~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
December 15

★~ Today’s Quote: “Never pass up new experiences [Scarlett], They enrich the mind.” – Rhett Butler”  ― Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

★~ Cat Herders Day: 

Taken from the idiom ‘like herding cats,’ which is used to describe doing something impossible, Cat Herders Day is meant to honor all of those who do impossible things. But, talk to any experienced cat herder and they’ll tell you it’s all just a matter of timing, catnip placement, and pulling a few strings. Like, literally pulling strings along the ground. Cats love that.

★~ Halcyon Days ( 15-29):

In the midst of holiday hustle and bustle, there is a multi day observation that often falls through the cracks: Halcyon Days, which begins a week before the winter solstice and ends a week after the solstice.

Greek mythology recounts the story of the goddess Alcyone (or Halcyone), daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. Alcyone married a mortal king named Ceyx, who drowned at sea in a storm. Such was Alcyone’s love for her husband that she threw herself into the ocean after him. Seeing this, the gods transformed Alcyone and Ceyx into birds. Thereafter, Aeolus kept the winds calm on the sea for a week before and a week after the solstice, enabling the birds to build nests on the water and lay their eggs there.

The Greek words from which the name Halcyon is apparently derived mean, roughly, ‘sea’ and ‘conceive.’ Over the centuries, the term came to refer both to the kingfisher (an actual bird) and to the mythical bird that nested on the sea and mysteriously calmed the winds around the time of the winter solstice.

Nowadays, when we use the expression ‘halcyon days,’ it’s almost always a way of saying ‘the good old days’ or ‘when life was easy.’ More often than not, the expression refers sentimentally to a bygone time that we remember as being much more tranquil and prosperous than it really was, so the mythological origin of the term is rather apt. I’ve never heard anyone speak of looking forward to halcyon days, nor have I ever received a ‘Happy Halcyon Days’ card on December 14. But a few weeks from now, when we are putting away decorations, repairing broken toys, and looking at unpleasant credit card bills, we can look back at these two frenzied weeks of late December and reminisce, ‘Those were the halcyon days.’

★~ Cupcake Day:

Fun fact: the world’s largest cupcake was on display in July 2009 at the Covent Garden Real Food Market in London. This cupcake was about 4 feet in diameter and weighed over 330 pounds! It also contained 200 eggs and took over 50 hours to make. Yikes!

Celebrate National Cupcake Day with your favorite cupcake recipe, head to a local cupcake shop, or gather your friends and go for a new cupcake record!

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1939 – Gone With The WInd premiere: One of the 20th century’s biggest film blockbusters premiered on this date in Atlanta, GA. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, the film starred Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable and was produced by David O. Selznick. It won an unprecedented eight Academy Awards, including best picture. Hattie McDaniel won a best supporting actress Oscar—the first time an African-American actor had won or been nominated. No film would touch its Oscar achievement or monetary grosses for decades. At the chilly Atlanta premiere, more than 300,000 people lined the streets to catch sight of the film’s stars arriving at the Loew’s Grand Theater.

♥~ 1939 – Nylon yarn was sold to hosiery mills to make women’s stockings, marking the first use of commercial yarn for apparel. The DuPont product enabled a record number of ladies’ hose to go on sale for the first time in May 1940. And it all started in nylon’s hometown: Wilmington, Delaware.

♥~ 1973 – Sandy Hawley became the first jockey in history to win 500 races in a single year. With this victory in the third race at Laurel racetrack on Charlie Jr., he broke the legendary Bill Shoemaker’s 20-year-old record. Hawley recorded his 6,000th career victory in 1992 aboard Summer Commander at Greenwood racetrack.

♥~ 1973 – Charlie Rich’s hit, The Most Beautiful Girl, hit #1 (for two weeks) in the U.S. “Hey, if you happen to see the most beautiful girl that walked out on me … Tell her, “I’m sorry.” Tell her, “I need my baby.” Won’t you tell her that I love her.”

