New Year's Quotations

This is it. The final page of our 2010 calendar. Some of you reading this have already moved into 2011, and those of us still here in the past year wish you well.

It's once again time for my annual report. On January 1, my list server e-mailed 568 copies of my Musings out to folks. Today I will electronically ship out 532. My hope is that my Facebook account and blog are making up for this drop, but I'm not yet up to speed on my Google Analytics to get those numbers.

You kind readers are located mostly in the U.S., but also in Nigeria, Australia, Iran, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Romania, Ireland, India, Canada, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Belize, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Thailand, New Zealand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, France, and those are just the countries I know about.

Whew.

I have no plans to make changes to what I do here in 2011, but I must warn you that the triple threat of the economy, my family's employment status, and the whims of Congress may force me to make some. I will keep you apprised, of course, as the situation unfolds.

As I've often said, the calendar - through the grace of God and whatever men or governments created it - gives us several times each year to put the past behind us and look forward with renewed hope to do better in life and vigor to accomplish new goals. January 1 is chief among those days. Your birthday is another. The end of the school year. The start of the school year. The first day of each season. You get the idea. My prayer is you take this opportunity to make a fresh start in whatever part of your life needs it, and may the best of this past year be the worst of your next year.

May God bless you, each and every one.

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NEW YEAR'S QUOTATIONS

"Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go." (Brooks Atkinson)

"Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to." (Bill Vaughan)

"Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average ... which means you've met your New Year's resolution." (Jay Leno)

"My new year's resolution is to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time." (James Agate)

"New Year's Day is every man's birthday." (Charles Lamb)

"New Year's Day. It is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." (Mark Twain)

"In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, never in want." (Irish Toast)

[selected, with thanks, from about.com]

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WEBSITE of the WEEK: The U.S. Forest Service is a part of the United States Department of Agriculture, which I did not know (I thought it was part of the Interior Dep't). They have begun an initiative to get ourselves and our kids away from our digital leashes at http://www.discovertheforest.org/. Lots of material for parents and activities for all are listed. I know for many it's winter, and a trek through the forest isn't high on your priorities, but bookmark this site and come back to it in the Spring.

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Notice Beauty

Bonnie - being an amateur photographer and all - has wanted for years to take a "color tour" of northern Michigan during this time of year.

So this weekend, we are.

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In high school, there was a teacher we were rather fond of, and one day her husband died suddenly of a heart attack. About a week after his funeral, she returned to work and then one day shortly after that, as the afternoon sunlight streamed in through the windows and class was nearly over, she moved aside a few things at the edge of her desk, and sat there.

With a gentle look of reflection, she said, "Before class is over, I would like to share with you all a thought that is unrelated to what I teach, but is something which I feel to be quite important."

She looked out the window for a moment and then back at us. "Each of us is put here on Earth to learn, share, love, appreciate and give of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It can be taken away at any moment. Perhaps it is God's way of telling us that we must make the most out of every single day."

Her eyes filling with water, she went on, "So I would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It doesn't have to be something you see. It could be a scent ... freshly baked bread wafting out of someone's home, or the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way an autumn leaf feels.

"Please look for these things and cherish them. I know it sounds trite, but these things are 'the stuff of life.' The little things we are put here to enjoy. The things we often take so much for granted. We must make it important to notice them, for at any time ... it can all be taken away from us."

The class was quiet as the bell rang. We picked up our books and filed out quietly. That afternoon I noticed more things on my way home than I had the entire semester.

[God's Work Ministry via Chapnotes]

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WEBSITE of the WEEK: Staying with a nature theme, visit http://zipcodezoo.com and find out what plants or animals are native to your particular part of the world. Click "Home" and "Set My Location" ... you'll need to register, but it's free. It's also a data-rich site, so there's a lot of text, but you can get a good sense of what to look for on those nature walks.

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Mark's Musings is available via an RSS Feed, a Facebook Note, the Amazon Kindle and via e-mail each weekday (usually). Subscriptions are free. ISSN 2154-9761.

