Hello Pussy it's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Pippi Longstocking,
you have ratcheted up your attacks on the news
media in recent days — assailing CNN and crudely insulting the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — while defending your use of social media as “modern day presidential.”
A joke - but a very bad one!
A joke - but a very bad one!
Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Do You Often (or Ever) Feel a Wonderful, Joyous, Childhood Feeling of Expectancy?
I’m a huge fan of the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books.
If you read these brilliant stories as a child, you should re-read them now; so much of the humor is pitched at grown-ups –marriage, friendship, theories of child-rearing.
After I’d re-read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for the fiftieth time, I decided to try Betty MacDonald’s adult work. In her memoir, Onions in the Stew, she remarked, “Going down to the beach after a storm is the only time in my adult life when I experience that wonderful, joyous, childhood feeling of expectancy.”
This observation struck me, because I’ve noticed that I too rarely experience a “sense of expectancy.” The fact is, I don’t have a very joyful spirit. I rarely look forward even to fun events or activities. Also, I dislike errands, logistical details, or any kind of hassle, and even when those hurdles are fairly minor, they can overshadow my sense of anticipation.
But to go through the days and weeks and months of life, looking forward to nothing, struck me as a sour way to live.
One of my aims for my happiness project, therefore, has been to boost my feelings of pleasant expectancy. First, I’ve made a real effort to add items to my schedule that I actually anticipate, to make time for activities that I really enjoy – to go to a bookstore (one of my favorite things to do) or on a smell adventure with a friend (which I’m doing today).
Thinking along the same lines, a friend told me, “I looked at my seven-year-old nephew’s weekly schedule, and he had all sorts of fun activities, with art, music, baseball, library. I thought, I like to do those things, too! I wish my schedule had art, music, baseball, and library. Now I make a big effort to do more fun things.”
At the same time, I’ve also pushed myself to revel in anticipation, to devote mental energy and time to looking forward to activities I enjoy. In what’s known as “rosy prospection,” anticipation of an event is sometimes greater than the happiness actually experienced. All the more reason to revel in anticipation.
I’ve found that I can often re-frame activities to help myself anticipate them more. Do I view decorating the apartment for Halloween as a chore or as a pleasure? Do I think it’s tiresome or fun to shop for school supplies? I’ve been surprised by how readily I can steer my attitude.
One of my rules of happiness is that to eke out the most happiness from an experience, I must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory. By making an effort mindfully to look forward to pleasant experiences, I deepen my experience of happiness.
How about you? Are you a person who often feels happy anticipation? Or, like me, do you find that you have to work to have a “childhood feeling of expectancy”? How do you help yourself to do that?
I guess I have this feeling because we have so many children in our family.
My sisters and I are huge Betty MacDonald fans and so are our children.
Like Betty MacDonald we are writing funny stories and everybody in the family has a role in the play.
Author Karel Capek wrote: Childhood is so exciting because we are sailing away every day to find new treasures.
That's it. You can find new treasures every day.
Life is so exciting. Let's sail away like Mrs. Piggle-Wiggles pirate husband to find new treasures.
I'm Betty MacDonald fan club organizer.
It began in 1983 when author Wolfgang Hampel founded Betty MacDonald fan club with 4 members.
We have members in 40 countries now.
As I'm in contact with so many Betty MacDonald fans from 5 continents Life is exciting every day.
I found my heaven.
Love,
Linde Lund
you can join
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald Society
Vita Magica
Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club
on Facebook
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Greta Larson
Trump Tweets a Video of Him Wrestling ‘CNN’ to the Ground
President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.
The video, about 28 seconds long, appears to be an edited clip from a years-old appearance by Mr. Trump
in WrestleMania, an annual professional wrestling event. The clip ends
with an onscreen restyling of the CNN logo as “FNN: Fraud News Network.”
Cartoonish
in quality, the video is an unorthodox way for a sitting president to
express himself. But Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on the news
media in recent days — assailing CNN and crudely insulting the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — while defending his use of social media as “modern day presidential.”
In
a speech on Saturday at a faith rally in Washington, Mr. Trump was met
with cheers when he referred to CNN as “garbage journalism” and said:
“The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president, and they’re not.”
The
wrestling video, which was also posted to the official @POTUS Twitter
account, stirred criticism, disbelief and dumbfoundedness. Some
journalists denounced its portrayal of violence as dangerous, saying it
could incite attacks or threats against news media employees.
