Cover Photograph
Model: Victoria Borodinova
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/demons-the-devils-hell-love-4993649/
https://www.instagram.com/victoriaborodinova/
Month: May 2021
Good Humor — Annette Rochelle Aben
Whoa
We heard It coming
How far away
Can we find our cash
How long had it been since
We bought ice cream from a truck
Once out there, we were not alone
The neighbor and her two kids were there
And everyone got something on a stick
©2021 Annette Rochelle Aben
Good Humor — Annette Rochelle Aben
May 2021 Reading Wrap-Up — HappymessHappiness
Hello there, homo sapiens! I hope everyone’s safe and well. I’m doing my May reading wrap-up today (how time flies!) and this might be my last blog post for the meantime. I managed to read nine books this month, two books short compared to April but I’m still glad with it because May has been […]
May 2021 Reading Wrap-Up — HappymessHappiness
David Bruce: 250 Anecdotes About Religion — Perspective, Poor, Practical Jokes, Prayer
Perspective
• A woman continually cried, no matter what the weather was like. If it rained, she cried. If it was sunny, she cried. When she was asked why she continually cried, she explained that she had two daughters. One daughter was married to a shoe salesman and the other daughter was married to an umbrella salesman. The woman cried when it was raining because no one would go out into the rain and buy shoes, and she cried when it was sunny because no one would bother to buy an umbrella. A wise person asked her why she didn’t smile when it rained because it meant that people would buy umbrellas, and why she didn’t smile when it was sunny because it meant that people would buy shoes. After that, no matter what the weather was like, the old woman smiled.
Poor
• The motherhouse of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had no stoves, no washing machines, no electric fans, no air conditioners. Mother Teresa explained, “I do not want them. The poor we serve have none.” When she first had the idea of starting the Missionaries of Charity, she even thought that she would allow the nuns to eat only the kind of food the very poorest people ate — rice and salt. However, she asked advice from Mother Dengal, who told her, “How do you expect your sisters to work, if their bodies receive no sustenance?” As a result of the advice, Mother Teresa allowed her nuns to eat well, but to eat only simple food.
• During years of interviewing children for his TV program House Party, Art Linkletter occasionally interviewed an underprivileged child. (Mr. Linkletter himself grew up in a poor family. He writes in Kids Say the Darnest Things! that if the church hadn’t donated dinners to his family, holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas would have been bleak.) In one interview, he asked an impoverished child, “What makes a happy home?” The little boy answered, “A steady paycheck.”
• In an inn, a rich man mistook Rebbe Zusia for a beggar and mistreated him. However, when he discovered that it was Rebbe Zusia he was mistreating, and not a beggar, he asked Zusia for forgiveness. Rebbe Zusia replied, “You have treated Zusia with respect; it is a poor beggar that you have mistreated. Go and ask forgiveness from beggars everywhere.”
Practical Jokes
• Lorenzo Dow was a traveling evangelist in the old days. At a camp meeting, he met a preacher who had a habit of ending every sermon with the cry, “Hurry up, Gabriel, and blow your horn!” Therefore, the Reverend Dow hired a boy to hide in a tall tree before the preacher’s sermon, and at the conclusion of the sermon, while hidden by the tree’s leaves, to blow on a hunting horn.
• Gregor Mendel, whose work with peas led to the development of the science of genetics, was a priest in the Order of Saint Augustine. Priests aren’t supposed to have children, but Father Mendel enjoyed shocking visitors to his monastery by telling them, “Now I am going to show you my children.” He would then lead the visitors to his garden and show them his pea plants.
• Mark Twain listened to a sermon, then he told the preacher that he had at home a book that contained every word of the preacher’s sermon. This astonished and worried the preacher because he did not want to be guilty of even unintentional plagiarism. He asked to see a copy of the book, and Mr. Twain sent it to him — it was a dictionary.
Prayer
• Art Rooney felt that he had gotten a good price when he bought the Pittsburgh Steelers partly because his two sisters were nuns and his brother was a priest. Another person with a religious connection was Joe Paterno, coach of Penn State. When Penn State was having a big winning streak, his mother would listen to the games, and if Penn State was losing, she would go into the bathroom with her rosary and pray. In the Orange Bowl, Kansas led Penn State for most of the game, and with Mr. Paterno’s mother in the bathroom praying, Penn State scored to come within one point, 14-13. Mr. Paterno decided to go for a win with a two-point conversion, but the attempt failed. With his mother still praying, a referee called a penalty on Kansas for having too many players on the field, and on its second attempt, Penn State made the two-point conversion to win by one point. After the game, Mr. Paterno received a telegram from Mr. Rooney: “Congratulations. I’ll trade you my brother and two sisters for your mother, straight up.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy the Paperback
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Kindle
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Apple
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Barnes and Noble
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Kobo
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Music Recommendation: Jonathan Nicholas — “How Can You Break?”
