~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
June 23, 2013

★~ Today’s Quote: Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.– Ann Landers

★~ Let It Go Day:

There’s baggage piled on every life,
forever in the one’s way.
Today’s a chance to let it go,
and have a perfect day.

Today, take a past grievance that you have been hanging onto, put it in a balloon, let it go, and watch it fly far, far away.  Someone once told me that getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars; you have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

★~ Pink Day:

Today you are in the Pink! Pink is a fabulous summer color!  Pink flip-flops, pink bows, pink shorts, shirts, or skirts – even a pink flower tucked behind your ear!  And pink is not just for girls!  Fashion savvy men know how to turn heads by rocking some pink. Did you know that before the 1940s, pink was actually assigned to boys because it was related to red, which was thought to be a masculine color? I might suggest that the guys skip the pink flip-flops, but a flower behind their ears could be kind of cute. Click here to find out more about the color pink! (Not to be confused with other pink holidays)

★~ Pecan Sandie Day:

Once dubbed “sand tarts” for their appearance, pecan sandies are a nutty interpretation of the simple sugar cookie, differentiated only by the presence of chopped pecans. If you don’t like nuts, then go ahead and have a simple sugar cookie today; Odd excludes no one. Celebrate by making some pecan sandies, or just stop by the store and pick up a special bag made by elves.

Pecan Sandies Recipe 

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1868 – Christopher L. Sholes of Wisconsin patented his type-writer. A Mr. Remington later turned it into a more practical typewriter. Christopher’s version was a little cumbersome. It was about as big as a desk. And it didn’t have any correcting ribbon. The writer didn’t need any since the huge type-writer hid the paper inside itself so one couldn’t see any typos until after the fact. Mark Twain was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher. We have an old typewriter that fascinated my teen (pictures above)

♥~ 1979 – Disco queen Donna Summer captured the #1 and #5 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with Hot Stuff and Bad Girls. In the following weeks the two singles jockied for #1, #2 and #3 at various times, as Summer became the first solo entertainer to hold two of the top three positions simultaneously. (Her Bad Girls double-album sold over four million copies in 1979.)

♥~ 1987 – The first celebrity cover girl to grace Cosmopolitan magazine since Elizabeth Taylor in 1969 was Madonna and she did it on this day.

♥ ~ 1992 – Actress Susan Lucci of TV’s “All My Children” received a standing ovation at the Daytime Emmy Awards when she did not win an Emmy after being nominated for the 13th straight year

♥~ 2009 – The International Whaling Commission (IWC), meeting in Madeira, Portugal, reported that whale watching generates far more money than whale hunting. Worldwide, the industry generated about $2.1 billion per year, it says. And the group that commissioned the report, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), said whaling countries would gain from a switch to whale watching.

★~Born Today:

♥~ Alan Turing — British mathematician, codebreaker, computing and artificial-intelligence pioneer — is a genius for all time. His age would have been 100 today. Google UK’s engineering director, calls Turing “the father of modern computing” on the tech company’s official blog. “It’s no exaggeration to say,” Eland writes, “he’s a founding father of every computer and Internet company today.”

♥~ 1927 – Bob (Robert Louis) Fosse Oscar Award-winningdirector: Cabaret [1972]; