Happiness Now Newsletter 2

Time to move on to the topic of the day...

The Happiness Now web site is my effort to bring together information about becoming and staying happy. Everybody is welcome to contribute their ideas in the comments section on the site. The site is not biased to any particular philosophy or religion. If it is biased at all, the bias is to be open minded and share as many views on happiness as possible. My goal is to find out and share whatever leads people to what they see as happiness.

You can jump to the web site to read what follows and lots of other articles, or continue reading here in the newsletter to see the most recent updates.

Little Steps Can Take You Very Far

My family has a special love for the folks at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. One of our grand kids was diagnosed with cancer when he was ten months old. We just celebrated his tenth birthday, thanks to the treatment he has received at St. Jude's. We do everything we can to support this hospital after seeing the loving care our little guy received there, the quality of his treatment, and the almost unbelievable dedication of their entire staff.

Thousand of children have been treated at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The number of fatal chilhood cancers shrinks every day thanks to the reseach at St. Jude's. In the true spirit of loving care, no patient is turned away because of inability to pay and all medical dicoveries are freely shared with other treatment centers throughout the world.

How did such a top-notch hospital come to exist? Was it done by a huge government project? Was in funded by billionaire philanthropists? Did a corporate consortium create it? All wrong!

Surprisingly, this wonderful hospital is the result of the dream of a single man who made a promise to help others out of gratitude for the good fortune that came his way. That man is the famous comedian Danny Thomas.

To quote from the St. Jude website:

"More than 50 years ago, Danny Thomas, then a struggling young entertainer with $7 in his pocket, knelt in a Detroit church before a statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Thomas asked the saint to “show me my way in life.”

His prayer was answered, and soon he moved his family to Chicago to pursue career offers. A few years later, at another turning point in his life, Thomas again prayed to St. Jude and pledged to someday build a shrine to the saint.

Throughout the next years, Thomas’ career prospered through films and television, and he became a nationally known entertainer. He remembered his pledge to build a shrine to St. Jude.

In the early 1950s, Thomas began discussing with friends what concrete form his vow might take. Gradually, the idea of a children’s hospital, possibly in Memphis, took shape. In 1955, Thomas and a group of Memphis businessmen who had agreed to help support his dream seized on the idea of creating a unique research hospital devoted to curing catastrophic diseases in children. More than just a treatment facility, this would be a research center for the children of the world."

Danny picked a hospital to treat children, regardless of ethnic, religious or racial background because he had seen so many children, many his friends, die needlessly from disease as he grew up in a poor neighborhood during the Great Depression.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital opened its doors in 1962 and is now recognized as one of the world’s premier centers for study and treatment of catastrophic diseases in children... all due to the small initial steps taken by a single man. His idea grew and gained support until his dream became a reality. Danny considered the founding of St. Jude's to be the true meaning of his life, and seeing it become reality made him a very happy man.

So you see, little steps really can take you very far!

For another good story about little steps check out the Daffodil Principle.

Let's take a break for a few laughs!

It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking,and I saw a little boy staring in at me. "Is that a dog you got backthere?" he asked. "It sure is," I replied. Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, "What'd he do?"

A little boy was in a relative's wedding. As he was coming down the aisle he would take two steps, stop and turn to the crowd (alternating between bride's side and groom's side). While facing the crowd, he would put his hands up like claws and roar. So it went, step, step, "ROAR," step, step, "ROAR," all the way down the aisle. As you can imagine, the crowd was near tears from laughing so hard by the time he reached the pulpit. The little boy, however, was getting more and more distressed from all the laughing, and was also near tears by the time he reached the pulpit. When asked what he was doing, the child sniffed and said, "I was being the Ring Bear."

A daddy was listening to his child say his prayer "Dear Harold." At this, dad interrupted and said, "Wait a minute, "How come you
called God 'Harold?'
The little boy looked up and said, "That's His name. You know,
"Our Father, who art in Heaven, Harold be Thy name."

Some real headlines
- "Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Times in 10 Years"
- "Never Withhold Herpes Infection from Loved One"
- "War Dims Hope for Peace"
- "If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While"
- "Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures"
- "Deer Kill 17,000"
- "Enfields Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide"
- "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges"
- "Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead"
- "Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge"

In a Tacoma, Washington men's clothing store:
- "15 men's wool suits, $10. They won't last an hour!"

Bumper sticker seen on a stealth bomber:
- "If you can read this, then we wasted 50 billion bucks."

Happened in Kentucky --
- Two men tried to pull the front off an ATM by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home--. with the chain still attached to the machine-- with their bumper still attached to the chain-- with their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper.

On my first day of school my parents dropped me off at the wrong nursery. There I was...surrounded by trees and bushes.

Snowmen fall from Heaven unassembled.

When I'm finally holding all the cards, why does everyone decide to play chess?

To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.

Procastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

Borrow money from pessimists-they don't expect it back.

3 kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't.

A conclusion is often simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

Help Wanted: Telepath. You know where to apply.

Does fuzzy logic tickle?

A bird does not sing because it has an answer -- it sings because it has a song.

A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

Enough! Thats all I can take!

Here are some of the other articles you can find on the Happiness Now web site:

Happiness Now! Newsletter - April 9, 2007