Abracadabra!

 

Sometimes you just want to go somewhere that's pretty! I have photos here for you from a small restaurant that is only a few miles from our house, but it feels like you are in a faraway place. It is attached to a bookstore which makes it all the nicer for us. This is in a very old house that was once a fair size restaurant. Back when they filmed "Dukes of Hazzard" in the next county over, Carroll O'Connor was here almost every evening to dine. It was called "Michaelangelo's" then and he had good taste because they had very good food. (Once, he was behind me at a stop light. When I recognized him in my rear-view mirror, I mouthed the words, "I love you!"  He did a deep bow even while seated in his car! That's a nice memory.  Probably told you this story before but I don't see stars every day of the week!)

Abracadabra!  Did you instantly think of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat?  I just learned that the word has been around for many centuries. It somehow means the equivalent of "I will create as I speak" or "I create like the word". It all seems a bit misty to me as the exact origin of it, but it seems that people felt a certain power to it and would write the word in a triangular shape (like I have shown you above) and have it above their doorways so as to ward off diseases.   They did this during the Great Plague of London which was in 1665.  Daniel Defoe (the same author who wrote "Robinson Crusoe") wrote dismissively of them doing so.  If you get the chance, I wish you could read a bit about Daniel Defoe, I think his life story would make a very good film!  One of his books, "The Storm" was about a hurricane that hit Britain in 1704.  It is considered one of the first works of modern journalism as he gave first-hand accounts of those who had survived the storm.  Florida has just now had another hurricane and I have been watching the news thinking of all those affected. Here is what Daniel Defoe had to say about the hurricane in 1704...

"No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it".

There, doesn't that sound exactly true?  And perfectly expressed?

There has been such bad news recently but one piece of good news.... did you see the story of the children that were rescued from the cable car in Pakistan? It took them a while to figure out how to attempt the rescue, but they were successful, and all were saved! They showed a photo of the cable car itself and I remarked that it reminded me of a tin of Spam, it was very small, and it only had a metal gate at either end. (I am not criticizing in any way, just observing how small and open it would have been for them, dangling like that above those mountains!)  

I have had this video on here before, but I really like it, I hope you do as well! Such a peaceful tune. It is the theme song from the movie "Up"....it is called "Married Life". (Thinking of our dear son and darling daughter in law who just married in the Spring.) xx

Hope you are all doing well, my friends.  So many people are getting Covid! I bet we will have to start wearing masks again, you know I still have some!