The Honeypot Trap III. The Widow Jenkins

 Part I is here. Part II is here.

“Doris Jenkins moved here about 20 years ago, bought the house on the edge of town. You likely saw it; the one with all the flowers. We call her The Widow Jenkins as she was newly widowed when she moved here and has lost two husbands since. Heart failure. The last one just a month or so ago. No idea where she finds them. Must haunt the Lonely Hearts pages of The Western Seducer.

“She is now in her early 70s, lives frugally but certainly is sociable. You are always welcome for tea in her front deck. Never in the house though and she keeps people away from the backyard because of the bees. Comes to church in the hall every two weeks when the preacher is here. She and her husbands attended the dances and drove to the next town to theatre and so forth. Very outgoing, very energetic. Spends all her spare time working with her flowers and her bees. Her husbands must have died smiling. Best tell your client to avoid her”, she laughed. I didn’t.

I stirred my coffee thoughtfully and tried to pull together what my client had told me and what I had learned since. My client was a nurse. Her uncle had been Jenkins’ last husband. She was suspicious and asked for a coroner’s report. Her uncle’s heart was fine on his last medical, taken a few months prior to his marriage and no one in the extended family had ever had any heart trouble.  He was a spry old dude which is why he went looking for a wife in his old age.

He had an insurance policy worth half a million with Imprudent Life. It had been in the niece’s name, but he made the niece and his new wife joint beneficiaries. Did the previous husband have life insurance? I sent texts to three or four of the more popular companies with the name of the previous deceased husband, date of death, and an explanation that I suspected insurance fraud. They know me and I have worked for them before.

While I waited for replies, I decided to walk over from the hotel to check out the Jenkins residence and especially her flowers. I could take pictures and use them to identify the plants or shrubs. For some strange reason I bought three bottles of carbonated water from the locked hotel cooler.

The front flower bed was the usual pansies and petunias, begonias and not begonias. The backyard was a different matter. Shrubs 6 to 10 feet high covered in flowers. Yellow, red and all colours. I was taking pictures when the back door opened, and Doris Jenkins hollered at me. “What are you doing? Be careful you don’t touch any of those shrubs. They are lovely but will kill you if they get the chance.” Sounded like my Ex.

She was wearing surgical gloves, “Come around front and have some tea”. Yeah, right, I thought. We sat on the front deck. “I’m Mike Malone. I was passing through, stopped for coffee at the hotel and tried some wonderful honey that they said you had supplied. It was so good I decided to follow up. Sorry, no tea. Carbonated water for my upset tummy.”

We visited for half an hour, about life in general and honey in particular. She was not very forthcoming about her honey production. I went back to the hotel. Tomorrow would finish the job.

The Honeypot Trap II The Village

 Chapter I is here. 

The sign said Pilsudski’s hotel, bar and café. Mrs. Pidsulski met me at the door, She was about 5 ft in any direction you wanted to measure her, with a friendly but no-nonsense smile. She sat me at a table in the middle of the room, no booths, poured me a cup of coffee and then said hello. She’d take me order after the morning coffee rush.  The coffee was as it should be, as my Peruvian friend once said, “Hot as hell, black as pitch, and bitter as marriage”.

By 9:45 the morning coffee crowd was gathering. Several men, with white, grey, or no hair, piled in and sat at their habitual places. I worried I was in someone’s spot, but no one made a fuss. They were pleasant enough, said hello, and three sat at my table, making no effort to include or exclude me from the conversation. I listened.

Nothing new or exciting, farm prices, weather forecasts, sports scores, the usual. No one asked my business, just assuming I was passing through. Then one of them ordered toast, “And bring some of that good honey from the Widow Jenkins”. I’d hit the pay dirt. The only beehive I’d seen was behind the house with all the flowers.

The honey was light caramel and flowed easily from the container. “What’s so special about this honey?” I asked. “Oh”, the man exclaimed, “the Widow Jenkins has all these flowering trees in her backyard, and a beehive. Occasionally she will sell a pail of honey to the café. It tastes different from canola or buckwheat honey. It is sort of a seasonal treat for us old timers”.

I drank my coffee. In 20 minutes, the men had all cleared out and I caught Mrs. Pilsudski’s eye for another cup. She poured the mug full to the brim, “Breakfast?” “Please.” And off she went. . . OoooKay?. In 10 minutes, she was back, two eggs over easy, four slices of bacon, hash browns, brown toast, and a side of cold beans. Poured herself a coffee and sat.

I introduced myself, “Hi, I’m Mike Malone, insurance, property and life”, one name being as good as another.  “Uh Huh, I saw you come off the rim this morning. And my rooms are clean”, she looked at me in disgust, “You needn’t have slept in your car. Who or what are you looking for?”.

I handed her my business car. “Rick O’Shea, Private Investigator. . . I thought you were a cop”.  “No, Ma’am, cops have to follow the law”, I smiled. She smiled back, “I hear ya.”

“I’m sort of scouting this community for a client who is looking for a nice place to settle down. He doesn’t trust real estate agents to give him an honest answer.” She nodded, “Smart move. Lost my husband in the war and been here 30 years. I know most everyone here and can give you a run down if it will help”.  She laughed, “How old’s your client?. . . Never mind, I ‘m too old to start that again”.

“My client is early 70s, just retired, comfortable but not rich by any stretch. So tell me about Lakeview.”

“Quiet, mostly retired, several younger couples with families that work here. Husband runs my bar, wife teaches at the school. Family runs the service station-confectionary. Two families own the grocery store and wife/husband teach at the school.”

“Tell me about the honey from The Widow Jenkins that one of your customers raved about.”

To be continued.

The Honeypot Trap I. The Valley

 The road my client told me to take was more of a dirt trail. Winter or rain would make it impassable. And the country was flat. Pee on a plate flat. Watch your dog run away for two days flat. I was almost at the edge of the valley before I saw it coming.

I stopped at the brow of the slope, backed up so I wouldn’t be readily visible, dug out my field glasses and looked down and across. The valley, about a mile wide, ran east and west. Cattle grazed the far side. A small stream or river ran along the far side, crossed here and there by single span, narrow bridges, flowed into a series of small lakes, giving the valley and the village below its name, Lakeview.

The village, directly below me, looked like about 45 houses. A gas station/confectionary stood beside the two-lane blacktop that ran the length of the valley. Outlines of a long-abandoned railway showed vaguely. On what passed for main street was a small grocery store, a two-story hotel/bar, and a small school.

In two hours, one car went east on the highway and two went west. A cube van from the west made stops at the confectionary, grocery store and hotel. So the hotel had a restaurant as well as a bar.

The houses all had gardens. Flowers and grass in front and vegetables and fruit trees in back. By fruit, I meant likely saskatoons, chokecherries, or crabapples. All but one house, near the edge of town. It was a blaze of colour front and back. Field glasses revealed a beehive in the back yard. This was the house I was sent to investigate.

Suddenly I wished I’d spent more time on botany than bugs. But bugs are usually more use in solving murder cases. If indeed this was murder or simply the hazards of growing old. Fortunately Gooble was there to ask about the vegetation. IF there was Wi-Fi service.

Speaking of bugs, not knowing who or what had slept in the hotel’s rooms before me or if they might still be there, I stretched out in the car to spend the night. I’d packed a blanket just in case.

In the morning, I watched the town slowly come alive. At 8:30 a small school bus pulled up to the school, a few little kids got off and a few larger kids got on. The bus headed east. So, there were families scattered up and down the valley. The school was likely K-6 and a larger school in the next town that was 7-12. Interesting little community. Didn’t look like it would house a murderer but what rural community does?

By 9:30 breakfast sounded good so I stuck it in 3^rd gear and started down the hill into the valley. I sure hoped I could drive out on the highway as climbing back up was out of the question.

To be continued

Left Knee Replacement

 Last Wednesday Jan 22nd, I had my left knee replaced. I do not recommend it. I was doing fine on pain killers and using an elastice knee support. Now I am crippled untill likely April. No dog walking for sometime after that. And I am on Hydromorphone. A walker gets me around. 

Do your exercises they said. So I did and now my leg is swollen and inflamed. Cold packs every few hours help bring the swelling down. 

