It wasn’t the luck of the Irish that saved 7-year-old Patrick Bojorquez from choking on a four-leaf clover cookie — it was his friend and classmate, Hunter Hoffman.

On St. Patrick’s Day, the third graders were eating their dessert during lunchtime at Plainfield Elementary School when a piece of cookie got lodged in Patrick’s throat.

Having learned the Heimlich Maneuver from his 12-year-old sister that took a first aid class for baby-sitting, Hunter spring into action.

“I knew when to do it because he wasn’t saying anything, he just got up out of his seat,” Hunter said. “It was scary.”

Hunter got behind Patrick, began squeezing-thrusts on the abdomen, and on the third thrust, the cookies came out.

“My wife and myself are very proud of him,” Hunter’s dad, Steve Hoffman, said. “For a 7-year-old who never had any first-hand training, it’s pretty good.”

Patrick’s mom, Cameron Dewberry, said she didn’t even hear about the incident until she picked Hunter up from school to take him to baseball practice, and “he went and played baseball like nothing ever happened.”

She said the full impact of the situation didn’t hit her until she spoke with Hunter’s mom at his eighth birthday party two days later and learned, “(Patrick) wasn’t making a sound which is the trigger that someone is truly choking.”

“I think it’s amazing that a 7-year-old boy has instincts like that,” Dewberry said. “Had I been there I probably would have freaked out. How perfect it

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was that they were eating lunch together at that time; my son could have died.”

On Monday the kids teacher, Barbara Herms, had all of her students pay a compliment to someone in their lives. Hunter thanked Patrick “for not letting me choke.”

Her jewelry choice may have looked a little odd, but Hannah Cameron credits her four-leaf clover and pen necklace for carrying her to third in the national spelling bee.

A Grade 7 student at Herring Cove Junior High School, Hannah competed Sunday in the 2010 Canwest Canspell National Spelling Bee in Ottawa.

The 12-year-old from Portuguese Cove started the morning competing against 21 of the top spellers from the regional bees held this winter across the country. And slowly, throughout the day, her competition was weeded out as speller after speller got tripped up on their words.

“I just enjoyed the heck out of it,” Hannah said in a telephone interview from Ottawa.

Although she put a lot of pressure on herself to win The Chronicle Herald regional final, Hannah said she went into the national competition with no expectations other than to have fun.

According to Hannah, even with a skill like spelling, luck still comes into play.

“I kept getting easy words.”

And maybe that luck came from the assortment of good-luck charms her friends gave her to take to Ottawa, including the four-leaf clover and pen that Hannah made into a necklace.

She and her mother arrived Wednesday in Ottawa, where they spent the rest of the week taking in the sights of the nation�s capital.

The word that caught Hannah out was pharaoh. She transposed the a and the o, she said.

“I knew all the rest of the words,” she said laughing.

Although this was her first time at a national competition, Hannah is already hoping to come back next year.

Canspell is aimed at middle-school students from grades 4 to 8.

“I�ll be allowed to come back next year,” Hannah said.

According to the Canspell website, Cape Breton speller Claudine Broussard, 14, of Port Hawkesbury came in fourth. The Grade 8 student�s last word was pansit, which she spelled ponset.

Both girls won $5,000 awards as top regional spellers, as well as the trip to Ottawa to compete in the national bee.

( djeffrey@herald.ca)

�I just enjoyed the heck out of it.�

Hannah cameron, 12Third-place finisher in national spelling bee

Gloria DeLaCruz-Vasquez never considered herself lucky, but a fateful day this month may have changed that.

As DeLaCruz-Vasquez watered the aloe vera in the back yard, she glanced down and saw among a patch of weeds, a rare four-leaf clover.

“I’ve been looking for one since I was 7 or 8,” she said.

Genuine four-leaf clovers come from the trifolium repens, or White Clover variety. Typically the plant is dark green in color and a fourth leaf is usually smaller than the others. Four-leaf clovers are more common among different clover varieties such as Pepperwort and Water Clover, though they aren’t considered to be the mysterious lucky four-leaf clover.

The four-leaf clover has long been said to be a symbol of luck and remains a fascination for many, since it is still a rare find.

St. Patrick’s Day, a celebration of the patron saint of Ireland, is most commonly observed in the United States by wearing green. The shamrock, the registered trademark of Ireland, was often worn as a badge during St. Patrick’s Day, which is celebrated on Wednesday. Irish lore tells of the saint using the three-leaf clover to explain the Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

DeLaCruz-Vasquez, 57, recalled spending much of her time during recess at Clover Elementary School in San Juan trying to find the good luck charm, at the suggestion of the teachers.

