sent me a small, personal pre-packaged revelation – a tiny Christmas declaration as powerful as any I have ever received. In the midst of mumbling, I heard the clear, unbroken cry of a baby. It truly startled me. Only then did I realize I had wandered near the maternity ward. 'Jeff, my boy,' my Heavenly Father seemed to say, 'I expected a little more from you. Christmas is joyful not because it is without pain or privation, but precisely because life does hold those moments for us.'” – Jeffrey R. Holland

Green Pinwheel

 

Think you know all there is to know about “Jingle Bells?” Think again. First, it isn’t a Christmas song. It never mentions any holiday, though it may have been first performed around Thanksgiving. It was actually written for a minstrel show, so it was probably first sung by white men wearing blackface.  The author, James Lord Pierpont, was son and brother of two Unitarian ministers and uncle to financier J. P. Morgan. When James wrote “Jingle Bells” – which he called “One-horsed Open Sleigh,” the lyrics were racy enough to make his whole family blush. But James was never what you’d call a family man. At 14, he ran away from boarding school to become a whaler. In 1849 he abandoned his wife and children to join the gold rush. The Pierponts were staunch abolitionists, but James supported the Confederacy. In 1965, astronaut Wally Schirra and played “Jingle Bells” on harmonica, making it the first music broadcast from space.