Tell me what company you keep, and I'll tell you who you are."
Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616 (Author of Don Quixote)
Norm's Daily Ramblins
"THANKS TO GOD" FROM THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE CONSTITUTION
You would think that the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States would know better than to use the name of God in any of their official documents. What's the matter with them? Why didnt' the ACLU stop this sort of thing?
Could it be that the Secular Humanists interpretation of Jefferson's comment about "partition" is totally wrong and these men just wanted to make sure that no religion was favored above another? They didn't want God and faith banned from life and the government. They knew it must be a normal experience in life.
What an incredible job the Sedular Humanists have done in the past 75 years taking faith and the value of religion out of our culture and removed it from having an influence on our culture. From Dewey and H.G. Wells on down they have done an incredible job -- even to the point you think I'm the one that's so blind. What would certain people in Congress and the ACLU to with the proclaimation below?
STATE OF NEW-HAMPSHIRE.
IN COMMITTEE of SAFETY,
EXETER, November 1, 1782.
ORDERED, THAT the following Proclamation for a general THANKSGIVING on the twenty-eighth day of November, received from the honorable Continental Congress, be forthwith printed, and sent to the several worshipping Assemblies in this State, to whom it is recommended religiously to observe said day, and to abstain from all servile labour thereon.
M. WEARE, President
By the United States in Congress assembled.
PROCLAMATION
Therefore the United States in Congress assembled, taking into their consideration the many instances of divine goodness to these States, in the course of the important conflict in which they have been so long engaged; the present happy and promising state of public affairs; and the events of the war, in the course of the year now drawing to a close; particularly the harmony of the public Councils, which is so necessary to the success of the public cause; the perfect union and good understanding which has hitherto subsisted between them and their Allies, notwithstanding the artful and unwearied attempts of the common enemy to divide them; the success of the arms of the United States, and those of their Allies, and the acknowledgment of their independence by another European power, whose friendship and commerce must be of great and lasting advantage to these States:-----
Do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these States in general, to observe, and request the several States to interpose their authority in appointing and commanding the observation of THURSDAY the twenty-eight day of NOVEMBER next, as a day of solemn THANKSGIVING to GOD for all his mercies: and they do further recommend to all ranks, to testify to their gratitude to GOD for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience of his laws, and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.
Done in Congress, at Philadelphia, the eleventh day of October, in the year of our LORD one thousand seven hundred and eighty-two, and of our Sovereignty and Independence, the seventh.
JOHN HANSON, President.
Charles Thomson, Secretary.
(Some of us will know the tune. Sing it loudly.... to Yourself)
Over the river and thru the wood,
To grandmother's house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Thru the white and drifted snow, oh!
Over the river and thru the wood,
Oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes,
And bites the nose,
As over the ground we go.
Over the river and thru the wood,
To have a first-rate play;
Oh, hear the bell ring,
"Ting-a-ling-ling!"
Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day-ay!
Over the river and thru the wood,
Trot fast my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground,
Like a hunting hound!
For this is Thanksgiving Day.
IT WASN'T THE PILGRIMS WHO HAD A THANKSGIVING FEAST
While Thanksgiving and Pilgrims are a familiar combination,
the truth is that the Pilgrims never held a feast they called Thanksgiving.
But wait! Before you stop reading what seems like another irreverent rewrite of history -- or before you cancel the turkey -- let me tell you more.
The Pilgrims DID have a feast in 1621 after their initial harvest.
The reason for it was described in Bradford’s first-hand account. "So that we might, after a special manner, rejoice together after we had
gathered the fruit of our labors."
They may have called it a “rejoicing” day . . . but not “thanksgiving.”
Why wouldn’t the Pilgrims have called it Thanksgiving? Because to those devout colonists, a day set aside for thanksgiving would have been a day of fasting and prayer.
Well, anyway, their “rejoicing” day has become the model for our Thanksgiving. I hope no one has a problem with that. (Now please pass the pumpkin pie.) We need to take full advantage of this special day. It’s a great time for families and friends to have fellowship and celebrate gratitude to God for His provision and favor.
