& the U.S.A.

September 6, 2010

The Labour Day holiday in Canada, as in the U.S., celebrates worker solidarity. Most workers, public or private, are entitled to take statutory holidays off with regular pay. Some businesses remain open on holidays, such as medical clinics and some stores, restaurants, and tourist attractions.

In a time when the news of labour “strife” is dominated by disputes between millionaire athletes and billionaire owners, history provides a useful perspective on a time when working people had to fight to work less than 12 hours a day. The “Nine-Hour Movement” began in Hamilton, Ontario, and then spread to Toronto where its demands were taken up by the Toronto Printer’s Union.

In 1869 the union sent a petition to their employers requesting a weekly reduction in hours per week to 58, placing itself in the forefront of the industrialized world in the fight for shorter hours. Their request was refused outright by the owners of the printing shops, most vehemently by George Brown of the Globe.

By 1872 the union’s stand had hardened from a request to a demand and a threat to strike. The employers called the demand for a shorter workweek “foolish”, “absurd” and “unreasonable.” As a result, on March 25, 1872 the printers went on strike.

On April 14 a demonstration was held to show solidarity among the workers of Toronto. A parade of some 2000 workers marched through the city, headed by two marching bands. By the time that the parade reached Queen’s Park, the sympathetic crowd had grown to 10,000.

The employers fought the strikers by bringing in replacement workers from small towns. George Brown launched a counterattack by launching a legal action against the union for “conspiracy.” Brown’s action revealed the astonishing fact that according to the laws of Canada union activity was indeed considered a criminal offense. Under the law, which dated back to 1792, police arrested and jailed the 24 members of the strike committee.

On 15 May 1872, Hamilton’s “nine-hour pioneers” defied opposition with a procession of 1500 workers (Canadian Illustrated News, courtesy NAC/C-58640).

As history tells it, however, Brown had overplayed his hand. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald had been watching the Nine-Hour Movement with curious interest, “his big nose sensitively keen,” wrote historian Donald Creighton, “like an animal’s for any scent of profit or danger.” The scent of profit came from the fact that Macdonald’s old Liberal rival George Brown had made himself a hated man among the workers of Canada.

Macdonald was quick to capitalize. In Ottawa, he spoke to a crowd at city hall, promising to wipe the “barbarous laws” restricting labour from the books. Macdonald then came to the rescue of the imprisoned men and on June 14 passed a Trade Union Act, which legalized and protected union activity. Macdonald’s move not only embarrassed his rival Brown but also earned him the enduring support of the working class.

For the strikers themselves, the short-term effects were very damaging. Many lost their jobs and were forced to leave Toronto. The long-term effects, however, were positive. After 1872 almost all union demands included the 54-hour week. Thus the Toronto printers were pioneers of the shorter workweek in North America. The movement did not reach places such as Chicago or New York until the turn of the century.

The fight of the Toronto printers had a second, lasting legacy. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers’ strike led to an annual celebration. In 1882 American labour leader Peter J. McGuire witnessed one of these labour festivals in Toronto. Inspired, he returned to New York and organized the first American “labour day” on September 5 of the same year. Throughout the 1880s pressure built in Canada to declare a national labour holiday and on July 23, 1894 the government of Sir John Thompson passed a law making Labour Day official. A huge Labour Day parade took place in Winnipeg that year. It stretched some 5 kilometres. The tradition of a Labour Day celebration quickly spread across Canada and the continent. It had all begun in Toronto with the brave stand of the printers’ union.

James Marsh is editor in chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia.

In 2010, Labour Day falls relatively late, on Monday, September 6th, 2010. Some schools in Canada may thus be starting school before the Labour Day Weekend, instead of the Tuesday after the Labour Day holiday, which has been the tradition.

CANADA

What Happens on Labour Day?

• Lots of people head up north to cottages or campsites.
• Parades
• Fireworks
• See Labour Day Toronto Events

Source:  http://gocanada.about.com

U.S.A.

The First Labor Day

Labor Day parade,in St., Buffalo, N.Y., ca. 1900.
 

Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920

On September 5, 1882, some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City to participate in America’s first Labor Day parade. After marching from City Hall, past reviewing stands in Union Square, and then uptown to 42nd Street, the workers and their families gathered in Wendel’s Elm Park for a picnic, concert, and speeches. This first Labor Day celebration was eagerly organized and executed by New York’s Central Labor Union, an umbrella group made up of representatives from many local unions.  Debate continues to this day as to who originated the idea of a workers’ holiday, but it definitely emerged from the ranks of organized labor at a time when they wanted to demonstrate the strength of their burgeoning movement and inspire improvements in their working conditions.

Miners with Their Children, at the Labor Day Celebration, Silverton, Colorado,
Russell Lee, photographer, September 1940.

America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1933-1945 

The FSA/OWI collection has more than 60 photographs documenting Silverton, Colorado’s 1940 Labor Day celebration. To see this mining community’s parade and other festivities, search on Silverton.

New York’s Labor Day celebrations inspired similar events across the country. Oregon became the first state to grant legal status to the holiday in 1887; other states soon followed. In 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day a national holiday.

For many decades, Labor Day was viewed by workers not only as a means to celebrate their accomplishments, but also as a day to air their grievances and discuss strategies for securing better working conditions and salaries. Nowadays, Labor Day is associated less with union activities and protest marches and more with leisure. For many, the holiday is a time for family picnics, sporting events, and summer’s last hurrah.

• Read about other significant days in the history of labor. Search the Today in History Archive on labor to find features such as the history of the eight-hour workday.
• For images and documents pertaining to labor unions, search across the American Memory collections on the term labor union.
• American Memory contains an extensive array of materials related to  parades and processions. Search the collections of photographs and prints using the keyword parades, or the name of a specific parade.  The collections of motion pictures also document many different kinds of parades including a small Massachusetts town’s celebration of Labor Day.

The Outlaw Jesse James

Part of Briggs Avenue Looking South:
Park River, Dakota Territory,
 [188-?].

The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F. A. Pazandak Photograph Collections

The infamous Jesse James was born on September 5, 1847. At seventeen, James left his native Missouri to fight as a Confederate guerilla in the Civil War. After the war, he returned to his home state and led one of history’s most notorious outlaw gangs. With his older brother Frank and several other ex-Confederates, including Cole Younger and his brothers, the James gang robbed their way across the Western frontier targeting banks, trains, stagecoaches, and stores from Iowa to Texas. Eluding even the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the gang escaped with thousands of dollars.

Despite their criminal and, often, violent acts, James and his partners were much adored. Journalists, eager to entertain Easterners with tales of the Wild West, exaggerated and romanticized the gang’s heists, often casting James as a contemporary Robin Hood. While James did harass railroad executives who unjustly seized private land for the railways, modern biographers note that he did so for personal gain—his humanitarian acts were more fiction than fact.

Jesse James’ outlaw days ended abruptly in 1882 when fellow gang member Robert Ford fired a bullet into the back of his head. Ford hoped to claim the $10,000 offered for James’ capture but received only a fraction of the reward. He did, however, secure himself a place in Western outlaw lore that lives on in literature, song, and film.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SON, MURDERED BY A TRAITOR AND COWARD WHOSE NAME IS NOT WORTHY TO APPEAR HERE Jesse James’s epitaph, selected by his mother, Zerelda James

• Listen to one of many songs written about Jesse James. Search on Jesse James in these two collections of field recordings: Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 and in Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip.
• View The Great Train Robbery, the 1903 film classic inspired by Western outlaws. It is just one of several hundred early films available in Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of Tthe Edison Companie.
• For personal accounts of Jesse James’ activities, search on Jesse James in  American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940. Of particular interest are the interviews with “James McGuire,” who grew up with the James boys, and “L. A. Sherman,” who had a memorable encounter with Jesse James in a Quincy, Illinois, mess hall.

US.Gov:  All Details…. http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Labor_Day.shtml

A Celebration of Women

sends our Blessings and Love

to all the Women of our World in both Canada and our neighbour, U.SA.

May all of North America be at peace this week-end.

Celebrate Labour day!

THE AGE OF THE SUN

- Disorder- Cycles-Time Travel -

The Age of the Sun is an cycle that represents who we really are. It appears that present time is backward and separated but in truth it is not. Many souls deliberately choose to live in disorder to bring forth a greater order…the greater order being disorder. This sounds strange at first reading but it is truth. All came forth out of disorder and gradually moves in a backward direction, another reality, which is referred to as order. What I am expressing may contradict how you interpret order. Order as we think of it in matter can be the opposite of what it actually is.