♥~ 1996 – Tyco Toys’ Tickle Me Elmo stuffed animal that giggled and said, “that tickles”, when squeezed, retailed for $30 was selling out across the U.S.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1832 – Gustave Alexandre Eiffel , born in Dijon, France (1832). He was an early pioneer in using metal to construct bridges, and he went on to build the Eiffel Tower for the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889. It was the tallest structure in the world at the time, at 1.000 feet, and Eiffel decided to leave the metal scaffolding exposed because he thought the tower would be more stable if the wind could blow through it. Many people at the time thought it was ugly, but it still holds up to the wind. In 1999, Paris was hit by a windstorm that knocked down more than 100,000 trees. The Eiffel Tower only swayed nine centimeters

♥~ 1928 – Jimmy Nelson ventriloquist: Danny O’Day, Farfel the Dog; LP: Jimmy Nelson’s Instant Ventriloquism

♥~ 1933 – Tim Conway actor, comedian: McHale’s Navy, The Tim Conway Show, The Carol Burnett Show, various Dorf videos

♥~ 1949 – Don Johnson (Donnie Wayne Johnson) actor: Nash Bridges, Miami Vice, Harrad Experiment, A Boy and His Dog, The Long, Hot Summer, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man,Revenge of the Stepford Wives

♥~ 1979 – Adam Brody actor: Missing Brendan, The Ring, American Pie 2, Growing Up Brady, Never Land, Judging Amy, Family Law, Smallville, The O.C.

★~ Did You Know: 

♥~ As a publicity maneuver, fans of Gone With the Wind (the book) were asked to vote by ballot as to who should play Scarlett in the movie. Out of hundreds of ballots, Vivien Leigh received one vote.

♥~ Vivien Leigh was 25 when she filmed Gone With the Wind. The actress who played her mother was 28.

♥~ Vivien Leigh was paid between $25,000 and $30,000 for her role of Scarlett. (Clark Gable was paid $120,000 for his role as Rhett Butler.)

♥~ In the famous “I’ll never be hungry again” scene in Gone With the Wind—the part where Scarlett snarfs down a radish, then vomits—the vomiting noises had to be recorded by Olivia de Havilland. Whether this was because Vivien Leigh could not produce a realistic enough retching sound OR refused to do it because it wasn’t ladylike remains a point of dispute.

♥~ Vivien Leigh was paid between $25,000 and $30,000 for her role of Scarlett. (Clark Gable was paid $120,000 for his role as Rhett Butler.)

♥~  Both Scarlett O’Hara’s and Vivien Leigh’s parents were French and Irish.

♥~ Vivien Leigh was 25 when she filmed Gone With the Wind. The actress who played her mother was 28.

♥~  After Gone With the Wind premiered, The New York Times summed up how perfect she’d been for the role: “Miss Leigh’s Scarlett has vindicated the absurd talent quest that indirectly turned her up. She is so perfectly designed for the part by art and nature that any other actress in the role would be inconceivable.”

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Last night was Cole’s school concert. It’s always a hard one to attend without Joe. In years past, one of my favorite part of the concert was watching when a mom ‘who did not know’ shhhed my dearly departed husband. I have it on good authority that all men loathed being ‘shhhed’ by women, but Joe especially loathed it and did not handle it very graciously when it happened. Joe believed that he was standing up for the rights of all men to freely show their concert enthusiasm, when he admonished the ‘shh-er’ to mind their own business. I tried to let him know that there was a difference between a sporting event and a concert, but I was never very successful, so I just decided to agree with him…you know, if you can’t beat them, join them. Although I have to admit…I never ‘wooted’ after a beautiful rendition of ‘Oh Holy Night.’

I left a Facebook comment after the concert: ‘Our music director, the faculty, and our kids were delightful.’ After entering the status update, I noticed that I had written ’Our Kids,’ when only one kid belonged to me. When I look at the stage, and see the rumpled bunch of white shirts, black pants, and crooked lines, I always see ‘our kids,’ and I care about every single one of them. Sentimental, perhaps, but I suspect other parents feel the same way.

If you have a Morno moment, leave a comment. Odd Loves Company.

♥