The San Juan native, who works with children and pregnant woman for the Department of State Health Services, keeps a wild yard, watering indiscriminantly, so weeds will get a drink and grow tall.

“My husband wanted to have the back yard landscaped,” DeLaCruz-Vasquez said, but she didn’t want to give up the various greenery she has nurtured for years.

Her father, who was a farmer, helped her fill in the edges of her yard with trees and bushes. He passed away two years ago.

“I guess I was trying to find a connection to my father,” DeLaCruz-Vasquez said of her love of gardening.

DeLaCruz-Vasquez said she has never won anything in her life, but with a four-leaf clover in her yard, she’s considering playing the lottery. Her odds of winning may never be better.

 

Amy Nichol Smith covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4420.

Gary Corby (blog here, website about upcoming book here) asked me to blog this method of finding 4-leaf clovers, which works phenomenally well for Kiddo#1 (he found 80 of them the first summer he tried it) and marginally well for me, plus I’ve been able to teach others to do it too.

And in all fairness, this method was taught to me by someone from EtiquetteHell, but I’m forgetting whom. (Edited later: I think it was Geordicat.)

Since it’s re-created in Seven Archangels: Annihilation, I’m going to post t he excerpt. This is from Chapter One, where Gabriel is in human form, playing a hide-and-seek game with Remiel, who’s hiding as a four-leaf clover. The two boys are later revealed as demons. See if you can figure out which one turns out to be the cherub Mephistopheles (he’s not very good at remembering he’s in disguise, but Gabriel’s a little too focused to realize).

And then go find some good luck in chlorophyl-form. Enjoy!

–

Gabriel didn’t look up. “I’m searching for a four-leaf clover.”

“How do you do that?” said the smaller of the two, who appeared to be six.

“It’s actually not that hard.” Gabriel grinned. “You’ve got to figure that statistically speaking, there would be about one four-leaf clover in a patch this size.”

“I’d have estimated two.” The smaller boy’s eyes peered out curiously from under his curly hair. “I think it’s about one in three hundred, although there’s obviously some variance due to genetics.”

The bigger boy rolled his eyes.

“This species of clover tends to have fewer four-leaf variants,” Gabriel said, waving a hand out over the plants, “maybe one in five hundred, and given the square footage of this patch, I estimate we have about five hundred clovers here. Knowing that, you look at the patch and unfocus your eyes and concentrate on the shapes rather than the individual leaves themselves.”

“Oh!” The smaller boy seemed to get a bit taller. “You’re pattern-matching rather than actually looking.”

Gabriel grinned. “It’s as simple as picking out a square in a field of triangles.”

The boy looked breathless. “Do you find you can train the human eye to register only the squares?”

“Absolutely!” Gabriel turned his attention back to the plants at his feet. “Human vision is very easy to fool because the brain interprets visual patterns the way it expects to and rejects any data it doesn’t expect—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” said the boy. “I take advantage of that all the time.”

The bigger boy said, “You’d better quit it. Now.”

Immediately the younger boy fell silent.

Gabriel brightened. “Got it!”

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Finding Four (and up) Leaf Clovers

St Patricks Day – 7 Steps to get the Luck of the Irish!

March 19th, 2010  |  Published in Uncategorized

Isn’t the concept of ‘luck’ a funny thing! A few seconds of bad luck can undo years of hard work, and a moment of good luck can change your life forever in amazing ways.

But is luck really something that is completely random?  Or is it something we have more control over than we think. Is it really a case of people having good or bad luck, or is it more the way we view the things that happen to us?

Let’s look at an example – Sally was driving her car down her street when her tyre blows, she loses control of her car, runs off the road, hits a tree and completely smashes the front of her car. If Sally saw herself as an unlucky person she might think  - why do these bad things always happen to me? Thinking about how unlucky she was that it happened, how unlucky she is that her car is damaged, how she would have to stuff around with insurance and repairs and so forth. However, If Sally saw herself as a lucky person she would probably think to herself- thank heavens she wasn’t on the highway with lots of traffic doing 100km’s an hour, how lucky she was that she didn’t hit someone else, lucky she didn’t have her kids in the car, lucky that she wasn’t injured, lucky that she was insured, and just get on with what needs to be done to get her car back on the road, thinking herself rather fortunate.

It is the exact same situation, but depending on how she thinks, she is either ’unlucky’ or ’lucky’.