But let’s do more than that. It’s a time to renew our commitment to thankful living. Thankful living is an attitude, a way of life. Thankful living is a spirit of gratitude in all circumstances.
Paul put it this way, Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.
I Thess. 5:16-18.
Thankful living springs from a clear understanding of God’s call, knowing that the purpose for our being here on planet earth is to glorify Him with our lives.
Thankful living means we express our confidence in the constant mercy and faithfulness of God regardless of what life may deal us. He’s always there!
Thankful living means that by grace we rest in His plan for everything in life. Yet we stand ready. No matter what life throws our way; no matter what the circumstances – even being called into a battle with ovarian cancer.
Thankful living means more than being thankful on Thanksgiving Day. It’s living each day as though it may be our last, as the expression of a person who truly trusts the Lord.
Some families will come to the Thanksgiving table where there’s an empty chair.
Others will gather in the midst of the anguish of ill health or the impending loss of someone dear.
And some homes will have a missing parent or spouse because they now live in someone else’s house.
These are such difficult situations. But no matter what you may be facing this holiday, help is available. Ask God for strength and claim his grace and joy as you commit to thankful living.
Happy Thanksgiving Loved Ones, Friends, as well as all those we have not yet met.
Norman Plunkett
So ever since we first heard about you we have kept on praying and asking God to help you understand what he wants you to do; asking him to make you wise about spiritual things; and asking that the way you live will always please the Lord and honor him, so that you will always be doing good, kind things for others, while all the time you are learning to know God better and better.
We are also praying, too, that you will be filled with his mighty, glorious strength so that you can keep on going no matter what happens -- always full of the joy of the Lord and always thankful to the Father who has made us fit to share all the wonderful things that belong to those who live in the Kingdom of light. For he has rescued us out of the darkness and gloom of Satan's kingdom and brought us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who bought our freedom with his blood and forgave us all our sins.
Colossians 1:9-14 The Living Bible, Tyndale Press, Wheaton, IL
Here's an old favorite article I always post for Thanksgiving.. Enjoy, if you've never read it before. Enjoy even if you have seen it. Your memory is not that good anyway.
The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a tuberous plant in the same genus as the morning glory. It is a long tapered tuber with a smooth skin. The flesh of the tuber ranges from white to yellow, orange and purple. It is often confused with the potato, which is in the same order but not the same family. The soft, sweet, orange variety is called a "yam" in most of the United States but should not be confused with the true yam.
I'll tell you one thing, the best sweet potato I ever ate in my 70 years on this planet was grown in South Carolina. We were on our way home from Myrtle Beach in the middle of September and saw all these huge wooden containers at the side of the road with a farmer sitting in a lawn chair. We stopped and bought a bushel of the greatest sweets I ever tasted. The texture was also superb. I understand that North Carolina sweet taters is (I know it's "are") just as good.
Sweet potatos are rich in dietary fiber, vitamin C and vitamin B6. In tropical areas they are a staple food crop. The tubers, leaves and shoots are all edible. The tubers are most frequently boiled, fried or baked. Tubers can also be processed to make starch and a partial flour substitute. The plants and tubers are frequently used for animal feed. Industrial uses include the production of starch and industrial alcohol.
The plant is a tropical annual vine that does not tolerate frost. Depending on the variety and conditions tubers mature in 3-9 months. Sweet potatoes rarely flower outside of the tropics and are primarily propagated by cuttings and tubers. Some variants are sold as house plants.
Sweet potatoes are believed to have originated in South America and spread throughout the tropical Americas into the Caribbean and across the South Pacific to Easter Island. Very likely the tuber drifted across the sea in a manner coconuts still do today.
Because the general Polynesian word for the sweet potato is kumara, and the South American word is kumar, it was originally thought that this was evidence of cross-Pacific contact between South America and Polynesia. However, linguists have determined that kumara and kumar are totally unrelated and have nothing to do with each other. This therefore cannot be considered as evidence of pre-Magellan trans-Pacific crossings.
