Archive for the ‘wisdom,’ Category

1) Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don’t hurt.
3) Families are like fudge…mostly sweet, with a few nuts
4) Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground..
5) Laughing is good exercise. It’s like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.

By Anne Condon
Saturday, December 6, 2008

We’re hearing of turmoil and increasing trouble as the economy continues to descend dramatically. How do people deal with this kind of crisis? Two experiences I’ve had might shed some light.

At 17 my father took me to the bank to open my first account. He kept it simple. “If we deposit $100,” he said, “and right away you spend $105, you’re in trouble. But if you spend $95 and save $5, you’ll be on safe ground.”

I blurted out, “Well, what if I only spend $75 and save $25?” I’ll never forget his response. “Honey, if you can live by that principle, you’ll always be in control of your finances!” To this day I’ve followed his instructions. The result: solvency, self-respect, peace of mind.

The vicissitudes of life, however, can catch us unawares, and we find ourselves forced to face this unhappy fact. Years ago our family had some horrendous financial reversals.

We were in a rental then, and one afternoon I was near panic, wondering how the rent would be paid. It was due shortly. I recall thinking of a verse from Psalms: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:10). Continuing to calm myself, I opened my Bible to the Lord’s Prayer. The verse that stood out in my great need was, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).

One Bible commentary said it was a sin to look to tomorrow. God meets our every need today. That is enough!

Assessing our situation, I thought how true. We had a roof over our heads, clean sheets on the beds, and a pot of homemade chili simmering on the stove. All needs were met for that single day. What a humbling lesson to live in the moment of now.

I felt the heavy mental weight begin dropping away. I stopped worrying and being overly anxious. My desire was to be right with God, and that meant losing the fear and trusting Him completely. In my study, I discovered a corroborating statement that heartened my faith. “Never ask for tomorrow: it is enough that divine Love is an ever-present help; and if you wait, never doubting, you will have all you need every moment. This sweet assurance is the ‘Peace, be still,’ to all human fears, to suffering of every sort” (“Miscellaneous Writings” by Mary Baker Eddy, http:// www.spirituality.com).

That very peace washed over me with fresh hope and courage and joyful expectation. I knew I’d reached a higher plateau of spiritual understanding where I could experience God’s law of infinite supply operating in my life. And so it proved. Our financial obligations were all met, and our circumstances began to improve.

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Today my goal is to “owe no man anything but to love one another” (Romans 13:8). I see this love as unconditional; love that excludes the exploitation of others; love that includes the liberating compassion of Christ. Embracing this idea can bring God’s bountiful blessings to all mankind.

SHREWSBURY, Mass. — The imminent chopping down of a crab-apple tree, to make way for a large trash bin, was the last straw.

Lee Perrone and Pat Henry, residents of a subsidized housing complex for the elderly here, tied chairs to the tree and sat down to protect it. Their protest kept the chain saws at bay, drawing curious onlookers and local reporters. A meals-on-wheels program sent them food. Their landlord, the Shrewsbury Housing Authority, sent them eviction notices.

“My daughter thinks I lost it,” says Ms. Perrone, 74 years old. Her friend Ms. Henry is 65.

The eviction notices brought to a head more than a year of friction between the housing agency and tenants of Shrewsbury’s Francis Gardens apartments, in a battle over cluttered patios, fire codes, an allegedly dangerous garbage bin, and who decides what’s best for old people.

It was the garbage-bin hazard that meant the crab-apple tree had to go, the housing agency said. Another tenant injured her arm after falling on uneven pavement near the trash bin. The place chosen to relocate it was where the tree stood.

Francis Gardens is the kind of “independent living” community that more people who want to avoid nursing homes are winding up in. Residents of such places often cope with limited mobility and advancing infirmity, as they try to preserve their quality of life. In Shrewsbury, a central Massachusetts town of some 33,000, tenants bristled at what they saw as excessive safety precautions.

Francis Gardens, an array of brick-and-yellow-clapboard houses, has 100 one-bedroom apartments that tenants rent for a third of their monthly income. Many residents, especially elderly women living alone, have taken special pride in their decks and patios and decorated them with flower pots and rugs. In the warm months, social life revolves around the outside areas.

The trouble began in June 2007, when a state public-housing inspector noticed that a door on one apartment’s deck was blocked by furniture, which it called a “fire-egress obstruction.” In a letter the next month to residents, Dennis Osborn, executive director of the Shrewsbury Housing Authority, cited violations of building and fire codes.

Later that summer, the authority issued a new obstruction policy. “No chairs, tables, flowerpots, wind chimes, flags, mobiles, birdhouses or similar items shall be placed on decks or patios, or hang from, gutters, hand railings, trees, or the buildings,” it said. “Common entry hallways must remain clear of floor mats, throw rugs [and] welcome mats.”

Tenants acknowledge some decks were overflowing with clutter. Ms. Perrone recalls one deck in particular looked like “the city dump.” But in a letter to the housing authority, 65 tenants asked why everyone should be punished. “Now you want us to take ALL things off our porches/patios,” a move that would give Francis Gardens “a blank sterile atmosphere,” the letter said. “That would only serve to hinder people [who] can’t walk very well from getting out at all.”

