Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. Lawrence Block
The Source Weekly has some of the sweetest, kindest, most delightful customers and readers you can imagine. (In all honesty, there are also some real toots, impatient, belligerent, and demanding, but enough about them.) One of our more charming readers sent me this story, and I have her permission to share it, word for word, with you today. Enjoy.
“My husband and I have two pecan trees in our backyard. Last summer, on a clear, sunny day, one of the trees dropped a limb. A very large limb. There wasn’t bad weather, the limb wasn’t bug-infested, it just fell off. It missed the fence and all the power lines, so it did no damage. My husband got busy over the next few days cutting it up into firewood. Even had to buy a new chainsaw as the one he had wasn’t up to the job. He couldn’t have told you why he was so gung-ho to get it cut up, but he just felt he had to take care of it.
We haven’t used our fireplace for its intended purpose in many years, so a decision had to be made about what to do with all that wood. He decided he’d take it to his sister in San Antonio. His sister lives with their 93-year-old father, and our daughter lives there, as well. Then over the next several months, he made three trips, hauling that wood in our SUV. His sister joked about what she was going to do with all that wood. They hadn’t used their fireplace more than a few times the past several winters.
Then came the winter of 2021. The freezing temps hit them before we got it and they lost power in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. With it, they lost heat and the ability to cook. And suddenly, they were dependent on the fireplace for heat and the ability to prepare hot food. My father-in-law is in ill health and has dementia, and they considered taking him to a hospital to ride out the weather, but the roads were too icy to make the trip into town. Without the wood from our tree, who knows what they would have done.
Being 200 miles away and dealing with our own freezing weather and power outage, we would have been unable to help them in any way, but because our perfectly healthy tree dropped a perfectly healthy limb in the summer, giving us time to cut it up and move it to San Antonio, a bad situation was prevented from becoming tragic.
Serendipity? Perhaps, but I prefer to think, ‘the Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform’.”
– Tharon Tanner
Serendipity – You don’t have to understand it, you just have to have faith.
An Arkansas man arrested and charged in connection with the Capitol attack, is offering to let you help him financially to support his legal fight. In exchange for sending him just $100 or more, Richard “Bigo” Barnett will send you an autographed picture of him sitting with his feet propped on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. In addition to smiling for the picture, he carried a stun gun into the Capitol and later showed off a piece of stolen mail to reporters. Hmmm. But it is unclear whether he can actually sell the photo of himself because it was taken by a photographer, and the companies that the news photographers work for actually control copyright to their work.
Internet Explorer debuted 26 years ago, in 1995, as part of Windows 95 and we loved it. At its peak in 2002, it had 95% of the browser market. Now it is about 5%, so Microsoft is officially getting rid of Internet Explorer on June 15, 2022. In the obit, Microsoft says it is slow, no longer practical for, or compatible with many modern web tasks and is far less secure than modern browsers. RIP. We sure enjoyed our time together.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Actor Jim Belushi is 67.Comedian Jackie Mason is 91. Sports commentator Dick Vitale is 82. Dickie V. Guitarist Mick Box of Uriah Heep is 74.Actor Bob McGrath of Sesame Street is 89.Bob Johnson. Singer Dennis Locorriere of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show is 72.Actor Marla Gibbs is 90. The Jefferson’s. Actress Ally Sheedy is 59. Brat Pack. Actor Richard Thomas is 70. John-Boy. Actor Joan Van Ark is 78. Singer Janet Lennon of The Lennon Sisters is 75. Guitarist Barry Melton of Country Joe and the Fish is 74.Musician Paul McCartney is 79. Actor Isabella Rossellini is 69. Country singer Blake Shelton is 45. Actor Gena Rowlands is 91. Actor Phylicia Rashad is 73. Singer Ann Wilson of Heart is 71.
Singer Boy George is 60. Singer Steve Walsh of Kansas is 70. Actor Courteney Cox of Friends is 57. Actor Neil Patrick Harris is 48. Doogie Howser, M.D. Singer Gino Vannelli is 69.I loved the Black Cars album. Vannelli and his brother moved to LA in ‘72. Desperate and broke, they waited for hours in the parking lot outside A&M Studios, hoping to get a record deal. When Herb Alpert, the co-owner of A&M Records, finally emerged, Vannelli ran toward him, handing him a demo tape while being chased by security guards. Alpert signed Vannelli and released their debut album, Crazy Life, in the summer of ‘73.
Clarence Williams III, best known as Linc Hayes on TV’s Mod Squad, and Prince’s father in the movie Purple Rain, died at 81 of colon cancer. Eric Carle, who illustrated more than 70 children’s books over his long career but was best known for 1969’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, died at 91. He was one of my children’s favorite from a very early age. Felix Silla, a trained circus performer best known for portraying tiny Addams Family member Cousin Itt, died at 84 of pancreatic cancer.
