Saturday, August 20, 2022

Actual Answers to a Sixth Grade History Tests (author unknown)


Actual Answers to a Sixth Grade History tests 
(author unknown):

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother's son?" 

3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada. 

4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines. 

5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth. 

6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. 

7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline. 

8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw the java. 

9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. 

10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus." 

11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them. 

12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonized by Bernard Shaw. 

13. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense. 

14. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. 

15. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. 

16. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah." 

17. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100‑foot clipper. 

18. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroicouplet. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet. 

19. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. 

20. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. 

21. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim's Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this. 

22. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. 

23. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. 

24. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. 

25. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. 

26. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees. 

27. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large. 

28. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. 

29. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't have any children. 

30. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. 

31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers. 

32. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch‑Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The day my world stood still . . .

The day my world stood still . . . 

This is always a very difficult day for me.  

Forty-five years ago today, and at the very moment I heard an announcement from a radio news report about the death of Elvis, I was in a tent in the camping area of a Maryland State Park (a radio was blaring somewhere in the background).  

I was fourteen years old, and still very short and undeveloped for my age. It was just two-and-a-half weeks before my fifteenth birthday; the first day of classes for my sophomore year of high school was only three weeks away. 

Just moments earlier, I had been coaxed and forced, for the first time in my life, to perform oral sex on someone.  The culprit and predator was a man nearly twice my age.  

He was a “diocesan” seminarian studying for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and had already been regularly sexually molesting me for over a year (something that had started just after I graduated from the eighth grade of my parish school).  

I think he was very happy that things had “progressed” to that level on the eve of August 16, 1977.  He told me I had “a talent” for what had transpired.  

As I heard the news about Elvis, I remember feeling at that precise moment like all I wanted to do was to wash out my mouth with soap, and to take a shower to cleanse my body and soul of it’s “filth.”  

I have PTSD, and this anniversary always “triggers” me.  

But I’m a SURVIVOR!

Saturday, August 13, 2022

My Transfers and various parishes (2014 through 2022)

My transfers and various parishes (2014 through 2022):


I posted the following, and the updated comments first on August 13, 2014, and then on August 13, 2022.  Eight years passed between the two entries below . . . 

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Posted on 08/13/2014:

I'M BEING TRANSFERRED!

Greetings all:

Now that the "dust is settling" from our recent Province Chapter, I want to let you know how recent decisions of the Minister Provincial and his Definitory (i.e., his "executive council") have impacted my life; I have no doubt that these decisions will also effect the lives of quite a few people who have been very dear to me for many years.

I'm filled with emotion (and quite a bit of anxiety) as I wish to share with you that I will soon be departing Most Holy Trinity--St. Mary and Brooklyn, New York.

I'm being transferred "up north" to Syracuse, New York and to another friary and parish, at "The Franciscan Church of the Assumption" (see: http: // assumptionchurchsyracuse. org   NOW [2022]: https://assumptionsyr.org/ ).

I've been stationed at Trinity for two separate assignments during the past twenty-two years--first, for seven years during the 1990s, and then more recently, for the past ten years (since June of 2004).  I've spent seventeen years of my life at Trinity, and every one of those years were filled with both wonderful moments and many blessings! 

I love Trinity, Brooklyn and New York City.  Leaving this place again, now for the second time, will no doubt be very difficult for me.  But with that in mind, I am now grateful for the opportunity to move on to a place where I hope to respond faithfully to God's call in my life and to minister to God's people in a new and challenging ministry.  That being said, I know the transition will not be easy.

I hope to have time, before my departure from Brooklyn on September 1, 2014, to say good-bye personally to the many people who have enriched my life for so many years at Trinity.  Words cannot express how grateful and blessed I feel to have had all of you as such a wonderful part of my life and ministry.

Please pray for me!

Peace . . . and Praise God!
Timothy

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Posted on 08/13/2022:

Wow!  How time does fly!  Eight years ago I was being transferred from Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary in Brooklyn, New York to Assumption Church, Syracuse, New York. 

So many highs and lows since then . . . 

Since August of 2014, I've been blessed, and am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had, to serve as the Pastor of six parishes (most of them simultaneously): Assumption, Syracuse (‘14-‘15), St. Ann and St. Wenceslaus, Baltimore City (‘15-‘18), and St. Michael, Annunciation, and St. Clement, Baltimore County (‘18-‘22).

How blessed I’ve been to journey for a time with so many wonderful and faith-filled people in each of those parishes!

Seventeen years of my life were spent at Trinity in Brooklyn (‘92-‘99 and ‘04-‘14); MHT-STM still holds a very central place in my heart!!! ❤️

Praise God!

Timothy

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Wednesday, August 10, 2022

A "Googled" image of my folk's OC, MD home

 




Earlier today, I “Googled” my folk’s Ocean City, Maryland home address; I did so because, planning some travel, I wanted check the distance and time it would take to get there from "here to there," for a visit I plan to make to see my dad. The attached Google photo is what came up (with some privacy alterations!).

Seeing the Google photo made me feel sad and melancholic because it’s obviously “dated” (I’d guess about eight to ten years old). My dad’s old fishing boat is in the driveway; years ago now, he departed with it.
There’s no doubt the photo was taken when my mom +Carolyn was healthy, full of life, very much alive, and still lived there (and before she was ravaged by Alzheimer’s and eventually had to live out the last three and a half years of her life at St. Joseph's Nursing Home, Catonsville-d. September 13, 2018). I'm sure my mom most certainly put those fall/Halloween decorations in the windows of the house that are visible in the picture.
Seeing this photo (something I didn't anticipate as I had entered the address on the Google search app), reminded me of how my mom always delighted in holidays, and how she took pleasure in changing her home’s decoration schemes so as to spruce up the house for festive occasions. She loved doing that!
The second photo is from Christmas 2014. It was the last Christmas my mom spent in her home. As I look at the photo now, I can see how obvious it is that my mom was already suffering the effects of the disease of Alzheimer's. It's notable to me that the tree is decorated only with lights and no ornaments, something my mom normally wouldn't have allowed! Not long after that Christmas, she became a resident of St. Joseph's Nursing Home.
After that, family holidays were never the same . . .
I really miss her.
Rest in peace dear +mother!