Boots

The Boy Scouts of America are celebrating 100 years of scouting with a huge "jamboree" in Virginia this week, where they have pitched some 18,000 tents and set up more than 3,500 kitchens.

And today the U.S. Postal Service helped them commemorate the event with their own stamp.

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The first carload of Boy Scouts had left my house just minutes ago. As I was putting the finishing touches on packing up my own vanload of Scouts, bound for the wilderness and a three-day camping excursion, I noticed that someone from the first car had left a pair of hiking boots on the back steps and snagged them.

An hour later we caught up with the first car at a rest stop. Just after we figured out that no one had forgotten a pair of boots, my cell phone rang. It was my wife.

"Have you seen the plumber's boots? They were on the back steps...."

[Joe's Clean Laffs]

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WORDS for YOUR WEEK: "Happiness is open to all, since, when you boil it down, it merely consists of contentment with what you have, and doing what you can for other people." (Sir Robert Baden-Powell)

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Scout Identity

What do Steven Spielberg, Gerald Ford, James Stewart, Walter Cronkite, Ross Perot, Hank Aaron, Mark Spitz, and Neil Armstrong all have in common?

They were all Boy Scouts.

Today marks the formation of the Boy Scouts, 100 years ago. It's an organization that still claims nearly three million members.

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AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE

A friend of mine spent two weeks at a Boy Scout Camp out west. Halfway through their stay, the boys received "care" packages from home and many of them contained checks for spending money. A group of them went into town to cash these checks at the local bank.

One Scout was having some trouble because he'd lost his wallet. He insisted that he had identification on him, but didn't want to show it. The young woman who was serving as a teller that day, however, insisted upon seeing it. So the young man climbed up onto the counter and whispered into her ear.

She motioned for him to come around behind the counter where they could have a little more privacy. My friend, who was tall enough to see over the counter and keep an eye on things, reported that the blushing boy pulled out his shirt, folded down his belt, and then pulled up the label on his underwear.

The teller could see his name neatly written there with an indelible marker.

She cashed his check.

[originally seen in Andychap's The_Funnies]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: Occasionally you hear that a child is precocious. What does this mean? It is usually applied to children but really describes anything that shows advanced levels of maturity, or development. The original Latin word was praecox, from "prae" (meaning before - we use it as the word "pre"), and the word "coquere" (originally meant "to cook" but it was also applied to something that ripened). The word was originally applied to flowers that bloomed early or fruit that ripened before others that were planted at the same time.

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Campfire

My son has a big job interview at 1:00 est today. If you think of it, have a good thought for him this afternoon.

Now, he's pretty motivated and works hard but not, I think, perhaps quite as hard as this guy.

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HOW TO BUILD A CAMP FIRE

1. Split dead limbs into fragments. Shave one fragment into slivers.

2. Bandage left thumb.

3. Take small hatchet and chop rest of fragments into smaller fragments.

4. Bandage left foot.

5. Build tiny tepee on top of fragments from slivers (include ones embedded in left hand).

6. Light match.

7. Light match.

8. Repeat "A Scout is cheerful" and light match.

9. Apply match to slivers. Add smaller fragments while gently blowing across base of fire.

10. Apply burn ointment to nose.

11. While fire is burning, collect more wood.

12. After discovering fire has nearly gone out while you were away, give up natural method and douse wood from can labeled "kerosene."

13. Treat face and arms for second-degree burns.

14. Re-label can, "Gasoline."

15. Once fire is well underway, add remaining wood.

16. Once thunderstorm has passed, repeat from Step One.

[Net 153s Smile A Day]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: While we're kind of on a work theme today, let's look at an opposite of work in the word, "lollygag." Currently we use it to mean spending time idly, aimlessly, or even foolishly. At one time it was spelled "lallygag" and the first part of the word used to refer to your tongue. In the mid-1800s, the word carried a sexual connotation, referring to licentious people with their tongues hanging out, pandering after pleasures of the flesh, and doing naught else. We've long since lost that meaning in this country, though the "doing naught else" - or "doing nothing" - part still applies to the definition.

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