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whew !!!

IN THIS ISSUE

• Geoff Goodship wraps up his suggestions for prospective organ donors
• Bruce Galway´s story is about the long memory of elephants
• Jackie Stevens sends an example of the results of distraction
• Jack Peaker tells of a man who has his priorities straight
• Rafiki forwards a thoughtful tale of a threatened mouse
• Marilyn Magid sends a fish story
• The editor gets a new-to-her computer, which is presenting challenges
• Where does Burke Dykes get all these blonde jokes?
• Jack Peaker and Miriam Ockenden suggest interesting websites

Geoff Goodship offers more personal advice on how to remain

AN ORGAN DONOR IN GOOD STANDING

6) I tried sky diving. It certainly concentrates your attention. The thrill is extreme but short lived. I didn´t stayed with sky diving long enough to get into the sport competitively. I´m pretty competitive, so it´s probably one reason I´m still alive today. I´ve done scuba but it has a similar problem for me. It takes a whole bunch of expensive equipment just to get started. I can´t think of any minor injuries associated with either sky diving or scuba.

7) I never did get to play hockey as a kid although I played minor lacrosse for a couple of seasons. Come to think of it, I can´t feel any part of my body that hurts today as a result of playing lacrosse 60 years ago, and they even wear face masks now. When I look at most of the 18 to 24 year olds playing hockey today, I see a budding 45 year old with one or more debilitating injuries. There are no exceptions, even for those who play ´no contact´ hockey in their senior years. It will most likely be a knee or shoulder, but could be in many other places as well. An older hockey player is just a live specimen waiting to become a host for an aggressive arthritis bug.

I used to think that testosterone poisoning was exclusively a male condition. Today, however, the athletic stupidity factor is shared equally between the sexes.

Have you any recommendations for sports I´ve yet to try? Perhaps golf is the ideal game for those who want to sneak passed 60 without too much pain. Chances of being hurt at golf are mostly to your pride and your pocketbook. Perhaps I should have taken up darts but with my luck.... Is there such an injury as dart-throwers wrist?

The other day I was cleaning out an infrequently-used drawer when I came across an old and out-of-date driver´s license - mine. Comparing it to my current B.C. driver´s license, I discovered that the present license no longer carries the ´Organ Donor´ designation. Curious, I Googled B.C. driver´s license + organ donor and found the information I´ve cut and pasted below:

"You must register with the B.C. Transplant Society even if you previously held a B.C. license with an organ donor decal. Organ donation is no longer linked with your B.C. Driver´s License. For more information or to complete the form online, see the B.C. Transplant Society http:/www.transplant.bc.ca

It must be 20 years since I originally signed that organ donor card. I don´t want to renege on the offer, but I´m not certain there will be any useful bits or pieces left over, particularly if the recipient is at all fussy. I´m not sure they´d let me now. Still, they´re welcome to anything that still works and doesn´t hurt.

Bruce Galway forwards this wonderful animal story:

ELEPHANTS HAVE LONG MEMORIES

A young man was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from college. While he was walking through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so the man approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant´s foot. There was a large thorn deeply embedded in the bottom of the foot.

As carefully and as gently as he could, he worked the thorn out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man and with a rather stern look on its face, stared at him. For a good ten minutes the man stood frozen - thinking of nothing else but being trampled.

Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. The man never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, the man was walking through the zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to where they were standing at the rail. The large bull elephant stared at him and lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times, all the while staring at the man. The man couldn´t help wondering if this was the same elephant.

After a while it trumpeted loudly; then it continued to stare at him. The man summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder.

Suddenly the elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of the man´s legs, and swung him wildly back and forth along the railing, killing him.

Probably wasn´t the same elephant.

Jackie Stevens forwards this story:

IT DOESN´T PAY TO BE DISTRACTED

A Michigan woman and her family were vacationing in a small New England town where Paul Newman and his family often visited.

One Sunday morning, the woman got up early to take a long walk. After a brisk five-mile hike, she decided to treat herself to a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone.

She hopped in the car, drove to the center of the village, and went straight to the combination bakery/ice cream parlor. There was only one other patron in the store: Paul Newman. He was sitting at the counter having a doughnut and a cup of coffee.

The woman´s heart skipped a beat as her eyes made contact with those famous baby-blues. The actor nodded graciously and the star-struck woman smiled demurely.

"Pull yourself together!" she chided herself. "You´re a happily married woman with three children; you´re forty-five years old, not a teenager!"

The clerk filled her order and she took the double-dip chocolate ice cream cone in one hand and her change in the other. Then she went out the door, avoiding even a glance in Paul Newman´s direction.

When she reached her car, she realized that she had a handful of change - but her other hand was empty. "Where´s my ice cream cone? Did I leave it in the store?"

Back into the shop she went, expecting to see the cone still in the clerk´s hand or in a holder on the counter, but no ice cream cone was in sight.

With that, she happened to look over at Paul Newman. His face broke into his familiar warm, friendly grin and he softly said: "You put it in your purse."

Jack Peaker forwards this story about

PRIORITIES

A retired corporate executive, now a widower, decides to take a vacation. He books himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeds to have the time of his life ... until the ship sinks.

