100 Years

1909 FORD Model R Show this to your children and/or grandchildren

THE YEAR 1909 This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!

The year is 1909.

One hundred years ago.

What a difference a century makes!

Here are some statistics for the Year 1909:

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The average life expectancy was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,

A dentist $2,500 per year,

a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,

and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.

Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!

Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which

Were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard.'

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month,

and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from

Entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:

1. Pneumonia and influenza

2. Tuberculosis

3. Diarrhea

4. Heart disease

5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea

Hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.'

( Shocking? DUH! )

Eighteen percent of households had at least

One full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A.!

(Mainly becasue there was a firearm of some sort in almost every home!

An armed society is a POLITE society!!)

I am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it myself.

From there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD - all in a matter of seconds!

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

IT STAGGERS THE MIND!

The Irish Bagpiper

The Irish Bagpiper

As a bagpiper, I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man who had no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a cemetery in the remote countryside and this man would be the first to be laid to rest there.

As I was not familiar with the backwoods area, I became lost and being a typical man, did not stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late. I saw the back hole and the crew who were eating lunch but the hearse was nowhere in sight. I apologized to the workers for my tardiness and stepped to the side of the open grave where I saw the vault lid already in place. I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long but this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around, still eating their lunch.

I played out my heart and soul. As I played the workers began to weep. I played and I played like I'd never played before, from Going Home and The Lord is My Shepherd to Flowers of the Forest . I closed the lengthy session with Amazing Grace and walked to my car. As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I overheard one of the workers saying to another, "Sweet Jeezuz, Mary'n Joseph, I never seen nothin' like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years!

Phone

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

Women are like phones: They like to be held, talked to, and touched often. But push the wrong button and your sorry *ss is disconnected.

Cat Person

3 Tenors

This is amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqUkUjeF4-c

Do You Remember?

Absolutely the funniest joke ever......ON US !!! Let it sink in. Quietly we go like sheep to slaughter.

Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ...... during the Carter Administration?

Anybody?

Anything?

No?

Didn't think so!

Bottom line .. we've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency ... the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember. Ready???????

It was very simple.. and at the time everybody thought it very appropriate...

The 'Department of Energy' was instituted on
8-04-1977
TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

Hey, pretty efficient, huh?????

AND NOW IT'S 2009, 32 YEARS LATER ... AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS NECESSARY DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 + BILLION A YEAR.

IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES, AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!

THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY 'WHAT WAS I THINKING?'

Ah, yes, good ole bureaucracy.. And NOW we are going to turn the Banking System, health care & the Auto Industry over to them?

God Help Us !!!

Browser?

Aren't they adorable?

Patience

This just about says it all.

Where does it go?

Can you believe it's June already?! Where does the time go? It seems like it was just March.

The trees are so beautiful. All of the flowers are getting into their full glory. The grass is so green.

Spring and summer are by far my favorite times of the year. I like fall, but winter follows and I just don't like winter.

I just can't look at all the beauty of spring, summer and fall enough. I marvel at every day's beauty whether it is sunny or rainy.

Ah well, I've said enough!

Awesome!

Very appropriate for this Memorial Day Weekend! God Bless America!

Get a load of these high school kids. At the conclusion listen to the high notes on the trumpet, played by a high school kid! One of the fathers recorded it, added some graphic enhancements to the recording, and posted it on the web.


The song, of course, is the ' Battle Hymn Of The Republic.'


Be prepared....It will definitely send a few shivers up your spine.
TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS..

Click on the link below:

http://www.greatdanepromilitary.com/Battle%20Hymn/index.htm

High Flight

I thought that since this is actually the "real" Memorial Day that I would post this ("High Flight").


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvZeuzXGFb0


Enjoy!

Smart Woman

THIS IS ABOUT WOMEN WHO KNOW THEIR PLACE

Barbara Walters, of 20/20, did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. Despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem to, and are happy to, maintain the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, 'Why do you now seem happy with an old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?'

The woman looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation said, 'Land Mines.'

Moral of the story: No matter where you go or what language you speak, behind every man,
THERE’S A VERY SMART WOMAN.

Hymn 365

Hymn #365

This is a hoot, but I suspect the minister didn't appreciate it.

A minister was completing a temperance sermon. With great emphasis he said, "If I had all the beer in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river."

With even greater emphasis he said, "And if I had all the wine in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river."

And then finally, shaking his fist in the air, he said, "And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river."

Sermon complete, he sat down.

The song leader stood very cautiously and announced with a smile, nearly laughing, "For our closing song,Let us sing Hymn #365, 'Shall We Gather at the River.'"

Smile, life is too short not to!

If this brightened your day, don't let it stop here. Pass it on with a smile. Keep spreading the cheer.

See you at the river!

Moo...

I just couldn't resist this one!

English

You think English is easy???

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP..'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred o r more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so......... it is time to shut UP!

Lilacs

Can't you just smell those lilacs?! I love Penny Parker's art work!

Memorial Day

In honor of all who serve and have served and in memory of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you.

Cattitude

I think the caption says it all! LOL!

This is me...

... after I see a spider and have the hubs kill it!

Detroit

Times are tough... and they are really getting tough in Detroit. Today I volunteered 2 1/2 hours of my morning at St. Aloyisius's (I always spell that wrong) Canticle Cafe.

People are let into the center at 7:00 a.m. to get a hot cup of coffee and a doughnut, a bowl of oatmeal and a coffee, or a sandwich. They can sit and eat and watch a movie, work on some VERY old computers (kind of like training so they can apply for a job). There are days when they can come and get a bag of food, or maybe some shoes and clothes.

St. Al's knows where to send you to find help for your family when you have lost your job and have children.

They do a wonderful job in a very old building that badly needs plumbing. They get no assistance from the government. They turn away no one. If they can't help you, then send somewhere where they can get help. Those that come into the center are from all walks of life. Young, old, black, white, male and female, they come. Some are clean, some aren't. Something as small as a cup of coffee and a donut brings a lot of smiles to a lot of faces.

I wish the people who have tons of money and spend it on things like millin dollar jewelry, fancy cars, McMansions, full-day spa treatments, etc. could see where their money could do some good. Imagine if all of those with billions of dollars could give some of the money they throw away on fancy birthday parties for their kids (who all have to out-do one another on what kind of shindig they throw) to places like St. Al's. Think of all the people they could help. And it wouldn't take a ton of money from each person.

But I guess I'm just chasing rainbows.

Retro World

This is a really neat site!

http://www.billsretroworld.com/