Seniors and Social Isolation!

Wikipedia defines social isolation as “a state of complete or near-complete lack of contact between an individual and society. It differs from loneliness, which reflects temporary and involuntary lack of contact with other humans in the world.”   Social isolation has a connection to mortality and morbidity and can therefore affect one’s quality of life.  Here are the rankings of the states in which older people have the highest and lowest risk of social isolation (courtesy of the American Association of Retired Persons).

Highest risk
1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. Kentucky
4. Alabama
5. New Mexico
6. West Virginia
7. New York

Lowest risk
1. Utah
2. New Hampshire
3. Delaware
4. Minnesota
5. Colorado
6. Iowa
7. Arizona

Source: AARP Bulletin, March 2019, p. 48; and, Senior Report, 2018.  See all the state rankings at americashealthrankings.org.

Commonly Misspelled and Confused – Letter H!

Happy Monday!  Here is a list of some of the more commonly misspelled/misused words (courtesy of the Internet Accuracy Project) beginning with the letter “H.”  Enjoy!

Commonly misspelled words

H – handkerchief, happily, harass, height, heinous, hemorrhage, heroes, hesitancy, hindrance, hoarse, hoping, horrific, humorous, hypocrisy, hypocrite.

Commonly Confused Words

HEAR – to perceive sound  He claimed he could hear the footsteps of approaching zombies. HERE – at this place; at this point in time  Although there was no evidence to support his claim, the frantic man continued to insist zombies had been right here in this room.

Source: Internet Accuracy Project’s commonly misspelled, confused and misused words is a helpful collection of some of the most commonly misspelled, confused and misused words.

A Simple Prayer!

Here is a prayer that I ran across recently (it was on the reverse side of a chaplain’s business card) . . .

Do not fear
what may happen tomorrow.
The same loving Father
Who cares for you today
will care for you tomorrow
and everyday.
Either He will shield you
from suffering
or He will give you
unfailing strength
to bear it.
Be at peace, then,
and put aside all
anxious thoughts
and trust in the Lord.

St. Francis de Sales

Indiscreet Oxymoronica?!

So much humor these days hovers on the fringe of indecency (sexual, profane, etc.); oxymoronica are no different.

“Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.”  (Malcolm Muggeridge)

“I had to give up masochism — I was enjoying it too much.”  (Mel Calman)

“Personally I know nothing about sex because I’ve always been married.”  (Zsa Zsa Gabor)

“The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.”  (Florence King)

“A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.”  (Coco Chanel)

“There is . . . no woman so naked as one you can see to be naked under her clothes.”  (Michael Frayn)

“What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore.”  (Edward Dahlberg)

Source: oxymoronica by Dr. Mardy Grothe

Fun Fact Friday, Number One Hundred Twenty-Four!

Today’s real facts (courtesy of http://www.snapple.com) are all about cars.  Did you know that . . .

• the city of Los Angeles has about 3 times more automobiles than people?  (Real Fact #137)
• the blue whale’s heart is the size of a small car?  (Real Fact #232)
• there are more saunas than cars in Finland?  (Real Fact #256)
• New York was the first state to require cars to have license plates?  (Real Fact #849)
• if you could drive your car upward, you would be in space in less than an hour?  (Real Fact #1392)

Source: http://www.snapple.com/real-facts

Marriage Advice, Number Nine!

Here is the ninth installment of advice on How to be Happy Though Married.  Enjoy!

The Pleasures of Marriage
“What an addiction to happiness a good wife makes!  Such a one is the best companion in prosperity, and in adversity the surest friend; the greatest assistance in business, the only lawful and comfortable means by which she can have issue, and the great remedy against incontinence..”  (Aristotle, Aristotle’s Masterpiece, c. 1684)

The Pains of Marriage
“Of all the actions of a man’s life his marriage doth least concern other people; yet of all actions of our life it is most meddled with by other people.”  (John Seldon, English scholar, 1584-1654)

Hints for Husbands
“Remember, if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all..”  (Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618)

Hints for Wives
“A true wife should be like a Tortoyse under her shell, ever bearing her house upon her backe.”  (A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving, 1615)

The Marital Bed
“I see silk clothes, if these qualify as clothes, which do noting to hide the body . . .  Our women have nothing left to show their lovers in the bedroom that they haven’t already revealed on the street.”  (Seneca, De Benificiis, 1st Century AD)

Source: How to Be Happy Though Married: Matrimonial Strife Through the Ages, compiled by Emily Brand.

Amazing Adjectives, Number Fifty!

Here is a word from the Greek pachy, meaning “thick,” + dermatos, meaning “skinned.”  As exemplified in The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives for the Extraordinarily Literate.

“A person as pachydermatous as he cannot be expected to understand that his attentions are not welcome.”

“The huge lumbering pachydermatous creature showed remarkable ability to locate and follow its small prey.”

pachydermatous

\ pak-i-dur-muh-tuh s \, adjective;

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of pachyderms.
2. thick-skinned; insensitive:

Source: The Highly Selective Dictionary of Golden Adjectives for the Extraordinarily Literate by Eugene Ehrlich and http://www.dictionary.com.

The Shipwreck!

On this the birthday (in 1775) of Joseph Mallord William Turner (aka J.M.W. Turner or sometimes William Turner), an English painter printmaker and watercolorist with connections to the Romantic style, I thought I would share one of my favorite Turner paintings: The Shipwreck, painted in 1805.   This painting currently resides at the Tate Britain, in London, England.  He is “best known for his expressive colourisation, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings” (wikipedia).

Source: photo of The Shipwreck (1805), by J.M.W. Turner; photo © Tate (part of the Tate Turner Collection), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)

 

 

“In God We Trust!”

Today marks the day (in 1864) that the phrase “in God we trust” was coined.  the two-cent piece of 1864 was the first to bear this motto.

In addition, April 22nd was the day for several other “firsts,” such as the first . . .

• neutrality claimed by the federal government (General George Washington, 1793)
• death penalty ban by a state (Pennsylvania [except for murder in the 1st degree], 1794)
• Library of Congress collection ($5,000 appropriation for books and to furnish a reading room, 1800)
• round-the-world bicycle trip (Thomas Stevens, 1884)
• capture of a ship in the Spanish-American war (American gunboat Nashville, took Spanish ship, Buenan Ventura, 1898)
• ice-loading machinery (William Metz Ice Company, Pittsburgh, PA, 1917)
• orchestra from the United State to make a European tour (Symphony Society of New York, 1920)
• nuclear-powered submarine (Nautilus, Electric Boat Company [division of General Dynamics Corporation], Groton, CT, 1955)
• Earth Day (1970)
• American boycott of the Olympic Games (summer Olympics, Moscow, Russia, 1980)
• genetically altered virus approved for use in a vaccine (Department of Agriculture, to fight a form of swine herpes,  1986)
• museum commemorating the Holocaust (U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC, 1993)
• state law decriminalizing hemp cultivation (North Dakota, 1999)

Source: Famous First Facts by Joseph Nathan Kane, Steven Anzovin, and Janet Podell.

Some Coffee Humor!

Here are a few gems that I found on the Reader’s Digest website.  Enjoy!

If you sit down to enjoy a hot cup of coffee, then your boss will ask you to do something that will last until the coffee is cold.

Barista: How do you take your coffee?
Me: Very, very seriously.

If the local coffee shop has awarded you “Employee of the Month” and you don’t even
work there, you may be drinking too much coffee.

A man went to his psychiatrist and said, “Every time I drink my coffee, I get a stabbing pain in my right eye,” the psychiatrist said, “Well, have you tried taking the spoon out?”

Source: Reader’s Digest, Military Jokes