Famous
First Words: Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after...
Epitaph on a Tyrant W. H. Auden
Happy
Birthday Erma! Once you get a spice in your home, you have it
forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried
with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.
--Erma Bombeck / When humor goes, there goes civilization. --Erma
Bombeck
..........ain't
got no token, ain't got no god..........Nina Simone …..Ain't Got
No – I Got Life
“War
can't end terrorism. War is terrorism.” -- Philip Berrigan
It
is a chilly (17°F) Friday morning. There is nothing to obstruct the
clear blue sky, no cloud, no jet stream, no bird or plane. A breeze
blows around bare branches and bites a little on bare skin. I motor
my way to the doctor's office for a blood draw. The traffic is light
and the sun is bright. I cannot bear to listen to the radio – the
news is not news, it's only what network owners want us to hear and I
no longer recognize the music on the rock stations. So I drive in
near silence, listening to motor sounds and tires against pavement.
Until I arrive home – to warmth and the smell of brewing Moose
Munch waiting for me. I have fasted for my blood draw and I'm hungry
and thirsty. It makes me hurry through the prep – sweetener, ½ n
½, stir lovingly. So I can, finally, sit down and write to you.
Great day, so far.
Hope
your weekend is chuck full of laughs, ePistliers.
First
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Be careful when you follow
the masses, sometimes the m is silent. --Submitted by ss of ks
Thanksgiving
dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve
minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
--Erma Bombeck / God created man, but I could do better. --Erma
Bombeck
..........I
am the dust you leave behind........Mary Chapin
Carpenter …..I Am A Town
Trivia
Questions: Happy Birthday to the Washington Monument
^
Who is credited with starting the society that promoted the monument?
^^
What part of the monument involved the Masons?
^^^
So how does the Pope fit into all of this?
^^^^
How tall is the monument, anyway?
^^^^^
What's makes the monument an engineering marvel?
Big
Hello: Helô - Welsh
https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hello.htm
Second
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: I'm
always surprised when heavily tattooed couples have a baby and it
comes out blank.
Fake
Library Statistic of the Week:
23% of librarians get the most joy from cursing not reading.
https://www.facebook.com/FakeLibStats/?fref=ts
One
thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of
you life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's
name and how old he or she is. --Erma Bombeck / Guilt: the gift that
keeps on giving. --Erma Bombeck
..........I'm
just a soul whose intentions are good..........Nina Simone …..Don't
Let Me Be Misunderstood
Moonbeam:
Better are the blows of a friend than the false kisses of an enemy.
--Thomas Becket
Naturally
Occurring Mandala of the Week: Acorn squash
Next
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week:
Michael Avenatti guilty on all counts. I guess that means he'll be
joining the Trump White House. --Submitted by rl of ca
Move
of the Week: Jeffrey is moved in to his
new place (1736 Ohio, #18, Lawrence, KS 66044). On Saturday morning
I looked at all the stuff and decided to order a truck because it
would take more than one trip in Chris' car. We picked up the u-haul
at about 1:15. It was slightly bigger than I thought it would be.
We drove to our house, loaded the truck in about 25 minutes. Drove
through the basketball crowd leaving the Phogg, unloaded into Jeffrey
apartment and returned the truck at 2:40. We had drive 10.1 miles
total. Sigh! Fastest move I've ever participated in.
Week
of the Week: National Engineers Week
(16-22) --A
mathematician, physicist, and engineer are all trying to find the
volume of a yellow bouncy ball. The mathematician gets his callipers
out and measures the diameter, then evaluates the integral. The
physicist fetches a bowl of water, drops the ball in and measures the
displacement. The engineer strolls up with book in hand, checks for
a serial number and looks up the volume in his yellow bouncy ball
table.
I
was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too
tired for an affair. --Erma Bombeck / What's with you men? Would hair
stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere. --Erma
Bombeck
..........My
daily dose of destiny under my sigh........Mary
Chapin Carpenter …..I Feel Lucky
^
In
1833, the Washington National Monument Society, a private
organization, was among early groups promoting the idea for the
tribute to the first President. James Madison along with Supreme
Court Chief Justice John Marshall started the society.
Almanac:
It is Friday, February 21, 2020. The moon will be new on Sunday and
is in Aquarius. It is International Mother Language
Day [UNESCO], Card
Reading Day, and in Bangladesh it is
Bangladesh Martyrs Day aka National Mourning Day (1952) .
Among
those born on this day were Peter II (1728),
Charles Scribner (1821), Andres Segovia (1893), Anais Nin (1903), W.
H. Auden (1904), Murry the K (1922), Erma Bombeck (1927), Nina Simone
(1933), David Geffen (1943), Alan Rickman (1946), Tyne Daly (1946),
William Petersen (1953), and Mary-Chapin Carpenter (1958).
On
February twenty-first Thomas Becket was canonized (1173), the trial
of Joan of Arc began (1431), Boris Godunov became tsar (1584),
Michael Romanov became tsar (1613), the Presidential
Succession Act passed
(1792), the first native Amiercan newspaper began publication
(Cherokee Phoenix,
1828), Lucy Hobbs became the first US female dentist (1866), the
Washington Monument was dedicated (1885), the National Ski
Association formed (1904), the New
Yorker
was first published (1925), Alka Seltzer was introduced (1931),
Elizabeth Taylor married Micahel Wilding (1952), and Richard Nixon
visited China (1972).