He finds himself on an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing, only bananas and coconuts. While lying on the beach one day about four months later, the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to the shore. In disbelief, he asks, "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"

She replies, "I rowed here from the other side of the island. I landed here when my cruise ship sank."

"Amazing," he says. "You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."

"Oh, this thing?" says the woman. "I made the boat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a eucalyptus tree."

"But where did you get the tools?" wonders the guy.

"Well, that was no problem," replies the woman. "On the south side of the island, a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock is exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable, ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tool to make the hardware."

The guy is stunned.

"Let´s row over to my place," she says.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man looks to shore, he nearly falls off the boat. Before him is a stone wall leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare around, dumbstruck.

As they walk into the house, she says casually, "It´s not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please. Would you like a drink?"

"No. No thank you," he blurts out, still dazed. "I can´t take any more coconut juice."

"It´s not coconut juice," winks the woman. "I have a still. How would you like a Pina Colada?"

Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, "I´m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet."

No longer questioning anything, the man goes into the bathroom. There in the cabinet is a razor made from a bone handle, with two shells honed to a hollow ground edge fastened onto its end inside a swivel mechanism.

"This woman is amazing," he muses. "What next?"

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her.

"Tell me," she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, "We´ve been out here for a really long time. You´ve been lonely. There´s something I´m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you´ve been longing for all these months?" She gazes into his eyes.

He can´t believe what he´s hearing. "You mean... ?" He swallows excitedly; tears start to form in his eyes. "You mean you´ve built a golf course?" ED. NOTE: Or as another version of the story has it: "You mean I can check my e-mail?"

Rafiki sends this

MOUSE STORY

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. "What food might this contain?" the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse, I´m sorry for you, but it´s no skin off my nose."

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer´s mousetrap - alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house - like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer´s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer´s wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever. Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup´s main ingredient. But his wife´s sickness continued, so friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer´s wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them.

The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn´t concern you, remember - when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

Marilyn Magid shares this story about

ONE SMART FISHERMAN

Four married guys go fishing. After an hour, the first guy says, "You have no idea what I had to do to be able to come out fishing this weekend. I had to promise my wife that I will paint every room in the house next weekend."

The second guy says: "That is nothing. I had to promise my wife that I will build her a new deck for the new pool."

The third guy says: "Man, you both have it easy! I had to promise my wife that I will remodel the kitchen for her."

They continue to fish when they realize that the fourth guy has not said a word. So they ask him, "You haven´t said anything about what you had to do to be able to come fishing this weekend. What´s the deal?"

The fourth guy says: "I just set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. When it went off, I shut off my alarm, gave the wife a nudge and said, ´Fishing or sex,´ and she said, "Wear sun-block.´"

Burke Dykes offers this disclaimer: Sorry, but I just can´t help myself - here is another blonde joke:

TWO BLONDES WITH HAMMERS

Carol and Donna were doing some carpentry work on a Habitat for Humanity house. Carol, who was nailing down house siding, would reach into her nail pouch, pull out a nail, and either toss it over her shoulder or nail it in.

Donna, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, "Why are you throwing those nails away?"

Carol explained, "When I pull a nail out of my pouch, about half of them have the head on the wrong end and I throw them away."

Donna got completely upset and yelled, "You moron! Those nails aren´t defective! They´re for the other side of the house!"

THE EDITOR STRUGGLES WITH A NEW COMPUTER AND A NEW SYSTEM

I have inherited Jay´s monster of a computer. He doubted my ability to absorb two new operating systems, OS X for the Mac and Windows, also for the Mac, at once. So instead of getting a Mini Mac, which does not support programs pre-OS X, he gave me his Mac G5. This computer is intimidating, to say the least, but it has one great advantage - Jay copied many of my files from my iMac to this one, and I can still play my favourite games as well as find all the material I´ve been saving for future Spinners. I just have to work on a machine that is based on OS X, and I am frequently lost.

If you notice anything unusual about this or forthcoming issues, put it down to the steepness of the learning curve I am trying to cope with. Jay is an invaluable source of help, and many a plaintive note has been sent to him since he installed this machine on Sunday. I would like to run a computer the way I do a car - step on the gas and steer, but unfortunately computers are somewhat more complicated. However, I will eventually learn my way around, and until that time, I ask that you bear with me.

P.S.: Sending this issue has turned out to be more of a challenge than I feared. When I tried to open the copy I had edited and saved, I was told it needed a default application to open, but I couldn´t figure out what it wanted. So I went to Jay´s website, where the issue was already posted, and downloaded it. From there I copied and pasted it into another file, went through and put all the dividers in again, and now I am about to try to keep this one available long enough to get it off to you. <sigh>

THIS WEEK´S SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Jack Peaker sends these sites for browsing:

Food: http://snipurl.com/wnir Health: http://www.ecureme.com/ Africa: http://www.tamarin.com/king/kindire1.html Images: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/ Projects: http://www.diynetwork.com/ Pictures: http://www.picture-history.com/index.htm

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Miriam Ockenden likes this site:

http://www.marycy.org/remember.html

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Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.