Birthday Cake

At our sing-along at the nursing home last week, I reminded everyone I’d be absent this week because I would be out celebrating my birthday. (I’m also celebrating the Utah Shop Hop, but that’s completely beside the point.) The residents asked how old I’ll be. I guess I should have expected that. We’re always asking how old they are. (For the record, most are in their early eighties. Some are in their nineties, and every now and then you meet a centenarian.) I told them I turn fifty-nine this year. They laughed and said I was still just a baby. I probably should have expected that, too. The last time most of them were fifty-something, you could rent Dirty Dancing on VHS at Blockbuster Video. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you want a new perspective on life, spend time with people who’ve seen more of it than you have.

Small Talk

Last Thursday was the closing social for our local Special Needs Activity Program. It’s a picnic the handicapped kids and their parents look forward to every year. Families whose last names begin with the letters A through O were asked to bring salads, and those starting with P through Z brought desserts. It’s a clever way to manage things, but our last name is ALWAYS going to give us a salad assignment. This year I wanted to bring something different, so I cheated just a bit:

Tropical Orange Salad (Dessert)

20 ounces crushed pineapple, drained

6 ounces orange gelatin mix

24 ounces small curd cottage cheese

16 ounces frozen whipped topping

1 cup sweetened coconut flakes

11 ounces mandarin oranges, drained

Mix pineapple, gelatin mix and cottage cheese together in a large bowl. Fold in whipped topping, coconut and about half the oranges. Garnish with remaining oranges. Cover and refrigerate until completely chilled.

Four Drunkard's Paths

Here’s another holiday I’ll bet you didn’t know about: National Learn About Composting Day. Kitchen and garden waste accounts for between a fifth and a third of what we send to the landfill, while much of it could be enriching our gardens instead. Composting requires three basic ingredients: browns (like dead leaves, twigs and small branches), greens (grass clippings, vegetable waste, fruit scraps, and coffee grounds) and water. Having an equal amount of greens and browns and adequate water is important for compost development. Brown materials provide carbon for your compost, green materials provide nitrogen, and water provides moisture to help break down the organic matter. What SHOULDN’T go into the compost pile is just as important: dairy products, fats, meat or bones, cat litter or dog poop, diseased plants, anything treated with pesticides or herbicides, or leaves and twigs from a black walnut tree.

First Border

“We know that charity is a gift bestowed upon us after all we can do. We must pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that we may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ. It seems to me that we receive the Holy Spirit best when we are focused on serving others. That is why we have the priesthood responsibility to serve for the Savior. When we are engaged in service to others, we think less about ourselves, and the Holy Ghost can more readily come to us and help us in our lifelong quest to have the gift of charity bestowed upon us.” -  President Henry B. Eyring

Drunkard's Path

Sally Kristen Ride was born 67 years ago today. I’ve written about her before (https://mombowe.blogspot.com/2016/12/sally-ride.html), so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much. In 2016 I knew she was the first American woman in space (twenty years after the first female cosmonaut). I didn’t know she was also the youngest American astronaut in space, a record she still holds. I didn’t know she was a nationally ranked tennis player before joining NASA. I didn’t know she used to collect stamps. This week (six years after her death which makes her elligible for such an honor) the US Postal Service announced a new stamp recognizing Sally Ride’s achievements. Last year Lego created a play set featuring pioneering women of NASA—Nancy Grace Roman, Margaret Hamilton, Mae Jemison and and of course Sally Ride. I find myself wondering: Did Sally play with Legos as a child?

Four Dutchman's Wheels

Mr. Boo is an unusually quiet tuxedo cat. He seldom makes a sound at all. But the Tuesday after Mother’s Day, he woke up the whole family by meowing loudly. A boiler in their basement was malfunctioning, but at first the Kecskes family in Green Township, Ohio didn’t know what was wrong. Carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Unless you have a working detector in the house, it might make you think you had the flu. Or, as the Kecskes family nearly did, you might just go to sleep and never wake up. It’s what could have happened if Mr. Boo hadn’t suddenly decided to make a fuss. The whole family including Mr.Boo and another housecat made it outside safely. Now that all the excitement is over, Mr. Boo is back to being quiet. As his owner puts it, “It's like he's been waiting his whole life to do this one heroic thing.”

As Time Goes By

Herman Hupfield wrote “As Time Goes By” in 1931 for the Broadway musical Everybody’s Welcome, but the song never really got the attention it deserved until it was featured in the 1942 Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman film, Casablanca. I was surprised to read that the original lyrics (omitted in the movie) referred to Einstein’s theory of relativity. I guess for some reason I’d assumed that E=mc2 came after the theoretical physicist’s emigration to the U.S. in 1933. As it happens, he first published his theory of special relativity in 1905. (When I make stupid mistakes like this, I like to blame an indifferent public school education. But the indifference was probably on my part.) “As Time Goes By” made number 2 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years/100 Songs list. Number 1 was of course Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz.