Childcraft: Animal Friends and Adventures
Animal Friends
For some reason, I never got around to reading out of this book and no one ever read it to me. I was never very good about sitting and listening to a story. Mom couldn’t read to me at night because as soon as she got me in bed I fell asleep. And if it was daytime, then I wanted to be outside or doing something. Once I could read on my own, however, I became addicted.
Reviewing the list of authors, I only recognize one name: Rudyard Kipling. But I also see that there’s a Dr. Dolittle story. My third grade teacher read to us from those books after recess every day. I’m ashamed that I didn’t know that Hugh Lofting wrote those books. And there’s a story from Justin Morgan Had a Horse. I loved other stories from that book. It’s too bad I didn’t know that another one was on my very own bookshelf.
The lead story in this volume is a Hindu tale, “Bunny the Brave,” about a young rabbit that outsmarts a hungry tiger. Every culture must have a story like this, about a small and brave child or creature who outsmarts the larger and cruel oppressor, about the trickster. I bet you can name other small heroes and stories: Ber Rabbit, coyote, Anansi, Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse.”
The next story is by a Czeck author, Josef Kozisek, who wrote A Forest Story. “Bidushka Lays an Easter Egg” was influenced by the Bohemian girls Elizabeth Orton Jones, the author, knew growing up. There are several stories set on farms or ranches. There are stories by authors famous in the 1930s and 40s. It’s like I’m on a literary archeological dig. Several of these stories are worth bringing back.
Wheels, Wings, and Real Things
I think they did a great job naming this section. But it might have been the reason why I wasn’t interested in this book as a child. Stories about trucks and planes just didn’t interest me. I think Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel turned me off to such tales. Even a story in which the machine is female, “Susie Stock Car,” wasn’t enough to draw me in.
Now if I’d just noticed the wonderful story of “The Family Who had Never had Roller Skates.” It’s a tragic tale of little girls being forced to be little girls and not allowed to skate. But finally the family doctor comes to their rescue. “Their petticoats grew mussed and torn, but their cheeks grew rosy.” Pa-pa and Ma-ma Pettingill were won over. It’s a tale that says “Yes, join in. Try out the latest thing.”
MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies
Art for Children
Childcraft: Folk and Fairy Tales
I’m not sure where I learned most of my traditional children’s tales. Now, when someone mentions “Sleeping Beauty,” I think of Disney’s version. Don’t you? For “Cinderella,” I think of the TV version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with Lesley Ann Warren. And then I think of Disney. I don’t think of the stories in this volume.
Now if you mention “The Three Little Pigs,” that’s a different story. I immediately remember the unusual illustrations by Shirley Spackey. Then I have a more contemporary memory of changing the story slightly when re-telling it for my nephews. I liked to make it the story of the three pittle ligs and tell how the big wad bolf would threaten to “puff and huff or I’ll hoe your blouse in.” (I learned to use spoonerisms by watching Grandpa Jones on “Hee Haw.”)
The other illustration that I vividly recall is of Tom Tit Tot. That “little black thing” scared the pee-wadding out of me (to use a phrase I learned in childhood.) I now realize that “Tom Tit Tot” is basically the same story as “Rumpelstiltskin.” The story is scary, too. Just because you did something stupid, your parent’s vanity or some big man’s greed could lead to you being locked in a room with only a spinning wheel and some flax.
The stories in this volume are the canon of English literature for children. Our shared knowledge of these stories allows authors to make use of the tales in new ways. I actually think I enjoy Fables, the graphic novel series, much more than I did the stories I heard as a child. Niel Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” story is deliciously thrilling and disturbing. Stephen Sondheims’ Into the Woods is like a candy cane treat. But they wouldn’t be so enjoyable if I didn’t get all the references.
I got into a fight once about one of the stories I read in here. I was wrong, but so were my friends. We fought over a drawing I made of the Rapunzel story. I remember the lead character’s mother starting out pregnant and with a desire for rutabagas. It was her husband’s journey into the witch’s garden to get her some that earned her the witch’s ire. My friends insisted there was no pregnant lady in the story. Well it’s implied that she is pregnant. She believes that she’ll soon have a child and everyone knows pregnant women have strange cravings. But it wasn’t for rutabagas, it was for rampions. I’d never heard of such an herb so I must have changed it in my head. For some reason, the risk the young husband took for his wife and his willingness to sacrifice his future child, was the heart of the story for me. Not the hair thing in the tower.
