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The story begins when a female journalist, walking along the beach in Cape Cod, stumbles upon a bottle that contains a love letter from a man to his wife. She’s so moved by the letter that she sets out to find him…

I don’t need to tell you that it’s the main idea behind the book and the film, Message In A Bottle, the book written by Nicholas Sparks. You’ve probably seen the film with Kevin Costner and the late Paul Newman. You might want to read the New York Times bestseller if you feel the need to be inspired to write a love letter. It was published in 1998 by Warner Books. Its ISBN is 0-446-60681-2.

I mention another book during the program this evening. It’s called Gift of a Letter by Alexandra Stoddard, author of Living A Beautiful Life. It was published in 1990 by Avon Books, a division of Hearst. Its ISBN is 0-380-71464-7.

In our busy life, a letter may be the last thing on our list of “To Do” things. Over these past few nights, I hope I’ve inspired you to take pen in hand and write a letter to someone who means the world to you. You might even consider a love letter to the world, sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea…

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Don Jackson

“A letter is never ill-timed; it never interrupts. Instead, it waits for us to find the opportune minute, the quiet moment to savor the message. There is an element of timelessness about letter writing; we are reminded of Jane Austen’s novels and a more gracious way of life.

“Letter writing is that sweet surrender of time and place that allows us to recapture the essence of a particular closeness, when we recount shared memories of special times and special people who have so enriched our lives.”–Lois Wyse from Friend to Friend: Letters Only A Woman Could Write, published by Simon and Schuster.

I’d also like to recommend last year’s blog on Remembrance Day called The Poppy. I hope you will take a few moments to read it.

There is a line in John McRae’s poem that we recite this day that is so powerful: “Short days ago / We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, / Loved, –and were loved–and now we lie / In Flander’s Fields.” Tonight during our radio program, proof that they once did live…and love.

I feature some excerpts from love letters written during a time of war. Who knows how some of these letters fell into the hands of those who compiled this one collection. They may have been bequeathed by the families as a tribute to those who have crossed over. Whatever the route they took to this particular volume, we are the richer for those who have shared these warm sentiments penned during a time of war. Not all the letters in the volumes mentioned below are from wartime. Some are from the distant past. All prove the power of love…

Love Letters: An Anthology Of Passion by Michelle Lovric, published in 1994 by Shooting Star Press. Shooting Star Press is located at 230 5th Avenue, Suite 212, New York, New York 10001. Its ISBN is 1-56924-857-5.

Love Letters: An Illustrated Anthology Chosen by Antonia Fraser, published in 1989 by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 289 Westbourne Grove, London, England W11 2QA. First published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in conjunction with Penguin Books, 1976. Its ISBN is 0-7126-2057-5.

“As I opened the drawer of my little desk, a single letter fell out, a letter from my mother, written in pencil, one of her last, with unfinished words and an implicit sense of her departure. It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window–or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer–and everything collapses.”–Colette, from Letters From Colette, edited by Robert Phelps, and published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

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Don Jackson

“In Fuzhou, far away, my wife was watching/ The moon alone tonight, and my thoughts fill/ With sadness for my children, who can’t think/ of me here in Changan; they’re too young still./ Her cloud-soft hair is moist with fragrant mist./ In the clear light her white arms sense the chill./ When will we feel the moonlight dry our tears,/ Leaning together on our window-sill?” -Tu Fu translated by Vikram Seth and featured in the collection, World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time, edited by Katherine Washburn and John S. Major, published by the quality paperback book club, New York. Its ISBN is 0-965-41983-5

I’ve always liked that very ancient poem…

My dog got a haircut over the weekend. She’s been looking rather “shaggy” recently. She is a little schnoodle- part poodle, part schnauzer. I almost didn’t want to see her clipped with the cold weather season coming on, but she needed to get her old “look” back.

She is a very expressive animal. No sooner had my wife finished bathing and clipping her, then she got up on her hind legs and gave my wife her version of a hug. It was as if she appreciated the effort my wife had made on her behalf. I spent the day today vacuuming up the hair that was still in our carpets. But, she if worth the trouble.

If you look back to my thanksgiving Monday blog you will see a photo of her along with all the other things I have to be thankful for.

