For 157 years, Americans have had fun with eating conversational candy hearts. Whether you’re nine or 90, odds are you’ve received Sweethearts ® Conversation Hearts on Valentine’s Day. After all, there are plenty of the much-loved Sweethearts Conversation Hearts to go around, as the New England Confectionery Company (NECCO ®), America ’s oldest multi-line candy company, produces eight billion of the sweet treats each Valentine’s Day season. Fifty years ago there were some 25 different ways that expressed one's feelings toward another. In 2004 there were nearly 100 sayings.

Last year, they added these new Sweetheart Sayings:
“#1 Fan,” “Fit for Love,” “Dream Team,” “Love Life,” “Be A Sport,” “Love My Team,”  “Cheer Me On,”  “Be My Hero,” “Pot of Gold” and “All-Star.”

This year, 2006, they seem to have focused on the home:
"Sweet Home," "Home Soon," "Call Home." "House Party." "Home Sick," "ILU." "Go Home," "To," "And," and finally "Home Run."

Whether sports or homey inspired sayings to cheer on that special someone, the Sweethearts original recipe remains the same.  With only three to six calories a-piece, the candies always hit a home run with that special someone. 

They also have a Sweethearts™ Gum, introduced last year as the world’s first heart-shaped, blister pack gum with assorted flavors and colors. Sweethearts gum has zero net carbs and is made with Splenda which is sure to bring a smile to sweethearts of all ages. Adding a twist to the iconic candy, Sweethearts Gum features two-sided sweet sentiments like “Be Mine/Be True,” “It’s Love/Marry Me,” “Sweet Talk/Cool” and “Kiss Me/Hug Me.”  Sweetheart's Gum comes in five intense fruity flavors including Boomin Berry, Fruit Blast, Juicy Orange, Green Apple and Luscious Lemonade. The suggested retail price for the 12-piece package of Sweethearts Gum is $.99. The product is available at all stores now.

But that's enough of the NOW. Let's talk about the THEN. How carefully we "handled the little candies with our dirty fingers." We would select a candy heart or hearts that seemed to express a message of our inner feelings toward the one we were giving it to. But we would "simply die" if we knew that the message got through as intended -- at least in grade school.

The famous candy hearts were floating around in most boy's pockets around Valentine's Day -- along with coins minted in the 1940's, usually a pocket knife, couple of marbles, a rubber band or two and appropirate lint that was always present in a boy's pocket. And the person who was given the candied message from that unsanitary storehouse would read the message, innocently eat the candy, and smile with approval.

This was a sure way to express our embarassed affection for the girls. It was silent, sweet, and clear. Good thing there was a limit on negative sayings that would convey a cool, quiet message of derision to my male friends.

At other times of the year, this same company used the same candy recipe for a nickle sized wafer. They would have denominations on them printed in food color -- denominations of 5, 10, and 25 with a circle on the edge. Some of you will remember and others will be able to say I bought one of those last week since they are still made after 157 years. Packaged in a six-inch waxed paper roll, NECCO wafers were a staple in my diet when I was a boy -- last year.

I used to pretend they were coins but had one in my mouth so often. The corn starch powder they had on them mixed with the different flavors was wonderful. There was also a smaller two-inch package that sold for a penny. The large roll was a nickle. I always liked to lick the surface to remove the powder and see the rich color of the wafer itself and a clearer image of the denomination that was printed on it. Sometimes we would put four or five wafers in our mouth and weld them together with our spit ( That's saliva in a little boy's mouth. )

Pastel-colored little candy disks called NECCO wafers first appeared in 1902, named for the acronym of the New England Confectionery Company.

As some "sidetrack information" check this out. In the 1930s, Admiral Byrd took 2 1/2 tons of NECCO Wafers to the South Pole -- almost a pound a week for each of his men during their two-year stay in the Antarctic. During World War II, the U.S. government ordered a major portion of the production of the wafers. Since the candy doesn't melt and is 'practically indestructible' during transit, it was the perfect food to ship overseas to the troops.

The New England Confectionary company, popularly know as NECCO, was founded in 1847. Each year there is a press release telling the public that NECCO is still manufacturing the wafers and hearts we all love. Home base has been Cambridge, Massachusetts since 1902, when it started making conversational hearts that are available between Christmas and Valentine's Day -- even though production of the hearts goes on all year. Today, three plants turn out 100,000 pounds of candies EVERY SINGLE DAY! That translates into 26 million pounds a year.

