SPRING FORWARD!

Get ready, get set and go move your clocks forward one hour on Saturday night, March 13, BEFORE retiring for the night.  Can you believe that it’s time for Daylight Saving Time?  Well, it is, so frown or grin and bear it, as one hour of sleep is lost this coming weekend. Don’t worry, you will get it back in the fall!

DST is the act of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Just when we are seeing daylight when awakening, now it will be dark. This year DST will end on November 6^th.

March was named for the Roman God of War, Mars.  Since its beginning as a month, March has always had 31 days.  The vernal equinox falls during this month, the 20^th or the 21^st.  This is the day that the northern half of the earth begins to tilt toward the sun.  Spring arrives, trees begin to bud and the grass begins to turn green.

The birthstone for March is Aquamarine, a stone symbolizing safety and security. The stone is believed to have the power to increase intelligence and to restore youth. I’m looking forward to that because March happens to hold my birthday.

Of course, the flower for March is the daffodil.  The showy, yellow color pops up at old home places, around trees and in flower beds.

March 17^th is St. Patrick’s Day, a day when friends, Gus and Barbara Wilmoth, will celebrate their 60^th wedding anniversary.  If you like, send them a card at POB 34, Drakes Branch, VA, 23937. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to you two!

The following stories were sent to me by a friend and I must share.  Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge, the purpose being to find the most caring child. Enjoy a few of these:

A four-year-old child’s next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man crying, the little boy went into the old man’s yard, climbed onto his lap and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy just said, “Nothing, I just helped him cry.”

On my way home one day, I stopped to watch a Little League baseball game.  As I sat down behind the bench on the first base line, I asked one of the boys the score. “We’re behind 14 to nothing,” he answered with a smile. “Really,” I said. “I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.” “Discouraged?” the little boy asked, with a puzzled look on his face. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet!”

An eye-witness account from New York City on a cold December day, some years ago:  A little barefoot boy, about 10 years old, was standing before a shoe store, peering through the window, shivering in the cold. A lady approached the young boy and said, “My, but you’re in such deep thought while staring in that window!”

“I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,” was his answer. The lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk to get a half dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel and he quickly brought them to her. She took the little fellow to the back part of the store, knelt down and washed and dried his feet. By this time, the clerk had returned with the socks. Placing a pair upon the boy’s feet, she purchased him a pair of shoes. She put the remaining socks in a bag and patted him on his head, saying, “No doubt, you will be more comfortable now.” As she turned to go, the astonished child caught her by the hand, and looking up into her face with tears in his eyes, asked her, “Are you God’s wife?”