So the good news, as just demonstrated, is that you can become a lucky person instantly just by the way you think. You can also generate more luck for yourself with the things that you do. Lucky people tend to take more chances, or do things that other people just can’t be bothered to do. This in turn generates more chances of new and exciting things happening to them. We have all heard the stories, someone receives an invite to some party and normally they wouldn’t go but on this occasion they did and met their future husband. Or someone going to a job interview for a job they really didn’t want only to be offered another position in the interview which is their dream job. Someone who normally doesn’t enter competitions buys a jar of mayo with a competition on it, enters it and wins a car. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

So if you want to become ‘lucky’, or if you doubt that creating your own good luck is possible, then follow these seven steps for one week. When the week is up, review it and see if you think that your good luck has increased.

1. Try and see the positive side of everything that happens, like the car accident. If you really can’t find a positive side right now, then believe that everything happens for a reason and the positive side might not be evident to you for years to come, or that the positive side might be a very valuable lesson that will be a big help to you down the track.
2. Write a list of all the reasons why you are already lucky. It can from the big things like owning your own home to smaller things like having food in the fridge. Read it and add to it every day. The luckiest people are the ones who believe they are lucky!
3. Do at least one thing you wouldn’t normally do. Go rock climbing, join a social club, do some charity work, get a pen pal, anything that will give you new experiences, give you the opportunity to meet new people, and put you in situations you have not been in before.
4. Change your routine. Have something different for breakfast, take a different route to work, take the train or bus to work, wear something you normally wouldn’t, wear your hair differently, stop off and visit a friend on the way home, go for a bike ride after work with someone etc. Shaking things up from your normal routine will generate some freshness and excitement in your day, increasing the chances of new and exciting things happening.
5. Take some chances. I don’t mean quit your job and move to the country, but just little chances like entering a competition, accepting an invite, applying for that job you would love but don’t think you stand a chance etc.
6. View everything as an opportunity for great things to come into your life. Obviously, if great offers come your way, don’t be complacent or you could miss out on some great opportunities. But also don’t forget the small things that can lead you to great opportunities as well. By just doing small insignificant things (like doing someone a favour by dropping them off at the airport) could start a domino effect where you are just at the right place at the right time for something lucky to happen to you.
7. Find yourself a Good Luck Charm! Do you have something that you think is lucky? It could be a five cent piece or a rock you found on the ground, a present someone gave you, or even print this blog and cut out the picture and put it in your wallet for Good Luck! Then believe it will bring you luck!

Happy St Patrick’s Day – and Good Luck!

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St. Patrick’s Day Irish Wedding Traditions

Written by Stephanie Padovani Friday, 19 March 2010 17:26

St. Patrick’s Day Irish Wedding Traditions

Couples getting married on or around St. Patty’s Day may wish to incorporate some Irish traditions in the wedding day. Or maybe you just want an extra helping of the luck o’ the Irish on your big day?

Try these Irish wedding traditions on for size…

Aitin’ the Gander Immediately before the wedding, the bride’s family invites the groom over for dinner and cooks him a goose. Add a pint of Guinness and it’s one heck of a party.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/_kir/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Walking to the Church The Irish bride and groom walked to the church together while friends and family cheer them on, tossing rice…along with pots, pans and other loose objects. Make sure you’ve got good reflexes if you try this one.

Once the groom is safely inside the doors of the church it is an Irish tradition for guests to lock them behind him; apparently Irish grooms have a history of cold feet.

 

Claddagh Wedding Bands Irish couples often choose traditional Celtic Claddagh rings the symbolic heart held by two hands and topped with a crown, as their wedding bands.

 

The placement of the ring on a lady’s finger announces her availability. Unmarried ladies wear the Claddagh on their right hand, heart facing outward if she is available and heart facing downward if her heart is taken. Married ladies wear the ring on their left hand.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/royalcladdagh/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Irish Wedding Vows Exchange the Irish wedding vow: “By the power that Christ brought from heaven, mayst thou love me. As the sun follows its course, mayst thou follow me. As light to the eye, as bread to the hungry, as joy to the heart, may thy presence be with me, oh one that I love, ’til death comes to part us asunder.”

Irish Wedding Coin At the ceremony, the groom gives his bride a silver coin and says, “I give you this as a token of all I possess.”

Go Green What better way to go Irish than to use green in your bridal colors? Kelly green is beautiful for spring or you can opt for a softer moss. Go hard core Irish with the colors green, white and gold.