I will try and clarify my understanding. That which is free flowing appears to be disorder but when it is categorized, organized it becomes order. I understand creation to actually be quite different that commonly perceived. Take time and study the stars at night. Is there truly an order to creation or does it simply appear as if there is? Perhaps, each is doing its own ‘thing’, so to speak, but taken as a whole…appears to be orderly.

Looking at this from another perspective…when we walk through the woods is everything orderly? No. If we walk through a manicured English garden, it is. Now, if everything that is natural in its original state becomes organized through individual thought and action, then we have taken disorder and created order. I know this may sound strange but in truth, we have removed the natural state.

Now taking this a step forward, look at not only nature but also your own life. If you organize everything, categorize it, it is very likely you may lose the purity or the essence of it. Yes, most of us like to be organized but organization from a human perspective does not necessarily mean free flowing energy nor does it mean that it is a genuine creation. Now that I have confused you more, why not understand and think of yourself as a light, a being, a spirit essence who has chosen to exist in order to find out how you can return to a natural state of disorder?

Disorder does not imply war, negativity or any corrupted thought or action. It implies the natural state of being open, free and recognizing the oneness of all nature and all creative manifestations regardless of vibration or appearance. Disorder is not a material creation from the highest perspective that a human can manufacture but a creation that is free and embraces All as part of its beingness. Artists usually understand what I am attempting to express.

The Age of the Sun is gradually returning. The Age involves a breaking up of the order that humans created and judge as normal and allowing room for the disorder of the natural beauty and magic of light and sublime energy of love to come forth in all its power and glory. For that to happen where we are actually one with Nature and all life, the order that has worked against humanity must be replaced with a disorder similar to the example of the stars or the natural state of a wooded area.

There is no real time and space…only the present state of disorder hidden behind the order which the majority has forgotten. So…do not fear the upheavals of Nature. She is restoring Her body to disorder…a natural state. The Age of the Sun happens when we become artists at living. An artist at living resonates to the natural and not the artificial. An artist at living embraces variety and differences because she/he intuitively understands that everything is already one although it appears not to be.

When more of us grasp the thought that we are all stars appearing as dust blown this way and that on earth, we will rejoice and embrace diversity. This diversity includes a past, a present and a future that is all one and the same. The sameness is another way of describing cycles or loops of consciousness and appearance that are ongoing. Finite mind cannot describe God, the Infinite. It is impossible! To understand what I am writing, it must be felt. Try not to bring order into my words.

Everything simply is and will continue to be. Each of us is playing a role over and over again until we tire of the process. It is our choice. Those of us who are in the ‘arts’ sometime have a better understanding of the ongoing drama that consists of loops and spirals. There is nothing to be concerned about because we have done this before and will very likely do it again. This is one of the reasons why we can ‘visit’ the past and travel into future possibilities. Everything exists simultaneously.

There are those of us through the expansiveness of the mind, soul and subtle bodies travel back and forth through what we commonly refer to as space and time. What about the physical body as we know it? Once we become familiar with the science of Light and how we can manipulate matter, more of us will tangibly accomplish this controversial possibility. It may sound extreme but to those who already know how to manipulate matter, it is accepted as a reality available for our use. As an example, there exist healers who have the ability to place their own physical hand through flesh, bones, muscles and so forth of a body and remove and make the necessary corrections. Just because a person has not had an experience of this amazing feat does not mean the reality of it does not already exist.

The Age of the Sun has been experienced before. It is a way of demonstrating more of the reality of Nature as She speaks to us. During the Age of the Sun, a greater burst of radiant Light is available to the masses and not just to the few. It is a welcomed time period when we have the freedom to blossom, shine and connect in a way that has been sorely missing during the long experience of the cycle of darkness. Souls are struggling in an attempt to move out of the cycle of the night into the cycle of the day, the Age of the Sun.

Respectfully,

Shirlee Hall

September 4, 2010

SHIRLEE HALL:  www.behealedforever.com 

 A Message From VERONICA

Fear & Loathing in the Physical Realm

“To become part of the physical experience it is necessary to focus intensely upon the moment.  A time line unfolds before you as you proceed upon creating a reality.  The plans are in place but often a deviation occurs placing the energy in the path of alienation from the core energy from which they came.  This occurrence is easily magnified and embellished by dramatic creations.