My right knee is also arthritic. I'll deal with it when I am in a wheelchair. 

When I have energy, I will catch up on reading all your blogs. 

The disaster that is America is in danger of spreading North and I can't even run. People with disabilities will be first into the ovens

How cold is it?

 It is -28C today with windchill -42C. How cold is that you ask?

• Colder than a mother-in-law’s kiss

• Colder than a bankers heart

• Cold enough to freeze the nuts on a combine harvester
• So cold I saw two rabbits with booster cables trying to jump start a coyote
• The rock rattling around in your shoe is your toe.
• Richard Simmons wearing shorts that come nearly to the half-thigh region.
• Lawyers have their hands in their own pockets.
• You have to break the smoke off your chimney
• You have to open the fridge to heat the house
• Your false teeth chatter, and they are still in the glass
• Police tell a robber to freeze, and he does
• Our words froze in midair and we had to put them in a frying pan to thaw them so we hear what we were talking about.
• People look forward to getting a fever
• Mailmen watch out for both dogs and polar bears
• I'm shivering like a mobster in a tax office.
• We had to chisel the dog off a lamp-post
• Refrigerators are redundant
• Pet stores sell hamsters, gerbils and penguins
• Lady Liberty put her torch inside her dress!
• Prisoners are begging for the electric chair.
• Roosters are rushing into KFC and begging to use the pressure cooker!
• A streaker froze in mid-streak! Cops hung a plaque around his neck...so we have to pretend he's a statue until Spring.
• I chipped my tooth on my soup.
• Dunkin' Donuts is serving coffee on a stick.
• We pulled everything out of the freezer and huddled inside to keep warm.
• I saw an Amish guy buying an electric blanket.
• I actually saw a gangsta pull his pants up.
• I'm drinking hot sauce instead of coffee.
• Ice cubes are coming out of my faucet.
• Trees are chopping themselves into firewood.
• Cops are tazing themselves.
• I farted snowflakes
• Even Elsa is bothered by it
• I'm thankful for hot flashes
• Donald Trump's hair freezes in place.
• Miley Cyrus had to put her clothes back on.
• I saw a greyhound bus and the dog was riding on the inside.
• The ice cubes in my drink have goose bumps.

Doing a Jackiesue Post

 

The Case of the Missing Negative

 “Rick O’Shea”, I said to myself, “you are in trouble”. The phone message had been cryptic, “Go to 1485 Seraphim Court at 5:00 pm”. Nothing more. Now the P.I. business has been slow for a while. I had been rubbing two loonies together for a week, trying to get them to mate. I wasn’t about to pass up anything that might have a dollar in it. But I was worried.

I pulled up outside the building. A mansion by anyone’s standards. A small bras plate on the door said “Professional Photography. Strict confidence maintained”. I had to wonder what kind of pictures he took. Likely kinky couples, twosomes, threesomes, even handsomes. I opened the door and went in.

The two people in the room paid no attention to me when I entered. And only one of them was dead. The corpse was sprawled beside a funny looking camera that held one large negative at a time. It was open and the negative was missing. That likely accounted for the three shots I heard and the heavy-set man in a brown leather coat running down the backstairs through the well-manicured yard and flower beds to a car on far street.

The other, a slim red-headed female, late 20’s, sat rigidly in an armchair, staring straight ahead, stoned out of her mind. She wore a pair of large dangling diamond earrings. That was all. I admired the view. Nice, but not my type. I prefer a more robust Rubenesque body.

There is no shortage of nubile young women willing to shed their clothes at the sight of a camera. Apparently, the red head was not one of them, as a small syringe lay on the floor where the photographer had dropped it.

I figured like this. The girl comes for a professional photoshoot. The dead man slaps a needle into her and sets up the girl. Someone pegs the pervert and steals the negative. Question is, who and why? Probably to use it to blackmail someone, likely the girl’s family who are no doubt Very Important People.

I didn’t touch anything in the room and wiped my prints off the door latch. I phoned Bill, the beat cop. “Bill, I got a problem. A phone message earlier directed me to this address and now I’m in a mansion in a high-priced neighbourhood with a dead man and a drugged naked woman”.

