Dear Friends,
Congratulations to Mike Delodnick from Geneva, PA, the winner of our Heroes in Action children's poetry contest. Mike will receive a $50 gift certificate to Pier 1 Imports and have his poem published at the bottom of this newsletter. Congratulations, again!
I'd like to take a few moments to tell you about my personal hero, a hemiparetic nun who preaches on the open access Christian TV station. Sister Morgan (as I'll call her) has been the host of the popular "Visions of a Lamb in Christ" for many years. I changed her name to "Sister Morgan" because I'm about to tell you confidential medical information.
A few years ago, Sister Morgan had a major stroke and was left with a facial droop and misaligned eyes. Now I've seen some sad saps with some tough breaks, but I have never witnessed this kind of determination from a stroke patient. Sister Morgan went back to her televised pulpit less than a week after leaving the hospital. For a few months, every time I would turn the TV on, she would be there in her eye-patch, drooling and slurring through her Hail Marys.
How best to honor such a bastion of spiritual fortitude and constancy? It turns out, there is some archaic bylaw that prevents her from being canonized into sainthood while she's still alive. (If your Load-of-Crap Meter just went through the roof, I'm totally with you.) Unfortunately, no one even told me about the stupid rule until after I had already gone door-to-door and collected over 30 signatures!
Then I got to thinking... maybe the best way to honor her would be to do what I do best, and help other people with strokes!
Then I remembered that there is nothing that can be done for those people. In fact, I think I'm going to hold on to those signatures.
Finally, I decided that the best way to show my profound respect for Sister Morgan would be to make a disabled nun a major character in my musical. The Hard Taco song this month, "Twylla's Song," is the ribald yarn of a crippled woman-of-the-cloth, modeled very loosely on Sister Morgan. The principal difference in their respective handicaps is that Twylla is missing four fingers on her left hand, while Sister Morgan suffers from a wedge-shaped brain infarct. Also, Twylla's handicap stems from an ancient curse, while Sister Morgan's handicap stems from high blood pressure and red meat.
With warmest regards,
Zach
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"Hats off to Heroes." by Mike Delodnick, age 13
A hero can be
A big furry dog who helps someone find a manhole,
A hero can be
A very small boy who's smart enough to tattle on his friends (who are vandals.)
Heroes are everywhere, like
A train conductor who gets busy workers home on time
Heroes are everywhere, like
A scientist who knows more about lava than anyone else
He uses that knowledge to help people.
Hats off to this hero:
A Samurai who eats worms to win a bet,
Hats off to this hero:
The guy who pays up to the Samurai without being all grumpy about it.
True heroes are
Jim Varney, Gene Hackman, etc.
False heroes are
Randy Moss, the Coast Guard
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