“Long, long ago, in a lavish lodge near the village of Liverwurst, lived a lovely lass called Linda the Lonely.
Linda was lonely because, ever since she was a little girl, she had been
locked in the lodge by her wicked uncle, Lord Ludwig of Liverwurst.”
So begins “The Legend of Linda the Lonely” in The Sesame Street Book of Fairy Tales.
By now you have noticed something strange about the first paragraph of poor Linda’s story—it’s full of the letter “L.”
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Have you seen the presidents on Mount Rushmore? Walked among the giant sequoias of Yosemite National Park? Stood on the precipice of the Grand Canyon? Explored an underwater shipwreck as a Junior Ranger?
The United States’ National Park Service turned 100 in 2016, but even before it was formed, 35 national parks and monuments were already in operation. We can celebrate a rich heritage of forests, deserts, mountains, sweeping landscapes, historical sites, and other treasures saved for our education and enjoyment.
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You are a doctor, and you have been told that you must assist a patient with their suicide. If you don’t you will be breaking the law.
Doctors in some American states, in Quebec, and in some Scandinavian countries are facing this increasingly ethical dilemma: Help patients kill themselves or be punished.
In fact, doctors in Quebec, through Bill 52, are given a kit with three medicines designed to calm their patients’ anxiety and then stop their breathing, according to the Church Around the World.
Brittany Maynard, a vivacious 29-year-old woman dying of cancer of the brain, committed suicide in 2014 with the help of her physician. You can read her story here.
J. J. Hanson, a Marine Corp veteran, learned that he, too, is suffering from the same inoperable brain cancer that Brittany Maynard dealt with. You can read his story here.
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Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. Though that is over 200 years ago, we still read his work today.
He’s famous for his short stories and for poems like “The Raven.” (You know, that “Nevermore” poem.)
In an essay, Poe explained how he was very careful to choose just the right words for how they sound and for the effect he was trying to achieve. You’ll see that he was very successful in his poem “The Bells,” which is rich with writer’s devices.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for racial equality in the 1950s and early 1960s before he was assassinated, but he did not advocate violence as a means of reaching this goal.
Read the following excerpt taken from Stride Toward Freedom, written by him in 1958:
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Advertising is everywhere. TV commercials bombard you 18 minutes out of every hour, but they are not the only places companies try to sell their products. Think of billboards, huge pictures of food products stuck to restaurant windows, and even your lowly cereal box.
Yes, even after you’ve bought the cereal, you still get advertisements about it. Take a look at a cereal box and notice all the adjectives there to describe the cereal and tell you how great it is. Here’s a sentence from my Cinnamon Life® cereal:
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Buck is a dog who grew up in sunny San Diego, California, but suddenly finds himself thrust into the frigid world of the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory, Canada, in the late 1890s. You can read about him in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
Here’s Buck and his first encounter with . . . well, I’ll let you figure it out:
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When I think of a new year and new beginnings, I think of Samson, the Bible’s strongman.
You know, Samson with the long hair. Samson who wanted to marry a woman from an enemy country, a woman his parents did not approve of. Samson who tore a lion apart with his bare hands and then pestered people about it. Samson who killed thirty men at his wedding. Samson who hung around with Delilah.
That Samson.
Samson’s life was miraculous from the beginning. His mother could not have children, but an angel of the Lord announced to her that she would have a child and that he would help free the Israelites from the iron fist of the Philistines.
For most of his life, however, he pretty much did whatever he wanted to do.
But here’s the amazing part, the part about new beginnings:
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You remember Samson of Bible fame? You can read about him in Judges 13-16. God kept giving him chances to get it right, and Samson pretty much blew it every time by focusing on himself instead of on what God wanted.
But you don’t have to be Samson to feel the regret of missed chances or the frustration of personal failure. To be human is to know the gut-punch of remorse.
Maybe you feel as if you failed in something last year. Maybe you wish you could do something all over again, only this time you’d win. You’d do the right thing. You’d have the courage. You’d succeed.
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Do you have Christmas season memories you hold dear? Here are a few of mine:
The year my mother saved her hard-earned cake-decorating money to buy a sewing machine for me when I was a college freshman. Little did I know that I would use that machine to sew little outfits for my firstborn son and to teach my daughter how to sew on it. In fact, she has it now, and she is teaching her daughters how to sew.
The year we skipped Christmas.
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