Mil Misic passes away

On December 27, 2021, Mil passed away after a short battle with cancer. She was 93. She loved to write and while there are many postings on this site, there are even more that the family has collected over the years. Thank you to those who reached out to her to talk about her writing. She loved hearing from her readers and it motivated her to continue with her writing.

If you are interested in seeing a compilation of her writings, please contact us at klmisic724@gmail.com.

You can find her obituary on Legacy.com at https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/midweeknews/name/mildred-misic-obituary?id=32016668

Keeping Faith During Troubled Times – March 30, 2021 – Daily Chronicle

Because of the events of this past year, the pandemic causing so many deaths throughout the world, our isolation and quarantine, wearing masks,  keeping a social distance, no large gatherings, no or limited church attendance, etc.   It’s easy to understand why some people’s faith has been tested. 

It brought to mind Pascal’s wager, or dilemma that I read about many years ago.  Not trusting my memory, I looked it up again in my encyclopedia.   Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and religious thinker of the 17th century. 

He believed that reason alone could not satisfy one’s beliefs.  He believed it to be prudent to believe in the existence of God.  He felt it wise  to believe in God,  because,  without it, we have nothing. 

When bad things happen, people tend to blame God and/or question his existence.  You’ve probably heard it said, “How can God let this happen?”  They forget there is a formidable enemy in the devil’s existence. 

When good times are present not many people give God credit but only question His existence during bad times.  Nothing can be gained if you do not believe in God and much can come to you if you trust in Him.   I jotted down lines I once heard during a rerun of an old television show about trust.  I can’t attribute it to the author but it goes like this:

Trust Him when dark thoughts assail thee

Trust Him when thy faith is small

Trust Him when to simply trust Him Is the hardest thing of all.

Trouble sleeping? Why not improve your memory? – February 27, 2021 – Daily Chronicle

During troubled times and we are bombarded with the news about the rising number of virus cases each day, it’s no wonder we have trouble sleeping some nights.

I looked for information about sleep in Bartlett’s quotations and found this:  “It covers a man all over, thoughts and all like a cloak.”  To that, I would add, “except those nights when sleep is not easy.  

What do you do when you are having a sleepless night?  Do you get up and vacuum, raid the fridge?  I like to test my memory.  I try to recall old poems I learned in school.  Sometimes I try remembering a memory test my son showed me when he was in college.

He handed me a list with about twenty items on it.  After a few minutes of letting me study it, he instructed me to tell him how many items I could remember.  I think i recalled about five or six entries.  Then he showed me how I could recall all twenty items.  Would you believe I can still remember all twenty items today?   It’s true.  He told me to assign a number beside each item on the list.  By associating a number, it is very easy. 

I also remember all the names of nine planets by the following sentence.  My very erudite mother just served us nine pizzas.  Taking the first letter of each word, I came up with the following, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.  (I know one of the planet’s existence is in question and may not be a planet.)

Using a similar tactic, there is a way to remember how to spell a long word like Arithmetic as a child  A Rat In The House May Eat the Ice Cream.  Or, George Earnest Old Grandpa Rode A Pig Home Yesterday.  And there you have GEOGRAPHY. 

My mother remembered dates by associating two events, like the following example.  We bought our first refrigerator the day Charlie Brownlee died,  GET IT?

Try it…it works.

Of course you could always write it down somewhere but this is how to improve your memory. 

Isolation – September 5, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

Let’s hope this isolation ends soon

During our recommended and/or forced isolation, and social distancing, John Donne’s poem, “No Man is an Island,” written 400 years ago, came to mind.  Following is a partial quote from the poem:  

No man is an island

Entire of itself

Every man is a piece of the continent

A part of the main

Any man’s death diminishes me.

Because I am involved in mankind.

No matter how independent we may be or prefer our solitude, we need one another.  

Much like a pair of scissors, one blade is not enough and needs a counterpart to function.   

If my religious upbringing did not keep me on the straight and narrow, to be sentenced to prison in solitary confinement would keep me from a life of crime. 

Wild animals travel in herds, birds flock together, etc., so why should man be alone?   

After God created Adam, He decided it was not good that man be alone, so He created Eve.  And so it has ever been through the ages.  We all need each other.     

When something good happens to us, we want to share it with someone. Remember when you fell in love with your intended?  Didn’t you want to shout it from the rooftops or stop strangers on the street and tell them about being in love and being loved?  I know I did.

Long term separation may lead to depression.  Social graces may be forgotten as we forget how to interact with one another.   

I found this on the Internet:  

Other side effects may be poor sleep quality, impaired executive function, accelerated cognitive decline and poor cardiovascular function, impaired immunity at every stage of life.

Happiness must be shared to be fully enjoyed.

Loneliness can also be found in a crowd as well as when we are alone.

There are times when we all need a break and to be alone but not when it’s forced on us. 

