Brightspots #6

 

The old addage.."be careful what you wish for ....."

A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him. The waitress asks them for their orders. The man says, 'A hamburger, fries and a coke,' and turns to the ostrich, 'What's yours?' 'I'll have the same,' says the ostrich.

A short time later the waitress returns with the order ' That will be $9.40 please,' and the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact change for payment. The next day, the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, 'A hamburger, fries and a coke.' The ostrich says, 'I'll have the same.'

Again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change. This becomes routine until the two enter again. 'The usual?' asks the waitress. 'No, this is Friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and a salad,' says the man. 'Same,' says the ostrich.

Shortly the waitress brings the order and says, 'That will be $32.62.' Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.

The waitress cannot hold back her curiosity any longer. 'Excuse me, sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change in your pocket every time?”

'Well,' says the man, 'several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it, a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes. My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket and the right amount of money would always be there.' 'That's brilliant!' says the waitress. 'Most people would ask for a million dollars or something, but you'll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!'

'That's right. Whether it's a gallon of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there,' says the man.

The waitress asks, 'What's with the ostrich?' The man sighs, pauses and answers, 'My second wish was for a tall chick with a big butt and long legs who agrees with everything I say.'

Our First Ladies # 11

 

     

                                                           Julia Gardiner Tyler 1820-1889

 

Julia Gardiner Tyler was born in 1820 to Juliana and David Gardiner, a landowner, and New York State Senator. (1824 to 1828). She was raised in the town of East Hampton and educated at the Chegary Institute in New York. In 1839, she shocked polite society by appearing, posed with an unidentified man, and identified as "The Rose of Long Island", in a newspaper advertisement for a middle-class department store. Her family took her to Europe to avoid further publicity and allow her notoriety to subside, but she was indeed a beauty.

On January 20, 1842, the 21-year-old Julia was introduced to President John Tyler at a White House reception. After the death of his first wife, Letitia Christian Tyler, on September 10, 1842, Tyler made it clear that he wished to get involved with Julia. Initially, the high-spirited and independent-minded northern beauty felt little attraction to the grave, reserved Virginia gentleman, who was thirty years her senior. He first proposed to her on February 22, 1843, when she was 22, at a White House Masquerade Ball. She refused that and later proposals he made. The increased time spent together prompted public speculation about their relationship.

Julia, her sister Margaret, and her father joined a Presidential excursion on the new steam frigate Princeton. During this excursion, her father, David Gardiner, along with others, lost his life in the explosion of a huge naval gun called the Peacemaker. Julia was devastated by the death of her adored father. She spoke often in later years of how the President's quiet strength sustained her during this difficult time. Tyler comforted Julia in her grief and won her consent to a secret engagement, proposing in 1844 at the George Washington Ball.

After a wedding trip to Philadelphia, a White House reception, and a stay at Sherwood Forest, an estate the president had recently acquired for his retirement, the newlyweds returned to Washington D.C.. Although her husband was often visibly fatigued, his youthful wife thoroughly enjoyed the duties of First Lady.

President Tyler was 54 years old, while Julia was just 24. Tyler's oldest daughter, Mary, was 5 years older than her father's new wife. The marriage made Julia the first (First Lady) to marry a President who was already in office at the time of the wedding.

It was awkward for the eldest Tyler daughter, Mary, to adjust to a new stepmother five years younger than herself. One daughter, Letitia, never made peace with her stepmother.

The anthem "Hail to the Chief" had been played at a number of events associated with the arrival or presence of the President of the United States before Julia Tyler became First Lady, but she ordered its regular use to announce the arrival of the President. It became established practice when her successor, Sarah Polk did likewise. It is still practiced today.

The first lady was known as a wonderful hostess and the President was delighted with all the compliments she received. When the President’s term was finished, they retired to The Sherwood Forest Plantation.

 All though a northerner by birth, Mrs. Tyler soon grew accustomed to the leisurely routines of daily life as the wife of a wealthy plantation owner, and between 1846 and 1860, Julia and John had seven children together.

Julia wrote a defense of slavery titled "The Women of England vs. the Women of America", in response to the "Stafford House Address" petition against slavery which the Duchess of Sutherland had helped to organize.

