Some good Shakespeare

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact”

Fighting?

“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it.”
-- George Bernard Shaw

“You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.”
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

“The painful warrior famous for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil'd, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd”
-- William Shakespeare

Facts about Brendan Behan

born Feb. 9, 1923, Dublin, Ire.—died March 20, 1964, Dublin.
Irish author noted for his earthy satire and powerful political commentary.

Reared in a family active in revolutionary and left-wing causes against the British, Behan at the age of eight began what became a lifelong battle with alcoholism. After leaving school in 1937, he learned the house-painter's trade while concurrently participating in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as a courier.

Behan was arrested in England while on a sabotage mission and sentenced (February 1940) to three years in a reform school at Hollesley Bay, Suffolk. . He was deported to Dublin in 1942 and was soon involved in a shooting incident in which a policeman was wounded. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 14 years.

Best way to ask for a miracle

"If you ask in My Father's name all things will be granted should they glorify Him."
-- The Bible

Comment: Include peace and reconciliation.

Hope!

"It is the ashes in our lives that permit a greater love to come."
-- Fr John Corapi

Irish on Politics

It has been said of Sir Boyle Roche, MP (1743-1807) for Tralee, Co. Kerry), that he only opened his mouth to change his feet. On one occasion he told his audience that "the cup of Ireland's misery has been overflowing for centuries and is not yet half full." Joining that remarkable cup is this spectacularly mixed metaphor, also by Roche: "All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand."

"Do you want to see my shadow?" News from St. Lucia

It is hot. All the windows and doors are open and birds are nesting in the house. Driving through villages on tiny twisting roads cut through the rainforest chickens peck at stray trash. Ragged lonely dogs skinny and dirty hang their tongues as they scurry off the road. Men carry machetes, to harvest coconuts and just because. They stop in the street to sharpen them on rocks. Groups of children of all ages dressed in colorful school uniforms laugh and talk on the way to school. Grizzled emmaciated old men with yellowing dreadlocks stare into nothing as they walk. Just past the square in Soufriere we take a wrong turn. The road narrows and eyes from the groups sitting along the street watch us carefully. A frantic beggar runs to offer help for a price. Everyone is suddenly shouting. When we finally make it out through the maze of crooked streets the air rushes through the window and finally we breathe. At the beach the mountains reach into the ocean and relief from the heat finally comes. The water is so clear and salty we float with ease and talk together in the water as if we were sitting at the kitchen table.

Prayer for Mikey

Saint Theresa's Prayer

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be confident knowing you are a child of God. Let this prescence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

More poisonous plants for babies

Vines:
Goldenchain
Moonseed
Philodendron
Rubber vine

Other:
Jimsonweed (weed found in gardens)
Various mushrooms
Rhubarb leaves

Irish on the farm

Notice in a Co. Down field ....
"TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED - PLEASE SHUT THE GATE"

Sign on an Irish gate:
The farmer allows walkers across the field for free, but the bull charges.

It was so windy that one of our chickens laid the same egg four times.

The Irish on mariage

"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Marriage is the same."
--Oscar Wilde

"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
-- Oscar Wilde

Me darlin' was sweet, me darlin' was chaste
Faith, an' more's the pity.
For though she was sweet an'though she was chaste,
She was chased all the way through the city.
Anonymous Irish verse, circa 1790

more classified adds

For sale—an antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs and large drawers.

For sale—a quilted high chair that can be made into a table, pottie chair, rocking horse, refrigerator, spring coat, size 8 and fur collar.

Four-poster bed, 101 years old. Perfect for antique lover.

Now is your chance to have your ears pierced and get an extra pair to take home, too.

More poisonous plants for babies

Shrubs:
Castor bean
Daphne
Duranta
Holly
Jessamine
Lantana
Mistletoe
Mountain laurel
Privet
Pyracantha (firethorn)
Rosary pea
Yew

More poisonous plants for babies

Trees:
Black locust
Buckeye
Cherry
Chinaberry
Goldenchain
Holly
Mountain laurel
Sandbox
Tung

more classified adds

Found—dirty white dog. Looks like a rat. Been out awhile. Better be reward.

