Ray's Daily

Ray’s Daily
April 20, 2020
http://rays-daily.com
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde

Here we go again, another week with:

• No interaction with friends and family
• No outside activities
• No way to get a hair cut
• Plenty of housekeeping chores

But we have plenty to read, enough to eat and each other. So, we are so much better off than those who have no income and little food. We are virus free and our isolation has lowered our risk. We are well into our eighties and both have health issues that put is in the high risk category for severe illness if we became infected with Coronavirus, but we are successfully avoiding it, So we are doing better than so many others.
We continue to stay positive and look forward to the day when we can rejoin society. I amy have shared the following with you in the past, but it is something we all can use now.

The Optimist Creed
Promise yourself . . .

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

Written by Christian D. Larson in 1912

~~~

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”

Noam Chomsky
~~~

After many years, a young Jewish Talmud student who had left the old country for America returns to visit the family.
“But–where is your beard?” asks his mother upon seeing him.
“Mama,” he replies, “in America, nobody wears a beard.”
“But at least you keep the Sabbath?”
“Mama, business is business. In America, everybody works on the Sabbath.”
“But kosher food you still eat?”
“Mama, in America, it is very difficult to keep kosher.”
The old lady ponders this information and then leans over and whispers in his ear, “Isaac, tell me–you’re still circumcised?”

~~~
Those are my principles, if you don’t like them……I have others.
Groucho Marx
~~~

John Smith was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood. On the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill. Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper. This went on each Friday of Lent. On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood men got together and decided that something had to be done about John, he was tempting them to eat meat each Friday of Lent, and they couldn’t take it anymore. They decided to try and convert John to be a Catholic. They went over and talked to him and were so happy that he decided to join all of his neighbors and become a Catholic. They took him to Church, and the Priest sprinkled some water over him, and said, “You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, and now you are a Catholic.”
The men were so relieved, now their biggest Lenten temptation was resolved. The next year’s Lenten season rolled around. The first Friday of Lent came, and just at supper time, when the neighborhood was setting down to their tuna fish dinner, came the wafting smell of steak cooking on a grill. The neighborhood men could not believe their noses! WHAT WAS GOING ON? They called each other up and decided to meet over in John’s yard to see if he had forgotten it was the first Friday of Lent?
The group arrived just in time to see John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water. He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, “You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish.”

~~~
I’ve learned…. That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.

~~~

When temperatures plunged to 26 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the Rockford, Ill., Register Star asked its readers to finish the sentence, “It was so cold that…” Here are some of the responses:
…you could freeze an egg on the sidewalk.
…I had to go up and break the smoke off my chimney.
…we opened the refrigerator to heat the house.
…when police saw a bank-robbery suspect and said, “Freeze!” he did.
…I saw a 32nd-degree Mason, and he was down to 15.
…when I called home to Arizona, the message caused the cactus to frost over.
…I let my dog out, and I had to break him loose from the tree.

~~~
Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.
Fred Astaire
~~~

Donald Ogden Stewart, the writer, had a son away at prep school. When the boy reached the age of fourteen, Stewart wrote him the following letter:
“Dear son, now that you have reached the magic age of fourteen, the time has come to tell you about the bees and flowers. There is a male and a female bee, although I haven’t the slightest idea which is which. As for the flowers – we get ours from the Plaza Florist, Inc.

Well, that takes care of that.
Write soon, Affectionately,
Father
~~~
I made a mental note, but forgot where I put it.
~~~

Moshe was taking to his psychiatrist. “I had a weird dream recently,” he says. “I saw my mother but then I noticed she had your face. I found this so worrying that I immediately awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep. I just stayed there thinking about it until 7am. I got up, made myself a slice of toast and some coffee and came straight here. Can you please help me explain the meaning of my dream?”
The psychiatrist kept silent for some time, then said, “One slice of toast and coffee? Do you call that a breakfast?”

~~~

“Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don’t hang around long enough for his or her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, surround yourself with optimistic people.”

Zig Ziglar
~~~
Ray Mitchell
Indianapolis, Indiana

Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.
Ray’s Daily has been sent for more than fifteen years to people who want to start their day on an upbeat. If you have system overload because of our daily clutter, let me know and I will send you the information via mental telepathy. If you have not been getting our daily you can request to be added by e-mailing me at raykiwsp@gmail.com. Back issues are posted at http://rays-daily,com/ currently there are more than 2000 readers from around the world.