Long Distance "Spin The Bottle"...!

I love it when a story like this comes along, especially in the midst of all the wackiness coming out of Washington!

Never hurts to have a little "feel good" story every once in a while, right? Well, this one from CBS News is just that!

July 28, 2011 9:55 AM

Message in bottle received after decades adrift

In New Hampshire, a message in a bottle traveled thousands of miles over as many as 50 years before finding its way back to the author's daughter - in the mail.

Paula Pierce has lived her life by the ocean. Last week, it delivered a message, as Lauren Leamanczyk of CBS station WBZ in Boston reported for "The Early Show."

"It was like being contacted from the past," Pierce said.

The message was sent in a Coca-Cola bottle and it took decades to find its way back to The Beachcomber Motel -- her family's business in Hampton Beach, N.H.

"It like jumped up off the page at me," she said. "And I was like that's my father's writing. That is my father's writing!"

Sometime between 1960 and 1980, Paula's father put a message in a bottle that reads, "Return to 419 Ocean Boulevard and receive a reward of $150 from Tina, owner of the Beachcomber."

Tina is Paula's mother. She thinks her dad wrote it to tease his business savvy wife. Somehow the bottle made it all the way to the island of Turks and Caicos where Clint Buffington found it. He collects messages in a bottle.

Buffington, who runs the website Messageinabottlehunter.wordpress.com, told CBS News, "A message from the past like this carries special weight. And I'm just really glad to be part of that I guess."

Traveling direct, it's about 2,000 miles from Hampton Beach to Turks and Caicos, but no one knows how many miles that bottle logged in the 30 to 50 years it spent in the Atlantic Ocean.

Pierce's parents passed away years ago.

"That gave me chills today. I actually started to cry," she said. "I feel like they're sending me a message somehow."

Pierce's father, Leamanczyk remarked, may have meant the message as a practical joke, but instead, he gave his daughter a priceless gift.

I think this is pretty cool! Just imagine how far that bottle has traveled and all the places it's been to! I love it!

Let's get some fresh coffee and sit on the patio for a bit! Gonna be really hot later, so we better do it soon!

True Then, True Now...!

The year is 1907, a little over one hundred years ago.




Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

'In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.. And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.'

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

As I've said before, the Truth is always the Truth! Now, my friend, let's get some fresh coffee and sit on the patio for a while, OK?