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “How Can You Break?”
Album: ROLLING EYES & SIGHS
Artist: Jonathan Nicholas
Artist Location: Swansee, UK
Info: “This isn’t light gentle acoustic, there’s a strength to the guitar playing and vocals that give it a power and feel that a lot of acoustic artists just don’t have.” — SwanScene
Not on the Album: Ramblin’ On My Mind – Jonathan Nicholas (a Robert Johnson blues classic)
Price: £1 (GBP) for track; £3 (GBP) for 5-track album
Genre: Acoustic. Singer-Songwriter.
Links:
https://jonathannicholas.bandcamp.com/album/rolling-eyes-sighs
https://jonathannicholas.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/c/JonathanNicholas1988/featured
David Bruce: 250 Anecdotes About Religion — Movies, Nazis, Peace, Peace with Handicaps, Perspective
Movies
• At the end of the movie Schindler’s List, many Jews saved by Oskar Schindler are shown placing stones on his burial marker. This is a Jewish tradition — the stones symbolize that the wind will not blow away the memory of this man.
Nazis
• One form of resistance against the Nazis was the telling of jokes. (The powerful never like to be mocked.) In one story, Nazi propagandist Paul Joseph Goebbels toured a school where he asked the children for patriotic slogans. One student shouted, “Heil Hitler!” Goebbels was pleased and said, “Very good.” Another student shouted, “Deutschland über alles.” Goebbels was again pleased, but asked, “How about a stronger slogan than these?” A small boy raised his hand, then declared, “Our people shall live forever.” “Excellent,” Goebbels said. “That is indeed a stronger slogan than the others. What’s your name, little boy?” The boy replied, “Israel Goldberg.”
• Billy Wilder, the Jewish-American film director, served with the United States Army Psychological Warfare Division during World War II. After the war, some Germans wrote him for permission to put on a play depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. After investigating the Germans, Mr. Wilder discovered that they had been either storm troopers or members of the Gestapo. Therefore, Mr. Wilder said that he would give them permission to put on the play — as long as they used real nails.
• Josef Müller was a Catholic priest in Grossdungen who was sentenced to death for telling an anti-Nazi joke. Father Müller told about a dying German soldier who asked to have a photograph of Adolf Hitler placed on one side of him and a photograph of Gestapo head Hermann Goering placed on the other. When he was asked why, he replied, “That way I can die like Jesus — between two thieves.”
Peace
• Betty Williams was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and in general she was in favor of the activities of the Irish Republican Army until the day she saw a young British soldier get shot and die. As he lay dying, she knelt beside him and they prayed together. In 1976, she and Mairead Corrigan won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to stop the violence in Northern Ireland.
• John Roberts, a Quaker in New Jersey, was going by the market place, when he stooped to tie his shoe. As he did so, a man hit him in the back and said, “Take that for Jesus’ sake!” Mr. Roberts didn’t look back at the man; instead, he merely straightened up and said, “So I do,” then continued on his way. A couple of days later, the man who had hit him begged to be forgiven.
People with Handicaps
• As a person with cerebral palsy, which affects his motor skills, Cordell Brown learned to put other people at ease. At a church camp, Mr. Brown knew that the other campers were uneasy with his cerebral palsy. After unsuccessfully trying several times to plug in his electric razor, he turned to the other campers and said, “Just call me speed and coordination.” The other campers laughed; after that, Mr. Brown became friends with them.
• People with mental retardation can be religious, too. To prepare for her Bat Mitzvah, Leslie Fish, who became mentally retarded after suffering from meningitis as a baby, studied Hebrew for five years — which she says was “hard.” She wrote her own speech for the ceremony; in her speech, she talked about being responsible for her actions.
Perspective
• Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach took his message to everyone, including the very poor and even the mentally disturbed. He delivered a talk to Manhattan’s Diamond Dealers’ Club, where a man asked, “Shlomo, we love your music and your Hasidic tales are also very nice, but there’s one thing that bothers some of us and which we just can’t understand: Why are you always so busy with low-lifes and crazies?” Rabbi Shlomo replied that he knew he was among diamond experts, and he asked if any of them had ever thrown away a million-dollar diamond because it was a diamond in the rough. The diamond dealers laughed and said that none of them would ever do that. Rabbi Shlomo then said, “My sweetest friends, please try to remember this because it’s the most important thing to know in life. Everyone — everyone — is a diamond in the rough.”
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy the Paperback
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Kindle
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Apple
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Barnes and Noble
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Kobo
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Music Recommendation: The Woolley Bushmen — “The Routine”
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “The Routine”
Album: SKY BOSSES
Artist: The Woolly Bushmen
Artist Location: Orlando, Florida
Info:
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $10 (USD) for 10-track album
Genre: Garbage Rock.
