One Hundred Bright Hopes

 

As I understand it, artichokes were first cultivated in the middle east, where they were valued for their leaves rather than their pulpy flower buds. We drove through the heart of artichoke country once (hah), in the autumn of 2009. At first, we had no idea what we were looking at. We traveled I-5 from San Jose to Anaheim, past acres and acres of spiky shrubs in tidy rows, each of them waving several angry purple-green fists. Nearly all commercial artichokes (99.9%) are grown in central California, amid cool, foggy summers and mild, frost-free winters. In such a mild climate – zones 9 and 10 – artichokes are perennials. It’s even possible to grow them in zones 7 and 8. Alas, I live in zone 5, maybe 4. I’ll have to content myself with a small potted artichoke in my sun room. Or, I’ll just wait a few months until the little fists go on sale. 

Twelve-Inch Daylesford

 

At 3.5 feet long and up to 88 pounds, wombats are the second largest marsupials (after red kangaroos). They look like furry couch potatoes, but can run as fast as humans. The collective noun for wombats is “wisdom.” (A wisdom of wombats, a mob of kangaroos, a paddle of platypus! Australian collective nouns are cool!) Wombats have teeth that never stop growing. That’s great, because their teeth won’t wear out. Wombats spend up to eight hours each night, grazing. They chomp away at native grasses, sedges, and roots of shrubs and trees. It takes a wombat four to six days to digest a meal. But, as they’re always eating, they’re always pooping. Here’s the most interesting thing about wombats: their poop is cube-shaped! It comes in handy when they use said poop to mark their territories. They actually stack their dung like really disgusting building blocks to tell other wombats to get off their lawns.

Ninety Bright Hopes

 

“Here is the great news of God’s plan: the very things that will make your mortal life the best it can be are exactly the same things that will make your life throughout all eternity the best it can be! Today, to assist you to qualify for the rich blessings Heavenly Father has for you, I invite you to adopt the practice of thinking celestial! Thinking celestial means being spiritually minded. We learn from the Book of Mormon prophet Jacob that to be spiritually-minded is life eternal. Mortality is a master class in learning to choose the things of greatest eternal import. Far too many people live as though this life is all there is. However, your choices today will determine three things: where you will live throughout all eternity, the kind of body with which you will be resurrected, and those with whom you will live forever. So, think celestial.” – President Russell M. Nelson

Twelve-Inch Sparkle and Shine

 

John Tyler was this country’s tenth president. He served from 1841 to 1845. He was William Henry Harrison’s V.P. when the latter died, 31 days into his presidency. John Tyler was born in 1790 and died in January, 1862 – more than 162 years ago. So, it might surprise you to learn that President John Tyler has a grandson still living. How’s this possible? John had two wives: Letitia, who bore him eight children, and then Julia, who gave birth to seven. The last, Lyon, was born in 1853 when his dad was 63. Lyon also had two wives (in succession – the Tylers weren’t bigamists) and he fathered six children. Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928, the year Steamboat Willie was released. His dad, Lyon, was 75! Harrison celebrated his 95th birthday last November. Until his brother, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. passed in 2020, there were two living descendants who could call John Tyler “grandpa.”

Eighty-One Bright Hopes

 

Last autumn I shared a Michael J. Fox quote. Here’s a bit from the same article: “Some days are more difficult than others. Because I have assets, I have access to things others don’t, I wouldn’t begin to compare my experience to a working guy who gets Parkinson’s and has to quit his job and find a new way to live. I’m really lucky. I am genuinely a happy guy. But as I came through that darkness, I had an insight about my father-in-law, who espoused gratitude and acceptance and confidence. I started to notice things I was grateful for and the way other people respond to difficulty with gratitude. I concluded gratitude makes optimism sustainable. If you don’t think you have anything to be grateful for, keep looking. Because you don’t just receive optimism. You can’t wait for things to be great and then be grateful for that. You’ve got to behave in a way that promotes that.”

Ten-Inch Daylesford Block

 

When I saw the name of today’s block, my first thought was it might have something to do with the Yorkshire Dales, an upland area of the Pennines in Northern England. But then it would have been spelled in two words, without the “Y.” So, I looked up the name. Daylesford (one word, with a “Y”) refers to a spa town in Victoria, about 70 miles northwest of Melbourne, Australia. In 1848, European settlers called this place “Wombat Flats.” But three years later gold was discovered here. There was the inevitable rush and boom, and the resulting town got a more gentrified name. Eventually, of course, the gold ran out. But there are 65 mineral springs in the area – 80 percent of Australia’s mineral springs are right here – and in the early 1900’s this was a very fashionable place to come “take the waters.” With art galleries, restaurants, gardens and B&Bs, it’s still a popular tourist destination.

Seventy-Two Bright Hopes

 

Heinz has been using the slogan “57 varieties” since 1896. It was always meant to convey the idea that Heinz makes and sells a lot of different items. But it never actually stood for a specific number of them. Henry J. Heinz claimed he got the idea for the slogan from a billboard for a shoe store he saw once that advertised 21 styles of shoes. Heinz chose the number “5” because he’d always felt that was a lucky number. The “7” he said was his wife’s lucky number. Fifty-seven was by no means an exaggeration. At least four years before the slogan was adopted, the Heinz company was already selling more than sixty different products. Many of them were condiments, like jellies and jams, pickles, relish, mustard and horseradish. But there were also tomato juice, baked beans, and several kinds of canned soup. By the early 21st century, the company was marketing more than 5,700 products.