It is important to take notice of the embracement of drama and its ability to spiral into more complicated predicaments.  It is at that point where the dread of continuance can cause severe depression and immobility.  This overwhelming experience puts the souls of many in jeopardy due to the lack of movement in their energy.

To remedy this moment it is necessary to pause in the linear creation your are experiencing.  Attempt to stop the unnecessary chatter in your head while focusing on a quite moment connection with your energy.

If it appears impossible, it is imperative to provide for yourself the silence.  If you have the time to be miserable indeed you have the time to reconnect to your soul.

It’s your choice.  However, to continue in the turmoil will only result in more of what you find yourself in now.

Take the opportunity….. find the silence.  It’s quite alright to do it your own way.  Just do it.

It’s never going to be too late but the tardiness of your evolution will be noticed….  by you.

It is not required to be dissatisfied with your evolvement.  It is not required to fear the moment.  Fear can be conquered with mere eye to eye engagement.  Fear will slink away by a mere glance of your internal energy.  Yes it will.

Find the silent moment void of fear.  Your distaste for the physical will recede and your eternal energy will emerge.  Remember to keep linear chatter at bay.  See what occurs.”

                       –VERONICA

Message:  www.aprilcrawford.com 

The YIN MIND

September 4, 2010

Welcome!

One professor said:

“You can’t see the forest for the forests.”

‘That is true. I always seek the contexts.’

Since reading a book by an Oxford professor of human genetics: The Seven Daughters of Eve, I have watched for the subsequent discoveries of this Professor Bryan Sykes. Now, he presents us with the book: Adam’s Curse a Future Without Men.

Here is an internet link:

http://books.google.ca/booksid=NJ6EPt17qeEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Adam’s+Curse&source=bl&ot

This is a statement from the preface to the book.

Professor Sykes states:

“I have called the book Adam’s Curse, because this experiment that gave us men is not turning out too well, just now.” Speaking of the Y-chromosome the indicator of the male genome, Sykes says, “ . . . this ultimate genetic symbol of male machismo is decaying at such an alarming rate that, for humans at least, the GM (Genetically Modified) experiment will soon be over. We run the real risk of extinction.”

This information is shocking, perhaps even jolting to some, perhaps most, if not, to all of us.

• Have you ever heard of the ancient Sumerian Civilization?
• Are you acquainted with their cuneiform language?

Thousands of tablets have been found. There are somewhere around two hundred people able to translate the tablets. The code breaking occurred because some tablets were found that were interlinear Akkadian and Cuneiform. * Akkadian is an ancient Semitic or Hebrew-like language.

There are books written by Samuel Noah Kramer:

The fifth book in the series is: Genesis Revisited.

Here, the ancient texts describe the genetic manipulations that yielded the human adamu (adam). When reading the original Hebrew or better, the Akkadian account, or better yet, the cuneiform,there is no conflict between creationists and evolutionists. The Elohim, plural, created man in their own image. Now, here we are, in 2010, and the male chromosome is on the brink of extinction. *Does that mean the extinction of the human race?

On June 26, 2007, International Stem Cell Corporation (ISCC), a California-based stem cell research company, announced that their lead scientist, Dr. Elena Revazova, and her research team were the first to intentionally create human stem cells from unfertilized human eggs using parthenogenesis.

The process may offer a way for creating stem cells that are genetically matched to a particular woman for the treatment of degenerative diseases which might affect her.

Do you know that ‘parthenogenesis‘ means ‘reproduction without male participation’?

 Elizabeth Gould Davis wrote: The First Sex.

‘Are we on the brink of making the first sex, also the last sex?’

If you know any of these educators, works or writers, please feel comfortable to SPEAK OUT LOUD, as Your Comments and Reply are Valuable.

Let’s TALK!

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode…Eve Revere

Famous Quotes of Hopelessness

…..

with a Challenge Attached!