“My advice is get out quick and hope no one saw you. Let the police ‘discover’ it in their own time. Don’t worry, we’ll get the girl to a hospital”.

I didn’t need to be asked twice. I went out the way I came in, wiped the door latches down inside and out, and ran to my car. I drove back to the office and poured a drink. Who sent me the phone message and why? Who was the girl? Who was the dead photographer? Who threatened me? Who wrote the book of love? I poured another drink. Nothing to do but wait.

Two days later there was a knock on my door. I put my .45 where I could reach it quickly and pushed the button to unlock the door. A distinguished looking grey-haired man in an expensive suit entered. He carried a photograph and showed me the back of it. I already knew what the front looked like. She was his daughter.

“Bring $10,000 in $20 dollar bills in a canvas tote bag to the park off Smith Street by 1 pm tomorrow. Tie it to the third tree to the left of the water fountain. No funny stuff. We’ll be watching. Do this and we destroy the negative. Otherwise, it goes to the press and your political future goes down the toilet.”. (Obviously he was not a Republican, or it would have enhanced it).

“Blackmail, huh? How did you get my name?”

“Police officer contacted me on the quiet. Said I should see you if I didn’t want to go public.”

“If you pay off the blackmailers, what guarantee that they will honour the agreement and not hit you again? Or that they won’t send it to the press anyhow?”

“None. What do you suggest?”

“My hunch is that there is only one person. He and the photographer were in partnership, but he double crossed the partner with three bullets so he wouldn’t have to share. Regardless of the threat, I need to stake out the drop and spot the person who picks it up.”

I parked three blocks away and watched through field glasses. At 2:45 a big burly man picked up the bag and disappeared. No indication he destroyed the negative.

I was a block away when a black Nisson N-Trail cut me off and forced me over to the curb. (The N-Trail is like the X-Trail but has more guts). The big scruffy guy got out and came to my passenger window, pointing a .45 automatic where it could ruin my social life. I wished I had a Trunk Monkey. At least he didn’t shoot me outright. I unlocked the door, like I had a choice.

“OK, Shamus, we are going for a ride. You know too much and a little guy like me can’t afford that. Life is tough enough.”

The world’s smallest violin played ragtime in my head. “Where are we going?”

“Find a dirt road out of here and don’t play any games.”

About two miles out of town I saw a gravel road and turned off the highway. I was driving pretty slow. Being late for my own funeral wouldn’t bother me and it gave me time to think of something. Thinking was never my strong suit.

A semi crossed the road directly in front of us. I hit the brakes hard, opened the door, jumped and rolled. The back tires on the trailer just missed me. The car went in under, between the tires. Sliced the top of as neat as a can opener. Sliced the top off my kidnapper too.

By the time the cops got there, I had fished the negative out of the guy’s pocket, without getting too much blood on me. Case closed.

Next day the distinguished looking grey-haired man dropped into my office and gave me a check for $5000. He declined my offer of a drink. He must have known I was down to rotgut Scotch. I poured myself a tall glass, knocked it back, gasping for breath. I sat back on my chair and relaxed.

Finding Light in Winter

 A friend sent me this. It is worth passing on in this dark time.

Monet “Snow in Argenteuil” (1875).

By Mary Pipher. Dr. Pipher is a clinical psychologist and writer in Lincoln, Neb., and the author, most recently, of “A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence.”

The mornings are dark, the late afternoons are dusky, and before we finish making dinner, the daylight is gone. As we approach the darkest days of the year, we’re confronted with the darkness of wars, a dysfunctional government, fentanyl deaths, mass shootings and reports of refugees crawling through the Darién Gap or floundering in small boats in the Mediterranean. And we cannot avoid the tragedy of climate change with its droughts, floods, fires and hurricanes. Indeed, the world is pummeled with misfortune.

We can count ourselves lucky if we do not live in a war zone or a place without food or drinking water, but we read the news. We see the disasters on our screens. Ukraine, Israel and Gaza are all inside us. If we are empathic and awake, we share the pain of all the world’s tragedies in our bodies and in our souls. We cannot and should not try to block out those feelings of pain. When we try, we are kept from feeling much of anything, even love and joy. We cannot deny reality, but we can control how much we take in.

