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WITandWISDOM(tm) - January 20, 2004 ISSN 1538-8794 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: The human heart feels things the eyes cannot see, and knows what the mind cannot understand. - Robert Vallet Source: Carol's Thought for Today, http://www.kalama.com/~carola/ ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: On September 8, 1860, a terrible storm swept over Lake Michigan and threatened to sink the passenger steamer "Lady Elgin." On shore, watching the tragedy unfold, were some students who had come from nearby Garrett Biblical Institute. As the ship began to break up, one of the students, Edward W. Spencer, noticed a woman clinging to a piece of wreckage. Unable just to stand by and watch her drown, Spencer threw off his coat, plunged into the raging surf, swam to the sinking vessel, and brought her safely to shore. Again and again he swam out and brought back someone, until his strength was gone and he collapsed on the beach from exhaustion. As a result of his efforts, 17 lives were saved, but it almost cost Spencer his life. He never fully regained his health. After his death some years later, someone wrote his wife and asked if it were true that not one of those who had been rescued thanked her husband. Here is her reply: "The statement is true. Mr. Spencer never received any thanks from anybody he succeeded in saving, nor any recognition from any one of them." Then, in an admirable spirit of magnanimity, she went on to blame the seeming lack of gratitude on the general confusion and exhaustion of the rescued as well as the rescuer. She closed the letter with these words: "My husband always took this view of the situation and never manifested any feeling of resentment, and I am sure he felt none. He did his best, with no thought of reward or appreciation." Source: Sure As The Dawn, by Donald E. and Vesta W. Mansell, Copyright (c) 1993 by Review & Herald Publishing Association, ISBN: 0828007233, http://isbn.nu/0828007233/price ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: Country Words of Wisdom: Don't name a pig you plan to eat. Country fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong. Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce. Life is simpler when you plow around the stumps. A bumble bee is faster than a John Deere tractor. Trouble with a milk cow is she won't stay milked. Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled. To know how country folks are doing, look at their barns, not their houses. Man is the only critter who feels the need to label things as flowers or weeds. Don't wrestle with pigs: You'll get all muddy and the pigs will love it. Submitted by Bobbie Preissner ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: We purchased an old home in Northern New York State from two elderly sisters. Winter was fast approaching and I was concerned about the house's lack of insulation. "If they could live here all those years, so can we!" my husband confidently declared. One November night the temperature plunged to below zero, and we woke up to find interior walls covered with frost. My husband called the sisters to ask how they had kept the house warm. After a rather brief conversation, he hung up. "For the past 30 years," he muttered, "they've gone to Florida for the winter." Source: Chapnotes, http://www.chaplainsnotes.org/ ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: Madison, Wisconsin (AP): A researcher from the University of Wisconsin at Madison has figured out a better way to slice cheese _ just use a laser. "At any other university, people would have just laughed. But this is Wisconsin. It's cheese. And this is no laughing matter," said Xiaochun Li, a mechanical engineering professor and laser expert. Traditional cheese processing has a number of shortcomings, he said. Large cutting machines require considerable care to keep cheese from becoming contaminated by bacteria. And it's impossible to slice cheese very thin because it tears or sticks to the cutting blade. But now Li, working with engineering graduate student Hongseok Choi, has adapted the same kind of laser used for eye surgery to slice Wisconsin's most famed food product. At first, Li tried using a traditional commercial laser that uses heat to cut by melting or evaporating; it fried the cheese. "It smelled really bad," he said. Li tried again using a new class of laser that emits light in ultraviolet, and therefore shorter, wavelengths. That laser, known as a cold laser, cuts by blasting apart the molecular bonds that hold materials together. Source: White Board News, http://www.joeha.com/whiteboard/ |