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Don Jackson

This is a short fable from Aesop, the translator unknown. “In the old days when men were allowed to have many wives, a middle-aged man had one wife who was old and one who was young; each loved him very much, and desired to see him like herself. Now, the man’s hair was turning grey, which the young wife did not like, as it made him look too old for her husband. So, every night, she used to comb his hair and pick out the white ones. But the elder wife saw her husband growing grey with great pleasure, for she did not like to be mistaken for his mother. So, every morning, she used to arrange his hair and pick out as many of the black ones as she could. The consequence was the man soon found himself entirely bald.” As always there is a moral to Aesop’s fables, “Yield to all and you soon have nothing to yield.”

This reminds me of what Major Sullivan Ballou wrote in his last letter to his wife Sara, just before he was killed in the final battle of Bull Run. This is an excerpt from Never Far Away, by Mary M. Green,
“When the wind blows your hair so slightly,/ Think of it as me pushing a few stray hairs back in place…”

“When I feel the wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk. Kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with it until they fall to the ground laughing..” Excerpt from Life and Kids-author unknown.

Shortly after my daughter was born, we bought a little silver keepsake holder for a lock of her baby hair. We tied it in a ribbon and it’s been stored away for safekeeping. Every once in a while we come across it while going through our prized reminders of the past.

“When I am in heaven, may God give me no angel’s wings to soothe hurt in my heart; spread instead across the sky the hair of the children I loved, and let their hair sweep forever in the wind across my face.”- The words of the 1945 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature-Gabriela Mistral, words that every mother could identify with…

I like the feel of the wind in my hair. I went for a walk today with a dear friend. We talked of so many things. All the while, the November breeze conspired to rearrange my hair as it also played with dry, brittle leaves on the ground.

Human beings aren’t the only things on this planet that like to play with your hair.. Kahlil Gibran wrote, “And forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.”

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Don Jackson

“Everything I need to know about life I learned from Noah’s Ark. / One: Don’t miss the boat. /Two: Remember that we are all in the same boat. / Three: Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. / Four: Stay fit. When you’re 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big. / Five: Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done. / Six: Build your future on high ground. / Seven: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs. / Eight: Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs. / Nine: When you’re stressed, float a while. /Ten: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic was built by professionals. / Eleven: No matter the storm, there’s always a rainbow waiting.”–Remember The Ark–Author Unknown

There was talk sometime back that some entrepreneurs were actually considering plans to build a modern-day version of Titanic. I don’t know if I would want to tempt fate like that…

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”–Dolly Parton

“Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. /Even love unreturned has its rainbow.”–James Matthew Barrie

August 14th, 1979, in Wales, a rainbow was seen for three hours, which is one of the longest times one has been observed. Some years back, again in late summer, one of our airborne traffic reporters in a fixed-wing aircraft reported that he was observing a rainbow that formed a complete circle. That had to be one of the strangest reports of a rainbow I’ve ever heard. I happened to be on the air at the time and the pilot and I were discussing this strange phenomenon before he went to air. That’s a photo that would be worth posting in my blog. Unfortunately, no photo of it was taken.

If you will check my blog posted on Thanksgiving Monday, you will find a photo of a spectacular rainbow that my wife captured on her digital camera as we drove to one of my son’s hockey games in Peterborough. At the present time, that photo is the wallpaper she’s using on the desktop of her laptop. Looking at this rainbow inspired me again to revisit the subject of rainbows in this blog, and in a portion of my radio program.

“Rainbow was Rain’s son. He only came out to stop his father from falling from the sky. People had to chase Rainbow away to allow Rain to fall, otherwise there would be a drought.”–An excerpt from an Australian folktale.

“Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; / And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; / And flowers themselves, that sway through the sunny hours; / Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon.”–Rupert Brooke

This appeared in the Dear Abby column on August 9th, 1998: “There is a bridge connecting heaven and earth. It is called the Rainbow Bridge, because of its many colors. Just this side of the Rainbow Bridge, there is a land of meadows, hills, and valleys with lush green grass. When a beloved pet dies, the pet goes to this place. There is always food and water and warm spring weather. The old and frail are young again. Those who are maimed are made whole again. They play all day with each other. There is only one thing missing: they are not with their special person who loved them on earth. So, each day, they run and play until the day comes when one suddenly looks up! The nose twitches. The ears are up. The eyes are staring. And this one suddenly runs from the group. You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you take him or her into your arms and embrace. Your face is kissed again and again and again, and you look once more into the eyes of your trusting pet. Then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together, never again to be separated.”–Author Unknown

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Don Jackson

Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness said: “People hurry up when they see a clock, which is why stores don’t have clocks - they want us to linger.” Come to think if it, I can’t remember the last time I was in a store that featured a clock on the wall, unless it was a store that sells clocks or a fine jewelry store. I saw a grandfather clock on display in one of those big box discount stores recently and it wasn’t running, now that I think about it.