This familiar candy that symbolizes love, has a shelf life of three to five years. With nearly 10 billion conversational hearts being sold at this time of the year, it's the single largest selling Valentine based product on the market, according to NECCO.

If you plan a special event for next year's Valentine Day be aware that you can order your own hearts with any custom sayings you select or write. Wouldn't that be fun with friends? By the way, to do that you must have a minimum order of 3,600 pounds.

Many of the sayings have been popular for over a hundred-years and are still used today. You can't improve on "Be Mine," or "I Love You." But each year, out of date sayings are discontinued and new ones added. One of the latest is "Fax Me."

So when you pop one of the conversational hearts in your mouth this Valentine's season, pause and think that you are not unique. 8.5 billion others are being popped into mouths just like you.

If you don't know where to buy the old Necco wafers drop me an E-mail and I'll send some resources on to you. Remember those Sherbet Mints, Chiclets, Walnettos, Chuckles, and the cherry/licorice/lemon/grape "candy buttons that were on what looked like adding machine tape? You bet you do. But that's another article, isn't it? Click the link below to have a fun trip to NECCO in Revere, MA N. Plunkett

Harlan (Krakow) Kreklow says that the referece to "Chicagoese" could extend to other northern "European American" cities like Toledoese, Milwaukeeese, or even parts of New York City. Poking fun at how we used to talk (with vestiges still able to be found) is all so hilarious and so much fun to hear again. After all, we grew up listening to "real people" who talked like this. And some were even in our family, "Ennah?" In fact, I could list about 25 names of friends and relatives who use many of these expressions with gusto. Enjoy. See what you missed? Thanks Harlan for passing it on. If you really want to know, I talk a little like dis when I wanna have fun. This example of "Chicagoese" has strong overtones of Italian Chicago street talk.

THE ONLY LANGUAGE I'LL EVER BE HAPPY SPEAKING...

1. "Grachki" (grach'-key) is Chicagoese for "Garage Key" as in, "Yo, Theresa, waja do wit da grachki? Howmy supposta cut da grass if don't git intada grach ta get da mowar?"

2. "Uptadaendada" (up-ta-da-en'-dada) as in, "Joey, you kin ride yur bike uptadaendada alley but not acrost or I'll bust yur butt . . ."

3. "Sammich" or the variation -- "sannich." It's Chicagoese for sandwich. When made with sausage, it's a sassage sammich; with shredded beef, it's an Italian beef sammich, a local delicacy consisting of piles of spicy meat in a perilously soggy bun.

4. "Da." The definite article is a key part of Chicago speech, as in "da bears" or "da bulls" or "da Mare" - the latter denoting, for as long as he wants it to, Richard M. Daley, or Richie, as he's often known.

5. "Jewels." Not family heirlooms or a tender body region, but a popular appellation for one of the region's dominant grocery chains -- Jewell Tea -- to wit, "I'm goin' to da Jewels to pick up some sassage." As in most Chicago pluralizations, the "S" is pronounced with a hissing sound, rather than the usual "Z" sound of American pluralizations.

6. "Field's." Marshall Field is a prominent Chicago department store. Also Carson Pririe Scott, a major department store chain, is called "Carson's," etc.

7. "Tree." The number between two and four. "We were lucky dat we only got tree inches of snow da udder night."

8. "Prairie." A vacant lot, especially one on which weeds are growing.

9. "Over by dere." i.e. "over by there," a prolix way of emphasizing a site presumed familiar to the listener. As in, "I got the sassage at da Jewels down on Kedzie, over by dere."

10. "Kaminski Park." Perhaps the high concentration of ethnic Poles makes people want the White Sox to be playing in this mythical ballpark, rather than in their true home, Comiskey Park. Now they've given it an electronic name that no one uses.

11. "Frunchroom" as in, "Getottada frunchroom wit dose muddy shoes.'' It's not the "parlor." It's not the "living room." In the land of the bungalow, it's the "frunchroom," a named derived, linguists believe, from "front room.

12. "Uze." Not the verb but the plural pronoun "you." "Where uze goin'?"

