A few years ago I bought a red flowering crabapple tree and carefully planted it in our yard. But it didn't exactly thrive - in fact, one by one the leaves started dropping off! My husband failed to s...
The mimosa pudice plant is sometime called the sensitive plant. Found in Central and South America, it folds up its leaves in response to heat, wind or human touch. Some human beings are like that. ...
Tea is the ubiquitous Chinese drink. In welcoming guests, chatting with friends, and celebrating special occasions, serving tea is a necessary social ritual. According to legend, tea was discovered...
Recently newspapers, radio and TV carried the tragic, but comic, story of a man who was determined to finally get rid of a troublesome mouse. The man threw the stunned mouse on a pile of leaves he ...
The Guinness Book of World Records keeps track of some very unusual records. One is, "The longest time living in a tree." A man named Bungkas went up a tree in Benkes, Idonesia in 1970 and has been th...
A French criminologist named Emile Locard came up with an idea which he called Locard's exchange principle. It says that any person passing through a room will unknowingly leave something there and ta...
The great naturalist John Muir wrote; "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you,...
Several years ago, The Wall Street Journal carried a story about Sally, an overly conscientious youngster who made herself miserable over the smallest failures and setbacks. Early one fall, while the ...
A guest at a hotel was in a hurry to check out when he realized he did not have his briefcase. He went to the bellhop and said, "Would you please hurry to room 1203? I think I left my briefcase there....
A guest at a hotel was in a hurry to check out when he realized he did not have his briefcase. He went to the bellboy and said, "Would you please hurry to room 1203? I think I left my briefcase there....
In northern Europe, a walk through a winter's forest is a bleak affair—white, stark, cold, lifeless except for occasional boughs of green holly bearing bright red berries. In Medieval times, these bou...
In Bill Keane's comic strip The Family Circus the little girl is explaining time to her little brother. She says, "Yesterday's the past, tomorrow's the future, but today is a gift. That's why it's cal...
Owning up to one's shirked responsibility leaves room for a steady calm....
Two preachers who didn't get along very well met on the street. One of them said, "I heard you speak the other night and recognized that sermon - you preached it 14 years ago." Somewhat chagrined, ...
In the washroom of his London club, British newspaper publisher and politician William Beverbrook happened to meet Edward Heath, then a young member of Parliament, about whom Beverbrook had printed an...
In a speech at Hillsdale College, Jack Kemp quotes Pope John Paul II whose Veritas Splendor warns of "the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism." Says Kemp: "Too often from our ...
In the washroom of his London club, British newspaper publisher and politician William Beverbrook happened to meet Edward Heath, then a young member of Parliament, about whom Beverbrook had printed an...