January, 2025
When you read this Christmas will be over for another year. Time to think of 2025 and perhaps to think of things we would like to change and those we would like to stay the same.
We all have at some time done a Jigsaw puzzle. Years ago I always had one on a board and you can be sure that anyone who came in would add another piece. What I didn’t know was that jigsaws have existed since the 1700s. Of course they come in many subjects and in different forms. Toddlers have their large piece wooden ones, and some can be very complicated. However, we all know that in adult puzzles it’s best to put the flat outer pieces first making sure before you start that no pieces are missing.
In December 1933 a curious advertisement appeared in an Ohio newspaper ‘Man who felt depression sting to help 75 unfortunate families. Anonymous giver known as “B. Virdot” posts $750 to spread Christmas cheer.’ All the reader had to do was to describe their plight in a letter and mail it to ‘general delivery’. Oddly no one knew ‘B. Virdot’ and people wondered if such a person even existed. Then within a week cheques began arriving in homes all across the area. Most were modest, about 5 dollars and all were signed ‘B. Virdot’. Years went by and his identity remained unknown. Then in 2008, long after his death, his grandson opened a tattered black suitcase from his parent’s attic. He found letters dated December 1933, along with 150 cancelled cheques. It turned out that B. Virdot was Samuel J. Stone and the pseudonym was a hybrid of Barbara. Virginia and Dorothy, the names of his daughters.
John Wesley wrote; ‘Do all the good you can, by all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can as long as ever you can.’
Marie Cove