In response to Julia Tyler's essay, Harriet Jacobs, a former slave and later abolitionist writer, authored her first published work, a letter to the New York Tribune in 1853.

After her husband's death in 1862, lost her 60 slaves and 1,100 acres of land due to military events. Julia moved north to Staten Island with several of her children and family relations were so strained that her brother David moved out of his mother's house, where Julia had settled.

Her home there was almost burned down by enraged Union veterans when it was discovered she was flying a Confederate flag on the property. She resided at the Gardiner-Tyler House from 1868-74.

In 1865, her brother David sued to prevent her from inheriting the bulk of their mother's estate valued at $180,000, charging that Julia Tyler had exerted "undue influences" on their mother to execute a will despite her "mental incapacity". The court supported his claim on August 25 and refused to accept the will. After two appeals, David Gardiner won the case in 1867. David then asked the courts to partition the estate as if no will existed. Julia asked for a jury trial on the issue, and the jury declined to consider the contested will as an argument in her favor. The New York Times thought Julia was treated unfairly and that the dispute could be traced to "the political antagonisms of the rebellion, which have divide many a household besides that of Mrs. Gardiner". She died in 1889 and is buried next to her husband in Virginia.

Yawning

 

One theory of why we yawn is that when we are bored or tired, we just don't breathe as deeply as we usually do. As this theory goes, our bodies take in less oxygen because our breathing has slowed. Therefore, yawning helps us bring more oxygen into the blood and move more carbon dioxide out of the blood.

Uplifting Wed. Via Pinterest #140

 

A Lego bridge

 

The German town of Wupperttal is home to Lego-Brücke, also known as LEGO Bridge—a bridge that looks like it's made of candy-colored LEGO bricks, providing a foot- and bikeway for those looking to cross over the street below. Despite appearances, the bridge is not made of giant plastic bricks however, but concrete, and it was painted to look like the popular building toys by street artist Martin Heuwold.

The smallest country

Size is not a criterion in our definition of what constitutes a country. A country need only be an independent state, with distinct territorial boundaries, and its own government. The smallest country is the Vatican City.

Vatican City, a city-state surrounded by Rome, Italy, is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. It's home to the Pope and a trove of iconic art and architecture. Its Vatican Museums house ancient Roman sculptures such as the famed “Laocoön and His Sons” as well as Renaissance frescoes in the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel, famous for Michelangelo’s ceiling.

Capital: Vatican City

Area: 109 acres

Founded: February 11, 1929

Population: 1,000 (2017)

Happy New Year!

 

Merry Christmas

 

Brightspots #5

 

 

Two Large Plastic Garbage Bags

A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags rips, and every once in awhile a $20 bill falls out onto the sidewalk.

Noticing this, a policeman stops her, and says, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of your bag."

"Oh, really? Darn!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back, and see if I can find them. Thanks for telling me."

"Well, now, not so fast," says the cop. "How did you get all that money? You didn't steal it, did you?"

"Oh, no", said the little old lady. "You see, my back yard is right next to the Lambeau Field parking lot. On game days, a lot of fans come and pee through the fence into my flower garden. So, I stand behind the fence with my hedge clippers. Each time some guy sticks his thing through the fence, I say, '$20 or off it comes.' "

"Well, that seems only fair," laughs the cop. "OK. Good luck! Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?"

"Well, you know, not everybody pays."

 

                                     

                                                 

 

Typhoid Mary

“Typhoid Mary” was a real historical person who became notorious in the early 1900s. She was an Irish woman named Mary Mallon who immigrated to the United States in the 1880s. Though she had no symptoms of typhoid fever, she carried the bacteria in her blood and could pass it on to other people. Because no doctor could convince her that this was true and she didn’t feel sick, she insisted on working as a cook. During her career, she infected at least 51 people, three of whom died, before she was isolated in enforced quarantine for the last decades of her life.

Uplifting Wed. # 140 via Pinterest

 

The oldest hotel in the world

 

The Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan spa hotel was originally opened in 705 AD, and in 2011 it was declared the oldest hotel in the world by Guinness World Records (currently 1311 years old).

The hotel has been owned and operated by the same family for 52 generations since its inception.