Have you adapted to the change to Standard Time? I’m still finding my body rhythms are still on Daylight Savings Time. I finally changed the clock in my car, but it still feels I’m driving into work an hour later.

This year, we went to Daylight Savings Time earlier, and that my have something to do with me trying to adapt to the time change. Fortunately, because of the hours I work, I don’t have to rely on an alarm clock to wake me. But I’ve been finding it difficult trying to get up at my normal time.

How many times do you hit the ’snooze’ button before you’re finally up in the morning? William Weir in The Hartford Connecticut Courant some years back said: “When the first alarm clock with a snooze button made its debut in 1956, General Electric-Telechron introduced it as ‘the world’s most humane alarm clock’”. Apparently, on average, it’s a nine-minute span from the time you hit the snooze button until it goes off again. Many, many years ago, I did a morning show. Not too many people know that about my career. But I’m a night-owl, always have been. My alarm clock went off every morning at about 3 am. I think I must have hit that snooze button repeatedly in those days. There wasn’t one morning that it didn’t hurt when that alarm clock tried to wake me up. (I don’t know how Erin and Mike do it every day!)

Some years back, an enterprising company introduced a robot alarm clock. It was designed to sit on the bedside table counting the minutes and hours until its alarm went off in the morning. As soon as you would press the snooze button, this clock would roll off the table and fall to the floor. It would then make its way to a hiding place. The next time it went off, you would have to get out of bed and find the thing in order to turn it off. The clock was introduced in 2005. I don’t know of anybody who has one. Maybe that’s how our morning crew make it in on time every morning…

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Don Jackson

“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.”–Lewis Thomas from The Lives of A Cell: Notes of A Biology Watcher, published by Viking Penguin.

I remember my mother sending air-mail letters to her pen-friends around the world. This was a time long before computers and e-mail. She would gather her thoughts and try to fit them all onto this small blue form. She would then mail it .. and wait for a reply. She had pen pals the world over–Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, the Philippines, England and Africa. My mother was heavily involved in the Girl Guides program. It was through Guiding that she met these other women the world over, women she would eventually become close friends with. Sometimes her letters would take a little over a week to arrive at their destinations. A reply might take as long to return. My mother would have liked the idea of e-mail, text-messaging and the like. To be able to send a quick note to her friends and get a reply almost immediately would have seemed like magic to her.

The world has become a much smaller place thanks to technology. My mother grew up at a time when a trans-Atlantic telephone call traveled the length of an undersea cable. Television news reports needed to be packed up and sent by plane in order to show up on our TV sets. Radio signals from great distances could be heard only late at night, and depending upon atmospheric conditions. Today we have satellite hook-ups that allow the world to communicate in real-time.

“Neighborhood is the area within which you can move about readily, or converse, or throw things. Once it was measured by how far you could walk or throw a spear. But today intercontinental missiles, a short-wave radio, satellite TV and jet planes are making neighborhood global. Our task is to transform neighborhood, which, large or small, is merely a fact–though a challenging fact–into community, which is a spiritual and a political achievement.

“Transforming neighborhood into community has always been the task of creative politics. We now face it on the world scale. It will not be dull. But it will demand that we learn to think, and to act, on a scale well beyond that of the single sovereign state, however powerful.”–Arnold Cantwell Smith, Canadian former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, and featured in the Points To Ponder column of the August 1984 issue of the Reader’s Digest magazine.

It’s an historic election tonight in the United States no matter who wins. This election for president has generated a lot of interest the world over. And people overseas will be watching the results as they become available.

“I cannot help believing that the world will be a better and happier place when people are praised more and blamed less; when we utter in their hearing the good we think and also gently intimate the criticisms we hope may be of service. For the world grows smaller every day. It will be but a family circle after a while.”–Wanted: More Praise by Francis E. Willard and featured in the collection The Treasure Chest, edited by Charles L. Wallis, and published in 1965 by Harper and Row, Publishers.

