~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
December 1, 2011

★~ Today’s Quote: “I hate reality. But where else can you get a good steak dinner?” Woody Allen

★~ Red Apple Day:

“The taste for apples is one of the earliest and most natural of inclinations,” according to Botanical.com. Today we honor the simple red apple with a heartfelt crunch.

Apples have high nutritional value and make for an extremely healthy snack — unless, of course, you’re a certain raven-haired beauty living with seven tiny men, in which case maybe you should lay low today

★~ Aids Awareness Day:

The first World AIDS Day was on December 1, 1988, and every year since, it’s served as an opportunity to increase awareness, educate, raise money, and fight prejudice. It is estimated that over 33.4 million people are currently living with HIV, and countless others are affected by it. The 2011 theme is Leading with Science, Uniting for Action.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1891 – James Naismith was a physical education teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, MA. To create an indoor sport that could be played during the winter months, he nailed up peach baskets at opposite ends of the gym and gave students soccer balls to toss into them and basketball was born.

♥~ 1913 – The first drive-in automobile service station opened, in Pittsburgh.

♥~ 1929 – The game of Bingo was invented by New York toy salesman Edwin S. Lowe.

♥~ 1945 – Burl Ives made his concert debut. He appeared at New York’s Town Hall. We lovingly listen every year for the voice of this old-time radio personality as the narrator and banjo-pickin’ snowman in TV’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

♥~ 1963 – The Beatles’ first single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” was released in the United States.

♥~ 1976 – The Sex Pistols used profanity on the British Today show, and became branded as “rotten punks.”

♥~ 2009 – A rare, 5-carat pink diamond was auctioned off for a record $10.8 million in Hong Kong. The stone, of a ‘vivid pink’ hue and considered near perfect, triggered brisk bidding at Christie’s in Hong Kong

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1847 – Julia A. Moore, She grew up on a Michigan farm, dropped out of school at the age of 11, bore 10 children, and is famous for writing really bad poetry — so famous for it, in fact, that Mark Twain modeled a character after her in The Adventures of Huck Finn, and he wrote a parody of Moore’s bad poetry for that character, Emmeline Grangerford, to recite.

She’s sometimes referred to as a “poetaster,” which the Oxford English Dictionarydefines as “a petty or paltry poet; a writer of poor or trashy verse; a rimester.” This distinction usually entails things like the use of awkward meter, painfully sappy sentimentality, words that rhyme in an unpleasant way, or poor taste in subject matter. Other poetasters famous enough to be anthologized include J. Gordon Coogler, William McGonagall, and James McIntyre.

As for Moore, her favorite topics included abstinence, temperance, sudden death, terrible destruction, obituaries of small children, and big disasters, such as train wrecks or fires. One of her most famous poems is about the Chicago Fire. She wrote:

The great Chicago Fire, friends,
Will never be forgot;
In the history of Chicago
It will remain a darken spot.
It was a dreadful horrid sight
To see that City in flames;
But no human aid could save it,
For all skill was tried in vain.

♥~ 1935- Woody Allen, born Allen Stewart Konigsberg, director and screenwriter. His parents wanted him to become a doctor or a dentist. Woody Allen said, “I loathed every day and regret every day I spent in school.”

As a teenager, he started reading classics by Faulkner and Nietzsche because he was embarrassed when he took girls on dates and they asked him about writers whom he’d never read. But he also told them jokes. When he was 15, he started submitting his best jokes to gossip columnists. He went to NYU, but he got an F in English and a C-plus in film, and he was expelled because he never went to class.

After leaving college he decided to teach himself about making movie and bought the rights to a Japanese spy film, inserted all new dialogue, and released the film as What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). It’s about a man trying to find to the recipe for the world’s greatest egg salad.

Woody  kept making movies, but when he was 40, he felt like a failure. He thought his films were too goofy. So he made a more serious film, filled with scenes from his own life. It was called Anhedonia, it was several hours long, and it had almost no plot. Allen played the main character. He cut it down, and ended up cutting out almost everything except scenes with Diane Keaton, who played the love interest. So they named the movie after her character, and it became Annie Hall (1977), winning the Academy Awards for best picture, best director, and best actress.

♥~ 1761 – Marie Tussaud (Grosholtz) museum curator and creator of wax figures: Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in 1834

♥~ 1933 – Lou Rawls (Louis Allen) Grammy Award-winning singer

♥~ 1940 – Richard Pryor comedian, actor

♥~ 1945 – Bette Midler Grammy Award-winning singer:

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ Judeo-Christian folklore: In Judeo-Christian mythology, the apple is the tree of forbidden knowledge, which gave Adam and Eve their knowledge of good and evil. It is now believed that the original fruit referred to in the bible was a fig or pomegranate, but when the legend traveled to Western Europe, the fruit was replaced by their sacred Apple.

♥~ Greek Folklore: The Earth Goddess, Gaia, gave Hera, the Queen of Heaven, an apple tree when she married the Chief God, Zeus. That tree was kept in the Garden of the Hesperides, guarded by the dragon, Ladon. One of Hercules’ tasks was to fetch an apple from that tree. Paris signaled his judgment of the fairest of the Goddesses by giving Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, an apple.

♥~ Polish Folklore: In ancient Silesia (now part of Poland), the apple tree was a “dream tree”. Sleeping under the tree could induce dreams, or merely placing an apple under her pillow on New Year’s Eve, would induce a midnight dream in a young woman, of her future husband.

♥~ Celtic tradition: The Otherwordly Avalon was also known as the Avallach, the Isle of Apples, ruled by Fairy Queen, Morgan le Fay.  This is the land of fairies and the dead, where King Arthur was taken to be healed by his sister, Morgan. Like their cousins to the North, the Celts attributed the power of healing and youth, or rebirth, to apples. Apples are one of the magical trees, part of the Celtic Ogham tree alphabet, known as Quert.

♥~ In Great Britain it is customary to wassail the oldest apple tree in the orchard on Twelfth Night (either January 6th or old Twelfth Night on January 17th) to ward off evil spirits and beseech the trees to produce a fine harvest of apples the following spring. The oldest tree is named Apple Tree Man, and is the guardian of all the trees in the orchard.

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The Kitchen Witch has a wonderful apple butter recipe that I spread on my popovers! I also love apples and sharp cheddar cheese together—the perfect pairing! Apple cider is so tasty and makes the house smell so good! Or what about the kindergarten treat of apples and Graham crackers? YUM!

What is your favorite apple pairing? Leave a crunchy comment. Odd loves company!