Winning Words 6/30/10
“Why do we have to wait for special moments to say nice things or tell people we care about them?” (Randy Milholland) I’m getting to that age where funerals are being held for more and more people that I have known. Recently someone called after the doctor told her that her life would probably be short. She just wanted to talk before it was too late. That call was one of those special moments. ;-) Jack

FROM NL IN INDIANA/FLORIDA: OK Jack: You're like me we get up tooooo early. Great minds can't sleep once they wake up. FROM JACK: In the early hours I decided that the Winning Words I had intended for the day were not the right ones, so I got up and did some editing.

FROM SH IN MICHIGAN: The older I get and the more shifts that seem to take place, technological shifts, economic shifts, political shifts, social shifts, etc., etc., etc., the more thankful I am for community, true community, people who place their trust in God and can keep the rudder steady, so thank you for appreciating community too and for always finding a way to foster it. FROM JACK: I suppose you're not much into boxing, but good fighters learn to "roll with the punches."

FROM CJL IN OHIO: Wouldn't you say that each moment was special? FROM JACK: Yes, but some are specialer than others.

FROM SA IN VEGAS: Good question. You are a really cool Uncle. I like your smile because it usually means you’ve turned the light on for me. ( A Light in the Attic). Thanks for turning the light on in my ‘attic’. FROM JACK: Thanks for the nice words which remind me of the Shel Silverstein quote: “Tell me I'm clever, Tell me I'm kind, Tell me I'm talented, Tell me I'm cute, Tell me I'm sensitive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I'm perfect-- But tell me the truth.”

FROM LIZ IN ILLINOIS: We never know when a friend may go. Even when you're my 20-year-old daughter's age. Which brings up another thing that's so great about the internet. It allows us to keep in touch with people with whom we used to lose touch. FROM JACK: I wonder how many people who receive WWs are people that I've never met face to face? A lot!

FROM MOLINER JT: Thank God, she had someone to listen to her. It is important to "talk" when life makes drastic changes. FROM JACK: To have a friend, you have to be a friend. She was the kind of person who attracted friends, so when she wanted/needed to talk, there were people available. But, you're right! When life changes (as it certainly will at some time or another), it's good to have friends...people who care.

FROM MO IN ILLINOIS: I am of that same age, where the news if often not good. My friends and I laugh now about checking the obituaries first thing when we open the paper anymore, and we used to think it was so funny when our parents did that...and the quote is spot-on: Send your flowers to the living, and pay your compliments and give you hugs, before it is too late. FROM JACK: I was looking for a poem that I recall, titled, Too Late...and I came across this:

"It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late—
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand “Oedipus,” and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers
When each had numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had begun his “Characters of Men.”
Chaucer, at Woodstock, with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the “Canterbury Tales.”
Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed “Faust” when eighty years were past.
What then? Shall we sit idly down and say,
“The night has come; it is no longer day”?
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress.
And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
It is never too late to start doing what is right.
Never.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow