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IN THIS ISSUE

• The editor reviews the history of the Tale Spinner
• Don Henderson answers some questions about the 60-plusses
• Marilyn Magid asks why worry? This too will pass
• Vancouver makes some stringent rules about garbage disposal
• A work review of 2007 looks at demon bosses and employees
• Gerrit de Leeuw shares a letter about forwarding e-mails
• Jack Peaker tells the story about buying a bull
• Carol Hansen sends the demographics of US newspaper readers

A BRIEF HISTORY

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning of this newsletter are familiar with how it started, but for the benefit of those who have recently joined us, let me briefly recap the story of The Tale Spinner.

It was back in 1995 that I wrote to CARP asking if there was anyone out there who would be interested in writing to me online. I received 40 answers, and in desperation decided to compile a list of all the addresses and to share the letters I received with them. Here is an explanatory paragraph which I later wrote to Geoff Shorten, who alas, is no longer with us:

"Hi, Geoff. Indeed, I am out here, and so are about 44 others who answered my request for e-mail! I have set up a bulk mailing list and am sending posts from myself and others who have sent me artices which I have forwarded to everyone. I will send you those posts so you will know how this thing has snowballed, and you can let me know if you would like to be included in the group...."

Geoff did join the group and was with us until his death, after having written stories of his life and his wartime experiences. Others wrote about their lives, and many of those stories were about the war, because the people who belonged to CARP were of the generation that was young when WWII changed our lives forever. Since that time we have been joined by people from places as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Austria, England, Malta, many places in the US, and all across Canada.

Subscribers have shared travel stories, reminiscences, articles, and jokes. I have no idea how many of those people heard about the Spinner - like Topsy, the list just growed. Without your contributions this letter would have long ago been history because it is from those stories that I have compiled 13 years of weekly letters. I thank you all for your loyalty and your stories and jokes.

Thank you too for your good wishes in the holiday season, and for your congratulations on another year´s letters. Hugo Nelson, one of those early subscribers, wrote: "Thanks for editing yet another successful year of the Tale Spinner. It´s amazing how you and your correspondents keep it fresh and interesting year after year." It is amazing, and I thank you all - those who contribute, and those who only sit and read. I couldn´t do it without you!

Don Henderson says there is a lot of truth here for those over 60:

ARE YOU OVER 60?

Q: Where can women over the age of 60 find young, sexy men, who are interested in them?
A: Try a bookstore under fiction.

Q: What can a man do while his wife is going through menopause?
A: Keep busy. If you´re handy with tools, you can finish the basement. When you are done you will have a place to live.

Q: How can you increase the heart rate of your 60+-year-old husband?
A: Tell him you´re pregnant.

Q: How can you avoid spotting a wrinkle every time you walk by a mirror?
A: The next time you´re in front of a mirror, take off your glasses.

Q: Why should 60+-year-old people use valet parking?
A: Valets don´t forget where they park your car.

Q: Is it common for 60+-year-olds to have problems with short-term memory storage?
A: Storing memory is not a problem; retrieving it is a problem.

Q: As people age, do they sleep more soundly?
A: Yes, but usually in the afternoon.

Q: Where do 60+-year-olds look for fashionable glasses?
A: Their foreheads.

Q: What is the most common remark made by 60+-year-olds when they enter antique stores?
A: "I remember these!"

Marilyn Magid forwards this all-too-familiar story about

WORRY

Is there a magic cutoff period when offspring become accountable for their own actions? Is there a wonderful moment when parents can become detached spectators in the lives of their children and shrug, "It´s their life," and feel nothing?

When I was in my twenties, I stood in a hospital corridor waiting for doctors to put a few stitches in my daughter´s head. I asked, ´When do you stop worrying?" The nurse said, "When they get out of the accident stage." My dad just smiled faintly and said nothing.

When I was in my thirties, I sat on a little chair in a classroom and heard how one of my children talked incessantly, disrupted the class, and was headed for a career making license plates. As if to read my mind, a teacher said, "Don´t worry, they all go through this stage and then you can sit back, relax and enjoy them." My dad just smiled faintly and said nothing.

When I was in my forties, I spent a lifetime waiting for the phone to ring, the cars to come home, the front door to open. A friend said, "They´re trying to find themselves. Don´t worry. In a few years, you can stop worrying. They´ll be adults." My dad just smiled faintly and said nothing.