I am in the last decades of life, and sometimes I feel that my country and our species are also nearing end times. The despair I feel about the world would ruin me if I did not know how to find light. Whatever is happening in the world, whatever is happening in our personal lives, we can find light.

This time of year, we must look for it. I am up for sunrise and outside for sunset. I watch the moon rise and traverse the sky. I light candles early in the evening and sit by the fire to read. And I walk outside under the blue-silver sky of the Nebraska winter. If there is snow, it sparkles, sometimes like a blanket of diamonds, other times reflecting the orange and lavender glow of a winter sunset.

We can watch the birds. Recently, it was the two flickers at my suet feeder with the yellow undersides of their wings flashing, the male so redheaded and protective, the female so hungry. Today, it may be the juncos, hopping about our driveway, looking for seeds. The birds are always nearby. Their calls are temple bells reminding me to be grateful.

For other kinds of light, we can turn to our friends and family. Nothing feels more like sunlight than walking into a room full of people who are happy to see me. I think of my son and daughter-in-law on my birthday, Zeke making homemade ravioli and Jamie baking an apple cake, their shining eyes radiating love. Or of my friends, sitting outdoors around a campfire in coats and hats, reciting poetry and singing songs.

We also have the light of young children. My own grandchildren are far away, but I spend time with 9-year-old Kadija. My husband and I are sponsoring her family; they arrived here from Afghanistan, with only the father speaking English, just a few months ago. Already, she can bring me a picture book and read “whale,” “porpoise” and “squid” in a voice that reminds me of sleigh bells. I know someday she will be a surgeon, or perhaps a poet.

In our darkest moments, art creates a shaft of light. There is light in a poetry book by Joy Harjo, in a recording by Yo-Yo Ma and in a collection of Monet’s paintings of snow. The rituals of spiritual life will also illuminate our days. In my case, it is sun salutations, morning prayers, meditation and readings from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and influential Zen master. Also, it’s the saying of grace and the moments when I slow down and am present. Whatever our rituals, they allow us to hold on through the darkness until the light returns.

Finally, we will always have the light of memory. When I recall my grandmother’s face as she read to me from “Black Beauty” or held my hand in church, I can calm down and feel happy. I feel the light on my skin when I remember my mother at the wheel of her Oldsmobile, her black doctor’s bag beside her. Driving home from a house call, she would tell me stories from her life on a ranch in the Great Depression and during the Dust Bowl.

Deep inside us are the memories of all the people we’ve ever loved. A favorite teacher, a first boyfriend, a best friend from high school or a kind aunt or uncle. And when I think of my people, I’m suffused with light that reminds me that I have had such fine people in my life and that they are still with me now and coming back to help me through hard times.

Every day I remind myself that all over the world most people want peace. They want a safe place for their families, and they want to be good and do good. The world is filled with helpers. It is only the great darkness of this moment that can make it hard to see them.

No matter how dark the days, we can find light in our own hearts, and we can be one another’s light. We can beam light out to everyone we meet. We can let others know we are present for them, that we will try to understand. We cannot stop all the destruction, but we can light candles for one another.

Dec. 11, 2023, NTY Opinions

Making Sense of the World Around Us

 We had decent weather over the holidays but are paying for it now as it is -25 or -35 with wind chill. I didnt mean not to blog, just life around here was so dull, getting through the day was enough. Tanya made  nice Christmas dinner and New Year's Dinner for the two of us, three counting Lucky. I cut way back on reading my inbox. Too depressing and instead watched a few movies. 

The New Year is upon us. We have no choice but to bumble through it as best we can. Maybe it won't be as bad as we fear and maybe pigs have wings. Our Prime Minister is as popular as a wet dog at a picnic. I have not seen that he has resigned yet though the demands are deafening. There are two good candidates to replace him. Failing thst Pierre PeePee Poilievre could well become out next Prime minister. On the other hand since American billionaires are opposing him, maybe Trudeau isnt as bad as he is made out to be. But he has to go.