The authorities didn’t back down. “You can’t look at that as your patio or your deck,” says Gerald LaFlamme, who was the town’s fire chief at the time the obstruction policy was issued. “You have to look at it as a legal entity called ‘the fire exit.’ ” Mr. LaFlamme says blocked exits have hampered his firemen in the past.

Helen Jarzobski, 93, had set up a plastic table and four chairs on a grassy patch next to her small patio. “I had a little sign that said ‘friends welcome,’ ” recalls Ms. Jarzobski. “People would walk by, and they would sit and talk to me.” The housing authority removed the table and chairs, she says.

The new restrictions were particularly hard for Ms. Jarzobski. After a car accident a year ago convinced her to give up driving after 53 years, her world shrank to the size of her small apartment and her patio.

Ms. Perrone threw away the flowerpots hanging over the handrail of her deck, and removed the sun umbrella under which she used to read. Housing officials took away a rug and curtains she placed in a common hallway, she says.

Mr. Osborn of the housing authority declined repeated interview requests. Richard Ricker, one of the authority’s five commissioners, says the obstruction policy was based on “the lawful commands of the fire chief, and of the state and local inspectors.”

Before Halloween last year, Ms. Perrone borrowed a striped prison-style tracksuit and a cap and wore it to a small protest in the middle of Francis Gardens. She carried a sign that read “State-funded prison for senior citizens.” The protest brought local media attention and put the battle on the map.

After her patio furniture was confiscated, Ms. Jarzobski removed a birdbath from her deck. But Ms. Jarzobski, who is of Italian descent, refused to take down wind chimes and an Italian flag nailed to a tree in memory of her brother, who died in World War II. Her family bought her a new, elevated chair that was easier on her ailing legs — and chained it to a post on the deck to prevent housing officials from taking it.

In September, Ms. Jarzobski received a letter from Mr. Osborn, who ordered her to remove the chair and wind chimes or face possible eviction. Ms. Jarzobski ignored it, and on Sept. 23 received a 30-day eviction notice citing a “violation of the obstruction policy.” She’d lived in Francis Gardens for 32 years.

Ms. Perrone and Ms. Henry, who had been sitting guard at the crab-apple tree, received their eviction notices the same day. The two women, already angered by the obstruction policy, worried that the moved garbage bin would be too close to their windows. And Ms. Perrone says that just because the tree is old and scraggly doesn’t mean it needs to die. “My skin is flaky and I’m old, too,” she says.

Facing eviction, the tree defenders and Ms. Jarzobski filed complaints with the local housing court. Their lawyer chartered a bus to ferry the plaintiffs and other residents to the court hearing scheduled for late September.

After a state legislator decided to mediate, the housing authority chose to avoid a courtroom battle. On Sept. 29, the eviction notices were rescinded. Shrewsbury’s new fire chief, Robert Gaucher, says that as long as the tenants keep the fire-escape paths clear, they can have some personal items on their decks. “We are a little more flexible,” he says.

The crab-apple tree was saved, and the garbage bin is staying put. Housing officials say they plan to patch up the cracked concrete in its current location. To celebrate victory, Ms. Perrone dressed up as a crab-apple tree for Halloween this year. A new tenants committee has been meeting with the housing director twice a month to discuss concerns. “We are not looking for trouble at our age,” Ms. Perrone says.

Write to Philip Shishkin at philip.shishkin@wsj.com

Meaning

To be effective and efficient; deserving of one’s pay.

Origin

Sodium chloride, a.k.a. salt, is essential for human life and, until the invention of canning and refrigeration, was the primary method of preservation of food. Not surprisingly, it has long been considered valuable.

To be ‘worth one’s salt’ is to be worth one’s pay. Our word salary derives from the Latin salarium, (sal is the Latin word for salt). There is some debate over the origin of the word salarium, but most scholars accept that it was the money allowed to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt. Roman soldiers weren’t actually paid in salt, as some suggest. They were obliged to buy their own food, weapons etc. and had the cost of these deducted from their wages in advance.

Salt continues to be important enough to feature in the language for many centuries. Other phrases that would have been known to the mediaeval mind were take with a grain of salt, the salt of the earth and below the salt. The ancient roots of ‘worth one’s salt’, and its similarity to the 13th century ‘worth one’s weight in gold’ and the 14th century ‘worth one’s while’ (i.e. worth one’s time), give the phrase a historical air. Nevertheless, ‘worth one’s salt’ didn’t exist in Roman Latin or even in mediaeval English and dates from as recently as the 19th century.

The earliest citation of the phrase that I have found in print is in The African Memoranda, a report of an expedition to Guinea Bissau, by Philip Beaver, 1805:

“Hayles has been my most useful man, but of late not worth his salt.”

It’s worth pointing out that, although English is replete with phrases of a nautical origin, none of the above salty phrases has anything to do with the sea.

Add a phrase a week to your own web site or blog. (www.phrases.org.uk/a-phrase-a-week/add.html)