pErused ePistle

 Famous First Words: The shipment or transportation, in any manner or by any means whatsoever... Webb Act of 1913 The Webb-Kenyon Act

It's Reading Is Fundamental Week (14-20)! I spent all day reading, it was bound to happen. / Reading, now there's a novel idea.

..........Just because we get around........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..My Generation

You show me a capitalist and I'll show you a bloodsucker. --Malcolm X

It is a very gray Friday morning with wind gusts whipping the willow branches. 66°F is pleasant enough but at the bottom of my computer screen it says “rain coming”. It has a cute umbrella icon perhaps to ward off the rather sinister “rain coming” that sounds like it's borrowed from campfire ghost stories. A gust of wind just blew willow branches into a frenzy and I'm bringing up the weather channel because I DO need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In this case it blows from the north. I hear birds, but I don't see any.* Puck's early morning nap snoring drowns out the bird. As the first drops grace my window, I get up to freshen my coffee and stretch before sitting and writing to you. What a beautiful morning.

*Diversion: This week our storage shed roof became a flight school for a family of sparrows. Mama was still feeding the little ones mouth to mouth. For a long time the little ones just walked around the roof stretching their feathers. Then they attempted to fly from roof edge to tree branch – maybe a foot. It wasn't very windy. Initial landings were awkward but successful. Several landings involved smashing into a parent. The next morning, they all gathered on the roof and flew off together and they haven't been back.

Hope your weekend earns a Pulitzer, dear hearts and gentle people

First Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Some people are wise; some people are otherwise. --Submitted by INRITH

I tried to read a book on gravity but it was too heavy. / I started reading this book on anti-gravity machines; I couldn't put it down.

..........Daddy never sleeps at night........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..Squeeze Box

Trivia Questions: Happy Birthday to the Postcard!

• ^ Do you have any idea what a “mailed card” refers to?
• ^^ How does a piece of mail qualify as a postcard?
• ^^^ When was the first US postcard patented?
• ^^^^ About how many postcards did the Post Office handle last year?
• ^^^^^ How much does it cost to mail a postcard these days.

Correction of the Week: I believe Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's ancestors came from County Limerick' not her descendants; they came from Massachusetts with a little bit of leftover Limerick behind that. Not the other way around. Sorry and thanks to jb of ks

Big Hello: Hagare'enaam – Kawailsu (California) https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hello.htm

Second Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: I prefer my kale with a silent k. --Submitted by bc of tx

Image of the Week: The Exploratorium in San Francisco was free this Mother's Day. This is one of the giant inflatable sculptures exhibited there.

Fake Library Statistics of the Week: 60% of librarians can't go out tonight because their cat is sick. https://www.facebook.com/FakeLibStats/?fref=ts

February can't March but April May. / Hope these reading puns tickle your spine.

..........Smile and grin at the change all around........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..Won't Get Fooled Again

Moonbeam: The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself. --Nellie Melba

Question of the Week: What's next?

Puzzle of the Week: From listener Mark Isaak, of Sunnyvale, Calif. Think of part of the human body whose name is a compound word (like fingertip or toenail). Add an N and rearrange the result to get another part of the body whose name is also a compound word. What body parts are these? NPR Sunday Puzzle 5/14/23

Next Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Prophecy Class has been canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. --Submitted by TETD

I love to sit in the sun with a good book; it makes me, well, red. / I spent the summer barefoot in the Park reading fantasy and it became a hobbit.

..........And freedom tastes of reality........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..I'm Free

^ Envelopes were produced with pictures on them, and some people speculate that postcards are the direct descendants of these picture envelopes.

Almanac: It is Friday, May 19, 2023. The moon is new today and is in Taurus. It is May Ray Day, National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, National Bike to Work Day, National Chocolate Chip Day, National Hepatitis Testing Day, National Scooter Day, and Peace Officers Memorial Day. Because it is the third Friday it is also International Virtual Assistants Day, NASCAR Day, National Bike to Work Day, National Defense Transportation Day, National Pizza Party Day, and the O'Henry Pun-Off.

Among those born on this day were Giovanni della Robbia (1469), Innocent XI (1611), John Hopkins (1795), Alice Mary Smith (1839), Nellie Melba (1859), Waldorf Astor (1879), Ho CHi Minh (1890), Pol Pot (1915), Florence Chadwick (1918), David McLean (1922), Malcolm X (Little, 1925), Harvey Cox (1929), James Lehrer (1934), Nora Ephron (1941), Peter Townshend (1945), Phillip Rudd (1946), Grace Jones (1948), Dusty Hill (1949), and Yazz (1963).