Bill's septic cleaning. We haul American-made products.

Open house. Body shapers toning salon. Free coffee and donuts.

Joining nudist colony. Must sell washer and dryer, $300.

More poisonous plants for babies

Houseplants:
Dumb cane
Caladium

Ground plants:
Baneberry
Belladonna
Caladium
Caper spurge
Death camas
Nightshade
Poison hemlock
Pokeweed
Water hemlock
White snakeroot

more classified adds

Lost cat. Last seen at the Park County Rod & Gun Club shooting range.

Main Street Pizza: We deliver, or pick up.

Nordic track, $300. Hardly used. Call Chubby.

Exercise equipment: queen size mattress and box springs, $175.

poisonous plants for babies

Pictures of many of these are available in Cornell University's Poisonous Plant Database. If you need help identifying a particular plant, take a clipping to a local nursery for assistance. And if you suspect poisoning from a plant or any other source, call the national emergency hotline of the American Association of Poison Control Centers at (800) 222-1222, which will automatically redirect you to a local poison control center.
Flowers:
Azalea
Daffodil bulbs
Delphinium
False hellebore
Foxglove
Hyacinth
Hydrangea
Larkspur
Lily of the valley
Lupine
Monkshood
Oleander
Rhododendron
Tansy
Wisteria

Secretary's day

Thanks for all your patience and kindness Cindy L.

jpr

comment: Kick $20 in flowers for your sec and make her feel special...she has earned it!

more classified adds

Whirlpool built-in oven—frost-free.

Star Wars Job of the Hut, $15.

Tickle Me Elmo. New in box. Hardly tickled, $700.

1988 Toyota Hunchback, $2,000.

Classified adds

Free one can of pork and beans with purchase of three bedroom, two bath home.

American flag, 60 stars. Pole included, $100.

Amana washer, $100. Owned by clean bachelor who seldom washed.

Free puppies. Part German Shepherd, part dog.

Why women shop differently from men: The definitive answer!

Logic, science, and even Biblical narratives defy adequate explanation as to the difference in shopping between the sexes. So then reason, truth, and understanding have to be abandoned in search of the root cause. To our great fortune we bathe in a sea of ignorance. It is from here that the question will finally be answered. Superstition, ancient mysticism, and chance bring enormous benefits to our solution. None of which need fail us as often here does good sense.

The uneducated have long held that new and shiny objects are only made by the unnatural mind. Such wares are constructed to be irresistible in appeal to those natural beings for which these demons seek to take possession. Women it seems are their more ready victims. The stores and malls are the constructed haunts of all material fairies as well as other minor foul spirits of compulsion.

Men it appears are not so easy duped but defer their failure to delusions of grandeur and wealth offered by the most evil of fiends. So they avoid the entrapment of shopping in order to spend their lives in sports bars, gambling casinos, and unseemly places where they are certain to become heavily soiled.

It is with great hope to lessen the confounded mind that this nonsense is put forward. I believe the question may now be put away for all generations.

Grandpa’s Cellar

The stairs are long and steep,
The rail is high for tiny hand to keep,
All steps in darkness rest,
Small feet their courage to the test,
Into sterile world of white,
Of walls and ceiling bright,
Show from bare bulbs held over,
Tools and machines aliened with order,
No kitchen cupboard smell,
No warmth of mother’s dwell,
No fresh scent of outside stay,
No place in manly space to play,
Empty not of grandpa’s pipe and ash,
Fill here much labor, and toil in stash,
To boy child his first vision draws,
In grandpa’s cellar as man with life of cause.

-- jpr

Tombstone humor

On a brewer:
G. Winch, the brewer, lies buried here.
In life he was both hale and stout.
Death brought him to his bitter bier.
Now in heaven he hops about.