13. "Downtown." Anywhere south of the zoo and nord of Soldier Field down by da lake.

14. "Braht" is short for Bratwurst. "Gimme a braht wit kraut."

15. "Cashbox." Traffic reporter slang for tollbooths. "Dere's a delay at da cashbox on da Skyway."

16. "Goes." Past or present tense of the verb "say." For example, "Then he goes, 'I like dis place!'"

17. "Guys." Used when addressing two or more people, regardless of each individual's gender and usually preceeded by a defining word, "youse."

18. "Pop." A soft drink. Don't say "soda" in this town. "What kinda pop you got?" A soda is made with ice cream and flavored carbonated water.

19. "Sliders." Nickname for hamburgers from White Castle, a popular Midwestern burger chain similar to Krystal in the Southeast. The individual hamburgers are smaller than others and just slide down without chewing. "Dose sliders I had last night gave me da runs."

20. "The Taste" The annual Taste of Chicago Festival, a huge extravaganza in Grant Park featuring samples of Chicagoland's fine cuisine. Takes place around and before the Fourth of July holiday.

21. "Ji-eetyet?" This is the word you use when you want to express the phrase, "Did you eat yet?"

Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons was one of Radio’s longest-lived crime dramas. For almost 20 years Mr. Keen, the kindly pedantic detective, and Mike Clancy, his dim-witted broguing Irish assistant, would stumble across case after outlandish case. For the program’s initial few years the elderly detective solved an assortment of missing-persons cases, but soon seemed to specialize only in murders.

Bennet Kilpatrick was the best known of the "Mr. Keen" actors. He was the initial reader for the character and set the lofty, educated tone, which Phil Clark and Arthur Hughes were to maintain later in the series run. Jim Kelly played the role of Clancy, Keen’s stereotypical strong-arm assistant.

The program was the product of Frank and Ann Hummert, mass-producers of daytime radio dramas, and the show’s contrived plotlines reflect this “soap-opera” heritage. Throughout the program’s entire run we never learn by what authority our good crime-team acts; they're simply “called in” to assist the police whenever a murder has occurred. Despite their ambiguous authority and “employ,” they do seem to have tremendous powers of arrest, thinking nothing of entering warrantless into homes or following any semblance of "rules of evidence." The crooks they come against are as transparent and self-incriminating as Mr. Keen's logic is opaque and mysterious.

None-the-less the fact that the show ran for seventeen years is a resounding testament to the program’s entertainment value and widespread appeal. They were murder mysteries served up “plain and simple.” And in defense of poor lambasted Mr. Keen, I suppose the next fifty years will not look too kindly upon the majority of today’s TV-shows either!

Matthew 11:28-30 The Message Bible, Navigator Press, Colorado Springs, CO

THE PHRASE "LEARN THE UNFORCED RHYTHMS OF GRACE" IS ONE GREAT METHPHOR I HAD NEVER PAID ATTENTION TO BEFORE LAST FALL.

The Scripture you've just read above has some wonderful words of Jesus. They are as comforting as one can find anywhere in the bible. Jesus makes some powerful key suggestions -- "Walk with me." "Work with me."

That's how we get to know someone intimately. By walking and working we learn the heart and mind of the person we are doing it with and develop an intimate love.

And isn't that a beautiful phrase -- "learn the unforced rhythms of grace." That's one powerful phrase! "The unforced rhythms of grace."

Some say the men and women who grew up during the depression and served in WW2 are anywhere from 75 to 90 years of age and leaving this time and space dimension at the rate of nearly 1,500 a day... that's over 10,000 a week

We need to realize what is happening. I remember when there were still Civil War Veterans and Spanish American War Veterans. All the WW1's are gone and this generation is the next. I want to thank my niece, Christine Shaw, who lives in Flagstaff, AZ for sending this simple, sincere, and moving website.

Click the first link below to read and listen to a moving story and photographs that this Doctor has put together. Then click the second link that will allow you to listen to some excellent radio excerpts from WW2.

Below is an excellent story by Ronnie Thomas, a reporter for the Decatur Daily, Decatur Alabama. It's about "one of those special people" we are losing. The story was written for last fall's Veteran's Day.

