~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
January 2, 2012

★~  Count Down: 363 days remaining until the end of the year

★~ Today’s Quote: “Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour. “-  John Boswell

★~ Run it Up the Flagpole to See if Anyone Salutes Day:

“Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes” is an expression that means to float an idea to see what people think, or if they notice. The term is commonly used in advertising and print media.

How does your sweater look with your new boots? Well why not, “run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes?” This expression dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, when corporate jargon was more patriotic and less flashy. Today we are more likely to say, “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.” Of course, then you have to wonder what, exactly, are we supposed to throw, and how sticky is it supposed to be; but by the time you figure it out, you have forgotten your idea. It’s better just to run it up the flagpole, don’t you think?

Today, let the creative juices flow  while trying out and testing new ideas and concepts. By the way, I love how your new sweater looks with those boots! Big virtual salute from me!

★~ Cream Puff Day:

Cream Puffs made their debut in the United States in 1880. However, the first cream puff originated in Europe sometime during the 1540s when Catherine de Medici’s pastry chef created the baked puffed shells for Catherine’s husband, Henry II of France.

I have made cream puffs from a recipe that my sweet mom sent me, and it went pretty well—they puffed rather nicely. I may have a knack for food that puffs (cream puffs) and poofs (popovers). Do you think I missed my calling as a pastry chef? I am thinking of opening a bakery called Poofs and Puffs, and everything I bake will be covered in fluffy icing and powdered sugar. I might even drizzle chocolate sauce over my creation. Maybe I should run this idea up the flagpole, because the one thing that might get in my way is not liking to cook. Costco sells wonderful cream puffs.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1788 – One peach of a state, Georgia, became the 4th state to enter the United States of America.  Georgia is also referred to as the Empire State of the South. First explored by the Spanish, but named after King George II of England, Georgia became the stronghold of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Georgia’s state bird is the brown thrasher; state flower: for some reason it’s not the peach blossom, but the Cherokee rose; a state tree: the live oak; a state song: Georgia on My Mind; and an official state motto: Wisdom, Justice and Moderation.

♥~ 1872 – Brigham Young, the 71-year-old leader of the Mormon Church, was arrested on a charge of bigamy. He had 25 wives.

♥~ 1971 – George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass was number one on U.S. album charts. Harrison was the first ex-Beatle to hit #1 with a solo album.

♥~ 1965 – The New York Jets signed University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath for a reported $400,000.

♥~ 1983 – The smash musical, Annie, closed on Broadway at the Uris Theatre after 2,377 performances: the sixth longest-running show. The five longest-running shows at the time were: Fiddler on the Roof, Life With Father, Tobacco Road, Hello Dolly and Music Man.

♥~ 1995 – The most distant galaxy yet discovered was found by scientists using the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. “8C 1435+63” was estimated to be 15 billion light years away. The discovery was made by a team of astronomers from the University of California, led by Hyron Spinrad. They found the new galaxy to be 150,000 to 200,000 light-years across.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1903 – Sally Rand (Helen Gould Beck) dancer, stripper: inventor of the fan dance;

♥~ 1920 – Isaac Asimov sci-fi writer–  His family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old, and his parents opened a candy shop in Brooklyn. He spent most of his time working in the family store, and he was fascinated by the shop’s newspaper stand, which sold the latest issues of popular magazines. When his father finally relented and let him read pulp fiction, Asimov started reading science fiction obsessively.

He started writing science fiction as well. He published his first story when he was 18, and published 30 more stories in the next three years. At age 21, he wrote his most famous story after a conversation with his friend and editor John Campbell. Campbell had been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, which includes the passage, “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which has been shown!” Asimov went home and wrote the story “Nightfall” (1941), about a planet with six suns that has a sunset once every 2,049 years. It’s been anthologized over and over, and many people still consider it the best science fiction short story ever written.

♥~ 1936 – Roger Miller songwriter: King of the Road, Invitation to the Blues, You Don’t Want My Love; singer: Dang Me, Chug-a-Lug; 11 Grammys in 1964-65; wrote hit musical: Big River; died Oct 25, 1992

♥~ 1968 – Cuba Gooding Jr. Academy Award-winning (supporting) actor: Jerry Maguire; Pearl Harbor, The Tuskegee Airmen, Outbreak, Losing Isaiah, A Few Good Men, Boyz N the Hood, Coming to America

♥~ 1973 – Lucy Davis actress: The Office

♥~ 1983 – Kate Bosworth actress: The Horse Whisperer, Young Americans, Remember the Titans, The Newcomers

★~ Did You Know: 

♥~ January is named for the Roman God, Janus whose two faces allowed him to look both backwards and into the old year and forwards into the new one at the same time. He was the ‘spirit of opening.”

♥~ In the very earliest Roman calendars January and February did not exist. The ancient Roman calendar had only ten months and the new year started the year on March 1st.

♥~ The Anglo-Saxons called the first month Wolf ‘monath’ because wolves came into the village in search of food

♥~ The birthstone for January is the Garnet

♥~ The snowdrop is January’s flower since it will often bloom in snow.

♥~ On the 2nd of January in 1770 a huge Christmas pie was baked in London, according to the Newcastle Chronicle, it was made of “two bushels of flour, twenty-four pounds of butter, four geese, two turkeys, two rabbits,four wild ducks, two woodcocks, six snipes, four partridges,two neats’ tongues, two curlews, seven blackbirds, and six pigeons. It was nearly nine feet in circumference at bottom, and weighed about twelve stone.”

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Today will be spent restoring some order to my abode. I think. What are your plans for the 2nd day of the New Year? If you have a morno moment leave comment–Odd Loves Company!

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