Arguing

“When arguing with a stone an egg is always wrong”
~ African Proverb

“Women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is, married women.”
~ Mark Twain

Tombstone humor

Here lies Barnard Lightfoot
Who was accidentally killed
in the 45th year of his age.

This monument was erected
by his grateful family.

hell

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”

Winston Churchill

Hell

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
-- Adolf Hitler

Hell

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
William Shakespeare
The Tempest.

Heaven

The heavens and the earth and all that is between them, do you think they were created in jest?
--The Koran

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
--Thomas Hardy

Important questions

What do you call two young married spiders?
Newly webs.

What gets bigger the more you take away?
A hole.

What lives in winter, dies in summer,
and grows with its root upward?
An icicle.

Heaven

“If the Lord should bring a wicked man to heaven, heaven would be hell to him; for he who loves not grace upon earth will never love it in heaven”
~Christopher Love

Humor

What do you get if you cross a four leaf clover with poison ivy?
A rash of good luck.

Heaven

“Heaven means to be one with God.”
~ Confucius

“Heaven liveth at the feet of mothers”
~ Muhammad

Heaven

“Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
--Mark Twain

Heaven

“Men and women will retain their sex in heaven”
-- Pope John Paul II

Truism

Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
- Ogden Nash

Saying thank you

“I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks.”
William Shakespeare

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G.K. Chesterton

“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues.”
Cicero

Thought for the day

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
~Abraham Lincoln

Irish Bagpiper

As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a grave side service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Kentucky back-country. As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost; and being a typical man I didn't stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight.

There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play.

The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man. And as I played 'Amazing Grace,' the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full. As I was opening the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "Sweet Mother of Jesus, I never seen nothin' like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."

Easter quote

"And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here."
~ St. Augustine, Confessions

Easter quote

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."
~ Pope John Paul II

Names I use for my dog!

Houdi
Houdini
Houdamus
Houdapottamus
Houdi Tooty
Uh Oh!
Oh Merde!
Damn!
Not there!
Good Boy!
Bad Boy!
You didn’t!
Get Down!
No No!
Houidid this?
Borax
Haiku

Comment: Posted in increasing use of term! jpr

Easter Week by Joyce Kilmer

In memory of Joseph Mary Plunkett)

("Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.")

William Butler Yeats.

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave."
Then, Yeats, what gave that Easter dawn
A hue so radiantly brave?
There was a rain of blood that day,
Red rain in gay blue April weather.
It blessed the earth till it gave birth
To valour thick as blooms of heather.
Romantic Ireland never dies!
O'Leary lies in fertile ground,
And songs and spears throughout the years
Rise up where patriot graves are found.
Immortal patriots newly dead
And ye that bled in bygone years,
What banners rise before your eyes?
What is the tune that greets your ears?
The young Republic's banners smile
For many a mile where troops convene.
O'Connell Street is loudly sweet
With strains of Wearing of the Green.
The soil of Ireland throbs and glows
With life that knows the hour is here
To strike again like Irishmen
For that which Irishmen hold dear.
Lord Edward leaves his resting place
And Sarsfield's face is glad and fierce.
See Emmet leap from troubled sleep
To grasp the hand of Padraic Pearse!
There is no rope can strangle song
And not for long death takes his toll.
No prison bars can dim the stars
Nor quicklime eat the living soul.
Romantic Ireland is not old.
For years untold her youth will shine.
Her heart is fed on Heavenly bread,
The blood of martyrs is her wine.

Easter by Edmund Spenser

MOST glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;
And, having harrowd hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin;
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest dye,
Being with Thy deare blood clene washt from sin,
May live for ever in felicity!

And that Thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love Thee for the same againe;
And for Thy sake, that all lyke deare didst buy,
With love may one another entertayne!
So let us love, deare Love, lyke as we ought,
--Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

Megan's Haiku idu

Meg...you have in one stroke turned on the entrie family's create or be destroyed compulsion!

Easter Day by Oscar Wilde

The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.'