By the time I was 50, I was sick and tired of being vulnerable. I was still worrying over my children, but there was a new wrinkle. There was nothing I could do about it. My dad just smiled faintly and said nothing. I continued to anguish over their failures, be tormented by their frustrations, and absorbed in their disappointments.

My friends said that when my kids got married I could stop worrying and lead my own life. I wanted to believe that, but I was haunted by my dad´s warm smile and his occasional, "You look pale. Are you all right? Call me the minute you get home. Are you depressed about something?"

Can it be that parents are sentenced to a lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of human frailties and the fears of the unknown? Is concern a curse or is it a virtue that elevates us to the highest form of life?

One of my children became quite irritable recently, saying to me, "Where were you? I´ve been calling for three days, and no one answered. I was worried." I smiled a warm smile. The torch has been passed.

VANCOUVER GETS SERIOUS ABOUT SALVAGE

Metro Vancouver´s Zero Waste Challenge kicked off on January 2 with a ban intended to reduce the amount of recyclable material and hazardous waste ending up in landfills.

Enforcement of the new regulations will start at the curbside.

If banned materials are spotted in the trash, the bags could be left behind, according to Metro Vancouver waste committee chair Marvin Hunt.

From Tuesday onward, the following items, including all blue box recyclables, are banned from garbage collection:

* Corrugated cardboard.
* Newsprint and office paper.
* Gypsum drywall.
* Lead acid car batteries.
* Paints, solvents.
* Flammable liquids and gasoline.
* Pesticides.
* Vehicle tires.
* Oil, oil filters and empty containers.
* Yard trimmings.
* Beverage containers.
* Medications and pharmaceuticals.
* Electronic waste (personal computers, TVs, printers).

Electronic waste such as old computers and televisions is now accepted at Encorp Return-It depots around the province through a recycling program paid for by environmental handling fees that went into effect on Aug. 1.

The fees, which range from $5 for a laptop computer to $45 for a large television, are charged when the items are purchased and used to cover the recycling of the electronics.

Beverage containers, vehicle oil, oil filters and tires, as well as old paint and fuel, are also collected through similar fee-based programs involving retailers and depots.

Old medications and pharmaceuticals will be collected for free by pharmacies across the province for safe disposal.

In 2007, more than four million tonnes of garbage was sent to landfills.

YEAR-END REVIEW OF WORK IN 2007:

2007 was a year of bosses from hell and demon employees. Workplaces of 2007 were also overflowing with weird and wacky on-the-job mishaps and careers cut short by carelessness, stupidity, and greed. Here are some of the bizarre stories about the daily grind that hit the news this year:

Bosses from hell

* Hong Kong pop star Jacky Cheung hired and fired 21 maids from the Philippines in three years. The Philippine consulate black-listed him.

* An employer in India beheaded a worker for failing to milk his cows.

* A Belgian auto parts company ordered its workers, the majority of them of foreign origin, to speak only Dutch, even during their breaks, on pain of firing.

Demon employees

* A French tax official paid himself more than $800,000 over 15 years by creating an account for a non-existent university professor.

* A British Airways worker saved money by sleeping in a storage cupboard at his office for eight months before he was found out.

* A Japanese worker was upset when his boss ignored his gift of jelly desserts. So he smashed 22 office computers with a truncheon.

Firing offences

* A Polish bus driver ran up a bill of $34,000 on his company cellphone by sending thousands of text messages in a futile attempt to win a contest.

* An Australian barmaid served a patron a shot of Pine-O-Cleen disinfectant as a prank, making the man violently ill.

* A high-school art teacher in Virginia had his secret life discovered by his students through the Internet. In his off-time, the man was smearing paint on canvasses with his backside and private parts, and selling the results as abstract works of art.

* An TV cameraman in Iowa covering the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq was photographed urinating in the cemetery.

* A Romanian man, given a loan by his boss to pay for his mother´s funeral, was caught when the mother showed up at his workplace.

* A worker with the British retail chain Argos PLC was dumped after he went on-line while at work and set up a thread on the social networking site Facebook called "I work at Argos and can´t wait to leave because it´s sh**."

Gerrit de Leeuw forwards this letter from a network administrator responsible for all the computers at a very large corporation:

FORWARDING E-MAIL

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Many times when you get a forwarded e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses and names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds and builds and builds, and all it takes is for someone to get a virus, to have his computer send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer. Or someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That´s right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!

