~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
May 2, 2013

 ★~ Today’s Quote: Trust yourself,  you know more than you think you do. ~ Benjamin Spock

★~ Scurvy Awareness Day:

The disease of pirates has its own international holiday, and an entire website to boot!   I have no intention of sharing the gruesome details with you over a morning cuppa . . . suffice to say, make sure you get, what pirates call, ‘yer daily glass of arrr-ange juice and ’Steer your ships over to Limestrong for citrusy cocktails, curvy-not-scurvy pin-ups, and drop some (citric) acid into your bloodstream!

Good to Know: Blueberry juice was used by Civil War soldiers to protect themselves against scurvy.

★~ Play your Ukulele Day:

Ukulele Day dedicated to all things ukulele, sometimes called the uke.  The ukulele was introduced in Hawaii about 1879, by a group of Portuguese immigrants from Madeira.  João Fernandes, a native of Madeira, is credit with having played the “braguinha” – the original name in Portuguese — in Hawaii for the first time. The Hawaiians renamed the “braguinha” as “ukulele” in reference to “jumping flea” as suggested by the jumping motion of the hands playing the instrument.

The ukulele, was introduced in the mainland United States around 1915, after being featured at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Later the ukulele gained acclaim in Japan and the United Kingdom and from there around the world.

Elvis Presley, George Harrison, Elvis Costelo, Bruce Springsteen and Tiny Tim were fond of the ukulele.

El Morno Friend Carol, plays the Uke! Any other Uke players out there?

★~ Chocolate Truffle Day:

Historians believe Prestat Chocolate Shop in London was  solely responsible for popularizing chocolate truffles in England (and beyond).The first recipes for chocolate truffles appeared in the 1920s. Today there are three main types—American, European, and Swiss. Each type of truffle has a slightly different twist, but they all include a creamy ganache filling and a topping like cocoa, coconut, or drizzled chocolate. Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was a huge fan of Prestat truffles!

★~ Note: Some holiday calendars note today as ‘brother’s and sisters’ day, insisting brother and sisters day is different than sibling day which we celebrated on April 10th.  I would ask, “different how” but in an attempt to spread joy, peace, and good humor I will simple request you click this link  if you would like to celebrate brothers and sisters day or sibling day.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1885 – A new magazine for homemakers went on sale. You can still get it by mail or find it right next to the cash register at your favorite grocery store. The magazine is Good Housekeeping.

♥~ 1953 – Dark Star defeated the heavily favored Native Dancer to win the Kentucky Derby. A $2 wager to win on this dark horse would have put some change in your pocket. Dark Star was a 25-1 long shot.

♥~ 1969 – The British liner Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) left on her maiden voyage to New York.

♥~ 1981 – Scottish singer Sheena Easton made it to the top spot on the pop music charts for her first — and only — time. Morning Train (Nine to Five) knocked Kiss on My List, by Daryl Hall and John Oates, out of the top of the music charts.  Morning Train pulled into the top spot for a two-week stay.

♥~  Iowa spent $6,000 to change the locks at one of its state prisons after someone paid $12 on e-Bay for a set of keys belonging to a guard who retired in the 1970s.

♥~ 2011 – International terrorist icon Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sep 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, was killed in an early morning firefight in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

★~ Born Today: 

♥~1903 – Benjamin Spock baby doctor, author: The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care; died Mar 15, 1998

♥~1904 – Bing Crosby, US singer who recorded an estimated 2,600 songs in his lifetime including ‘White Christmas’, which was written by Irving Berlin. Crosby had 317 other hits in the USA. Died of a heart attack on a golf course in Madrid, Spain, on October 14, 1977.

♥~ 1936 – Engelbert Humperdinck (Arnold George Dorsey) singer: After the Lovin’, Release Me, There Goes My Everything, The Last Waltz, A Man Without Love, Winter World of Love, Les Bicyclettes de Belsize

♥~ 1937 – Lorenzo Music actor: voice of Garfield, Carlton the Doorman [in Rhoda]; Emmy Award-winning producer: Carlton, Your Doorman [5/21/80]; died Aug 4, 2001

♥~ 1945 – Bianca Jagger actress, model; Mick Jagger’s ex

♥~1952 – Christine Baranski actress: The Good Wife, Chicago: The Musical, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Odd Couple II, The Birdcage, Addams Family Values, Welcome to Mooseport

★~ Good To Know: 

When Penguin handed Dean James a three book contract for his Cat in the Stacks mystery series, it came with one condition: He’d have to get a sex change.

Okay, not really. But to connect with the traditional mystery genre’s primarily female fan base, the publisher decided that James should adopt a female pseudonym; he chose Miranda James. For a previous mystery series he’d taken the androgynous nom de plume Jimmie Ruth Evans. “I picked Evans so it would get me on the shelf next to Janet Evanovich,” he remembers.

Miranda James has found commercial success that eluded Dean James and Jimmie Ruth Evans: a string of New York Times bestsellers and an upcoming spinoff series.

Here are five famous writers who, mostly for marketing reasons, changed genders for their bylines and book covers.

♥~ Ann Rule:  Ann Rule is probably the bestselling true crime writer in history, but when she began reporting on murders for pulp magazines in the late 1960s, it was still a field dominated by men—so she wrote as Andy Stack at the request of her editor.

♥~Ben Franklin: When this founding father wanted to draw attention to the injustice of women taking all the blame for children born out of wedlock, he published “The Speech of Polly Baker” in the April 1747 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine. He also wrote a gossip column under the name Alice Addertongue and he wrote letters to The American Weekly Mercury under the names Caelia Shortface and Martha Careful.

♥~ L. Frank Baum:  Lyman Frank Baum is most famous for his Wizard of Oz series. But when he wanted to sell stories aimed at young girls, he was perfectly happy to adopt a female persona, and he used three: Edith Van Dyne, Laura Bancroft, and Suzanne Metcalf.

♥~ Bob Rogers: This married man found his calling writing romance novels—a genre read almost exclusively by women, few of whom are interested in reading stories by men. So he’s written 24 novels as a woman, mostly using the name Jean Barrett. How many other popular romance writers are secretly men? We may never know, because if they told us, their sales would plummet.

♥~ Lawrence Block:  Block, most famous for his Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr crime novels, has had a career that’s spanned seven decades and he’s used a few names over that period: William Ard, Ben Christopher, Lee Duncan, Chip Harrison, Paul Kavanagh, Sheldon Lord, Andrew Shaw, B.L. Lawrence, John Warren Wells, and two women: Jill Emerson (he used that one for lesbian novels) and Anne Campbell Clarke. Block, who got his start writing pornographic material, once explained it this way: “Sometimes I used pen names because I was being cute … But most of the pseudonymous books bore pen names because the work on which they appeared was generically second–rate.”

(Huffington Post, Crime library)

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I’m running behind this morno, but it wasn’t because I was trifling around….it has to do with a teen and his off again, on again, unable to decide, I want to torture myself and my mom about the Prom this Saturday. It’s a long sordid story that may end in murder…I will keep you posted…..

Have a terrific Thursday.

♥~