The Dress An Irish bride carries a handkerchief, the “magic hanky,” on her wedding day that will later be stitched into a christening bonnet for her baby. She might also wear traditional Irish lace.

The Bouquet English lavender symbolizing love, devotion and purity is used in the wedding flowers and a shamrock may be tucked in for extra luck.

Kilts The groom and his groomsmen dress in kilts, traditionally worn without undergarments. *grin*

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shopgirl78/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The Marriage or Make Up Bell Irish couples are given a bell as a wedding present. When the couple gets into an argument, either of them may ring the bell to resolve the disagreement without assigning blame.

I don’t know if it works, but it sure beats modern therapy.

Irish Music There are many beautiful Irish wedding songs and Celtic arrangements available for the ceremony. Bagpipes and pipe and drum bands add an impressive tribute to Irish heritage. Traditional Irish drinking songs are great for the reception and you might even throw in some contemporary Irish rock like the Dropkick Murphys or Flogging Molly.

Irish Dancers  Inviting some Irish step dancers to your wedding is traditional and fun.  You might ask them to come in full costume to hand out programs at the ceremony and have them dance at the reception later on.

The Irish Grushie The bride and groom toss coins to their wedding guests. This is said to bring good luck and prosperity to their marriage.

Serve Mead Serve mead, traditional wine made from honey, to guests at the reception. Irish newlyweds then drink it daily for the next month to keep away the evil fairies; this is where the term “honeymoon” comes from.

Irish Wedding Toast The bride and groom lead a toast, “Friends and relatives, so fond and dear, ’tis our greatest pleasure to have you here. When many years this day has passed, fondest memories will always last. So we drink a cup of Irish mead and ask God’s blessing in your hour of need.” And the guests respond, “On this special day, our wish to you, the goodness of the old, the best of the new. God bless you both who drink this mead, may it always fill your every need.”

Good Luck Charms Irish traditions are full of superstitions to guarantee good luck. Traditionally a bride might tuck a lucky horseshoe into her bouquet. You can modify this tradition by stitching a horseshoe onto your gown or working horseshoes into your theme. It is also considered good luck for a bride to braid her hair.

Of course, the ultimate good luck charm for any bride and groom: get married on St. Patrick’s Day!

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Everyone in the world believes in good destiny or good luck.Though invisible destiny has its tremendous impact on individual either in positive or negative way there are some creatures and objects, known as good luck charms that are believed to overpower negative forces and remove all the hurdles from human life. Good luck charms are blindly believed to bring happiness, love, prosperity, strength and power. Even those who claim themselves the atheist in some way or the other staunchly believe in good luck charms. You might have seen many people around you wearing amulets, bracelets, jewelries or the tattoos over specific parts of their body. All such peculiar attractants are symbols of good luck charms.

Besides the handmade objects like holy cross, swastika (Indian holy symbol) and horse-nail there are many insects also such as ladybug,  dragonfly, scarab, pig, elephant and tiger treated as the good luck charms. Apart from objects, insects and the animals there are many prominent icons (holy men) also like Buddha, respected and worshiped like a god. The icons also are treated as the good luck charms in different parts of the world.

Though many of you may go against the good luck symbol or charm as a part of superstition, you will can’t deny the fact that every person in the world believes blindly in an invisible power, in some way or other, that is, God. Though a name of God or invisible power has got to differ in different religions and cultures, the god, in all the religions, is believed to provide strength, peace, aggrandizement, prosperity, success, fame and power. Is there any God or power in the universe which doesn’t seem to provide happiness? Those who refuse to accept god’s existence extend their approbation to God indirectly by opting for good luck charms wearing amulets or tattoos. We are presenting over here world’s few popular good luck symbols or charms in order to make you introduce you with their conspicuousness for the life of humans.
 
Popular Good Luck Charms

Insects

• Crickets- Crickets are treated in Asia as the good luck charms bringing compatibility and removing all the obstructions from life.
• Ladybugs- Ladybug also is believed to be a good sign and those who staunchly believe in positive effects of ladybug in life never mistreat such insect. It is a special kind of insect which is not killed. This red color insect if sits over the body of any individual, it is not removed by the person concerned, unless it flies away on its own. Quaint isn’t it! Those who by mistake kill the ladybug are considered to invite a bad look involuntarily. It is the positive effect of ladybug which encourages the large number of youths and other superstitious people to devote some sensitive parts of their body in carving out a tattoo of ladybug. 
• Dragonflies- It also is a peculiar insect or bug loved all over the world as a good luck charm. Farmers take the dragonflies for bringing bumper crops of rice during the ensuing harvest season.The people of all ages wear the dragonfly tattoos as well. 
• Scarabs- It is another insect, treated as a good look sign or charm. It has been loved and provided protection since Egyptian period.

