Small Things Count

Summer has arrived! No school. Vacation. More sunshine and, hopefully, less stress. More outings with the family. It’s an excellent time to be thankful for all we have. Like our senses. They allow us to enjoy life and, if we’re open, experience all that’s around us. The embracing warmth of sunshine. The calming fragrance of Jasmine. The sea’s salty tang on our tongues, reminding us of friendship The humbling sight of a giant redwood. The call of the crane to have a free spirit. And that feeling we get when we relax in our favorite garden spot and allow it to envelop us. Nature is a wonderful gift. We should always appreciate it, respect it, and protect it.

Today’s Thursday Thought quote takes some thought and soul-searching to follow but leads in the right direction.

I’m fascinated with language, especially the origins of phrases we use all the time. I haven’t offered you one for awhile, so today I give you “running amok” (wild behavior).

This actually began as a medical term in the 18^th and 19^th centuries to describe a mental condition that made Malaysian tribesmen, who were usually within the normal bounds of behavior, to start killing and brutalizing people randomly. “Amok” is taken from “Amuco,” violent Javanese and Maylay warriors who caught the morbid fascination of Westerners. The term was popularized by the explorer Capt. James Cook, who declared that “to run amok is to … sally forth from the house, kill the person or persons supposed to have injured the Amock, and any other person that attempts to impede his passage.” From there it made its way into psychiatric manuals, where it can still be found today as a medical condition.

In 1772, our flag was adopted to represent our country. Today, on Flag Day, let’s remember and honor what it stands for. Let’s put aside our prejudices, political biases, feelings of superiority over other nationalities or races, and anything else that divides us and let our flag remind us that we are all AMERICANS.

Get kids involved in gardening by planting a “pizza garden”—tomatoes, peppers, onions, basil, etc.  When your crop ripens, enjoy a family-made—and grown—pizza.

For more easy, money-saving, Eco-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/7000, choose a format, and download to your computer or e-book device. For a description of the book go to My Free Books).

Today’s Thursday Thought is a cartoon I thought was cute and very on-point:

I urge everyone to watch the Jan. 6 hearings starting tomorrow, June 9, at 8 PM Eastern time on a whole bunch of TV channels. The second hearing is slated to be broadcast on Monday, June 13, at 10 AM Eastern time. If those times aren’t workable for you or if, like me, you like to watch such things in small bits and not have to wade through commentary, record it and play it later.

Why bother? We’ve been bombarded by Jan. 6 to the point of nausea.

Because this is the time when we get to actually SEE the REAL evidence, not just have one side or the other tell us what they want us to believe we should think. Because we can look at that evidence and make up our own minds what it means. Most of all, because we need to get to the truth so we can heal the divisions and animosity that are destroying our nation.

Please watch. Be open-minded. Consider. Think. Help unite our American family.,

Yesterday (https://smthingscount.com/2022/06/06/movie-observations-part-1/) I gave you five things I noticed during my Covid-movie-watching time. Here are five more.

1. Everybody’s home (unless a crime scene) is sparkling clean, free of dust, strewn toys, unwashed dishes or laundry, or dog hair.
2. Law enforcement officers track a bad guy along the sidewalk but then don’t get close enough to them before calling out to identify themselves, necessitating a 10-minute chase.
3. Everyone drives nice, late-model, dent-free, shiny-clean cars.
4. Even someone who has never touched a gun in their lives can pick up the dropped bad-guy’s gun, shoot without trying to aim, and hit him.
5. You can drive a car at any speed without looking at the road ahead…just keep eye-contact with the passenger you’re taking to.

Being a semi-hermit during the pandemic drew me into watching a lot of TV movies, if for no other reason than hearing human voices. I learned quite a bit. I’ve narrowed it down to 10 observations. I’ll give you 5 today and the rest tomorrow.

1. If it’s a Lifetime movie, it will probably a) start out with a frantic woman being chased through a forest or down a dark road and b) end with the bad guy’s death after the woman (untrained in self-defense) fights him off despite his knife or gun.
2. Sex scenes take up 1/5 of the total screen time and are far less titillating than the kiss-and-grope, leading to fade-out, of old movies.
3. Text messages will be too small and on camera too short a time for us to read them, and the background music drowns out much of the dialog.
4. The convenience weapon of choice by murderers is the heavy-duty butcher knife in the kitchen block of knives most of us can’t afford.
5. Most main characters live in huge, fancy houses, even if there’s only a couple or a single mom who we’re supposed to worry about because she can’t afford to send her kid to college. And most of those kids have been accepted to exclusive or ivy league schools.

[continued tomorrow]