Sometimes I’m amazed that children don’t have a greater fear of step-mothers. In these stories they never want to feed or clothe their step-children. And fathers, while in nursery rhymes always strong and helpful, have no power in the face of the fairy tale step-mother. My mother, who married a widower with two children, was terrified of her new role because these stories haunted her.
I’m sure there are tales in this book which don’t frighten or alarm little kids. But I think it’s notable that I don’t remember those. Those didn’t capture my imagination. So what if Rose Red and Snow White were the closest of sisters, kind to everyone, and end up with lots of treasure? That does not make their story memorable. It’s the evil dwarf who makes that story worth reading.
I just read the Jack and the Beanstalk story and it’s not the same as I remember. I thought the goose that lay the golden egg was in it; I didn’t know that was from Aesop’s Fables. The giant’s fowl with an oviduct problem was a hen. I don’t recall anything of a fairy who lost her powers and allowed the giant to kill Jack’s father. I don’t recall Jack making three visits to the giant’s house. I think I know the story from old cartoons instead of this book.
The volume ends with Aesop’s Fables. I remember these stories, but not with the same intensity as the fairy tales. I only liked them because they were short, had animals in them, and you could always guess the moral.
A while back my husband read a few of Grimm’s fairy tales out loud to me. He picked ones we didn’t know and they seemed totally outlandish and ridiculous. I wrote my own modern versions of two of them:
Fairly tales just beg to be re-told.
MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies
Childcraft: Storytelling and Other Poems
For me this was the Childcraft book. This is where I found the best poems to memorize. This volume was the reason I bought an old set of the encyclopedias. To me these first two volumes were nourishing and homey, like a good spaghetti casserole. (Substitute tater tot hotdish if you live in Minnesota.)
Poems for Everyday
Isn’t it great to think that there are everyday poems, like Melmac dishes, that you can recite or read at almost any time? No special occasion necessary.
The illustrations above and below are by Meg Wohberg who illustrated advertisements for baby-care products in the 1930′s and then worked on over 70 children’s books in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. So her work might look familiar to people of a certain age and even younger.
I read these poems without concern for their messages. I’d read “When Young Melissa Sweeps” and want to go grab a broom. I don’t think I ever did it though, being a rather lazy child. But I’m sure some of my understanding of what it meant to be a girl came from these poems.
Yet Gentle Will the Griffin Be
(What Grandpa Told the Children)The moon? It is a griffin’s egg,
Hatching tomorrow night.
And how the little boys will watch
With shouting and delight
To see him break the shell and stretch
And creep across the sky.
The boys will laugh. The little girls,
I fear, may hide and cry.
Yet gentle will the griffin be,
Most decorous and fat,
And walk up to the Milky Way
And lap it like a cat.- Vichel Lindsay
So I learned how the world saw little girls but I learned a few vocabulary words, too.
Poems introduced me to elements of culture I never experienced myself. There were poems about the circus, the popcorn man, streetcars, and the sea. There was even one about telegraphs — a little outdated for the 1961 edition of Childcraft — but I knew what telegraphs were because I watched Westerns on TV.
I think everyone my age remembers a bit of such poems as “When the Frost Is on the Pumpkin.” Many of us probably wondered what a shock of corn was when we’d read the poem in school in the fall. I’m sure that there’s something more contemporary that has replaced these poems. I know that I never read or heard most of the poems that my father learned in school and would recite to me on long drives. Classic poems like James Whitcomb Riley’s provide a shared experience with other Americans my age.
Humorous Poems
This was the section where I found the best poems for memorizing. These are the poems I can still recite. I was disappointed that one of my favorite poems had no author noted. It must be a “traditional” poem, although I’ve never heard anyone but my sister or me recite it. I love the romanticism and surprise ending.
A Farmer’s Boy
They strolled down the lane together,
The sky was studded with stars.
They reached the gate in silence,
And he lifted down the bars.
She neither smiled or thanked him
Because she knew not how;
For he was just a farmer’s boy
And she was a Jersey cow!