Some friends of mine have a plaque in their home that reads: “I may be alone but I’m never lonely.”   

We all like to choose our own path in life to be happy and not have it forced on us.  

Let’s hope this isolation ends soon when it’s safe once again.  

Living In The Past – June 29, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

It’s normal for us elderly to live in the past for that is where the bulk of our lives exists – especially when the future looks so bleak now.   The isolation due to the virus sweeping the world makes us  remember better times.

My sympathies are with the young.  We older people had a good life with some having a better time growing up – especially if you were born and raised in a small town as I was.  I’m talking abou a time with no television and few of us had radios.

My 3 older brothers hung out at a Texaco Filling Station.   No self service and often run by the owner’s son.  The teen age boys would hang out there and visit.  We gals were not invited and knew nothing of their get togethers.

For the most part, they were not mischievous in their plans and did not get into trouble. There were no crime stories to relate to that they saw nightly on  television or movies.  It was a very innocent time.  The biggest trouble they got into was at Halloween when they’d go out and instead of Trick or Treats, they’d upset someone’s outhouse.

It’s hard to imagine anyone doing such a mischievous thing today with all the technology available with which they might amuse themselves,  and, of course, there are  no more outhouses!

We young gals played hop scotch, tiddly winks, pushed our dolls around the block in miniature doll buggies and had tea parties.

I don’t remember when it all changed but I suppose WWII intervened and we lost our serene lifestyles and were never the same as we saw our brothers and fathers get drafted and sent overseas to fight for our freedom on distant shores.

Some of us were luckier than others and saw them return. They were amazed at the change in us while they were gone and our young brothers were gone too and returned as young men.

Each succeeding war took more innocence and youth away never to return as so many young men who might have become president or fulfill their destiny and make the world a better place in which to marry and have children who would make a difference, did not return.

Their offspring might have been able to foresee the pandemic and avoid it.

We’ll never know.

Isolation – May 7, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

Having been born and raised in the Midwest, I find the involuntary isolation due to the risk of the corona virus, nothing new.

We often had severe winter storms of snow and ice that kept us house-bound for days and some times weeks.  Back then there was no fleet of salt trucks and snow plows opening the roads and streets.

As children, we reveled in the fact of no school. Early mornings my father would come into our bedroom and announce we would not be going to school, so we’d jump out of bed and promptly be out in the yard, making snowmen, building tunnels in the snow, play fox and goose with neighborhood children.  It was an unexpected and delightful holiday!

Indoors we’d put jig saw puzzles together, play cards on the kitchen table, and other games we made up.  Not unlike what people are now doing with the exception we did not have computers, with Internet connections and education classes online, email, etc., to keep us happy and occupied.

My small town was without mail service as the mail came by truck from a distribution center in a neighboring town.  Telephone service was handled by a lone “Central” operator who placed our calls to rural friends, that is if the lines were not down because of the weight of snow on the lines.

It’s hard to believe all this happened so long ago but in a single lifetime.

People used to say back then that it tests our mettle.  As a child, I heard the word as “metal.”  Now I understand it means courage and fortitude.  To that, I would add patience in our isolation.

There is small comfort in the knowledge we are not alone with the inconvenience.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who was in a Nazi concentration camp for three years in solitary confinement when he wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  He wrote “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing.  The last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s own way.— to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

How we deal with this solitary confinement will make us strong or weak, depending on our own resilience.

One final thought, “If you can’t stand being alone, remember — this is the person with whom you will spend your entire life .”

 

Trying Times – April 18, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

Never truer are these words by Thomas Paine, author and patriot during the Revolutionary War:

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

With Easter Sunday ending the sad days of Lent and Good Friday we look to happier days.  In times past it meant attending sunrise service at our church where my daughter sings in the choir and my son works on Soundboard, followed by an Easter Brunch in the church basement where we visited with fellow parishioners

– a most joyous occasion after the sad days of denial during the Lenten season.

But not this year due to the recommended lockdown.

Throughout the excessive verbiage of the pandemic, I have not heard one word on radio or television about a talk on TED Talks by Bill Gates back in 2015.  The subject was “We did not Listen.”  He foretold this crisis then and it’s come to pass.

If you are not familiar with TED talks, they are available on the Internet.  These are talks on many subjects by many diverse people.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design.

Even though it’s difficult to maintain a sense of humor we should try.  It’s man’s ability to cope…with jokes under stressful situations.  It is not mentioned when God created us that among the senses he endowed in us, He also created a sense of humor.   Locked down, we now have to entertain ourselves as we stay in our homes.  We are fortunate to live in our modern age when there are so many sources with which we can amuse ourselves, think of our early settlers with no radio, television, movies and other ways to find enjoyment.  How did they cope?  Of course, you cannot miss what you never had like email and telephones to stay in touch.

Blessed is he who can entertain himself, for he will always be amused.