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Don Jackson

I hope you had a very happy and safe Hallowe’en this past Friday. I took the night off to ensure there were only treats and not tricks at our door.

My son was on the ice on Hallowe’en for a practice with his team. One of the parents I spoke with said that she had mentioned to the manager at one of our local supermarkets that she hoped they were not selling any eggs. He had forgotten to issue that memo and promised to speak with his cashiers on late duty to ensure that all eggs stayed in the store for the night. I wonder how many other store managers decided to put a temporary ban on eggs that night?

The Hallowe’en “Haunted House” at our local public school, that the local SCC put together, was another rousing success. My wife took some digital photos of the “rooms” the committee had created, and I plan on posting a few in the blog in the near future. I’ve been on the stage in the gymnasium where this was done, and I can’t believe they were able to create so many spooky areas on such a small stage. Teachers and volunteers took part in what is becoming an annual tradition on the night before Hallowe’en, and the general consensus from students and parents alike was very positive. The lineup was long to go through the “Haunted House,” but my wife was in charge of some great games that allowed those who were waiting in line an exciting way to pass the time. Games like “Pumpkin Bowling” allowed the parents to hold their place in line while the students enjoyed the activities.

On Hallowe’en night, we were visited by witches and the like. No “Sarah Palin” lookalikes, even though costume stores were doing a brisk business in masks, spectacles and wigs that helped to create her distinctive look. It’s election day tomorrow in the United States. I know this radio show is heard by many Americans who listen via the Internet. I hope you will get out and vote during this historic election. This is one of those elections that has generated interest the world over.

I bought poppies for my family over the weekend. We are all wearing them once again. I hope you will buy a poppy and wear it proudly over the next few days. I also hope you will take a few moments to remember why we wear poppies leading up to November 11.

The clocks went back an hour over the weekend. I’m sitting here writing this when I’m normally in the car driving in to do the show. My system still hasn’t adjusted to the time-change. And I still have yet to change the clock in my car. It always seems to be the last one to get changed. November is here and it’s supposed to be fairly mild in this part of the world for the next few days. At least the weather will help ease us through the transition into the dark time of the year.

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Don Jackson

I was outside again this afternoon trying to rake up the leaves that have fallen from the magnolia in our front yard. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees on our residential street.

Recently, I mentioned one of my favorite lines from a fairly recent film: “At the temple there is a poem called ‘Loss’ carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has crossed them out. You cannot read ‘loss,’ only feel it.” An excerpt from the Columbia Pictures/Dreamworks production of the book, Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden, and screenplay by Akiva Goldsman.

“Your absence has gone through me. Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color.”–Separation by W. S. Merwin

“Out in the marsh reeds / A bird cries out in sorrow / As though it had recalled / Something better forgotten.”–Ki No Tsurayuki, translated by Kenneth Rexroth.

Raking up the last few remaining leaves this afternoon and feeling the chill in the air, I felt a sense of loss for the year slowly winding down to its conclusion. The program tonight deals with “atmospheres.” I hope this blog has set an appropriate atmosphere to accompany it…

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Don Jackson

Joe Garner in his book, Now Showing: Unforgettable Moments from The Movies published in ‘03 by Andrews McMeel Publishing, suggests that Anthony Perkins made the psychotic “Norman Bates” go from “Sick and scary to vulnerable and empathetic,” in Psycho. The producers of the hit Showtime series, Dexter have also seemed to do this..we shouldn’t like the character Dexter Morgan, but we do.

The film Psycho still gives me the creeps, even though I now everything there is to know about it. Every time I’m in a strange place, like a hotel room somewhere, I’m careful to keep peering around the drawn shower curtain,  just in case.

Actually, I’m only kidding, but Janet Leigh, who starred in that famous scene, and who has seen the film about 40 times, said recently, “I stopped taking showers and I take baths, only baths.” She was quoted in the May first New York Times. She was promoting her book Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. She says that she panics if she stays someplace that only has showers available. I don’t think Hitchcock dreamed that a generation of moviegoers would feel the same way she does, but there are quite a few who no doubt still do.

Right now, most of the movie channels are featuring all kinds of frightening movies in the days leading up to Hallowe’en. For my money they don’t hold a candle to the original Psycho.

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Don Jackson