I remember my father bringing home a reel-to-reel tape deck and recording that poem on it. Mom recorded the poem “Eletelephony” which I thought was hilarious. Both the poem and Mom’s voice coming out of a machine sent me into fits of giggles.
The famous “Purple Cow” poem is also in this collection. I’m so sorry it caused Gelett Burgess, the author, so much grief.
Storytelling and Ballads
Sometimes the illustrations really made the poem. That was the case for “The Potatoes Dance,” I thought. The illustrator’s taters were so much better than dull old Mr. Potato Head. Samuel Armstrong gave those spuds life. I had dreams about those potatoes. The burnt matchstick legs scared me.
In my previous post I told you that my sister and I had competitions for who could memorize more poems. Since she was eight years older, I had a real challenge. I have a fond memory of sitting in the back of the neighbor’s station wagon waiting for fireworks to begin and my sister telling us a story she made up about Squidgicum-Squees. She got the idea from “The Raggedy Man” which was too long for me to memorize. It took up two entire pages!
I was talking with my younger husband about how exciting it’s been to re-read all these poems. I then discovered that he had never heard of The Song of Hiawatha. How can a man who frequently drives Hiawatha Avenue, has been to both Gitche Gumee and Nokomis lakes, has probably walked past the Longfellow House at Minnehaha Park, not know this poem? I thought all native Minnesotans would have been forced to read it at some time or other. I guess not. Or not any more.
After I read him the poem tonight I might try to memorize The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. It should be a task made easier by Loreena McKennitt’s rendition as a song, although she leaves out several verses. Her song makes me cry. The poem is just lyrically satisfying and a good Gothic tale.
I’ll end with another favorite from the humorous poems section.
A New Song to Sing about Jonathan Bing
O jonathan Bing, O Bingathon Jon
Forgets where he’s going an thinks he has gone.
He wears his false teeth on the top of his head,
And always stands up when he’s sleeping in bed.O Jonathon Bing has a curious way
Of trying to walk into yesterday.
“If I end with my breakfast and start with my tea,
I ought to be able to do it,” says he.O Jonathan Bing is a miser, they say,
For he likes to save trouble and put it away.
“If I never get up in the morning,” he said,
“I shall save all the trouble of going to bed!”“O Jonathan Bing! What a way to behave!
And what do you do with the trouble you save?”"
“I wrap it up neatly and send it by post
To my friend and relations who need it the most.”- Beatrice Curtis Brown
I always found it interesting that Jonathan Bing and Old Father William looked like the same man. They were drawn by someone with the initials of RL. For some reason Childcraft didn’t give credits for illustrations.
Thank you for letting me share these with you. It’s been so much fun for me. Although, It does make me feel really old. And I’ve gone a little bit crazy trying to decide which poems are epic enough to warrant italics instead of quotes for their titles.
Childcraft: Poems of Early Childhood
I grew up with the orange set of Childcraft encylopedias. I’m not sure what edition that was but a few years ago I purchased a 1960 set with tan covers. I bought it for the poems and probably paid about five dollars. I’ve seen a 1948 orange set on eBay for $75. That set probably has the “Little Black Sambo” story which was removed from later editions.
I loved the first two books in Childcraft set, especially after I could read on my own. I had very little reading material since our town’s library had only a single short bookshelf for the primary grades and I whipped through that pretty quickly. The words of Angelo Patri, the editor for Poems of Early Childhood, are still true.
You can give a child very little that he can keep as his own. You can give him a good book. There is no finer gift within your power.
The volume begins with Mother Goose stories which have always confused me. Why would you want to keep your wife in a pumpkin shell? Did Peter carve it like a Jack-o-lantern? Why would Jack’s crown be fixed with vinegar and brown paper? But I loved the repetition and symmetry (or lack thereof) in “There was a Crooked Man” even though I had no idea what a stile could be.
After Mother Goose, there are poems by others with names you’ll recognize, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, and others who you might not. I especially enjoyed poems by Christina Rossetti and Walter de la Mare. And I had no idea that a poem I had recited to me often because of my curly hair — “There was a little girl — was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. That’s the same guy who wrote The Song of Hiawatha.