Links:
https://thewoollybushmen.bandcamp.com/album/sky-bosses
The Woolly Bushmen on Bandcamp
https://thewoollybushmen.bandcamp.com
Meet up — t r e f o l o g y
In the days
before the internet
if you wanted to hook-up
with a demon
you had to use a
ouija dating board.
Questions to ask a ouija dating board:
Are there ghosts present?
Evil or good?
Single or married?
How tall?
Religion?
Carrying chains?
Doomed to one location?
Willing to bi-locate?
Meet up — t r e f o l o g y
David Bruce: 250 Anecdotes About Religion — Money, Monks, Movies
Money
• Elias Hicks, a Quaker farmer, once had an abundant wheat crop when his neighbors’ fields did poorly. Speculators knew that the price of wheat would rise, and they offered to buy Mr. Hicks’ crop at a high price, but he declined to sell. Later, when his neighbors began to suffer from the effects of the poor growing season, Mr. Hicks sold them wheat — but at the normal price, not at the higher price.
Monks
• According to legend, the monks who studied at the Shaolin Temple had a unique graduation ceremony. They were sent to the temple’s maze of underground passageways and had to find their way out by passing many tests. In one test, the monk came to a wall on which were hanging many weapons, a broom, and a sign saying, “Choose one.” The monk would select one, and then go into the next room, which turned out to be filled with scorpions. If the monk had chosen the broom, he was able to simply sweep the scorpions out of his way. Getting through the room was much more difficult if the monk had chosen a sword. At the end of the underground passageways, one final door needed to be opened, and the only way to open it was to use one’s bare arms to lift and move a searingly hot cauldron decorated on each side with dragon designs. In moving the cauldron, the monk’s graduation diploma — the figures of the dragon — were burned into his arms.
• Two monks and a woman crossed a river on a ferry. One monk ogled the woman, then he winked to his companion, so the woman slapped him. The monk then closed his eyes, but a few minutes later the woman slapped him again. The monk said, “What have I done wrong? I had my eyes closed!” The woman said, “You have been thinking about me with your eyes closed — and that is worse than ogling me with your eyes open!”
Mothers
• Before one seeks truth in faraway places, one ought to find the truth that is available at home. Yang Pu wished to study Buddhism under a great Buddhist teacher, so he left his home and went to Sichuan Province. However, he met an old man to whom he confided his ambition. But the old man asked, “Wouldn’t it be better to seek Buddha rather than a teacher?” “Of course,” said Yang Pu, “but where is Buddha to be found?” The old man said, “Go home. When you see a person wearing a blanket and with shoes on the wrong feet, that person is Buddha.” Yang Pu returned home, where his mother, who was not fully dressed, heard him. She was so happy that he was home that in order to run to greet him she threw a blanket around herself and put on her shoes so hurriedly that she put them on the wrong feet.
• When Dovid Goldwasser acted as Rabbi at a summer camp in Poland for Jewish adults, he met many people who had stories to tell about the Nazis and the death camps. One man, Boruch Segal, told about being lined up to be deported to Buchenwald by the Nazis. A mother in line, who was not observant as a Jew, saw a Rabbi and ran over to him so he could bless her infant daughter. The Rabbi blessed her daughter, saying, “May your daughter live a long life and may she one day become a leader of her community.” After telling this story to Rabbi Goldwasser, Mr. Segal pointed to a woman nearby — a leader of one of the groups at the camp — and said, “She was that baby.”
• When Kathleen O’Connell Chesto, a Christian, was a young girl, she looked into a mirror and complained about a perceived lack of beauty. Her mother overheard her complaints, then told her, “Don’t you dare criticize my handiwork!”
Movies
• One of the studio heads at Paramount invited Groucho Marx to a screening of Samson and Delilah, starring the muscular Victor Mature and the beautiful Dorothy Lamarr, then the studio head asked Groucho how he liked the movie. Groucho pointed out the one glaring fault the movie had: “No picture can hold my interest where the leading man’s bust is bigger than the leading lady’s.” For a long time thereafter, Groucho wasn’t invited to screenings at Paramount.
***
Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy the Paperback
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Kindle
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Apple
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Barnes and Noble
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Kobo
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Music Recommendation: Sandra Bouza — “Almost Love”
BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: “Almost Love”
Album: FALLING AWAY FROM ME
Artist: Sandra Bouza
Artist Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Info:
“Sandra Bouza has a lot to offer through her music and life experience, and on her new LP, FALLING AWAY FROM ME, the Toronto native shares deeply personal stories derived from living, studying and working all over the world.
“FALLING AWAY FROM ME’s eight tracks together build on the deep grooves of Bouza’s previous EP, THREE YEARS, showing off her sultry, soulful vocals.”
Price: $2 (CAN) for track; $8 (CAN) for 8-track album
Genre: R&B. Soul.
Links:
https://sandrabouza.bandcamp.com/album/falling-away-from-me
https://sandrabouza.bandcamp.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxidEtF1lMOUEc_-bjuv6xA
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