Natural Objects

Just after coming across some insects, taken as the good luck charms, let’s have a look at some natural objects.

• Acorns- It is a hard fruit of oak believed to be effective in keeping the all the bad situations at bay.
• Rainbow- It is believed to be a bow of India (Indian god of water). Its appearance in the sky is the precursor of an end of ongoing rain and onset of another beautiful climate. Rainbow’s seven colors also are taken as a sign of good fortune. In some parts of the world the end of rainbow is believed to have a treasure of god. People curiously watch the rainbow and display its scenery over the wall inside their drawing room as well.
• Gems or stones– Germs or stones also are treated as the good luck charms. There are many precious gems, leaving positive or negative effects on humans. These stones are worn by the people in just in accordance with their time & date of birth and birth place.The gems and stones have really tremendous impact in the life of person. Let’s have a look at some of the conspicuous gem stones treated worldwide as the good luck charms. Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Amethyst, Opal, Topaz, Peridot, Aquamarine, Tanzanite, Citrine, Ametrine, Garnets, Tsavorite Garnet, Demantoid Garnet, Mandarin Garnet, Tourmaline, Rubellite Tourmaline, Green Tourmaline, Paraiba Tourmaline, Yellow Tourmaline, Blue Tourmaline, Multicolored Tourmaline, Lapis Lazuli, Fancy Sapphires, Quartz, Zultanite, Jade, Zircon, Iolite, Spinel, Fire Opal, Moonstone, Alexandrite, Chrysoberyl, Kunzite, Beryls, Morganite, Chrome Diopside, Andalusite, Amber, Turquoise, Coral, Agate, Onyx, Bloodstone, Jasper, Pearl and Diamond are the good luck signs or charms.

Animals

• Dolphins- As all the fishes are taken as ominous sign or sign of good fortune all over the world including India, dolphins were treated as the sign of good luck in Ancient cultures of Greece, Sumer, Egypt and Rome. Christians in America still treat the dolphin as bringing good luck to the people.
• Pigs- Pig is very important animal treated as a good luck sign in Germany. 
• Tortoises- Tortoise also is believed to be a good sign of favorable destiny. Being indispensable part of astrology, tortoise is mentioned as changing all the contrary situations in to favorable one unbelievably.  The people in many parts of world keep the tortoises in captivity to ward off evil forces and obliterate all the contrary situations. 
• Elephant- It is also treated as one of the prominent gods in India, that is, Ganesha.  Elephant is the most conspicuous and sought after animal all over the world. Elephant being a good luck sign is preferred in USA, UK, Canada, India and China.
• Red Bats- in China the red bats are treated as a good sign or charm of good luck. Believed to chase away all the evil forces effectively, the red bats are supposed to provide longevity, good heath, love, prosperity and power. Chinese people discover the red bats as the good luck charm and want them to exist all around their localities.
• Tigers- Tiger, a most dangerous animal on earth, also is treated as a good sign of fortune bringing good luck in the life of viewer. It is treated with a great respect in India and China. In India it is believed to be a vehicle of goddess Durga, while in China it is believed to provide a protection from loss of precious goods and property.
• Rabbit- The rabbit’s foot also is believed to bring a good luck, while its teeth provide a victory in gambling and other games in Africa.

Icons and Figures

• Buddha- Buddha is worshipped all over the world including China, Japan, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. His presence in home as a laughing Buddha has gained worldwide popularity recently and people of all the religions do prefer to place its idol in their room turning its face towards main gate. Before going out of house for important work the people rub their hands over his belly for gaining 100% success.
• Saint Christopher.

Handmade objects

• Dream Catchers- It is also believed to be a good luck charm removing all contrary situations from life.
• Red Chinese Lanterns.
  
• Horseshoe- The horseshoe has been used to ward off evil forces and maintain peace, prosperity and the compatibility in the life of house inmates. Made by the blacksmith, It is hanged from over the main gate in order to prevent evil forces from entering the house.  
• Coins- The coins also are treated as good luck charms all over the world.
• A pot of gold.

Symbols and Numbers

• Nautical Stars- Nautical stars are respected by the fisher men and voyagers. The nautical stars are believed to foretell about contrary situations and provide a good protection from them.
• Swastika– Sign of good luck in India, happiness and prosperity.