We need nature

 A rich father who wanted his son to know what it was like to be poor brought him to live with a farming family for a few days.

The child stayed there for 3 days and 3 nights.

Back in the car on their way to the town, his father asked him:

"And your experience?"

"Fine," replied the boy.

"Did you learn anything?"

The boy then explained:

1.    "We have a dog, and they have four of them.

2.    We have a pool with treated water. They have a river with crystal clear water, fish and other good things

3.    We have electric lights in our garden, but they have the stars and the moon to light them up.

4.    Our garden extends to the fence. Theirs up to the horizon.

5.    We buy our food; they cultivate, harvest, and cook it.

6.    We listen to CDs ... they hear a sustained symphony of birds, crickets, and other animals ...... all of this, sometimes accompanied by the singing of a neighbour who works on the farm.

7.    We use the microwave. What they cook tastes much better cooked on a slow fire.

8.    We are surrounded by alarm fences to protect ourselves ... They live with open doors, protected by the friendship of their neighbours.

9.    We are connected to the telephone, computer, and television. They are in communion with life, sky, sun, water, fields, animals, friends and families. "

The father was impressed with his son's feelings. Then finally the son concludes: "Thanks for showing me how poor we are!

Every day we get poorer because we no longer look at nature !!! "

If you like it, you can share it

Clever

    This was sent to me by my friend Gudrun, but she did not tell me where she got it. It is clever and funny so kudos to the original writer

•       An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

•       A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

•       A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

•       An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

•       Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

•       A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

•       Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

•       A question mark walks into a bar?

•       A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

•       Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

•       A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

•       A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

•       Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

•       A synonym strolls into a tavern.

•       At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

•       A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

•       Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

•       A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

•       An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

•       The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

•       A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

•       The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

•       A dyslexic walks into a bra.

•       A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

•       A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

•       A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

•       A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the

Good friends are like quilts

Got this in an email from a high school friend, so I thought I would share.

A little house with three bedrooms,
One bathroom and one car on the street
A mower that you had to push
To make the grass look neat.

In the kitchen on the wall
We only had one phone,
And no need for recording things,
Someone was always home.

We only had a living room
Where we would congregate,
Unless it was at mealtime
In the kitchen where we ate.

We had no need for family rooms
Or extra rooms to dine.
When meeting as a family
Those two rooms would work out fine.

We only had one TV set
And channels maybe two,
But always there was one of them
With something worth the view

For snacks, we had potato chips
That tasted like a chip.
And if you wanted flavour
There was Lipton's onion dip.

Store-bought snacks were rare because
My mother liked to cook
And nothing can compare to snacks
In Betty Crocker's book

Weekends were for family trips
Or staying home to play
We all did things together –
Even go to church to pray.

When we did our weekend trips
Depending on the weather,
No one stayed at home because
We liked to be together

Sometimes we would separate
To do things on our own,
But we knew where the others were
Without our own cell phone

Then there were the movies
With your favourite movie star,
And nothing can compare
To watching movies in your car

Then there were the picnics
at the peak of summer season,
Pack a lunch and find some trees
And never need a reason.

Get a baseball game together
With all the friends you know,
Have real action playing ball
And no game video.

Remember when the doctor
Used to be the family friend,
And didn't need insurance
Or a lawyer to defend

The way that he took care of you
Or what he had to do,
Because he took an oath and strived
To do the best for you

Remember going to the store
And shopping casually,
And when you went to pay for it
You used your own money?

Nothing that you had to swipe
Or punch in some amount,
And remember when the cashier person
Had to really count?

The milkman used to go
From door to door,
And it was just a few cents more
Then going to the store.

There was a time when mailed letters
Came right to your door,
Without a lot of junk mail ads
Sent out by every store.

The mailman knew each house by name
And knew where it was sent;
There were not loads of mail addressed
To "present occupant”

There was a time when just one glance
Was all that it would take,
And you would know the kind of car,
The model and the make

They didn't look like turtles
Trying to squeeze out every mile;
They were streamlined, white walls, fins
And really had some style

One time the music that you played
Whenever you would jive,
Was from a vinyl, big-holed record
Called a forty-five.

The record player had a post
To keep them all inline
And then the records would dropdown
And play one at a time.

Oh sure, we had our problems then,
Just like we do today
And always we were striving,
Trying for a better way.

Oh, the simple life we lived
Still seems like so much fun,
How can you explain a game,
Just kick the can and run?

And why would boys put baseball cards
Between bicycle spokes?
And for a nickel, red machines
Had little bottled Cokes?

This life seemed so much easier
Slower in some ways
I love new technology
But I sure do miss those days.

So time moves on and so do we
And nothing stays the same,
But I sure love to reminisce
And walk down memory lane.

With all today's technology
We grant that it's a plus!
But it's fun to look way back and say,
HEY LOOK, GUYS, THAT WAS US!"

Good friends are like quilts-they age with you, yet never lose their warmth."

Women more likely to miss out on free pension guidance

This was published in the Actuarial Post in November and is from the UK.

Women are nearly half as likely as men to know about their entitlement to free, impartial pension guidance, new figures from retirement specialist Just Group reveal.

Nearly nine in 10 (88%) women aged 45-54 – those approaching the age at which they can start to take pension money – did not know they are entitled to free, independent and impartial pension guidance.

The 12% who said they were aware is nearly half the 20% of men aged 45-54 who knew about the service.

Women are initially more skeptical than men about the value of a guidance session with 45% thinking it would help them make sense of their retirement options compared to 56% of men. That rises sharply to 63% of women and 68% of men once they know there is no cost for the service.

“Pension Wise should be a compelling proposition for women in particular but male users outnumber female users by three to two,” said Stephen Lowe, group communications director at Just Group.

“Usually the smaller the investment, the less likely people are to seek professional support. The fact that Pension Wise is free to users should overcome that cost blockage, but that message does not seem to be getting through.”

 Research by the Pensions Policy Institute, earlier this year revealed that the average income from private pensions for women aged 65+ is £3,920 a year, £4,700 a year less than men.

This is often due to lower average pay when working and being more likely to have career breaks or to work part-time to provide care for children or elderly relatives. The research found single mothers and divorced women end up with smaller private pensions than the average woman.

“Government and regulators want to increase the numbers taking up their guidance entitlement because they know it gives people more confidence to make choices and avoid scams,” he said.

“It’s a chicken and egg situation – people who have a guidance appointment understand its value, but those who don’t know about it won’t book an appointment and find out how it can help them.”

 He said that streaming pension saver into guidance by automatically booking appointments would overcome this problem by reaching groups among those most likely to miss out.

“Those with smaller pensions and less financial confidence and knowledge are in most need of support. Automatic bookings would help engage these groups who are less likely to ask for help,” he said.

“The government has said that it wants taking the free guidance to be the ‘social norm’ for all those starting to take pension cash. Automatically booking appointments will make Pension Wise the gateway to retirement and would be particularly welcomed by the two-thirds of women who said they would value the helping hand.”