THIS N THAT

 Emperor Constantine both legalized and paganized Christianity (the Catholic Church) in the Roman Empire.  He converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.

🕇

Money magazine says there are 3,311 billionaires in the world as of the end of 2021.  975 of them live in the USA (most of any country) and 138 of them live in The Big Apple (NYC).  I'm told that most of them read my blog.

💲

Fred Franzia died recently.  He turned the wine world upside down twenty years ago when he marketed what was commonly known as "Two-Buck Chuck".  It was a reasonably good bottle of wine for two dollars.  His company, Branco Wine, bought a bankrupt winery with the label Charles Shaw (thus the Chuck).  They sold that label exclusively thru Trader Joe's outlets -  like the one in Kenwood.  His company has sold over 1 billion bottles of Charles Shaw wine.  With inflation, you may now have to pay up to $4 for a bottle.  

🍷

The first animal cloned from an adult stem cell was a sheep named Dolly.  Some Scottish scientists did the trick and the animal lived from 1996 to 2003.  You don't hear that much about cloning any more but the advancements in stem cell research have led to many medical uses with more to come.  

🐑 

Last week we had a biblical reading about the mustard seed - a very small seed producing a very large tree.  Now, what do you think is the largest of all seeds?  Give Up?  It's the coconut -  yes, it's actually a seed of the palm tree.  I suppose you could plant one in your back yard and grow your own.  Why don't you try that?!

🌴