“I
think it is unseemly that the president would attack journalists for
doing their jobs, and encourage such anger at the media,” said Dean
Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times.
The administration did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, defended the video when he viewed it for the first time during a broadcast interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC News. “No one would perceive that as a threat,” Mr. Bossert said. “I hope they don’t.”
“He’s a genuine president expressing himself genuinely,” Mr. Bossert added.
A version of Mr. Trump’s video appeared last week
on a Trump-dedicated page on the message board site Reddit, a popular
meeting ground for some of the president’s most fervent supporters. The
CNN logo is superimposed on what appears to be the head of Vince
McMahon, a wrestling magnate and a friend of Mr. Trump, who in his
prepresidential years often appeared as a guest on wrestling shows.
Mr.
Trump’s fans on Reddit were exuberant about what they viewed as
validation from the country’s most powerful man. “I love this,” wrote a user identified as American_Crusader.
“You know he saw it, chuckled, and knew he could control the media
narrative for days by hitting the ‘post’ button. So he did.”
The
president’s allies say that his attacks on the news media are
justified, arguing that the president is merely defending himself from
coverage that his supporters view as biased. Mr. Trump’s war of words
with CNN is especially popular with his voter base.
News
media advocates, however, have raised alarms about a recent spate of
arrests and assaults on working journalists, including a high-profile
episode in which a Montana congressional candidate, Greg Gianforte, assaulted a reporter
for The Guardian, breaking his glasses. (Mr. Gianforte, a Republican,
went on to win a House seat the next day. He later apologized to the
reporter.)
Groups
like the Committee to Protect Journalists, which usually focuses on
countries where reporters’ freedoms are curtailed, say they are
concerned that Mr. Trump’s campaign-trail rebukes of news organizations
are now being issued from the pulpit of the White House.
“Targeting
individual journalists or media outlets, on- or off-line, creates a
chilling effect and fosters an environment where further harassment, or
even physical attack, is deemed acceptable,” Courtney Radsch, the
advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote in a
statement on Sunday, adding that Mr. Trump’s comments may embolden
“autocratic leaders around the world.”
Mr.
Trump, who is spending part of the weekend at his Trump National Golf
Club in Bedminster, N.J., posted the wrestling tweet just as prominent
Republicans began appearing on the major Sunday news programs. On CNN,
Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican and frequent Trump critic,
accused the president of “weaponizing distrust” toward the news media.
“There’s
an important distinction to draw between bad stories or crappy
coverage, and the right that citizens have to argue about that and
complain about that,” Mr. Sasse said.
But
Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, bristled when asked
on the NBC program “Meet the Press” about Mr. Trump’s string of
anti-media remarks.
“This
is really remarkable,” Mr. Price said to the moderator, Chuck Todd.
“Your program — a program with the incredible history of ‘Meet the
Press’ — and that’s what you want to talk about?”
Some
White House aides said privately on Sunday that the president was being
held to a double standard. They argued that Mr. Trump’s video was akin
to a recent exchange on MSNBC,
in which the host, Chris Matthews, was discussing Mr. Trump’s
son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and jokingly praised the Italian dictator
Benito Mussolini for ordering the execution of his son-in-law.
Ari
Fleischer, who was a press secretary to President George W. Bush, wrote
on Twitter that he found Mr. Trump’s video to be “in poor taste.” But he added:
“The reason POTUS does it is because the press has made themselves so
unpopular. It’s a fight POTUS actually wins w much of the country.”
Mr. Trump regularly accuses CNN of bias, and he taunted the network last week after it was forced to retract a story about one of his close allies. On Saturday, hours before posting the wrestling video, Mr. Trump tweeted to his 33 million followers, “I am thinking about changing the name #FakeNews CNN to #FraudNewsCNN!”
On Sunday, CNN issued its response.
“It
is a sad day when the president of the United States encourages
violence against reporters,” the network said in a statement. “Instead
of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir
Putin, dealing with North Korea and working on his health care bill, he
is involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We
will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”
In keeping with the online nature of many of Mr. Trump’s disputes, CNN also replied directly to the president on Twitter, highlighting a quotation from a recent White House briefing by his deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The
president in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged
violence,” Ms. Sanders told reporters on Thursday. “If anything, quite
the contrary.”