Mix a Pancake
Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan;Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake—
Catch it if you can.- Christina Rossetti
I don’t think there’s a single poem in this collection that was copyrighted after 1945. I do hope that the current edition has kept some of these lovely old poems. Maybe not the ones that are terribly sexist, but the others. And I’d like them to correct a few poems that I remember with different words than are printed here. The poem for remembering the number of days in a month should end with “except February in fine, each leap year twenty-nine.” I fervently believe this even though “in fine” makes no sense.
The photo above of Mary Middling and her pig is from an illustration by Mary Royt. I find it sad that this artist hasn’t garnered a Wikipedia entry yet. I love the look on that pig. Eloise Wilkin was another of the illustrators. She created the most innocent looking little girls.
And it was Roger Duvoisin who did that terribly cute illustration of the gingham dog and the calico cat.
I would lose myself in the poems and illustrations in this book. It was a favorite of mine and of my older sister. In fact, we used to have poem competitions to see who could recite the most. We loved to run through then entirety of “The House that Jack Built.” It’s probably something we should go apologize to our mother for.
I have to leave you with one more poem. This is a new favorite and not one that I remember from childhood.
Funny Animals
The kangaroo said to her son,
“I wish you would get down and run.
We don’t have a car
And I’ve packed you so far —
Now try out your legs, just for fun.”Said the bear, with a growl, “I refuse
My company manners to use.
I’ve saved them so long
That I get them on wrong,
But I can be quite nice when I choose.”Said the donkey, “They jeer me a lot.
Something funny about me I’ve got.
I bray and, of course,
I’m not built like a horse.
But still, I’m a donkey — so what?”- Elizabeth Newell
OK, just one more. I think I need to memorize this one and bring it out next spring to amaze my friends or annoy my husband.
The Willow Cats
They call them pussy willows,
but there’s no cat to see
Except the little furry toes
That stick out on the tree.I think that very long ago,
When I was just born new,
There must have been whole pussycats,
Where just the toes stick through—And every spring it worries me,
I cannot ever find
Those willow cats that ran away
And left their toes behind!- Margaret Widdemer
MORE on the Childcraft collection:
Poems of Early Childhood
Storytelling and Other Poems
Folk and Fairy Tales
Animal Friends and Adventures
Life in Many Lands
Great Men and Famous Deeds
Exploring the World Around Us
Creative Play and Hobbies
Art for Children
Day at the farm
It takes a fair amount of planning for a city girl to go visit her relatives on the farm. First are the mental adjustments everyone has to make before seeing family. The farm is home to my sister, her husband, my sister’s oldest daughter, her husband, and their three kids. I don’t always see all of them when I visit. I never know who will be out putting up hay or something. It doesn’t take much emotional or mental adjustment to see the men since I never grew up with them or baby sat for them. They don’t know how to deploy any emotional strong holds or throw any sucker punches. They are basically in the background. The little kids are in the foreground demanding attention, but unless they cry, they are also emotional background noise. It is the physical noise I have to prepare myself for. And the constant interruptions. And the demand they make on my peripheral vision because there’s lot of stuff they can get in and I don’t ever want to hear “But I thought you were watching him!”
It’s the sister and niece I have to prepare myself for. I’ve never completely given up wanting my older sister to notice me and show an interest in me. We tend to communicate best by simply insulting each other, but I’ve tired of that game. And I’m out of practice. My niece I just don’t want to disappoint. Or be manipulated by. Or hurt. This is the child who will probably be taking care of me in my old age so I need to stay on her good side.
The next stage in preparation is choosing farm clothes. I have shoes, jeans, and shirts that are designated as either farm clothes or painting rags. But since I’m visiting my mother in her assisted living home first, I have to choose something else that I can wear both places. And it’s frequently the first few minutes that are the most dangerous in terms of dirt. Thankfully their dog does not jump up on people, but sometimes my great-nephews like to take me to the barns right away. Or I have to enter a barn to locate an adult. Packing for the farm is sort of like packing for camping. But instead of rain gear I pack garden gear, barn gear, and baby-sitting gear. And since I’m going out to help set up for a garage sale, I’ll need clothes for sitting at the sales table, too.
