All That Glitters

I am working on a video to post about glitter crafts. I want to start a trust fund or a foundation called The foundations for World-Wide Glitteracy." I believe everything should be glitterized. I titled one of the stories in my book "A Thousand Sparkling Diamonds," because when I was growing up near that beautiful blue lake in Alaska in the 1950's, the water sparkled in the summer sun like jewels. If you look carefully you can see glitter on many different things, from the grass to the trees.

Thanks so much to everyone for the gracious responses to the previous post. Someone wrote to me: "When I was younger I too thought the world was coming to an end. Everything seemed so confusing. It was only when I settled down to the serious business of marriage, home and family, that life began to make real sense. I think I cried myself sick a couple of times over the craziness around me. Now I see it was just the world trying to make life work differently than it is supposed to , and trying to make us young people believe it. Life makes much more sense now, especially when I see the Biblical plan for mankind."

I found the rest of the poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

Worth While

It is easy enough to be pleasant,

When life flows by like a song,

But the man worth while is one who will smile,

When everything goes dead wrong.

For the test of the heart is trouble,

And it always comes with the years,

And the smile that is worth the praises of earth

Is the smile that shines through tears.

It is easy enough to be prudent,

When nothing tempts you to stray,

When without or within no voice of sin

Is luring your soul away;

But it's only a negative virtue

Until it is tried by fire,

And the life that is worth the honor of earth

Is the one that resists desire.

By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,

Who had no strength for the strife,

The world's highway is cumbered to-day;

They make up the sum of life.

But the virtue that conquers passion,

And the sorrow that hides in a smile,

It is these that are worth the homage on earth

For we find them but once in a while.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1850-1919