I found this site while looking at Digg.com and yes whoever posted it there did get some interesting comments.
It seems several people are definitely tired of all the “bad” things that happen to good people and ready for some changes.
Here is the You Tube video that explains it and shows the commercial.

Here is a request I received via email for September 11, 2008.  Hopefully we can do this every year.

Please join us in this FLY THE FLAG campaign and PLEASE forward this Email immediately to everyone in your address book asking them to also forward it. We have a little less than one week and counting to get the word out all across this great land and into every community in the United States of America.

If you forward this email to least 11 people and each of those people do the same … You get the idea.

THE PROGRAM:

On Thursday, September 11th, 2008, an American flag should be displayed outside every home, apartment, office, and store in the United States. Every individual should make it their duty to display an American flag on this seventh anniversary of one our country’s worst tragedies. We do this honor of those who lost their lives on 9/11, their families, friends, and loved ones who continue to endure the pain, and those who today are fighting at home and abroad to preserve our cherished freedoms.

In the days, weeks and months following 9/11, our country was bathed in American flags as citizens mourned the incredible losses and stood shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism. Sadly, those flags have all but disappeared. Our patriotism pulled us through some tough times and it shouldn’t take another attack to galvanize us in solidarity. Our American flag is the fabric of our country and together we can prevail over terrorism of all kinds

Action Plan:

So, here’s what we need you to do ..

(1) Forward this email to everyone you know (at least 11 people). Please don’t be the one to break this chain. Take a moment to think back to how you felt on 9/11 and let those sentiments guide you.

(2) Fly an American flag of any size on 9/11. Honestly, Americans should fly the flag year-round, but if you don’t, then at least make it a priority on this day.

Thank you for your participation. God Bless You and God Bless America!

Let me know if you are going to do this and if you forwarded this.

Thanks!

We had a freak rain storm today.  When you live in the Mojave Desert in Calfornia rain in August is usually welcome.  The air is fresher and all the dust gets washed off of everything.  However the roads get covered with dirt because the desert can only absorb so much water and then it tends to run off.

It is beautiful here, and I was looking through some music to celebrate life, rainbows, and the new feelings that a summer rain can bring to a day.  I found this video from the Hawaiian, IZ (that is his abbreviated name).  If these lyrics do not hit you and bring on some emotion then you must be pretty set. His name is Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

I believe a tribute to  his life belongs on my Words of Encouragement blog.

I might post more than one video to him.  I hope you enjoy it and that you do find comfort in the presentations.

You should watch this one, too. It is more insight to his life.

Bruddah IZ
May 20, 1959 - June 26, 1997

Love

Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.
Ralph and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital.
One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool. Ralph suddenly jumped into the deep end.
He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there.
Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled him out.
When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna’s heroic act she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable.
When she went to tell Edna the news she said, ‘Edna, I have good news and bad news.
The good news is you’re being discharged, since you were able to respond rationally to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life
of the person you love. I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness.
The bad news is, Ralph hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he’s dead.’

Edna replied, ‘He didn’t hang himself, I put him there to dry. How soon can I go home?’

Happy Mental Health day!

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the1500s:
IN THE 1500′S

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water..

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying . It’s raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection.. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance way. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old..

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat..

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would
take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

Who said history was boring !

This is a little long, but you will be glad you read all of it.. It is very good.

They say this is a true story.

A Girl with an Apple !!!!!!!

August 1942. Piotrkow , Poland .

The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women
and children of Piotrkow’s Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word
had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.

‘Whatever you do,’ Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me,’don’t tell
them your age. Say you’re sixteen.’ I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could
pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker.

An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked
me up and down, then asked my age. ‘Sixteen,’I said. He directed me to the
left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.

My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and
elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, ‘Why?’ He didn’t answer. I ran to
Mama’s side and said I wanted to stay with her. ‘No,’she said sternly. ‘Get
away. Don’t be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.’

She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting
me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was
the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived
at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into
a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification
numbers.’Don’t call me Herman anymore.’ I said to my brothers. ‘Call me
94983.’

I was put to work in the camp’s crematorium, loading the dead into a
hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.

Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald’s
sub-camps near Berlin . One morning I thought I heard my mother’s
voice, ‘Son,’ she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.’
Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there
could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks,
near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was
alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with
light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I
glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German.
‘Do you have something to eat?’ She didn’t understand. I inched closer to
the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin
and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked
unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.

She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I
grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly,
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I returned to the same spot by the fence at the
same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a
hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn’t dare speak or linger. To
be caught would mean death for us both. I didn’t know anything about her,
just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name?
Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this
girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way
as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car
and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia . ‘Don’t return,’ I
told the girl that day. ‘We’re leaving.’ I turned toward the barracks and
didn’t look back, didn’t even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I’d
never learned, the girl with the apples.

We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and
Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I
was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I
tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but
somehow I’d survived.
Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I
thought, we will be reunited.

But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running
every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops
had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I’m not sure how. But I
knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a
place where evil seemed triumphant, one person’s goodness had saved my life,
had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish
charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust
and trained in electronics. Then I came to America , where my brother Sam
had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and
returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I’d opened my own
electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. ‘I’ve got a date.
She’s got a Polish friend. Let’s double date.’ A blind date? Nah, that
wasn’t for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up
to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a
blind date this wasn’t so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She
was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green,
almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.

The four of us drove out to Coney Island . Roma was easy to talk to,easy to
be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing
our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty
Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn’t remember
having a better time.

We piled back into Sid’s car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European
Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, ‘Where were you,’ she asked softly, ‘during the war?’ ‘The camps,’ I said, the terrible memories still vivid,
the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget. She
nodded. ‘My family was hiding on a farm in Germany , not far from Berlin ,’
she told me. ‘My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.’ I
imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet there we were, both survivors, in a new world. ‘There was a camp next to the farm.’ Roma continued. ‘I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.’

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. ‘What did he look like? I asked. ‘He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him
every day for six months.’ My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe it. This
couldn’t be. ‘Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was
leaving Schlieben?’ Roma looked at me in amazement. ‘Yes!’ ‘That was me! ‘ I
was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn’t
believe it! My angel.

‘I’m not letting you go.’ I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that
blind date, I proposed to her. I didn’t want to wait. ‘You’re crazy!’ she
said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the
following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma,
but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her
goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to
the fence and given me hope. Now that I’d found her again, I could never let
her go.

That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of
marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.

Herman Rosenblat, Miami Beach , Florida

This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat.
He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75. This story is being made into a movie called
The Fence. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people world-wide.
Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around
the world. Please send this e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to
continue the memoria l chain. Please don’t just delete it. It will only
take you a minute to pass this along. Thanks!

Amazing Medical Discover that was sent in an email.

Q: I’ve heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life; is this true?

A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that ’s it… don’t waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that’s like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.
Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?

A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.
Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?

A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up!
Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?

A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc..

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?

A: Can’t think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain…Good!

Q: Aren’t fried foods bad for you?

A: YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!!! …. Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they’re permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?

A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.
Q: Is chocolate bad for me?

A: Are you crazy? HELLO Cocoa beans! Another vegetable!!! It’s the best feel-good food around!
Q: Is swimming good for your figure?

A: If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.
Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?

A: Hey! ‘Round’ is a shape!
Well, I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets.

And remember:

‘Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - wine in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming ‘WOO HOO, What a ride’

AND…..

For those of you who watch what you eat, here’s the final word on nutrition and health. It’s a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.