Borowitz has good advice for surviving 2025:

There’s no way around it: it’s 2025. And that means we’re just days away from Elon Musk’s presidency. If you’re feeling anxious about the U.S. government being run by a man whose rockets regularly explode on the launching pad, I understand.
I want to help keep you sane this year—and the next four.
I’m not recommending that you disengage from the world, swallow fistfuls of gummies, or go on a four-year hot yoga retreat. I’m offering advice to make you calmer and stronger—and better equipped to do the important work ahead.
A few weeks ago, I published an essay called In Search of Sanity, in which I recommended, among other things, the Serenity Prayer:
God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed; Give me courage to change things which must be changed; And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
TBR community members contributed many insightful responses to my essay. Here are some of them:
·         The Serenity Prayer is really a recap of Stoic thinking (sorry, Christians).
·         Epictetus: "There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."
·         Old Epi (as his friends were wont to call him) was keen on the notion of "what is up to us, and what is not up to us." Sweat the stuff that you can do something about; getting overwrought about the rest of the nonsense is futile. Do you really think your worrying is going to change Trump suddenly from unhinged to "hinged"?
·         Figuring out the difference is not all that hard, but it takes some work, for sure.
·         I'd only add to your serenity recipe some of the prescriptions from Timothy Snyder in his pocket-sized book, On Tyranny: "Stand Out. Be Careful With Language & Listen for Dangerous Words. Investigate. Get Outside. Make New Friends and March With Them. Be As Courageous as You Can." And—support institutions that count, whether they be journalistic, non-profits, local government or whatever makes sense. We can't afford to sit back. Ever.
·         I have a suggestion which I’m trying to get myself to take a little more often: instead of listening to NPR on your earbuds or your home radio, put on MUSIC. Do you remember music? It’s wonderful! Try it sometime.
·         I would add that, in the end, we have as individuals more power over and access to change than we often realize. Look how South Korea just dealt with the martial law situation! Mika and Joe now defend their trip to grovel at Trump’s feet with “That’s our job!” I leave it up to MSNBC and the network to accept that as a proper validation of their FL trip (love your note that their show is “Fox for vegans”). The viewers took flight and if they stay away the ad dollars will follow suit. This type of action/reaction goes for any well thought out strategy to “defend” our rights, our liberty and our Democracy. It just takes a little bit more thinking and a proactive rather than passive (as in victim) attitude!
·         I’m 66, and have a lifetime of anxiety and depression behind me with lots of trauma. Along with many years of therapy, you don’t want to know how many, I started mindfulness meditation training with the Headspace app three years ago. And the main point if mindfulness, is that all we have is right now. The past is gone, and the future never arrives. None of us know what’s going to happen, we absolutely do need to focus on the micro, and do what we can to change our small corner every day. For me that means being kind, helping others when I can, and doing my best to live in the moment. Simple, but not easy.
·         I've been trying to tell my mourning friends that they're mourning before the body's dead. I believe Trump will cause great damage, and hurt a lot of people, but I have hope that the midterms will dull the pain, and in four years the Trump era will slowly start to diminish. I don't think Vance or certainly not DJ Jr. have the personal charisma to keep his rabid followers as riled up. I could be wrong, but history shows us that most political movements reach a peak, then subside. Hell, even the Berlin wall fell.
·         How about Epictetus? Basic premise: There are only two things in life that matter. First: Figure out in any situation what is the best thing to do. Second: Do it.

A friend sent these 

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. Mark Twain

 If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. Mahatma Gandhi

 Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. William Butler Yeats

 I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. James Baldwin

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous. Alfred Adler

What I try to tell young people is that if you come together with a mission, and it’s grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible. John Lewis

 Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. Francis Bacon

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. Abraham Joshua Heschel

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense. Robert Frost

Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories. Yuval Noah Harari

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. Franklin D. Roosevelt

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense. Thomas Hobbes

 Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes. Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. Isaac Asimov

 The failure to invest in youth reflects a lack of compassion and a colossal failure of common sense. Coretta Scott King

When I was born, my parents and my mother's parents planted a dogwood tree in the side yard of the large white house in which we lived throughout my boyhood. This tree I learned quite early, was exactly my age - was, in a sense, me. John Updike

 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Dwight D. Eisenhower