~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
September 3, 2012

★~ Today’s Quote: Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold.  But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.  ~Douglas Pagels, These Are the Gifts I’d Like to Give to You

★~  Labor Day:

Most of us regard Labor Day as the last “hurrah!” of Summer—a three-day weekend to make one final getaway before autumn encroaches, or at least an excuse to fire up the grill one last time. But Labor Day was originally founded in 1882 as not only a celebration (with picnics and parades in New York City’s Reservoir Park) for the working man, but also as a public rally to gain support for an eight-hour work day. (Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, it was not unusual for companies to require workers to stay on the job for 10 to 12 hour shifts with no overtime pay.) For the next few years, workers who chose to march in parades on the first Monday in September took the off without pay in order to participate. Oregon was the first state to recognize Labor Day as a legal paid holiday in 1887.

In 1894 approximately 3,000 workers at Illinois’ Pullman Palace Car Company initiated a wildcat strike in protest of recent wage cuts. Rail traffic in Chicago and points west ground to a halt as a result, and President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops in to settle matters, since the strike was interfering with the delivery of U.S. mail. Violence erupted, strikers were killed, and Cleveland received very negative press for his decision. In an effort to appease American workers, he signed a bill in 1894 declaring Labor Day a national holiday.

★~ Skyscrapers Day:

Look Up.! Today’s we celebrate tall buildings. How tall? Since the term was skyscraper was first used in the late 19th century, buildings of 12 stories or more have been considered skyscrapers. The Home Insurance Building  constructed in Chicago in 1885  is considered the  “the father of the skyscraper.”  It was 138 feet tall and 10 stories. It was the first building to effectively employ a supporting skeleton of steel beams and columns, allowing it to have many more windows than traditional masonry structures. The building was demolished in 1931 because of safety concerns.

Burj Dubai is currently the world’s tallest at 2,717 feet– almost twice the height of the Empire State Building. Click here for more Skyscraper Facts.

The best way to celebrate today is to look up and admire the tallest building in your home town.

★~ National Welsh Rarebit Day:

Famous all over Europe, Welsh Rarebit is made with a cheese and ale sauce : served over toast.. Nobody’s quite sure of the origin of the name, but it’s generally believed to be a jest at the expense of the poor people of Wales, who  dined on a lot of rabbit and drank a lot of ale.  It has been prepared in British homes as a special supper dish and in taverns since at least the 18th century, and is considered by some to be a uniquely British variation on fondue.

My mom use to make this dish when I was kid. I loved it!  I plan to make this Alton Brown recipe. When I made this for Cole last year he liked it but wondered, “where’s the rabbit?”

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1833 – The first successful one-cent (or penny) newspaper was published. Benjamin H. Day issued the first copy of The New York Sun. By 1836, The Sun had the largest circulation in the U.S.: 30,000.

♥~ 1951 – What was to become the longest-running TV serial (or soap opera) was seen for the first time. Search for Tomorrow debuted on CBS-TV

♥~ 1973 – George Gately’s Heathcliff debuted. The comic strip, about a stylish cat in leather jacket and sunglasses, soon appeared in newspapers all over the world.

♥~ 1989 – Karen and Stan Sutton sailed back into San Francisco harbor 8½ years after leaving on their trip around the world. They made it in a 43-foot ship they built themselves, despite Karen’s chronic sea sickness. Along the way, the couple had two children.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1913 – Alan (Walbridge) Ladd actor: The Carpetbaggers, Citizen Kane, Shane, Star Spangled Rhythm, This Gun for Hire; actress Cheryl Ladd’s father-in-law [she married Alan’s son David]; died Jan 29, 1964

♥~ 1932 –  Eileen Brennan Emmy Award-winning actress: Private Benjamin [1980-81]; A New Kind of Family, Off the Rack, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, The Last Picture Show, Stella, The Sting, FM

♥~ 1942 – Al Jardine, guitar, vocals, The Beach Boys

♥~ 1943 – Valerie Perrine actress: Lenny, W.C. Fields and Me, Superman, Boiling Point, Sweet Bird of Youth, Leo & Liz in Beverly Hills

♥~ 1955 – Steve Jones: Rock guitarist, The Sex Pistols

♥~ 1965 – Charlie Sheen (Carlos Irwin Estevez) actor: Two and a Half Men, Wall Street, Platoon, Hot Shots, The Chase, Men at Work, Young Guns, Major League, Major League II, Being John Malkovich, Spin City; brother of actor Emilio Estevez, son of actor Martin Sheen

★~ Did You Know: 

Have you ever wonder where the name teamster came from?

The name dates back to 1903, when most deliveries were made by horse-drawn wagons. The driver was referred to as a “teamster,” because he was the one who managed the team that was pulling the load.

Before they unionized, the average teamster in the late 1800s often worked 18-hour days and was expected to not only haul cargo, but load and unload it—and be financially responsible for it—from shipping point to delivery point. All that for an average salary of $2 per day. Unions are sometimes looked upon with some derision today, but when the Teamsters first organized, it was to prevent worker exploitation and provide a more humane and safe environment (along with a livable wage) for the humble laborer.

When the Teamsters are mentioned, the name Jimmy Hoffa immediately comes to mind. Hoffa was president of that union from 1958 until 1971, the last four years of which he administered while behind bars after being convicted of attempted bribery and jury tampering.

Hoffa was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, in 1975. The Red Fox closed in 1996, but in all the intervening years, waitstaff reported that not a week went by without at least one customer asking which booth Jimmy Hoffa had sat in that fateful July afternoon.

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We use the wall behind the stove to hang frequently used cooking utensils . . . you know—slotted spoons, tongs, ladles . . . the things I must have close at hand when I labor over the stove fixing our daily meal. Those utensils. But because of a gap between the wall and the stove, we often lost our tongs or slotted spoons behind the oven. Seriously annoying when you are trying to whip up a four-star meal. Yesterday Cole and I solved this problem with a trip to IKEA and a glass shelf. Cole hung the shelf above the gap between the wall and stove. Problem solved. I just love my purposeful new shelf and immediately rearranged the whole stove area, including wiping down the walls with Pine-Sol and digging out the gunk stuck in the grooves of the cabinets. I was talking about all the other things we could do inexpensively in our kitchen when Cole, watching me warily, said, “Hang a shelf for your mom and she is going to want you to build cabinets to go with it.” Don’t you just hate kids sometimes?

Enjoy your Labor Day! The last hurrah sf summer for us; school starts on Wednesday.
Find more here about labor law and your rights!

♥~