Mattel, home to the ever-so-famous Barbie, Matchbox and MEGA toys, needs your old toys. The 76-year-old toy company has launched a pilot program to recover and recycle materials in certain old toys and make them into future Mattel products, creating circular sustainability. You know, fun coming full circle. The toy take back program is called Mattel PlayBack and will enable families to extend the life of their Mattel toys once they are finished playing with them. To print out a free shipping label, visit Mattel.com/PlayBack. They will sort, separate, process, recycle or down cycle into other plastic products, or convert from waste to energy. CNN reported, “that of all the plastic ever created, only 9 percent has been recycled. The majority ends up in landfills or in the natural environment like the ocean, where they can take hundreds of years or longer to break down.” Unfortunately, plastic toys are no different. A recent study found that LEGO bricks, which are made of plastic, can survive up to 1,300 years in the ocean. In that time, they cause much harm to marine life and fragile ecosystems.
Food: Burger King is bringing back crown-shaped chicken nuggets after a 10-year absence, the latest nostalgia play in the fiercely competitive fast-food industry. Those must come from Sussex chickens.
My Harley-riding brother sent me this: Motorcycles are vital for survival. Dinosaurs didn’t have them and look how that turned out. I am still wondering how to respond.
Monarch sequoia trees can live up to 3,000 years, are fire-adapted, having survived dozens of fires in their lifetimes, but not any like this fire. It was really bad for our world. The 2020 Castle Fire was probably the most destructive fire in 700 years, destroying between 7,500 to 10,000 monarch sequoias, which is about 10% to 14% of the world’s entire mature giant sequoia population. The land looks like the surface of the moon in pictures I saw. Just dust. The redwood forests are so efficient in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, providing critical wildlife habitat, and watershed protection for farmers and communities. Makes you want to cry. Conditions in the park remain so dry that a sequoia tree was discovered still burning in a remote area of the forest last month.
Joanna Gaines says that when Chip dies, she will have the number 16 tattooed on her wrist in honor of her husband. Or maybe she will do a squirrel…she is so funny. No. 16 is his lucky number, and the name of the new men’s store at the Silos. The Silos is expanding from 2-acres to more than 5-acres, a full city block. They will have Magnolia Market, the Silos Baking Co., Magnolia Table restaurant, the Seed & Supply Garden store, and a food truck park. They will add the Magnolia Press coffee shop, a furniture showroom, a Wiffle ball field, a historic church that the couple relocated to the site, and a miniature village of six new themed shops carrying everything from leather goods to women’s clothing and children’s toys. Joanna says that the next project is the silos themselves and then she is finished with that area. The Silos? I like them just the rusty way they are. There is also a hotel makeover in the works. The launch of the TV channel will be pushed to January 2022 after extensive Covid-19 related production delays on its slate of new series. They are launching Magnolia app on July 15, 2021, that will offer the complete first seasons of Fixer Upper: Welcome Home and Magnolia Table, the complete Fixer Upper library, and complete seasons of new shows, including Growing Floret, The Lost Kitchen, Homegrown, Family Dinner and Restoration Road with Clint Harp. Oh, and their 16-year-old son Drake, got his driver’s license. Whew. Looks like they have been really busy.
Since reminding you of really good things never seems to happen enough, I will tell you again that seniors, age 65 and older, are eligible to receive a discount on their Lake Jackson water bill equal to 40% of the base water and sewer bill. There is a form available at the water department. Bring your driver’s license for verification. What a deal. Another little something to help us get excited about aging. Right.
A 37-year-old woman has been charged with a 2018 murder, after fatally poisoning her 62-year-old friend by filling her water bottle with six bottles of Visine. She also defrauded her of nearly $300,000 which she spent on gambling, expensive gifts, and spa treatments for friends and acquaintances. Now the suspect is saying that she actually helped the woman die by suicide. In 2020, a SC woman pleaded guilty after she gave her husband drinks laced with eye drops that she fed him over the course of three consecutive days. In 2019, a paramedic in NC, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after an autopsy determined his wife, Stacy, was poisoned by eye drops. Eye drops, more than something just to get the red out!
It is called Joints for Jabs and will run until July 12. Washington State will now allow adults, 21 and older, to have one free pre-rolled marijuana joint with their first or second vaccine shot. A Dutch court has ruled that Shell must step up its climate change effort and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030. Trump has reportedly been telling people that he is going to be President again in August. Hmmm. Coup? Mutiny? The Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease, the first such approval the agency has made since 2003.After arresting a flower delivery driver for DUI on Mother’s Day, California police stepped up and finished delivering the remaining arrangements. They say they hoped they got all the flowers to their destinations on time, because everybody in the world’s got a mom.
Most everyone knows that the creator of Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hat was Halston. Now, Netflix is streaming a drama about the most important American couturier of the 70’s as he lost artistic control of his name, did drugs, and partied too much. But let me tell you, the fashion in this show is fabulous, and they show it off perfectly. It is definitely an adult watch that took weeks to finish because the only time I watch is while I cook, but worth it just to see his clothing and the process of building his fashion house.
Almost every day, I bring my lunch. Today I had a beautifully ripened avocado that dropped out of my purse and on the sidewalk, on the way into the office. So, now I am having guacamole for lunch with my salmon salad. 😊 I know it is going to be a good day because I found $40 when I put my skirt on this morning. Hmmm. I may even consider buying a lottery ticket. Have a great week and as always, thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to read us.
LISA