On May nineteenth, Elizabeth I arrested Mary Queen of Scots (1568), Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, & Hew Harbor formed the United Colonies of New England (1643), the French Legion of Honor formed (1802), Mexico ceded Texas to the US (1848), the Ringling Brothers premiered their circus (1884), Rice Institute became Rice University (1891), the Post Office authorized the use of privately printed postcards (1898), the Webb Act outlawed Japanese ownership of land (1913), the first annual Frog Jumping Jubilee was held (1928), White women won suffrage in South Africa (1930), and Pinter's Birthday Party premiered (1958).

Night Sky, 5/19: Bright Vega is now nicely up in the east-northeast after dark. Look for its faint little constellation Lyra, the Lyre, hanging down from it with its bottom canted to the right. Lyra's stars form a little equilateral triangle (Vega is one corner) and a parallelogram attached to the triangle's bottom. AND New Moon (exact at 11:53 am EDT). http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/sky-at-a-glance/

Fraternal Picture of the Week: In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. --Alice Walker ...cattails in winter

This Week: Saturday, May 20 – Morel Mushroom Day & National Rescue Dog Day & World Bee Day & World Fiddle Day

Sunday, May 21 – International Tea Day & Ride A Unicycle Day & World Day for Cultural Diversity

Night Sky, 5/21: This is the time of year when Leo the Lion starts walking downward toward the west right after dark, on his way to departing into the sunset in early summer. After nightfall, spot the brightest star fairly high in the west-southwest. That's Regulus, his forefoot. Regulus is also the bottom of the Sickle of Leo: a backward question mark about a fist and a half tall that outlines the lion's leading foot, chest, and mane.

Monday, May 22 – Harvey Milk Day & Sherlock Holmes Day & World Goth Day

Tuesday, May 23 – National Best Friend-in-Law Day & World Turtle Day

Wednesday, May 24 – Brother's Day & Morse Code Day

Night Sky, 5/24: Venus (passing Pollux and Castor in Gemini) is the brilliant "Evening Star" in the west from twilight through late evening. This month it shines about as high in the dusk as it ever gets. It doesn't set until a good 2½ hours after dark. In a telescope Venus is a dazzling little gibbous globe, 60% sunlit and 19 arc seconds in diameter. It's enlarging a little more every day while waning in phase. It'll be 50% lit in late May and will become a bigger, dramatically thinning crescent dropping low from mid-June through mid-July.

Thursday, May 25 – Cookie Monster's Birthday & National Tap Dance Day & Towel Day

I just finished a book on the ford Edsel with lots of details; it's an auto biography. / Escalator Literature: A step by step guide to reaching new levels.

..........I wanna drive my bus to my baby each day........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..Magic Bus

^^ To qualify as a postcard, a mail piece must be rectangular and meet these dimensions: At least 3-1/2” high X 5” long X 0.007” thick. No more than 4-1/4” high X 6” long X 0.016” thick, have finished corners that do not exceed a radius of 0.125”

Preantepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Do something with your life that will piss off a mediocre white man. --aeb of ??

Moonbeam: Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from. --Nora Ephron

Video of the Week: Katherine Hepburn as Mary Queen of Scots Long Address (3:53)

Not So Late Night Snacks of the Week: I wear a thick cottony high waisted brief...one of the things that's good about it is that it's big enough that if the plane goes down and, say, I survived and we're on a mountaintop or in the wilderness, my underwear is large enough that I can actually make a pup tent out of it. --Paul Poundstone Wait Wait Don't Tell Me 5/13/23

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States. --Malcolm X

I like to go into the woods and sit in the shade and read poet-tree. / The good witch couldn't read the spell book because it was written in curs-ive.

..........got such a supple wrist........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..Pinball Wizard

^^^ In 1861 the US Congress passed an act that allowed privately printed cards, weighing one ounce or under, to be sent in the mail. That same year John P. Charlton (other places seen as Carlton) copyrighted the first postcard in America.

Antepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Having kids makes you realize how dumb your lies used to sound to your parents.. --jm of ks

Weird Word of the Week: Fernweh – (n) wanderlust; an ache for distant places or a strong desire to travel. Germanic https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fernweh

Dragon of the Week: Dragon from Templo Wat Karon in Thailand

Wacky Uses for Common Products: Store meats, chicken**, or fish in the freezer. Before wrapping meats, chicken**, or fish for the freezer, use a sheet of Bounty Paper Towel to pat dry any moist surfaces. **If chicken isn't “meat”, what is it? https://www.wackyuses.com/wacky/bounty.html

Better read than dead. / I'm reading a book of magic spells. It was fact checked by the Hazel's Spell Check App.

...........I know that you have 'cause there's magic in my eyes........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..I Can See For Miles

^^^^ In 2022 413,159,000 postcards and stamped cards were mailed in the US.

Penultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Do regular dogs see police dogs and think “Oh, no, it's a cop?” --Submitted by INRITH

Science Fiction Convention of the Week: Fantasy Basel 2023 (18-20, Basel, Switzerland) .The most beautiful and versatile Comic Con in the universe https://fantasybasel.ch/en

Actual Science Conference of the Week: Habitat Expo 2023 (18-20, Mexico City, Mexico) Allies with a strategic purpose. https://www.cantonfair.net/event/5047-habitat-expo

Answer to Puzzle of the Week: Eardrum → Underarm

Our music teacher told us to read band books. / Writing about time travel means you have to think outside the clocks.

..........I felt a little like a dying clown........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..Who Are You

^^^^^ The price of the postcard stamp rose from 40¢ to 44¢ in July 2022.

My Own Writing of the Week: I had two husbands but for the 20 years in-between I had no live-in lovers. My own creaming in my own time and under my own control was too important to me to share all my time with someone who thought it was their job to get me off. This did not prevent me from having a number of delightful affairs before, between, and after marriage. (And in my hippie, open, first marriage, during marriage.) I believe sex with other people was enhanced by my experience and knowledge of my own cunt.

I gave it up when I got married, for a while, at least. Vaguely, I felt that it would make me unfaithful, in some way that I could not have defined then and would have even less success defining today. I gave up the notion when I realized how little sex there actually is in marriage – at the time, it was the only respectable sex one was allowed and then, turns out, it wasn't much at all. I did not give it up for the second husband. I probably would have done it in front of him, if he had ever thought to ask.

The other promise I make to you and to myself is that I will not wallow in regret. There were men...and women too, for that matter...that I wanted and didn't have. If the memories aren't pleasant, forget 'em. The ones that worked made up a lifetime of love and was sufficient wherever the enough line fell.

I do not promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The whole truth would include way too much boring stuff. I am writing from memory. Memory has its own notions of truth. When I broke up with my first, we both swore that the green corduroy shirt had belonged to us before we were together. Truth is susceptible to corrosion when it sits too long in memory. And memory rewrites truth to improve the image to the ego; it rewrites it when we sleep and dream, when we feel inadequate or guilty. The stories I've written, I remember as the truth with perhaps better dialogue. A few are exaggerated for the sake of humor or skewed to protect the innocent. Probably a few are way off base due to memory tricks or years of wishful thinking.

I began this writing out of a winter meditation. I believe that nature's longest -dark tea time of the soul- night is a night to look into your dark side, get out all the stuff one has stuck in their subconscious all year because they didn't want to look at it. Empty your head, throw that stuff away and let the dark bubble up and out and flow off into the long night and be gone. One year when I did that, all these stories came to mind. I had not stored them as ego trash; but I had not sat down and remembered them, one by one, for decades and they poured out of my mind into my fingers and onto the pages.

From Always Surrender by Christine Smith

Quote of the Week: I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four. --Jim Lehrer

Final Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Live so that if your life were turned into a book, Florida would ban it.

Today's Peace of History, History, May 19, 1952: Playwright and activist Lillian Hellman advised the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that she refused to testify against friends and associates, saying, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.”

I read that new psychology book and now I'm feeling forever Jung/ The new bar owner is a big reader; that's why the signature drink is Tequila Mockingbird.

..........I lovingly mock you noble lords........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..A Man In A Purple Dress

Masthead of the Week: Friday ePistle, May 19, 2023, pErused ePistle. Online at: http://fridayepistle.blogspot.com/ Exclusive editor: Christine Smith. Lawrence, KS.

Moonbeam: Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be. --Nora Ephron

Cost of War:

• As of 05/18/23 State Department War Costs since 2001: $207,244,231,101.
• As of 05/11/23 State Department War Costs since 2001: $206,679,367,513.
• As of 05/18/23 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,137,958,106,863.
• As of 05/11/23 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,136,380,395,167.

• As of 05/18/23 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,136,817,073,927.
• As of 05/11/23 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,136,203,516,561.
• As of 05/18/23 Veterans Care since 2001: $3,051,276,239,278.
• As of 05/11/23 Veterans Care since 2001: $3,039,316,785,493.

• As of 05/18/23 Military Costs since 2001: $3,023,690,601,511.
• As of 05/11/23 Military Costs since 2001: $3,022,492,714,863.
• As of 05/18/23 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,556,988,264,356.
• As of 05/11/23 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,541,074,632,744.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

America is the first country...that can actually have a bloodless revolution. --Malcolm X

Famous Last Words: I know I was. --Harold Pinter The Birthday Party

..........Forgive me one more time........The Who (Peter Townsend) …..I Can't Explain

I'd love to hang out but my weekend is fully booked. / Metaphors be with you.

May Peace define your narrative

And Joy inform your plot

prairie mama

christine

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