Waxed Fruit

"This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

All around the neighborhood, I'm going to let it shine.

All around the neighborhood, I'm going to let it shine.

All around the neighborhood, I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel? No! I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine.

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine.

Don't let Satan [blow] it out! I'm going to let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."

How long would you keep hoping to find a missing wallet? A week? A month?

And even if you found it, would you expect your money to still be inside?

One man got an extraordinary surprise when his wallet came back to him after 14 years missing — and stuffed with more cash than before.

“First I thought that someone was joking with me so I went to check whether the money was real,” Croatian man Ivica Jerkovic told the Croatian outlet 24 sata on Friday.

It was.

“It was the best greeting for Easter!” Jerkovic said.

His wallet came to the post office in a plain package, and the sender did not reveal their identity, but Jerkovic has a theory.

He believes that when he lost his wallet 14 years ago — stuffed with 2,000 German marks, or roughly $1,200, for home repairs — someone who desperately needed the money found it.

“I believe that this money saved him and for years he was calculating how much he should return to me,” Jerkovic said. “Otherwise, I don’t know why he would keep the wallet for all those years!”

When Jerkovic received his long-lost wallet last week, it contained 1,500 Swiss francs, or about $1,530.

 Jerkovic praised the mystery person who returned his wallet for their care in keeping track of the interest.

“I call on him to contact me,” Jerkovic said. “He is the best personal banker in Croatia.”

This writer was on a photography safari in Botswana, Africa. Earlier, I had purchased in the Sudan a most remarkable ruby stone in a gold setting. I thought it was valuable, but until I returned home and had it appraised, I did not know how valuable.

Anyway, I had put the ring in my camera bag. One morning, my guide said to me " Doctor, I found this ring near your tent, do you think it is yours, did you lose it?" Someway, somehow, in taking one of my cameras out of the bag I had misplaced the ring, and the guide had found it. Of course, it meant nothing to him and I thanked him profoundly. He did not realize how much money he had held in his hand.

And, so it is with our lives. In the marvelous book The Godfather. The last words of the Godfather before he died, "Life is so beautiful." We spend our lives thinking that waxed fruit, artificial flowers, veneer on cheap wood, is beautiful. There is nothing the creator designed that can be duplicated. Satan always pays off with counterfeit.

It is so refreshing to find human-beings who are good for goodness sake... People who want to do good because it makes them feel good. Such as returning to someone something that they've lost... Whether valuable or invaluable. The genuineness of life is good, whether from the smell of fresh fruit, fresh flowers, or even the yapping of a puppy. Why should the world be consumed by greed, whether a politician, business man, or even a family member. Children who ate their meals their entire life with their feet under the same table, often get so insanely grieved-greedy toward one another when their hard working parents estate is settled. When you get my age, eighty-five, like the Godfather, you realize just how beautiful a life with honesty can be.

Several years ago, I gave to one of my cousins a fruit bowl that had come from his great grandmothers dining room table. The beautiful bowl had come down to me and I wanted someone in my family to have it. I so remember waxed fruit in the bowl when I was a small child. She had said to me, "Thomas, the fruit in that bowl is just for looking, not for eating." I still remember the owner of a furniture factory saying to me, "I can take any cheap wood and with a veneer, make it look like expensive wood." I still remember, like a fool, standing in line with other Buddhists, in a temple in Sri Lanka to look at a tooth that supposedly come out of Buddha's mouth. It is so easy to be fooled "fooled by fakery." Please god, here at the sunset of my life, let me know the joy of real things, real people. Not waxed figures like those I saw in Madame Tussauds Museum.

#1722

Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed (September 26, 1774 – February 18, 1845), born John Chapman, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance of apples.

We have all heard the jingle, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” The wiener is the most toxic food you can put into your body, so, the apple is the most healthy food that one can put into the human body. Other than the stem, all the apple should be eaten. Carefully washed, the peeling and the seeds are the most nutritious. Next to a wiener (Frankfurter, hot dog, etc.) the other most poisonous food entering the gullet is a soft drink (Pepsi, Coke, Soda, etc.). Particularly a diet soda. The artificial sweetener aspartame, and all its close cousins, will, in my opinion, do much damage to your central nervous system.