Farmers in the Southern United States started using the term "yam" to distinguish between the softer orange variety and the drier white varitey. The true yam is rarely found in the United States except as an import and the orange variety must be labeled "yam sweetpotato". Taken from the Wikepedia Free Encylopedia.
Sweet Potato is also a nickname for the Ocarina which all us old people played when we were kids along with the Jew's Harp or Juice Harp.
I've found that posting a program and history about "The Quiz Kids" always has been well received by visitors Ramblin by. So Thanksgiving seems like a good time to remind you about them. The audio of the program is being provided by an excellent Old Time Radio site belonging to Rich Samuels. You will be visiting his website to
start the audio of The Quiz Kids. I suggest you start with the second program when they appeared on The Jack Benny program. Each Quiz Kid program has four segments you need to start if you want audio. N.Plunkett
The Quiz Kids radio program, broadcast from June 1940 to July 1953 on NBC, Blue Network, ABC, and CBS.
Everytime we feature the Quiz Kids, we receive email asking questions. This is so rare because we probably receive five responses all year from the many visitiors to Norms Ramblins and four of them are in response to the Quiz Kids. This apparently was a very influential program in the lives of "us kids" back then that the old folks still retain as a fond memory.
The Quiz Kids first debuted in the summer of 1940 and was conceived as a juvenile variation of the premiere quiz show of the day, Information Please. Its creator was Louis Cowan, a Chicago-based advertising and public relations man who’d dabbled in radio since the mid 1930’s. The widespread popularity of Information Please, with its panel of "respected intellects," had proved that such programs could over come the “highbrow” stigma among the listening public. Cowan felt the next step would be to form a quiz program based on a panel of children, but not just any children! Cowan wanted prodigies –kids of immense intellect, poise, personality, and microphone presence. Just as important, Cowan also wanted these kids to never come across as arrogant or brash; children whom he auditioned that gave an impression of cockiness -or even children with “pushy or disruptive” parents- were summarily rejected.
The first children selected for The Quiz Kids audition recording were found from newspaper headlines. The first child chosen was a 6-year old boy, Gerard Darrow, who could identify more that 1,000 birds and was also and expert on butterflies, flowers, reptiles, amphibians, and shells! By the time the program was approved and the first episode was aired, the five member panel of Quiz Kids consisted of Gerard Darrow, Joan Bishop, Van Dyke Tiers, Mary Ann Anderson, and Charles Schwartz.
If Cowan and his staff had trouble selecting children to fill the program, they had an even worse time finding a suitable host/master of ceremonies. A pair of college professors auditioned for the part, but proved far too pompus and vain, giving the children not enough chance to talk. Another applicant was an intellect who traveled on the lecture circuit, but was rejected for "giving away" half the answers. Out of a field of 20 candidates one emerged, not because of any outstanding abilities he possessed, rather because all the rest had been rejected. The sole survivor was Joe Kelly, a former vaudeville performer and host of the “hayseed” music program, The National Barn Dance. Kelly, having only received a third-grade level education before entering show business, was hardly the ideal candidate to host a quiz show where he would be called upon to referee children’s responses to indepth questions concerning all matter of arts, science, history, and philosophy –a show in which every moment on the air held the potential of disastrous embarrassment for the former vaudevillian! But Kelly was my no means stupid, and in fact was a quick learner. Though the kids were never coached, Kelly was given a list of the questions and answers well in advance of the programs, and held regular meetings with the show’s researchers to go over potential problems with his diction. Eventually Cowan also hired a linguist to assist Kelly.
The quiz show operated on a basic format quite familiar to today’s audiences; Kelly would ask the panel of five children a series of questions throughout the program. The first child to raise their hand and give the right answer would receive points. Based on these points, four of the five children would return again on the next Quiz Kids program, accompanied by a new contestant. All of the contestants were given 0 savings bonds for each program they attended.