Night
Sky, 2/21: High over Venus after dark are the
two brightest stars of Aries, lined up almost vertically. High above
Aries and perhaps a bit left are the Pleiades. Venus is a good 42°
away from the Pleiades right now. But watch for the next six weeks as
they head straight toward each other. On the evening of April 3rd,
Venus will shine just inside the cluster's edge.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/sky-at-a-glance/
Max
Picture of the Week:
Max – wondering who is in and who is out of the cage
This
Week: Saturday, February 22 –
World Thinking Day & National Margarita Day
Sunday,
February 23 – Curling Is Cool Day & National Dog Biscuit
Day
Night
Sky,2/23: Have you ever seen Canopus, the
second-brightest star after Sirius? In one of the many interesting
coincidences that devoted skywatchers know about, Canopus lies almost
due south of Sirius: by 36°. That's far enough south that it never
appears above your horizon unless you're below latitude 37° N
(southern Virginia, southern Missouri, central California). And
there, you'll need a very flat south horizon. Canopus crosses the
south point on the horizon just 21 minutes before Sirius does.
Monday,
February 24 – National Cupcake Day & Play More Cards Day
Night
Sky, 2/24: Mars (magnitude +1.2, in
Sagittarius) glows in the southeast before and during early dawn.
Don't confuse it with Antares, shining with the same color and
brightness some 20° to Mars's upper right. Mars is still a tiny 5
arcseconds in diameter. But it's on its way to a fine opposition in
October when it will reach 22.6 arcseconds wide.
If
a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared
legally dead. --Erma Bombeck / Don't confuse fame with success.
Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other. --Erma Bombeck
..........You
better stop the things that you do..........Nina Simone …..I Put A
Spell On You
^^The
Free Masons were involved in the cornerstone ceremony and they used
Washington’s Masonic symbols in the ceremony. 20,000 people
attended the 1848 ceremony; the cornerstone contained copies of the
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and other objects.
'Nother
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Did you know? When you walk
through a door and forget why you are there; it could be because you
ran into an Alien and he had to erase your memory, so he could
escape. --Submitted by sb of ak
Moonbeam:
We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. --Anias
Nin
Late
Night Snacks of the Week:
Iowa and
New Hampshire were not the best places to start, neither state is
demographically representative of anything other than a Jimmy Buffet
concert. --Jimmy Kimmel / The night also saw a number of candidates
drop out of the race, including Deval Patrick. This was shocking to
all the voters who had no idea he’d dropped into the presidential
race. --Stephen Colbert / It has been the best night for Bernie
Sanders since he won that free cruise on Noah’s ark. --Trevor Noah
/ Trump has been firing those who spoke out against him. It’s the
kind of thing that dictators do although it’s hard to tell how much
of Trump is dictator and how much is just a dick. --Samatha Bee / So
an imbecile president who’s only interested in his own
self-preservation is turning the justice department into a political
weapon for his own benefit. Trump keeps digging himself deeper and
deeper – like Trump’s great friend, the majestic badger.
--Seth Meyers
Not
So Late Night Snacks of the Week: The New
Hampshire primary tells me that the 4 black people in New Hampshire
have a different opinion than the 3 black people in Iowa. / And
there was a Bloomberg ad...That
came on the hip-hop station. And he was, like, as
a billionaire, I understand that being black is hard.
... Well
he knows that being black is hard becaue he made it hard. --Alonzo
Bodden and Helen Hong Wait,
Wait, Don't Tell Me
2/15/20
“Nuclear
weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture
them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human
family, and the earth itself.” -- Philip Berrigan
There's
nothing sadder in the world than to awake Christmas morning and not
be a child. --Erma Bombeck / In general my children refuse to eat
anything that hasn't danced in television. --Erma Bombeck
..........Didn't
expect to be in this position........Mary Chapin Carpenter …..Shut
Up and Kiss Me
^^^
The
Society asked for people to donate ceremonial stones as part of the
construction process. Pope Pius IX donated a memorial stone of
marble, which infuriated the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party. The
Know-Nothings got their revenge by rigging the leadership election
for the Washington National Monument Society. Congress cut off
monument funding for 5 years until the Know Nothings left the group.
Worthless
Fact of the Week: New
Yorker founder, Harold W. Ross, published
the first issue on February 21, 1925, and was the magazine's editor
until his death in December 1951.
Wicked
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: I'm
two years into Cosmetology school and apply a hell of a contour, but
when are we gonna start learning about space?
Weird
Word of the Week:
Ignivomous – a volcano In
1721, a member of the Royal Society of London, Thomas Forster of
Boston, wrote The
World alarm’d. A surprizing relation of a New Burning Island lately
raised out of the Sea near Tercera; with a brief history of the other
ignivomous mountains at this day in the world
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-ign1.htm
Wacky
Uses for Common Products:
Remove white rings and spots from wood furniture. Wipe on Wish-Bone
Thousand Island Dressing, let stand for an hour and whip off.
http://www.wackyuses.com/wacky/wishbone.html
I
come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. --Erma
Bombeck / Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the
carousel never belongs to anyone? --Erma Bombeck
...........I
wanna stay here with you forever..........Nina
Simone …..I Loves You Porgy
^^^^
The
Monument was the world’s tallest building when it was dedicated.