In this day, when the limousine liberals under the leadership of the Obama abomination, and the Copenhagen gang, talk incessantly of Cap and Trade, it is time to get realistic about carbon dioxide. Those who ride in large SUV's, puffing out smoke while carrying green shopping bags, promote the planting of trees everywhere. And even the planting of vines to grow over every building. Such is the green frolic, the foliage of climate control.

Lets not forget that possibly one billion of the Earth's six billion people need food. Reforestation is nothing new. Concerned conservatives have been planting trees my entire lifetime. In the planting, why not plant fruit trees? Not just for the leaves doing their science of photosynthesis, but producing viable food which can be dehydrated and used year round as a valuable supplement to those who need this vitamin rich nourishment. For instance, sugar cane, a grass, is as productive in the oxygen cycle and, as well, other bushes should be utilized. Berry bushes grow well where useless shrubbery only decorates. Any green food producing agriculture, or even nursery plant, should be encouraged. Not only for the oxygen cycle, but in the control of topsoil and the production of any type food, particularly fruit. It is incomprehensible that our fellow human beings would be hungry when we have every means for food production.

I was reared on a farm which had been closely supervised by people who cared for the Earth, the soil, the trees. The home, which had survived the Civil War, and housed my grandparents, as well as my parents, was in a large oak grove. Many of the trees were 3-4 feet in diameter. When I would rake the leaves falling from all these gigantic tree in the fall, it occurred to me that the valued chemicals in the leaves, already having done their due diligence in the oxygen cycle, should be used as fertilizer, and they were. My grandparents had nurtured many large fruit trees (apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, fig, etc.) and nut trees (pecan, walnut, etc.). I can still remember my wonderful mother canning the produce of these trees and drying in the sun much of the excess produce. It is a matter of education. Fruit and vegetables produced during the summer should never go to waste. The processes of canning, freezing, drying, is something that anyone can do if they would get off their lazy behind and do it. I repeat again, there is no reason for any child to go hungry in this abundant country. Depending on the seasons, orange and banana trees can be easily grown instead of useless, fruitless palm trees. All over the world, particularly on the islands of the Pacific and in Africa, I saw the housing of coconuts, dates and figs. DEHYDRATED FRUIT IS AS NUTRITIOUS AS FRESH FRUIT. In the Cameroons, I remember asking my guide, “What are those large baskets caught up in the trees?”. He said, “This is dried foliage which we use for our livestock in case of drought”. On the farm, we not only provided for ourselves but for our animals. The time may come when it will be impossible to buy Alpo or some other high priced product for your puppy. Learn to provide for your pet. Dried beans, later soaked in water and cooked, will provide nutrition for everyone.

Sugarcane is a weed or a grass, it is probably the most nutritious foliage known to man. Cutting and cooking gives crystals, which can be used as either white or brown sugar. The most valuable part of the sugarcane is the molasses. Sugarbeet molasses is used in animal feed but the blackstrap sugarcane molasses, as well as sorghum, is a valuable nutrient for the human body. This matter of green activity, like the compassion towards birds, whales or turtles, is a nuance making liberals feel a little better. Conservatives are interested in the preservation of the homo sapien species, the feeding of children, the saving of the lives of the unborn.

The limousine liberals, such as Obama and his ilk, gathered in Copenhagen to discuss climate control as if they can do anything about it. Like the big corporations (Monsanto, Exxon, Walmart), are only interested in the bottom line. The swollen bellies of hungry children I have seen in Africa and India does not bother the overpaid executives at Monsanto as they move their tractors and combines into the Ukraine to further explore it. World citizens as they control the marketing of grains, leading to the defeat of the small farmer.

In my early life, the anthropologists and archaeologists, would snicker at a scientist who believed in the energy involved in God's creation. Even though in every civilization known to man homo sapiens have always felt the need for honoring someone greater than themselves. Early man, as does today's enlightened man, knows the verisimilitude involved in man's relationship with his environment. The comprehensive energy in the masterpiece of creation. The scientific discovery was made some years ago that even ice crystals appear different in design when love is shown towards water than when hatred is shown towards water. In photosynthesis, in the stomata of leaves, we find God-science only equivalent in the human body with the clotting of blood (not understandable, totally dependent on a divine intelligence). Man has never defined electricity but we accept it knowing that everything depends on energy. Mr. Gore, and some other scam artists, have decided to make lots of money off the fraud of global warming. Before the world became dumbed down by satanic forces operating among us, we would have laughed this miserable group off the front pages.