I even think about what to pack in the car or truck. It’s best to take the truck, but the car gets better gas mileage so I’m taking it this trip. I try to have a box in back in case I decide to bring home something for the garden or something that’s just messy. Taking the car means that I won’t be bringing back any manure for my compost pile. But a plastic bag is always good to have. And some coffee and my iPod for the long drive. I always really need to pee when I get there.
And the bathroom is a good place to begin at the farm. On this visit there is no one to greet me when I arrive. I don’t think I’ve ever knocked at a farm door. I’ve always just entered the back door and assumed that the dog or geese or the sound of my car has notified the residents that I’m there. I enter the bathroom and scan it for clues as to how hectic the day has been so far. I see swimming clothes in the sink and some sort of paper-making project on the counter. These are signs that the family has had some time to play lately, but not enough time to clean. There’s no child seat on the stool so that means the Comrade, my younger great-nephew, is still not interested in potty training.
I hear a TV and go to the living room to find the Cowboy, my older great-nephew, watching a show. He informs me that his mother is doing chores. So that means she’s either in the CSA garden or in the barn. Coming at chore time is always dangerous because you can be put to work immediately. Once my husband was with me when they were putting up hay and he ended up with welts all over and in great need of an antihistamine. But I’m here to work on the garage sale so I’ll probably not be asked to do anything else. Besides, I’m not a good milker.
I enjoy walking out to the barn. I scan the garden to see how it’s doing and if there are any adults out there. Seeing none I pass through the fowl. If it’s time for them to eat, I’ll be surrounded by chickens, ducks, and guinea hens. But they must have been fed because they all ignore me. I try to start up a crowing contest but only have one unenthusiastic competitor.
The barn cats all watch me approach from their spots in the sun. Only a couple are tame and they come up and demand attention. I wish the little kids were a little older and more interested in locating and taming the barn kittens. There are some very cute ones but they all race away. I’m left with an older calico who I give a quick pat on the head. I’d offer more, but he has the ubiquitous barn cat cold. I do not like runny noses.
Once I enter the barn, I immediately know where my family is. We are all loud talkers. And we all talk at once. So I hear my niece, my brother-in-law, and the Comrade. I do not hear Baby-Girl, but I do see her wagon. The chickens I scare away and a few of the goats also call out. I add my voice to the cacophony saying, “Hey there. Are those boxes in the spare bedroom for the sale or to keep?”
“Oh hi! Both I think. Move Joe! Dad, can you take her?” replies my niece. I tease out the words that were directed at me and somehow acknowledge the others there. I’m sure everyone else said something to me and I probably said something, too. I grab Baby-Girl and see how far away from her mother I can get her. As long as she is walking or getting to see animals, I can expect to get a few minutes out of sight with her. But I didn’t come to play with the kids, I came to work. So back she goes and I head towards the garage.
My niece’s husband and I begin to clean the garage. Somehow the Comrade and Baby-Girl end up with us. I’m sweeping the dust, feathers, straw and various manures out towards the kids. The Comrade wants me to sweep right at him and Baby-Girl is trying to stand up on her bare feet in the gravel driveway. Her nose is dripping and I hate snot. But I always have a tissue on me so I wipe her face. I feel very magnanimous and womanly.
I set up tables my niece borrowed from her church and others start putting out boxes of items. My sister eventually returns from some other county where she was judging a 4-H show or some other event. I get to listen to the normal bickering of the two families living on this one farm. It’s rather comforting to me to know that they are voicing the same opinions and frustrations as every other time I’ve visited. I’m not sure that I could live with my parents or with my kids and grandkids, but it seems to work out for them. As long as they aren’t coming up with new and larger issues, I think they’ll do just fine. After all, much of our family identity comes from what we argue about.
Later I have dinner with my niece’s family and I try to listen as both boys talk at once and try to explain something to me. I’m not really very good at this. Baby-Girl cries and I get myself a plate and locate the food and settle down to eat. I ask about my nephew-in-law’s new job. I’m very pleased to feel the air conditioning. It’s not something I expected from their old farm house. It’s a large unit that sits in the dining room and has a couple of hoses running to a window. I love it.
