~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
March 31, 2011

★~ Today’s Quote: “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” -Rene Descartes

★~ Clam on the Half Shell Day. I hope that you like clams. Because, today we are celebrating clams on the hald shell. If you don’t like clams; don’t clam up and pout remember tomorrow is yet another day.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1889 – The Eiffel Tower opened in Gay Paree. A beautiful sight, no? Well, not so to writers, Guy deMaupassant and Alexandre Dumas who condemned the Eiffel Tower as a “horrid nightmare.” No pleasing some people, we guess… The Eiffel Tower was named after its designer, architect, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel who built the structure for the Paris Exhibition of 1889.

♥~ 1918 – Daylight saving time went into effect throughout the United States for the first time. Folks would spring ahead an hour allowing for longer early evenings. The time change left enough light for many activities, especially in farming areas. Planting and such could best be done with the sun up an extra hour. And, of course, folks would fall back an hour to standard time in the fall.

♥~ 1976– The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Karen Ann Quinlan, who was in a persistent vegetative state, could be disconnected from her respirator. (Quinlan, who remained unconscious, died in 1985.)

♥~ 1984, Kenny Loggins started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Footloose’, the theme from the film with the same name, a No.6 hit in the UK.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1811 – Robert Bunsen, German Scientist who helped develop the Bunsen burner.

♥~ 1929 – Liz Claiborne fashion designer; died Jun 26, 2007

♥~ 1934 – Richard Chamberlain actor: Dr. Kildare, The Thorn Birds; Centennial, Shogun, The Towering Inferno, Julius Caesar, The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Bourne Identity, King Solomon’s Mines; environmentalist in Hawai

♥~ 1945 – Gabe (Gabriel) Kaplan actor, comedian: Welcome Back Kotter

♥~ 1934 – Shirley Jones singer, actress: Carousel, The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Elmer Gantry, The Partridge Family

♥~ 1955 – Angus Young musician: guitar: group: AC/DC: Highway to Hell, Wall All Over You, Shot Down in Flames, Get It Hot, Dirty Deeds Done Cheap, Rocker, Problem Child.

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ A clam has only two goals in life: to eat and to have sex, hence the phrase “happy as a clam”.

♥~ Unfortunately, as the clam has no brain, it derives no real pleasure from either food or sex.

♥~ The clam is a chemically driven shell full of salty flesh that exists to procreate. The clam’s remarkable fruitfulness serves not only to reproduce itself, bit also to feed countless organisms in the seaside food chain.

♥~ A 405 year old clam dredged from icy Arctic waters is being hailed as the world’s longest-lived animal.

♥~ Clams are usually thought of as one soft mass but they actually have body parts. That’s right, clams have a head, foot, and radula. (I was afraid to google radula but I did because I am brave–I guess it is kind of like a tongue.)

♥~The geoduck or gooyduck is the largest species of clams on the face of the earth. The clam itself  can be as long as 7 inches, which is pretty big but the really impressive part is its long siphon that often reaches 3 1/2  feet in length. it weighs between 1 and three pounds, but there have been stories about 16 pound gooyducks.

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All this talk about clams has made me a little clammy. I don’t think I like clams. I am very sure Cole likes clams, because he likes everything, including anchovies and sardines that come in a tin can. When I saw him happily munching away at a sardine on a cracker at the age of three (compliments of his dad), I burst into tears, certain the hospital had given me the wrong baby; we would have to return him, but I was attached to him.  Somewhere, someone had a child that ate Jiffy peanut butter on white bread; a switch would have to be made. Joe assured me that Cole was ours, as he fed him a second sardine cracker. I still wonder some days.

Maybe, just maybe, I will try a clam in honor of clams on a half shell day; or, better yet, I will feed a clam to Cole. I am betting that it will make him as a happy as a clam.  What is new with you? Drop me a comment if you have time…don’t clam up! Odd Loves Company!

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