Jack’s Winning Words 10/24/16
“The first wealth is health.”  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)  Research at Penn State has shown that how people react to the stresses of life can affect their health.  Emerson had more than his share of stresses…3 siblings died as children; another was mentally ill; his first wife died at age 20; his own health was poor.  It’s no wonder he wrote that health is wealth.  A cartoon shows a man at the “COMPLAINT” window.  The clerk says, “At least you’ve got your health.”    ;-)  Jack

FROM TARMART REV:  My mind takes me back to one of my college classes and the study of a textbook titled, "None of These Diseases"...it pointed out the same thought of stress related challenges causing certain responses such as headaches, ulcers, heart attacks and the like. 0:-/ ====JACK:  Even a psychosomatic illness is an illness.====REV:  I have a headache just trying to spell it!!====JACK:  "It" is spelled, I-T.

FROM ST PAUL IN ST PAUL:  true that!    as our teens like to say...  hope you had a good weekend. ====JACK:  Teens seem to be especially affected by the death of peers.  "It shouldn't happen!"  But, it did.  I was visiting at a nursing home once, and a group of men was standing looking down at the parking lot as a hearse pulled away.  "There goes another," said one of them.

FROM HAWKEYE GEORGE:  True, true.====JACK:  Experience is a great teacher, as you know.

FROM OPT AW:  Good morning Jack. Health is #1 for sure. I am now recovering from shoulder replacement surgery and basically one-handed for 6 weeks.====JACK:  They'll soon be calling you, "the bionic man."

FROM RI IN BOSTON:  Hear! Hear!  Despite Emerson's poor health he lived to age 79, not bad for that era.  He's buried in a small cemetery 15 miles west of my home.  Another of Emerson's sayings is, "Don't go where the path may lead, go where there is no path and leave a trail,"  an idea that poet Robert Frost wrote about years later.====JACK:  Sometimes we give so much attention to the bad days that we go through life not appreciating the good ones...sort of focusing on the sliver while the rest of the body is doing well.  BTW, Mother Goose is also buried in Boston.====RI:  The belief that Mother Goose was a single writer has been called into question.  There is a notion that a Mrs. Elizabeth Goose compiled the Mother Goose stories, but it doesn't seem to hold up when historians cite Mother Goose references well before Elizabeth Goose's time.  The idea that Elizabeth Goose is the real Mother Goose is so widespread, however, that her alleged gravestone has become a tourist attraction in Boston. To add more humor to the ordeal, it is likely that these tourists are not only misled that the woman was “Mother Goose”, but also, Elizabeth’s grave is unmarked, and the grave they are visiting is actually that of a Mary Goose.====JACK:  Are you telling me that Mother Goose is a fairy tale?====RI:  Witty reply, Jack.   BTW, in the last email I wrote you, I should have put the second paragraph in quotation marks, and noted that it was taken directly from a literary piece discussing the probability that the Mother Goose rhymes and stories originated from various writers.
====JACK:  I could nave said, John Hancock was buried there with a tombstone that has large print.
====RI:  Jack, I can't compete with your sense of humor.  Keep it coming.

FROM RS IN TEXAS:  Yes, health is wealth, and we are pretty wealthy.  Gloria has been struggling with headaches for some time and we have yet to pinpoint the cause.  Sometimes I think getting sick is a blessing, as it makes you appreciate when you are healthy (not too many of those kinds of blessings, though).====JACK:  "Someone" said, "Pain is a pain."  But, without pain we wouldn't be aware of a problem.  When son David was learning to talk he once pointed to his throat and said with a pained expression..."Something wrongs."  We still use that expression today when we are sick.

====BLAZING OAKS:  I think it was J.L. Kraft who said, "We spend the first half of life ruining our health to gain our wealth, and the last half of life spending our wealth to regain our health." If health is wealth (and it is!) why bother to pursue the "other" wealth?! Can't be thankful enough to be up and about, and out, at my age, "clothed and in my right mind"!====JACK: I wonder if Medicare would have a chance of being enacted in today's political climate?  LBJ had a way of getting things done, even if it involved twisting arms.

FROM OUTHOUSE JUDY:  Health is important but there are other things just as important....family and children and love!====JACK:  Often it depends on what's bugging you at the time you're asked to say what's most important.