~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
April 14, 2011

Posted Updated: April 14, 2012 

★~ Today’s Quote:  “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax”  ~ Abraham Lincoln

★~ Today is National Pecan Day: In 2012 Pecan Day is celebrated on March 25

George Washington felt like a nut and so he planted pecan trees in Mount Vernon. Today is the anniversary of when those first pecan trees where planted. Thomas Jefferson introduced George Washington to pecans when he sent him some from Philadelphia in the late 1700’s. Which leads me to the observation that there has always been nuts in politics.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1865 – John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor, was permitted upstairs at Ford’s Theatre. Thus, he gained access to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s private theatre box as Lincoln watched the performance of Our American Cousin. It was just after 10 p.m. when Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, shot Lincoln in the head. After shooting the President, Booth leaped to the stage below, shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus always to tyrants!”, the state motto of Virginia.) He broke his leg in the fall but managed to escape the theatre (which was in Washington, D.C.), mount a horse, and flee to Virginia. Booth was hunted down and shot as he hid in a barn near Port Royal, Virginia. Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. the next day.

♥~ 1902 – James Cash Penney opened his first store — in Kemmerer Wyoming. In partnership with Thomas M. Callahan and William Guy Johnson, J.C. Penney named the store Golden Rule. The dry goods and clothing store had a first-year profit of $8,514.36 on sales of $28,898.11.

♥~ 1980 – Stan Mikita retired after 21 years with the Chicago Black Hawks of the NHL. His #21 jersey became the first Blackhawks number to be retired.

♥~ 1979- The Doobie Brothers went to No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘What A Fool Believes’, the group’s second US No.1, it made No.31 in the UK.

★~Born Today:

♥~1866 – Anne Sullivan (Macy) ‘The Miracle Worker’: famous for teaching the blind and deaf Helen Keller to read, write and speak; died Oct 20, 1936

♥~1925 – Rod Steiger (Rodney Stephen Steiger) Academy Award-winning actor: In the Heat of the Night [1967]; On the Waterfront, The Pawnbroker, Dr. Zhivago, The Longest Day, Back Water, In Pursuit of Honor, Mars Attacks!; died July 9, 2002

♥~1935 – Loretta Lynn country singer: Coal Miner’s Daughter, I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl, One’s on the Way, The Pill; 1st woman to earn the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year award; named ACM Artist of the Decade [1979]

♥~1941 – Julie Christie actress: Dr. Zhivago, Petulia, Shampoo, Separate Tables, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Fahrenheit 451

♥~1960 – Brad Garrett comedian, entertainer, actor: Everybody Loves Raymond, ’Til Death, The Pacifier, The Moguls

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ “The name ‘pecan’ is a Native American word of Algonquin origin that was used to describe ‘all nuts requiring a stone to crack.

♥~ Pecan trees are the only nut tree that’s native to North America,

♥~ The State of Georgia is the largest pecan producing state within the United States. We produces an average of 75 million pounds a year!

♥~ Albany, Georgia, which boasts more than 600,000 pecan trees, is the pecan capital of the United States.

♥~ Can you imagine a pecan skyscraper? It would take 11,624 pecans, stacked end to end, to reach the top of the Empire State Building in New York City.

♥~ Texas adopted the pecan tree as its state tree in 1919. In fact, Texas Governor James Hogg liked pecan trees so much that he asked if a pecan tree could be planted at his grave site when he died.

♥~ The United States produces 80 percent of the world’s pecan crop.

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Knock knock
Who’s there?
Pecan
Pecan who?
Pecan somebody your own size!

I love nuts. I especially love pecans. My grandfather grew pecans on his cotton farm in El Paso, Texas and I never remember a time growing up when we didn’t have big bags of shelled pecans in our freezer. I do remember the shock of discovering how much a small bag of pecans cost the first time I bought them. Holy expensive pecans!

It has always seemed odd to me when people do not put pecans in cookies, brownies or fudge. I would have sent Cole back if he had been allergic to nuts; not liking them was simply not an option. In fact, after several years of eating my best friend’s fudge at Christmas, I had to tell her….“Best friend, if you will add pecans to my fudge, I would be happy to buy them.”  I know it’s pushy but if your best friend can’t tell you that your fudge would be greatly improved by a handful of nuts, then who can?

Pecan rolls, Pecan pie, Roasted pecans, Pralines, my mother’s Christmas coffee cake! Yes! What about you? Do you like pecans? If you don’t, its ok. Really. I mean, some people like nuts and some people don’t–but if you send me brownies, would mind just adding a few?

♥