Louise Carroll: Random thoughts for April
I am spring cleaning my files, looking at all the clutter of random ideas, thoughts and notes. I’m getting rid of them by putting them in this column.
My Dyngus Day column about the Polish tradition got a good response. Sister Joanne wrote, “In some places, they use perfume rather than water, probably an Estee Lauder idea.” I wasn’t surprised by the number of responses because the Ellwood City area is a microcosm of the world. Growing up in Ellwood, I remember the Victor Emmanuel Club, Romania Club, Hungarian Club, Saxon Club, Sons of Italy, Polish Club, Saxon Club and some I have forgotten. Some of them are still active.
Your funny bone is not actually a bone. It’s a really sensitive nerve and hitting that nerve isn't funny at all.
Egyptians were the first to wear glitter, which was made of crushed beetle shells.
“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” - John Steinbeck
I use to have this sign in my office: “Insanity is inherited. You get it from your children.”
“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.” - Charles Dickens
My son Michael posted this: "A real man would never stand there and watch his woman pay for anything! He would go out and wait in the car.”
Three Musketeers candy used to come with three favors: chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.
“Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.” - Heinrich Heine
“I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.” - Edith Cavell, nurse and humanitarian
When you use your cell phone while driving, you up your chance of being in an accident by 400%.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair, novelist and reformer
"If you want something you never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done before." -Thomas Jefferson.
“Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.” - Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, poet and novelist
Abraham Lincoln's corpse has been buried, exhumed, inspected or reburied at least seventeen times since his death. That should be in the Guinness World Records.
“Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy.” - Bob Marley
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Louise Carroll: Random thoughts for April
