There were 56 of them - signers of the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776 - i.e. 250 years ago today. Here below you will see a list of them in chronological order, with the state in brackets. 1723-0205 John Witherspoon* Scottish-American signer of the Declaration of Independence – Gifford, Scotland (1794/72) 1725-1111 George Mason* planter/politician/ signer of the Declaration of Independence – Fairfax County, Virginia, British America (1792/66) Continue reading

is a friend indeed. Or so we hear. A friend can be pure poison, and it make take decades till one realizes that the “friend” actually was a fiend. Of course, people may change a bit over the years, but sometimes it takes a major conflict to realize that your friend never really had your best interest or any interest in mind, but was always concerned with his or her own. Continue reading

This is not about hearing voices that aren’t there - to most people - but about voices that we all do hear. Do we hear them in exactly the same way? Maybe. But we all know for sure that they all differ in major and minor ways. Human voice is actually a very interesting subject to study. Here is one. Our own voices sound different to us than to others, that we know. Continue reading

The mere title makes you feel ill, doesn’t it?! Unless you belong to the group of people who really believe that one should. Act one’s age. What does it even mean? That one should look and behave like most of the people that age do – or did or have done the past decade or so ? With total disregard of personal preferances but succumbing to prevalent expectations – whatever they are, in whatever culture. Continue reading

Imagine if there was a map where you could see the places on Earth with the most amount of human suffering. A crazy thought, right? You might right away think of the myriad places of wars. Or all the hospitals and other places where people have been treated with various illnesses, or waiting to die. Or homes with domestic violence scattered allover this beautiful planet. But might not delivery rooms be where the most physical hurt is experienced? Continue reading

We are constantly facing them these days – environmental decisions. Just taking the escalators down to the subway, you may pass three divergent posters advising you to: a) stop buying bread in those plastic bags b) buy our delicious puddings, available in these stores along your route c) invest in your future by opening a savings account in our bank Which of these is the most sensible alternative these days? Being environmentally aware you would of course opt for the first one. Continue reading

Ever thought about that? Many of us have. And our answers even to ourselves may differ depending on our cicumstances. But many of us do toy with the idea. For human life can be a struggle, and the life of many an animal seem so much easier. Though of course that is not necessarily so. For even with this, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Continue reading

xxxx Modern Family xxxx The Cast: 1946-0412 Ed O´Neill* as Jay Prichett from Youngstown, Ohio 1967-0822 Ty Burrell* as Phil Dunphy, from Grants Pass, Oregon 1970-0303 Julie Bowen* as Claire Dunphy, from Baltimore, Maryland 1971-0909 Eric Stonestreet* as Cameron Tucker, from Kansas City, Kansas 1972-0710 Sofia Vergara* as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, from Barranquilla, Colombia 1975-1022 Jesse Tyler Ferguson* as Mitchell Prichett from Missoula, Montana 1988-1107 Reid Ewing* as Dylan Marshall, from Florida USA Continue reading

cccccc If you were a cheese. what kind of cheese do you think you were? Camembert. Edam. Smooth, regular cheese. Not raising any eyebrows, you go through life smoothly and blend in well. Emmenthal. With lots of airy holes, but the taste is mature. You made a lot of mistakes, took leaps of faith, stretched yourself thin. But when all is said and done, you arrive to a point in your life that seems mature, mellow and worth it all! Continue reading

Earlier in Journeys of Life, we’ve had an article on composers. This time we will deal solely with composers of film music. What would a great film be without great music? Original score, songs? The list below will present some of the most unforgettable, magnificent scores and their composers, and the film where the music appeared, whether awarded or not. But before reading any further, go and have a look at what Wikipedia has to say about film scores. Continue reading

The image: lines crossing each other. Draw one yourself !! Our lives are full of them. Funny coincidences. Whether we attach any meaning to them, or just see them as what we usually call them - funny coincidences - there they are, enriching, xxxxxxing and perplexing our lives, in the myriad ways they may manifest. They may entertain us, perplex us, challenge us. An example. Doing online crossword puzzle on the subway on her way to work. Continue reading

There are many ways with which we can identify with another person. It is much harder to do that with say, a dog - no matter how much we love our pets - Let’s go on an imaginary journey of identification. We embark on it anywhere in the world, and the only common thing we all share on that journey is that it takes place on our home planet earth. We move from the apparently easiest identifiable to the apparently least identifiable parts of our selves. Continue reading

We humans have a need to cover our bodies, and for good reason. All the biological ones, and psychological. It’s a pretty necessary thing to do – unless you’re on a nudist beach, in the privacy of a bathroom, with your lover etc. So usually we do cover our bodies. And we often over our thoughts and intentions as well. It is a necessary thing to do in order to protect our integrity and proceed with our objectives. Continue reading

We’ve all probably experienced it at one point or another: the curse of inertia. Inertia could be seen as the other side of the coin where “the better side” has rest (add italics) printed on it. But whereas rest is a positive and necessary thing, really needed as a balancing ingredient between action, inertia is its negative counterpart, making it difficult to go back to action. And we can see it happening in so many areas of our lives. Continue reading

Tempo. It all comes down to tempo. Sometimes we are just too slow to get our ideas crossed, and others too fast to get theirs. Sometimes we suffer from a chronic illness that makes us unable to express ourselves in the manner or speed we would prefer. In such instances it may be particularly frustrating to “take part” in a conversation. By the time you finally remember what to say or have found the right words to what you want to say, the conversation may have proceeded too far from that point, and you end up saying nothing, thinking that others would not catch on your drift at all anymore. Continue reading

The NBC police procedural drama series Chicago P.D. xxxxxxxxx 1959-0403 Amy Morton as Sergeant Trudy Platt - Oak Park, IL USA 1960-0312 Jason Beghe as sergeant Hank Voight – New York City, NY USA 1961-0311 Elias Koteas as Senior Detective Alvin Olinsky – Montreal, QC Canada 1963-1115 Kevin J. O’Connor as Commander Fischer – Chicago, IL USA 1969-1214 Archie Kao as Detective Sheldon Jin – Washington, D.C. USA 1970-1014 Jon Seda as Antonio Dawson – Manhattan, NY USA Continue reading

When you here the word sin, the first thing that springs to mind is the Bible, right? The story of the ten commandments, and if you break any of them, you are committing a sin. Not all of us are religious, but we can still appreciate the idea of sin. Let’s go through each of them, with a little twinkle in our eyes. Let us also employ the idea presented by Shirley MacLaine in her book xxxxx, namely that Live is backwards Evil, so not to really live and let live, is tantamount to being the opposite of life, i. Continue reading

Xxx We all know we are at some point of our lives going to die. No matter how strong we live, no matter what we believe, no matter how much we have, we are going to die. And that doesn’t necessarily sound so bad, at least not to many of you who have had near-death-experiences. The creative urge leaves you oftentimes kind of sidetracked when it comes to mortality. It is hard to fathom that there comes a point when you can’t create anymore. Continue reading

xxx https://www.treehugger.com/listen-to-woodlands-around-the-world-with-this-forest-soundmap-5070780 Updated

We are our own people. We are born with certain characteristics which develop thru time and in their own way depending upon where we live and who we grow up with. But then there are certain traits that we might want to adopt as we move along our lifeline. Traits that seem desirable to us for some reason, but traits that we don’t really have naturally. Traits that reminds us of the person we picked it from, and want to keep the fond memory of. Continue reading