Posts by Pat:
July 4 humor!
Bringing you some humor for this special day of days. (And if it seems like it came from one who used to be a teacher, well, you’re right!)
Father William, the old priest, made it a practice to visit the parish school one day a week. He walked into the 4th grade class, where the children were studying the states, and asked them how many states they could name. They came up with about 40 names.
Father William jokingly told them that in his day students knew the names of all the states. One lad raised his hand and said, “Yes sir, but in those days there were only 13 states.”
The Fourth of July weekend was approaching and Miss Pelham, the nursery school teacher, took the opportunity to tell her class about patriotism. “We live in a great country,” she announced. “One of the things we should be happy about is that in this country we are all free.”
Trevor, who was a little boy in her class, came walking up to her from the back of the room. He stood with his hands on his hips and said loudly, “I’m not free. I’m four.”
And, did you know?
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson served on the committe that picked the eagle for the national seal (Franklin wanted the turkey!)
Bald eagles are not, and never were bald. The term comes from when “bald” meant “white-headed.”
The tide does come in!
No matter how bad our current situation appears to be now, nature guarantees a turn for the better. Change is always happening. Nature’s cycles are dependable. We can’t rush a seedling; pulling on it to make it grow faster will cause it to die. We can’t rush a baby; whevever possible, we have to let […]
A child’s story…
A little girl in second grade underwent chemotherapy for leukemia. When she returned to school, she wore a scarf to hide the fact that she had lost all her hair. But some of the children pulled it off, and in their nervousness laughed and made fun of her. The little girl was mortified and that […]
No pun intended?
The pun (also known as paranomania) is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term for an intended humorous effect. You can decide if you think these are funny or just punny! Writing my name is cursive is my signature move. I lost my job as a stage designer. I left […]
Which will you choose?
Before Thomas Jefferson said it, Epictetus (the Greek Stoic philospher) said that every situation has two handles-one that is an effective way to bear it and the other a way that is unsustainable. We choose, he said, which handle to grab. We choose whether we will try to see the best in people or the […]
Rule Number 6
Rule #6 is one of the fundamental rules of life…Do you know what it is? Have you read The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander? If not, you should! Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man burst in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his […]
The map is not the territory
We often confuse our map with the territory. But there is a difference between the actual world and our perception of the world, just like between the roadmap and what it intends to represent. As Alfred Korzbybski (scientist and philosopher who introduced this concept in a paper in 1931) pointed out, maps always come with […]
The Gap or the Gain?
Setting goals and moving towards them can either cause us happiness or unhappiness, depending on our perspective. (And our perspective is our choice!) The goals we aim toward are always somewhere between us and the horizon. The concept of the horizon is useful to figure out a direction and to plan a destination, but we […]
Was the story wrong?
The real-life retelling inspired by actual events loosely based on the alleged true story previously dramatized… So…what is true? Back in 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed in New York in the middle of the night. What I remember from my college psychology class was that the New York Times newspaper story reported that none of […]
Drop by drop…
When a project seems too big, it’s easy for me to get discouraged from even starting it. Buddha’s wisdom is a good reminder to me to start with tiny steps, with what seem to be just drops. Back in my younger days, I used to get all fired up and want to get everything done […]