I've resolved this year to be less bogged down with worry-- it just doesn't do any good. John Nugent and i continue prepping for our big submission by January 11th and again we are going to work as hard as we can --but without worry. Today would have been one of my favorite author's birthday. Her name was Jean Kerr and in case you don't recognize the newsmenthink of the blockbuster novel and movie Please Don't Eat The Daisies". The movie starred Doris day and the amazing David Niven. In one of her books, Jean tells the hilarious story of one of her kids getting a speaking part in his school play and being very disappointed. What was the play his mother wanted to know and what part did you get? It's "The Garden of Eden", the rueful son wailed and I have the part of Adam. His mother (Jean Kerr) was very proud and said "Oh, my, that's the lead, Adam is the father of all mankind. And Jean Kerr's son wailed "yeah-maybe, but the snake has all the lines". Isn't that just what happens in our lives? We have the lead. We have the top role. We're important-- we assume. But oh yes, the snake (the guy we never counted on-- he has all the lines-- and all the angles, and all the ways to get around our importance and authority. Jean wrote a book about it called "The Snake Has All The Lines". If you want to really laugh, read her long running play "Mary, Mary". I performed the lighting for this show way back in 1966 right after my father died. It was staged at the San Gabriel Little Theatre. It starred Gary and Linda Hamner and David P. Klain. How I miss those wonderful days Here are a few of my favorite Jean Kerr quotes.

"A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table."

" A man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself - like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks."

"Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left."

" Do you know how helpless you feel if you have a full cup of coffee in your hand and you start to sneeze?"

"Even though a number of people have tried, no one has ever found a way to drink for a living."

"Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn't permanent.

"I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on."

" I make mistakes; I'll be the second to admit it."

" I think success has no rules, but you can learn a great deal from failure."

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas? "

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.

"Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite. "

"Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn't always go with everything else in the house."

"One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is that assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.

"Some people have such a talent for making the best of a bad situation that they go around creating bad situations so they can make the best of them.

" The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old. "

"When the grandmothers of today hear the word "Chippendales," they don't necessary think of chairs.

"You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help. "