The show became quite popular and within a few months of its premiere parents across the country began writing in, certain that their own little “prodigies” could more than compete with the other “Quiz Kids.” Soon there were national competitions for Quiz Kids contestants, Quiz Kids board games, and a national tour of the show -with “Quiz Kids” visiting the White House, or making appearances with Hollywood stars. Certain kids became so popular that they made regular returns to the program, even if they had once been out-competed; only when they reached the “disqualifying age” of 16 would they leave the show for good. Among the most famous Quiz Kids were Gerard Darrow (the original “Quiz Kid”), Ruth Duskin (a 7-year old Shakespeare expert), math-masters Joel Kupperman and Richard Williams, Harve Fishman (a “jack of all knowledge"), and Claude Brenner (a 12-year old who had such a polished demeanor on air that he was asked on at least four occasions to stand in for Joe Kelly as program host).
The amazing abilities of the children, and the difficulty of questions they were capable of answering, led many to suspect that the programs were “fixed,” but apparently (and more amazingly) none of the children were coached or aided with any of the questions. On two occasions panels of professors from The University of Chicago and the University of Michigan came to the program for a little “good-spirited” (though ill-advised) competition with the Quiz Kids. The result were losses for the professors. The final score for The University of Michigan panel was 390 to the Quiz Kids' total of 420. The illustrious Chicago professors fared even worse with a score of 140 to the kids' 275. In one of the most difficult questions ever answered on the Quiz Kids program, Joel Kupperman was asked to imagine an 8-inch circle with an equilateral triangle inside it, with another circle inside the triangle, and an equilateral triangle inside that... and so forth. With only a moment’s notice, he was then asked to give the area of the fifth triangle in this progression. This question had been submitted by a “university expert” and when his answer differed from Joel’s, the expert was proven to be wrong.
A Quiz Kids television program was founded in 1949 and aired for several years with Joe Kelly and other members of the radio program, but the television version proved nowhere near as popular as the radio episodes. The Quiz Kids radio program aired its final episode on July 5th, 1953. In 1982 former “Quiz Kid,” Ruth Duskin, wrote a book entitled Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids? which provided a wise and a haunting look at how the program (for better and worse) effected the lives of the child participants. In the ensuing years many of the former Quiz Kids had grown to resent their experience on the program, feeling exploited and somewhat robbed of their youth.
At the time of the book’s publishing, former math-whiz Richard Williams had become a consul general in Canton, China and the first US ambassador to Mongolia. Jack Lucal had become a Jesuit Priest, Harve Fishman a TV show producer. Ruth (Duskin) Feldman had remained in the Chicago area and become a wife, mother, and journalist. Joel Kupperman had become a professor at the University of Connecticut and was living a private life, refusing all interviews about his quiz show experiences. Gerard Darrow, the 6-year old naturalist prodigy and original Quiz Kid, had not fared as well as the others. Throughout his adult life he’d held a string of menial jobs with long periods of unemployment. In the end he died a lonely broken man, at the age of 47.
YOUR MATRESS AND BOX SPRING UNCOMFORTABLE AT TIMES? Awww! THAT'S SO TOUGH!
HOW ABOUT THIS BOX SPRING?
"THEN WE HAVE A FLATTER HARDER MATTRESS IF YOU WISH."
OR PERHAPS, YOU WOULD LIKE TO TRY OUR WATERBED?"
SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO GET UP TO GET A GLASS OF MILK
You say that you can't always sleep well at night?
Your bed is uncomfortable?
You have so many problems to think about you can't go to sleep as you would like?
Perhaps, having looked at these photos will give you a different perspective and new appreciation for our troops. You've got a wonderful bed, don't you?
We're always honored by visitors. We do our best to provide new information on this "Ramblin" page ... and leave some of the stuff we think is extra good a little longer than the others. Please visit again.
We'd enjoy hearing from you. Drop us a note. We'd enjoy knowing you're visitin.' To do so, click the "Drop Us A Note" link right below.
We extend to you an old Southern salutation you don't hear much any more down here.... "Ya'll come back now, ya'hear?"
Norman Plunkett
God is good -- ALWAYS!
And especially as He floods you with all the grace you need no matter what the situation. As you trust Him, God's grace is always just enough and always on time.