I sleep that night on the mattress of my mother’s that we have just moved in. Mom has a new single mattress at the home. I decide to use Mom’s pillows, too. They’re old, but at least I know the woman and cat who used them. I’ve heard that you’re supposed to replace your pillows every few years, but I think the ones that were previously on the bed had to have been over 20 years old. I fall asleep to the sound of crickets and the wind, and to the smell of goats.
I wake to the sound of roosters and a progression of TVs. I think the first one I hear is from my sister’s. The wall of her house and of the house I’m in are shared. There’s a closet that joins the two houses and that closet opens to the bedroom I’m in. Eventually I give up and get dressed. I make myself coffee and sit for a bit with my niece and her two youngest who are up.
Then I’m back to pricing items. My sister comes by and pulls a few items off the table. I’ve gone through a box that came from their basement and apparently it’s going back into their basement. I pull off a few items that were my mothers because I fear that she’ll remember that she had them and ask about them. I don’t really want to tell her about selling off her stuff. And then the kids come out and start trying to bargain with me about which toys should really be kept. I try to stay out of that conflict. But it’s impossible to keep the toys on the tables. I help take a few items to my sister’s and twist my ankle on the way back.
My sister and niece pick veggies and pack them for a few of their CSA customers while I continue to price. I pick up a large sign we’ve made from scrap wood and painted to put out at the end of the drive. I get black paint all over my shirt. Luckily I’ve packed well and am able to put on another one.
No customers yet. So I go in a get a banana and sit and eat it while watching the boys ride their trike and bike. When I head for the compost pile to throw away my peel, the oldest one comes with me. We both spot a goat skull next to the pile and he gallantly crawls under the fence to bring it to me. I have lots of skulls in my garden and love to take whatever bones get picked clean behind the barn.
Before lunch time we get two customers. My niece chats them up. I’m not sure if the men have come for the sale or simply to see the farm. They both knew the previous owners. Later my niece’s husband comes home for lunch and lets me know that our signs have blown down. So I go out and put them back up. We eventually get two women who stop by and make several purchases.
I need to leave by 2 p.m. so I can avoid all the traffic on the way home. By the time I leave, we’ve made $1.65 total. I think this pretty much sums up farming. Put in a lot of work, get screwed by the weather, and earn a pittance. I take the squash my sister gives me and head for home, thankful that there are people willing to work this hard. I plan go home, put my foot up, have a glass of ice tea, and go to bed early.
Deadly serious plants
Whenever I’m pulling deadly nightshade out of the garden I get terribly curious about how the fruit of this plant must taste. I’m thankful that I never had this urge while I was a child. I also get to thinking about how I could try a witch’s flying potion with ingredients from my garden: nightshade, monkshood (aconite) and poppy being right at hand.
So I turned my curiosity towards other poisonous plants. And there are many.
Daffodils
For example, my beloved daffodils are poisonous. Or, at least, the bulbs are. I’ve read that Roman soldiers carried the bulbs to be used as a sort of cyanide pill (0r in this case an alkaloid pill) to commit suicide rather than die of painful sword or spear injuries. Botantical.com informs us that “an extract of the bulbs, when applied to open wounds, has produced staggering, numbness of the whole nervous system and paralysis of the heart.” No recipe for the extract is provided, thankfully.
Not onions
At least the squirrels are smart enough not to eat daffodil bulbs. (Although they’ll still dig them up for the fun of it.)
Apples
What could be safer than an apple? I recall the Alar and apple scare back in the 1980s, but we’ve all been eating an apple a day since then, right? I think I’m still safe in doing so. But not those lazy or thrifty people who eat the entire apple. If you eat enough of the seeds, apples can kill you. The pips hide cyanide within. Luckily we can detoxify small quantities in our own bodies, so you’d have to swallow a lot of the seeds before succumbing to the poison. Still, it’s a little disconcerting to see the ubiquitous fruit listed in Poisonous Plants of North Carolina.
La ngong and yellow oleander
If you don’t want to commit suicide with some common plant like lily-of-the-valley or rhubarb, you could go the route of folks in Vietnam or Sre Lanka. I found a report on la ngong (Gelsemium elegans) being used for suicides in Vietnam in 2007. It’s a very lovely vine with yellow flowers. It must be hard to pass by. Six people died after drinking wine in which the roots of the plant had been soaked.
