My dad earned his livelihood by driving a truck. As a very young man, he delivered furniture. During World War II, he was assigned to deliver supplies to the troops. In the picture below, he’s the young man at right. When Dad returned to civilian life, he continued delivering furniture until he received a job offer from a friend (I’ll call him M.). The company where M. worked needed truck drivers, long and short haul. For the rest of his working life, Dad drove a truck under this company’s name. Continue reading “Cinderella’s Last Date”
Tag: happiness
Striking Gold
The dictionary uses evocative terms to define and describe the unique properties of Gold (chemical symbol Au): durable, malleable, resistant to corrosion. It is a precious metal, connoting beauty and elegance as well as great value.




These definitions may be applied to a 50-year marriage: durable, malleable, resistant to corrosion. Likewise, the long-lived marriage is precious, signifying beauty and elegance in addition to great value. Continue reading “Striking Gold”
Welcoming In The New
Sweeping Away the Old
The Fragrance of Life
Southern Living has long been one of my favorite magazines, one of the few print magazines to which I steadfastly subscribe. While leafing through a recent issue newly retrieved from my mailbox, one full-page ad (pictured below) caught my eye. Now you might assume the radiant, air-brushed smile is what drew my attention … but no.
Maybe it was the fragrance ? If you’ve thumbed through a print magazine lately, you may have noticed an uptick in scent strip promos for perfume and cologne products. Scent strips can be helpful. They provide fragrance samples so you won’t plunk down a substantial sum just to learn the scent is awful. But the multiple competing scents in a magazine’s single issue might easily lead to sensory overload!
So, no, it wasn’t the toothy expression nor the unexpectedly subtle fragrance, both of which are skillfully designed to generate interest and drive sales. Surprisingly, the text drew me in!
Take a closer look at the tag line: Life is beautiful. The Fragrance of Happiness.
With a simple search, I learned there were other tag-lines attached to Lancôme’s La vie est belle advertising. The overall theme of Life is beautiful extends naturally from the French phrase. One tag-line declared Life is beautiful. Live It Your Way. Another: Life is beautiful. Choose Your Own Path to Happiness.
Notwithstanding its variations, Lancôme appears to have settled on The Fragrance of Happiness as its primary tag-line. Continue reading “The Fragrance of Life”
Sat-Your-Day
You may be geared like me. No matter what the rest of the week brings my way, Saturdays are usually a day of ambition for me. All the tasks still on my list (because I failed to complete them during the week) get shuffled into Saturday!
Not A Sour Note
Ever since we first viewed the 2007 film Bella, I’ve paid attention to Eduardo Verástegui and the projects with which he’s been involved. Bella tells the story of an international soccer star (José played by Verástegui) whose life takes a sharp turn that abruptly ends the man’s career. As the movie begins, he’s working as a cook in a restaurant.
Raising Canes . . . Maybe
Back in February, I posted about a day when I made a specific appointment to prune the raspberry bushes in my garden. I mentioned my reluctance to perform the task because I believed the productive plants might – given my notoriously purple thumb – take offense at being pruned and simply refuse to produce another crop! About two weeks ago, I took a hopeful gander at the raised-bed garden. I’m afraid it wasn’t good news.
Life In A Meat-grinder
With ABC’s Dianne Sawyer conducting a two-hour interview scheduled to air tomorrow night, stories and pictures of Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner are everywhere online as well as on the front pages of various tabloids. Jenner reached the pinnacle of success, snagging two Gold Medals in the grueling decathlon. Esquire described him as “the greatest athlete of his time.”
Forty years separated from his last Gold Medal achievement, the recent picture below makes me think of a tortured and lost child, someone so despondent he’s chosen an extraordinary (some would say irrational) path in hopes it will bring him some measure of peace. I look at this second picture and it breaks my heart. How does an individual arrive at this point of utter desperation?
Back To The 60s Again
For as long as I can remember, music has been an integral part of my life. Two other posts in this space (here and here) offer some background. Because I’m also a product of the 1960s, there’s a certain genre of music that shaped my life just as it shaped the lives of most in my baby-boomer generation.