Have You Ever Looked At A French Fry
Take Risks • Jenny’s Notable Voice • Chasing Dreams
One Minute Wit
Take Risks
Everything good in life requires risk.
Risk of failure, risk of rejection, risk of criticism, risk of loss, etc. If you want the good things in life you have to ignore fear and act.
Unless fear tells you, Do not get out of the car and pet the bear.
Then you should listen to fear.
50-Word Story & The Fascinating True Story That Is Far Better Than The Microfiction
Jenny’s Notable Voice
Jenny was an opera singer.
By the age of 16, Jenny had already made a name for herself by shattering over 100 glasses with her amazing soprano voice. Her future looked promising.
Until the lawsuits from the china shops she visited wiped her out financially and ended her brief career.
My Jenny microfiction story is total fiction. When I went looking for an image to use for my story, I discovered Jenny Lind. Her true story is far more interesting than my made-up story.
Jenny Lind was a famous opera singer in the 19th century and was often referred to as the Swedish Nightingale for the uniquely pure quality of her voice.
Lind’s mother ran a day school for girls. A maid of Mademoiselle Lundberg, a principal dancer for the Royal Swedish Opera, overheard Jenny singing when Jenny was age 9. Amazed by Jenny’s voice, the maid returned with Lundberg, who arranged an audition for Jenny with the Royal Dramatic Theater.
Jenny began singing on stage at age 10. She damaged her voice early in her career, but her voice was revived by Spanish singer and music educator, Manuel García. He had Jenny stop singing for three months to rest her vocal cords. Then García taught her how to sing correctly so she wouldn’t hurt her voice.
Once recovered, she toured Denmark, where Hans Christian Anderson met her and fell in love. Jenny didn’t return his feelings and rejected him as a suitor. She is believed to have inspired three of his fairy tales: Beneath The Pillar, The Angel, and The Nightingale.
Some of her other notable admirers were Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and Felix Mendelssohn
Jenny retired at age 29 for unknown reasons.
A year later, she came out of retirement when P.T. Barnum offered her a huge sum of money to tour the United States. Jenny wanted to use the funds to support schools in Sweden, so she agreed.
Her American tour was so popular that tickets to some concerts were sold by auction. After a year, Jenny grew uncomfortable with Barnum’s promotional tactics and cut ties.
Jenny gave 93 concerts in America and earned approximately $350,000 (almost $10 million dollars today.) Barnum pocketed roughly 50% more than Lind. Jenny donated her profits to charities at home and in the US. Barnum did not.
I cannot confirm if she ever broke a glass with her voice.
Not Sure What This Is
Chasing Dreams
When you are young,
you chase after dreams
When you are old,
you realize the chase was the best part
Humor
Have You Ever Looked At A French Fry
And Thought…
Have you ever looked at a French Fry and thought…
I wonder if the farmer who grew this potato had ancestors who migrated from Ireland to the United States during the great potato famine?
Also, how did people learn about potatoes in the first place, since they grow underground? Did some really hungry person in Peru just start pulling up vegetation and eating anything that was attached? Then they thought, “This thing is very starchy.”
So they threw it down and stepped on it. Then they noticed how nicely it mashed, and they thought, “I’ll bet if I boil a bunch of these things, and add some milk and butter, and pound on them until they’re creamy and smooth, and then add some gravy, they will be perfect with turkey.”
Then news of the potato slowly spread throughout the world via sailors on Spanish Galleons who came to Central and South America to raid its gold — and potatoes. So everyone started growing them. Like that ancestral farmer in Ireland.
And then maybe later some French guy visited that Irish farmer. And when the Irish farmer showed him his potatoes, the Frenchman said, “Hey, why don’t you try slicing the potato up when it is raw and frying it in extremely hot cow fat.”
And the farmer said, “Brilliant idea.” So he did, and it tasted great. Then he said, “In your honor, I will call them Duchamp Fries.”
And the Frenchman said, “It is too great an honor to use my name. And I am far too humble. Please simply call them French Fries.”
Or is it just me?
Happy Monday.
Mark
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Ok the potato story is like reading about EXACTLY how my mind works. Every time my husband asks what I’m thinking, I’m like “uh.. just wondering whether there are only six people who attend that tiny church and they are all friends and they share their priest with the next town and on Sundays he walks from town to town through the Alps holding nothing but a bible giving tiny sermons in tiny churches and the women all invite him over for quiche afterward but he’s really full from all the other masses he attended that day and all the other quiches he’d been plied with.” (actual example from this week.)
As for chasing dreams, I'll tell you what that is. True. Well put.