1. ‘I didn’t really want to live, so anything that was an investment in time made me angry… but also I just felt sad. When the hopelessness is hurting you, it’s the fixtures and fittings that finish you off. ‘ Angelina Jolie
2. ‘Hopelessness has surprised me with patience.’ Margaret J. Wheatley
3. ‘Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.’  B. H. Liddell Hart
4. ‘When you’re depressed, the whole body is depressed, and it translates to the cellular level. The first objective is to get your energy up, and you can do it through play. It’s one of the most powerful ways of breaking up hopelessness and bringing energy into the situation.’  O. Carl Simonton
5. ‘When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.’ Helen Keller
6. ‘That whisper you keep hearing is the universe trying to get your attention.’ Oprah Winfrey
7. ‘Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.’ Marilyn vos Savant
8. ‘Don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.”  Grace Hansen
9. ‘Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.’  Eliza Tabor
10. ‘Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”  Carl Bard

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Turn that Frown Upside Down….

“If you are having a rough time right now, give yourself the gift
of new beginnings. Give yourself permission to start fresh every
day. Stop limiting your happiness to just one or two chances.
The world is full of possibilities. Give yourself permission to
reach out again and grab yours every single day. Don’t drown
your dreams in hopelessness. Forgive yourself for past mistakes
and begin your dream anew. Choose to see new opportunities for
success and happiness everywhere you look. Make a conscious
choice to greet each morning with gratitude, as a new chance at
happiness. “

Live One Day at a Time!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Take this 1 Month Challenge….

Everytime you feel sad or afraid about an event in your life, immediately,

 immediately think of another event that gave you Joy.

Take Action!

 In the next month,

 if you see any positive changes in your life…

COMMENT HERE

Gel for Women – UN

 

September 2010 – Two further clinical trials are planned for a vaginal gel that has shown potential in reducing the risk of HIV and which, if confirmed, would be a major breakthrough in protecting women, who make up about half of the people living with the virus worldwide, the United Nations said today.

The results of the first trial of the tenofovir-based gel, which were announced in July at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, must be confirmed before the product can be made available for general use.

The gel was found to be 39 per cent effective in reducing a women’s risk of HIV infection during sex in a study completed by the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), a collaborative partner of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

At a meeting convened last week in Johannesburg, South Africa, by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO), experts proposed that further trials should determine whether different populations of women will have the same level of protection as seen in the CAPRISA trial.

The CAPRISA study was conducted in South Africa with women aged 18 to 40 years who used the gel once during the 12 hours before sex and once during the 12 hours after sex, according to a news release issued by UNAIDS.

One of the next two studies will also take place in South Africa, and determine if the CAPRISA results can be repeated in a variety of settings with a population that includes younger women.

It will also evaluate whether the gel can be used safely by sexually active 16- and 17-year-olds in settings where HIV incidence is high.

The other study will be conducted in other African countries and examine if a different dosing schedule is safe and effective. It will test if a single application of the gel before sex, or failing that immediately after, is equally effective and safe as the original two-dose regimen.

While participants at the Johannesburg meeting agreed on research priorities, they expressed concerns over the limited funding committed for the next phase of research. Only $58 million of the estimated $100 million needed is so far available.

“This promising tenofovir gel is a woman-initiated and controlled HIV prevention tool that could now be within reach,” said Catherine Hankins, Chief Scientific Adviser to UNAIDS.

“Funders, advocates, and scientists can work together to close the funding gap rapidly, gather the evidence, and ensure that no time is lost in getting a safe and effective microbicide to women.”

WOMEN of ACTION

Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in 1821 near Bristol, England. When she was eleven, a fire destroyed her father’s business and her family moved to New York City. In the following years, they moved around a lot. They found themselves in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1835 and Cincinnati, Ohio in 1838, where her father died. After her father’s death, Elizabeth and her family opened a private school in order to support the family.

Elizabeth also taught at a school in Kentucky, although she soon tired of the boring routine and decided to go into medicine, becoming a surgeon. So, she was privately tutored by male doctors and also applied to such colleges as Yale, Harvard, and Bowdoin. Yet, she was turned down because she was a woman.

However, in 1848, she was accepted by Geneva College in western New York state. That summer, she attended a program put on by Philadelphia Hospital and practiced medicine for the first time. She graduated from Geneva College in 1849, the first women to have a medical degree, and also became a United States citizen.