Wishing you.........

 

Amazing

 

                                               This is 4.5 million year old meteorite

 A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon

Brightspots #4

 

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.

The next morning while they are eating breakfast,
The young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
"That laundry is not very clean", she said.
"She doesn't know how to wash correctly.
Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry,
The young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a
Nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband:

"Look, she has learned how to wash correctly.
I wonder who taught her this."

The husband said, "I got up early this morning and
Cleaned our windows."

 

Romans 14:4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand alone.

 

First McDonalds drive thru

 

The first McDonald's Drive Thru was installed in a restaurant based in Sierra Vista, Arizona, located near the Fort Huachuca military installation. Military rules forbade the soldiers from wearing their military uniforms in public, and they weren't about to change into civilian clothes just to grab a burger and run back to base, so restaurant manager David Rich came up with a solution: cut a hole into the wall and allow members of the military to pick up their orders without stepping out of their car. The convenience and simplicity of the idea quickly caught on.

Our first ladies #10

 

Letitia Tyler (née Christian; November 12, 1790 – September 10, 1842) was the first wife of President John Tyler and first lady of the United States from 1841 to 1842.^[1]

She married Tyler, then a law student, in 1808 at Cedar Grove, her family home. Their twenty-nine year marriage appears to have been a happy one, although Letitia avoided the limelight during her husband's political rise, remaining in Virginia during most of his time in congress. Her later life was dogged by ill-health; a paralytic stroke suffered in 1839 left her an invalid. As first lady, she remained in the White House living quarters, leaving them only to attend her daughter Elizabeth's wedding in January 1842. She suffered another stroke in September 1842 and died, becoming the first First Lady to while serving in her role.

Together, John and Letitia Tyler had four daughters and three sons who lived to maturity.

 

Tyler appears on a 28p (£0.28) commemorative postage stamp from the Isle of Man Post Office, issued May 23, 2006, as part of a series honoring Manx-Americans.^[10] She also appears on a one-half ounce gold coin and a bronze medal issued by the United States Mint on July 2, 2009.

 

 

Uplifting Wed. #139 via Pinterest

 

The only one

 

Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S President to hold a patent.

Lincoln's Patent. On May 22, 1849, Abraham Lincoln received Patent No. 6469 for a device to lift boats over shoals, an invention which was never manufactured.

Did you know?

 

Lady Liberty came to America in 350 pieces. To help pay for the statue's construction and assembly, the chunks, including her head and her torch, were put on display at venues like the World's Fair in Paris and the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

Brightspots #3

 

A woman goes to the doctor for her yearly physical.

The nurse starts with certain basic items.
How much do you weigh?' she asks.
'115,' she says.
The nurse puts her on the scale.
It turns out her weight is 140
The nurse asks, 'Your height?'
'5 foot 8,' she says.
The nurse checks and sees that she only measures 5' 5'.
She then takes her blood pressure and tells the woman it is very high.
'Of course it's high!' she screams, 'When I came in here I was tall and slender! Now I'm short and fat!

And just in time for Halloween.....

Sunrise

 Arizona is known for beautiful sunsets but our sunrises are worth getting up for....

Uplifting Wed. #141

 

Stand sill

 

Stand still and consider the wonderous works of God
Job 37:14

First Lady #9

 

                                                   Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison

Anna Tuthill Harrison was the wife of President William Henry Harrison and grandmother of President Benjamin Harrison, and was nominally first lady of the United States during her husband's one-month term in 1841, though she never entered the White House due to the fact that he died exactly one month after the inauguration. The couple had been married 45 years when he was elected President and she had borne him five children. At the time she was too ill to travel when her husband set out from Ohio in 1841 for his inauguration, it was a long trip and a difficult one even by steamboat and railroad, with February weather uncertain at best and she at 65 was well acquainted with the rigors of frontier journeys as he was a decorated soldier. So, it was decided that his daughter-in-law would accompany him and serve until May when she planned to make the trip. She was packing when she received word of his death and never went. Accepting grief with admirable dignity, she stayed at her home in North Bend until the house burned in 1858; she lived nearby with her last surviving child, John Scott Harrison, until she died in February 1864 at the age of 88.