Think of happier moments in your life.

 

Turn the World Around, Turn it Back to Yesterday – March 24, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

Do you recognize that hit recorded by Eddy Arnold some years ago?  It has been on my mind ever since this virus has come around.  I thought of all the little things, as well as the large ones, we so often take for granted until they are taken away from us.

Who could have foreseen this national crisis?  It’s a good thing we do not have the ability to see what is in store for anyone of us. What could we have done had we known?

We often hear about plane crashes where someone missed the flight and was grateful to have been spared or people working at the World Trade Center but something delayed or stopped them from going to work that day.

On a tour of New York City years ago we did not visit the WTC.  I often think what if we had been scheduled to visit it the day they were hit?

Hop in your car, turn on the ignition and we’re off for a visit to someone or an errand.  Push a button on the elevator and were whisked to the designated floor with nary a thought as to how it works.  That is, until we get stuck on that small cubicle when it does not do our bidding.

Now, in the midst of all the goods and services we are denied, do you think of them?

If you woke up refreshed from a good night’s sleep, do you ever think of what it was like when you had a stuffed nose or sore throat due to a cold, or other maladies?  No, we just take the good days for granted as our due.

We may not get hit with this virus, but there is no guarantee we will escape it either.

We should all be thankful if we are spared.

 

 

Pay Someone A Compliment Today – March 14, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

Browsing the Internet one time, I found a poem called “Do It Now.”   The gist of the poem was about praising someone while they are alive and not at their funeral or wake.

I can’t include the whole poem here but, to paraphrase, there is a short passage that goes “If you like someone, tell them now instead of when they’re dead. They won’t know how many teardrops you have shed for they cannot read their tombstone when they’re dead.”

It reminded me of President Gerald Ford. You may recall how he was often depicted as a bumbling fool. Remember when an errant golf shot of his beaned someone?  Or the time he bumped his head alighting from Air Force I?  Much was made of that and yet, he was a. very graceful person.  It was after his demise that so many wonderful tributes were heaped on him.

There is also a 2^nd hand compliment.  A co-worker once told me he had a T.L. for me.  It stands for Trade Last.  When you hear something nice about someone you tell them, and they are supposed to do the same for them.

Why not give people all that wonderful praise while they are living?

I recently watched a documentary about talented actress Betty White.  She was portrayed as a wonderful person while she is still alive.  What a great idea.  I met her in person many years ago and she is a very down-to-earth person.

I was pleased someone made this documentary while she was living and could enjoy what they said about her.

Some people are embarrassed by too much praise.  I remember reading in a Garrison Keillor book (the title escapes me) an amusing story about a man who once nailed 95 reasons on the church door (ala Martin Luther) why he could not accept compliments gracefully was because of his strict religious upbringing.

How about we all take the time to compliment someone today while they are alive?

Do you know someone who might like to hear something good from you?  Tell the person now because once they are gone they won’t know how many teardrops you have shed for they cannot read their tombstone when they’re dead.

“DO IT NOW”

 

A Lexophile’s Nocturnal Thoughts – February 21, 2020 – Daily Chronicle

People moving to the United States often find the English language difficult to learn.  My parents were of German descent and my 3 brothers and I learned to speak German as young children. Somehow we learned English while playing with other children and in school.  I don’t recall it being all that difficult at the time.

There were times when I was laughed at when I referred to my hair in the plural sense as in German it is.

There were instances of convoluted sentences too as in “throw the cow over the fence some hay.”

During a sleepless night, I thought of words that might give foreigners a hard time to understand how to pronounce them when they rhyme but are spelled differently.

The words “sense,” “scents” and “cents” were 3 words that came to mind right away.  How do you explain that to a foreigner?
I also often conjure up poems, sayings and other trivia to lull myself back to the arms of Morpheus.

Word and bird were next to come to mind.

I “ heard” a farmer say his “herd” of cows had gotten loose and were roaming the countryside.

The pastor “conferred” the blessing before we left.

You may not get what someone “inferred” but still “concurred” with what was said.

Did Ferdinand Magellan’s close friends call him “Ferd” for short?

A toddler was told by his parents not to stray from their back yard and yet was “lured” away by another playmate.

The income tax preparer is a computer “nerd” who hoped he had not “erred” while filing the return

The breeze “stirred” the tree branches

“Gird” the lion in his den.

The batter was not “deterred” and made it to “third” base.

The cat “purred” in contentment by the fireplace.

I won’t even mention words like pneumonia and subtle that have useless letters of the alphabet inserted that we don’t pronounce.

Also who determined we dare not end a sentence with a proposition?

These are just a few thoughts that came to mind.  Why don’t you think of some?  There are many others so if you sometimes can’t sleep, why not think of your own list?  It’s fun!  Thanks for putting up with my bit of whimsy on a cold, sleepless February night.