Sri Lankans prefer to use the yellow orleander. It sounds rather romantic and dramatic. And for a while, it was quite the thing to do. “Yellow Oleander Plants Fuels Suicide Rates In Sri Lanka” reads a headline from 2006. You can also find all sorts of medical reports on the problem.
Mallow and puffins
Plants don’t just cause us harm; they go after cute fluffy animals, too. And in cruel and weedy ways. Consider the mallow which most gardeners curse themselves for ever planting. It’s evil enough. But another variety of the mallow, the tree mallow, is after the puffin. It covers the ground so thickly that the puffins can’t make nests.
‘The puffin only makes things worse for itself,’ added van der Wal. ‘It breaks up the ground, providing a perfect place for tree mallow seeds to take root. The birds provide homes for tree mallow which then prevents them breeding. Nature can be cruel.’
[source: The Guardian]
If you’re curious about other poisonous plants, there’s a quirky little site written by the Poison Garden Warden. After checking it out, go watch the video at the Alnwick Gardens site. I HAVE to go visit the garden. They grow cannabis in a cage!
Personalized envelope enclosed
My mother, a generous, conservative, Christian widow gets far too much mail asking her for a bit of her social security profits. While she was in the hospital I cleaned up all the piles of mail she had on the kitchen table, coffee table, ironing board and in the cupboards, closets, and dresser drawers. The volume of mail had overwhelmed her. She tried to give to every organization that asked it of her. I haven’t found any records of her giving over $10 to any one group, but that amount seems to be enough to get you on everyone’s lists.
Some of the mail is just too remarkable not to be shared.
Nancy Pelosi is waiting for you to die
I’m not sure if she’s been calling Mom’s doctor every few days to get an estimate on the date she’ll expire or not. But she’s not just sort of wondering when it’ll happen. No. She’s waiting for it. I’ve never received this piece of mail so I guess she doesn’t care if I live or die.
Personalized envelope enclosed
Apparently adding something like this really gets the attention of old ladies. They like to know that someone cares enough to do something just for them. So they open the piece in gratitude. Or perhaps they are just curious to see how well the sender understands how much they love kittens. Will this personalized envelope have a picture of my recently deceased Fluffermuffin? Mom didn’t fall for this one. I found this envelope unopened.
These next guys tried harder.
Mommy’s in jail
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) wants you help them to get Stephanie Mohr back home to her little boy. See the birthday card her son drew for her? Isn’t that worth some money? Not enough? Also included is a photo of little Adam. My mother thought he was cute and is saving his picture. But she wasn’t persuaded to send money. That’s a good thing because LELDF really doesn’t care that much as you might think. According a source quoted by snopes.com, the fund spent about 18 cents of every dollar collected on defending police officers such as Ms. Mohr.
Open immediately
Now someone’s getting creative. But it’s a really cheap trick to get an older citizen to open your request for money by counterfeiting a prescription drug envelope. Come on guys. At least try to play fair. This group and others have my mother convinced that medicare is going to end within weeks. Her memory is failing, but she remembers to ask me every week if I’ve read anything yet about Medicare or Social Security payments ending. She scans the newspaper for the terrible news every day. It must be inevitable. Every third piece of mail she receives says so. There must be twenty groups like this one, with similar names. The fixed income senior market is easy prey.
Indefinite or ambiguous catastrophe
Now I don’t understand why one-third of Mexicans illegally crossing the border go directly to the New Orleans area, but you see the evidence right there. I’m also confused about the quotes around “Borderline Disaster!” Are they trying to be facetious? Or maybe many undocumented immigrants have borderline personality disorders?
And then they outlawed the baby Jesus
Not only is the baby Jesus about to be outlawed at the behest of the ACLU, the Ten Commandments are targeted, too. There are no details provided on just how the legal status of a historical or mythical (depending on belief) can be altered or even how such a figure gains legal status in the first place. I gather that the adult Jesus gained legal status at some time and is not now under any threat. The Virgin Mary also seems safe for now. The Talmud and religious texts of other faiths are not under attack. It’s really just the baby and the stone tablets. For the low price of $16.65 and your signature you can protect your “Freedom of Faith.”
Mom didn’t fall for this one either. She’s a sucker for disabled veteran groups, though. I now review all her mail, so don’t get any ideas.