Elizabeth traveled back to Europe and while in Paris, she attended and completed a midwife course. However, she also contracted the eye disease called ophthalmia, which left one of her eyes blind and severely crushed her dream of becoming a surgeon. However, she wouldn’t give up her goal of helping people. She went back to New York in 1851 and adopted an orphan named Katharine “Kitty” Barry. She spent a lot of her time writing papers on good hygiene’s importance, and managed to catch the eye of a Quaker organization which began to refer patients to her.

Because of her many patients, Elizabeth opened an office in a run-down house in New York in 1853. Her sister Emily and a Dr. Marie Zakrzewska helped out with the patients, and this office became the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

In 1858, Elizabeth returned to England and became the ‘First Woman on the Medical Register of the United Kingdom’. In 1868, she established the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, returning to New York in 1869. In 1871, she created the National Health Society, and in 1875, Elizabeth became a professor of gynecology at the Royal Free Hospital (then called the New Hospital) of the London School of Medicine for Women. Elizabeth died at 89 years of age in 1910.

A Celebration of Women

salutes this Amazing Woman for her perseverence. guiding

Women into the Medical Service Industry.

Bravo Dr. Elizabeth!

I think it’s safe to say these rules will go a long way in helping you crack people up. I know I will be referring back to them myself in the weeks to come.

1. Play on the juxtaposition between what a listener thinks will happen and what actually happens in the story you tell. Freud talks about this in his Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious . To give you an example, let me tell you more about that hike I went on over the weekend — the one I had to be rescued from? Yeah. When I called 911, I was crying, exhausted, and completely disoriented, worried I wouldn’t make it to the clearing where the fire department had parked to begin their search for me. The 911 operator kept me on the phone, and said, “We have a good sense of where you might be from the GPS monitor but we’re worried you may not be very close to the access road. Continue walking till you see any kind of landmark and then tell us what it is.” About 60 seconds later, I was saying: “Oh! I see something in the distance. It’s … it’s red … and … it’s a truck! And on the side it says … Oh! Oh. It says, um, Fire Department?”

2. Use the rule of three. Give two standard or fairly serious examples, and an absurd third one. For example: “The men I like best are the ones who are tall, dark, and not living in their mother’s basement.”

3. End on a funny word or phrase. Do this when the funniest part of a joke or quip is a single word or phrase. As Woody Allen once said, “I don’t feel comfortable changing in front of a man of my own gender.”

4. Build up the tension. Many conventional jokes begin with long stories that include many irrelevant or unnecessary elaborations or details because the more involved a person becomes in the story — and the more distracted she becomes by the story — the more likely she is to care about (and to be surprised by) the ending. It’s a bit like he’s holding his breath while you tell the story, and the longer he has to hold it, the bigger the burst will be when he finally lets it out.

5. Take something someone said earlier and play on it. For instance, a while back, Teddy was with a friend of ours when she bought a new purse. Two different salespeople said to her, “Oh, what a fun bag.” Later in the day, when I met up with Teddy and her, I said, “That’s such a great bag!” And Teddy said, “No, no, not great. Fun .”

6. Have a running joke. In my blog, my baby fireman fetish is one of our running jokes. My penchant for jailbait is another. Part of what’s appealing about a running joke is simply feeling like you’re in on it; another appeal arises when you work the running joke in at an unexpected moment or in a surprising way. (Sort of the way I did when I talked about having to be rescued by the Lebanon Fire Department and then said, “Yep — I’ll do anything to meet a firefighter, won’t I?”)

7. Discern between self-deprecation and self-pity. Everyone loves self-deprecating humor — but you should be careful to make sure you’re poking lighthearted fun at your foibles in a way that makes it clear you recognize your shortcomings but have basic confidence or self-respect. (Conan O’Brien is a master of this, Teddy says.) One way to make sure this is happening is to do it with a figurative twinkle in your eye — or a literal smile. By signaling that you’re joking — with a raise of your eyebrows and a grin, for instance — people will understand that you’re not complaining.

8. Look for opportunities to be ironic. Make a statement that contradicts something that has just been said. For instance, if someone tells you you’re a good listener, you might say “What was that?” (Teddy loves that one.)

9. If you’re teasing someone, do it with affection. Don’t come off as nasty or judgmental. Tease someone with the idea that you’re doing it in a way that shows your affection for the person in question — shortcomings and all. One thing Teddy loves to nudge me about is the way I always say — both in person and on my blog — “What do YOU think?”

@ Maura Kelly,   http://www.marieclaire.com/