Wallace Willingham was 65 years old before he began to say much about his experiences in World War II. And then it was only at the prodding of his children. As youngsters, they tore apart their father's book about the Army's 87th Infantry Division, hoping to learn at least something of what their dad endured, after he balked at their questions.

"Were you ever shot at?" they would ask.

"Sometimes," he'd say.

So that his grandchildren and great-grandchildren also would know what he did in the war, he gathered a cache of old material, including maps, newspaper clippings, letters and photographs from storage to show them. The framed documents now occupy a place of honor on a den wall of his Betty Street Southwest home. As American soldiers battle insurgents in Iraq, the retired minister prays for them, and he honors them. He bonds with them, too, and he believes they are as much of a "greatest generation" as he was.

And he realizes that some toss "hero" about loosely. "A hero is one who does what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences," he said. "Our men and women in Iraq are heroes."

The Army drafted Willingham, now 78, out of Jacksonville High School in 1944 as an 11th-grader. He said he could have gotten a deferment because of farming, but he was ready to go.

"Anyway, who could have imagined a Depression-era Alabama farm boy getting a ride on the Queen Mary?" he said.

The luxury ship that the Allies transformed to a troop carrier docked in Scotland. In January 1945, Willingham crossed the English Channel to Le Havre, France. His unit pushed into Belgium, where fierce fighting continued in the aftermath of the major German offensive at Bastogne, known as the Battle of the Bulge.

While holding a position on a hillside in Saint-Hubert, west of Bastogne, Willingham watched famed Gen. George S. Patton Jr. riding in a jeep, reviewing the troops. Later, as Willingham's unit prepared to join the attack on the Siegfried Line — Adolph Hitler's fortification along the French and German border — Patton came for a speech to the commanders of several divisions of his 3rd Army, to "tell them what we were going to be facing." Willingham said Patton noted, "We're going to Berlin and raise the American flag, but there will be some dog tags brought back."

Willingham recounted a somewhat humorous incident that occurred near the Mosel River when he and fellow scout John Sherrer of Queens, N.Y., and four others went on patrol to nab a German soldier to interrogate about troop movements.

"It was dark, and we came upon an older fellow dressed in a uniform," he said. "We returned to camp with a local firefighter. A newspaper account ran the headline, '87th captures fire department.' But our officers told us not to fret, that he was as good as an SS trooper in giving us what we needed. We took him back, thanked him and released him."

On another patrol, Willingham and another soldier walked down a road when an 88 mm shell dropped between them. "We would have been gone for sure, but luckily, it was a dud," he said. "All I could think of at the moment was that mother had me on a prayer list at church. And I pressed the little Gideon Bible that I carried in my jacket pocket closer."

Nicknamed "Tuffy" by the men in his platoon, the scrappy Willingham crossed the Rhine River near Rheims, Germany, on March 25, 1945, his 19th birthday. "As we fought to hold our ground, and it became more desperate for the Germans the tougher the war became," he said, "we faced five counterattacks, at times the enemy coming at us with fixed bayonets that involved some hand-to-hand combat."

Willingham's outfit drove south of Berlin and pushed to the Czechoslovakian border, where they met Russian soldiers. The war in Europe ended in May 1945, and after a 30-day leave, Willingham prepared to be a part of the force that would invade Japan. But atomic bombs dropped on two Japanese cities in early August forced surrender the next month.

Only after he felt that his mission was complete did Willingham seek help for frostbite, which he suffered in one of his legs fighting during the bitter winter. He spent the last months of 1945 in a hospital at Camp Atterberry, Ind., near Indianapolis, where the Army discharged him.

Among his medals is the Bronze Star, which he received "for meritorious achievement in ground combat against an armed enemy."

Our old friend, Gene Bustard, sent us these incredible photos of three dimensional art being used in advertising. Here are some German 18 wheelers that have the same principle done with photography. Totally amazing.

But RISKS must be taken because the greatest hazzard in life is to risk nothing. You see, the person who risks nothing -- does nothing -- has nothing -- and is nothing.

One who avoids taking RISKS may avoid suffering and sorrow but they cannot learn, feel change, grow, love, and live.

Chained to their securities and bound by thier certitudes, they are a slave and have forfeited their freedom.

ONLY THE PERSON WHO RISKS LIFE IS TRULY FREE!

Norman and ChrisPlunkett

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.