The
Washington Monument as dedicated stood at 555 feet 5 inches tall. The
Cologne Cathedral had been the world’s tallest man-made structure
and the Eiffel Tower soon surpassed the Monument.
Penultimate
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: DNC
Mulls Asking Donald Trump; to Run As Democrat in Effort To Stop
Sanders. --The Onion
Science
Fiction Convention of the Week:
Fire & Ice 2020 (21-23, Manitowoc, WI)
Fire
& Ice is a little game convention with BIG fun for everyone
https://fireandiceconvention.com/
Actual
Science Convention of the Week:
The 35th
Annual New Mexico Symposium: American Astronomical Society (21,
Socorro, NM) Dark
skies and remote sites have attracted world-class astronomical
facilities to the Southwest and supported a wide range of research
since the mid-1900s.
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/events/nmsymposium/2019/
Puck
the Brave
Episode of the Week:
Here's our fearless Puck glad to be back in his back room with a back
door in the case of the Backyard Bully.
All
of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking
children into a house with a white carpet is one of them. --Erma
Bombeck / Car designers are just going to have to come up with an
automobile that outlasts the payments. --Erma Bombeck
..........I
can recall the sound of the wind........Mary Chapin Carpenter
…..Only A Dream
^^^^^
The
Washington
Post
recently
pointed out an interesting fact in an on-going debate about the
Monument as the world’s tallest free-standing masonry structure.
The Monument’s marble blocks are held together by just gravity and
friction, and no mortar was used in the process.
Month
of the Week: February is Sweet Potato
Month – One day two
sweet potatoes, who were best friends, were walking together down the
street. They stepped off the curb and a speeding car came around the
corner and ran one of them over. The uninjured sweet potato called
911 and helped his injured friend as best he was able. The injured
sweet potato was taken to emergency at the hospital and rushed into
surgery. After a long and agonizing wait, the doctor finally
appeared. He told the uninjured sweet potato, "I have good news,
and I have bad news. The good news is that your friend is going to
pull through." "The bad news is that he's going to be a
vegetable for the rest of his life".
Final
Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: I
think the proper term for “senior” women should be: Queen-agers.
--Submitted by eg of mt
Today's
Peace of History, February 21, 1972:
The trial began for the Harrisburg Seven including Father Philip
Berrigan in Pennsylvania. They were charged with conspiring in an
alleged plot to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Proceedings later ended in a mistrial.
Today's
Peace of Woman's History, February 21, 1866: Lucy B Hobbs
(Taylor) became the first US woman to earn a DDS degree. Taylor and
her dentist husband then moved to Lawrence, KS, where they had
successful practice, until James Taylor died in 1886. After her
husband's death, Lucy Taylor ceased to be an active dentist, but
became more active in politics, campaigning for greater women's
rights, until her own death on October 3, 1910. Their home is now
the Bzar Salon at 809 Vermont.
Housework,
if you do it right, will kill you. --Erma Bombeck / I will buy any
crème, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.
--Erma Bombeck
..........It's
a new dawn, it's a new day..........Nina Simone
…..Feeling Good
Masthead
of the Week:
Friday ePistle February 21, 2020, Erma's ePistle. Laugh, Love, and
Household Advise. Online at: http://fridayepistle.blogspot.com/
Exclusive editor: Christine Smith. 2511 Morningside Dr. Lawrence, KS
66047
Moonbeam:
Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in
intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I
escape, one way or another. No more walls. --Anaïs Nin
Cost
of War:
As
of 2/20/20 Military Costs of War since 2001: $3,003,212,983,696.
As
of 2/13/20 Military Costs of War since 2001: $3,001,247,044,972.
As
of 2/20/20 Homeland Security Costs since 2001: $950,329,076,352.
As
of 2/13/20 Homeland Security Costs since 2001: $948,993,193,796.
As
of 2/20/20 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $744,356,647,974.
As
of 2/13/20 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $742,677,241,548.
As
of 2/20/20 Veterans Care since 2001: $324,808,291,830.
As
of 2/13/20 Veterans Care since 2001: $324,426,660,344.
As
of 2/20/20 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $5,022,707,439,514.
As
of 2/13/20 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $5,017,344,843,013.
“Herein
lies a riddle: How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by
naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish
before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded,
lunatic?” -- Philip Berrigan
..........Hey,
baby, I'm running out of things to say.........Mary Chapin Carpenter
…..Quittin' Time
My
kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out
until all the groceries are unloaded from the car. --Erma Bombbeck /
Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that
is all you have done since you graduated. --Erma Bombeck
Famous
Last Words: or a President shall be
elected. --The Presidential Succession Act 1792
May
Peace fill your sleep
And
Joy fill your waking
prairie
mama
christine
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Laugh:
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