How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps.

(1) When you forward an e-mail, delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). Highlight them and delete them - it only takes a second. You must click the ´Forward´ button first and then you will have full editing capabilities. If you don´t click on ´Forward´ first, you won´t be able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do not use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses. If you´re forwarding something to more than one person, please be courteous and use the BCC for more addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing all the e-mail addresses. If you don´t see the BCC: option, click on To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC:.

(3) Remove any ´FW:´ in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(4) Always hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading. Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent. Also, while you´re in ´forward´ mode and deleting previous names and addresses, scroll to the end of the message and delete all the ads and anti-virus information. It´s frustrating to read a joke, then have to scroll down past pages and pages of this stuff to see if there is any more of the message. So when you forward, delete the junk before AND after the intended message.

(5) Have you ever received an e-mail that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The e-mail can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses. The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and e-mail addresses contained therein. Do not put your e-mail address on any petition. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and e- mail addresses on a petition. (And don´t believe the ones that say that the e-mail is being traced; it just isn´t so!)

Most e-mail petitions are worthless because they do not fully identify the signer by street address, etc., nor does it prove that the signer really signed it. It could be just one person writing all those names on the list. Don´t forward them.

Some of the other e-mails to delete and not forward are:

a. The one that says something like, "Send this e-mail to 10 people and you´ll something great will happen." Or sometimes they´ll just tease you by saying "something really cute will happen." It won´t happen, no matter how many you send it to or how long you wait - it isn´t going to happen.

b. Don´t let the bad luck ones scare you either. They should be deleted as should the ones that try to guilt you into thinking that if you don´t forward certain e-mails that you are ashamed of Christ and He will therefore be ashamed of you! Come on ... if you choose to delete and not spread the spam, there is no way that Christ will be ashamed of you, and forwarding it doesn´t automatically get you into heaven!

c. Before you forward an "Amber Alert", or a "Virus Alert", or some of the other e-mails floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them. Most of them are junk mail that´s been circling the net for years! Just about everything you receive in an e-mail that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com/. It´s easy to find out if it´s real or not. If it´s not, please don´t pass it on.

So please, in the future, let´s stop the junk mail and the viruses.

Also get rid of the advertisements at the bottom of your e-mails! You pay for your internet - why advertise free for them? If they want advertisement, let them pay you to use your space!

Finally, here´s an idea! Let´s send this to everyone you know. This is something that SHOULD be forwarded, so do it.

Jack Peaker sends this story about

BUYING A BULL

Two sisters inherit the family ranch. Unfortunately, after just a few years they are in financial trouble. In order to keep the bank from repossessing the ranch, they need to purchase a bull so that they can breed their own stock. They learn there´s a bull for sale at a ranch about 100 miles away and they decide one sister should check it out.

Before leaving, the one tells her sister, "When I get there, if I decide to buy the bull, I´ll contact you to drive out after me and haul it home."

She arrives at the man´s ranch, inspects the bull, and decides she wants to buy it. The man tells her that he will sell it for $599, no less.

After buying him, she drives to the nearest town to send her sister a telegram to tell her the news. She walks into the telegraph office and says, "I want to send a telegram to my sister telling her that I´ve bought a bull for our ranch. I need her to hitch the trailer to our pickup truck and drive out here so we can haul it home."

The telegraph operator explains that he´ll be glad to help her, then adds, "It´s just 99 cents a word." Well, after paying for the bull, she only has $1 left. She realizes that she´ll only be able to send her sister one word.

After thinking for a few minutes, she nods and says, "I want you to send her the word ´comfortable´."

The telegraph operator shakes his head. "How is she ever going to know that you want her to hitch the trailer to your pickup truck and drive out here to haul that bull back to your ranch if you send her the word ´comfortable´?"

She explains, "My sister´s blonde. The word´s big. She´ll read it slowly - com-for-da-bul."

Carol Hansen forwards

THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don´t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn´t mind running the country - if they could find the time - and if they didn´t have to leave Southern California to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren´t too sure who´s running the country and don´t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don´t care who´s running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.

10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren´t sure there is a country ... or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

12. The Pensacola News Journal is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something in which to wrap it.

To cherish what remains of the earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. - Wendell Berry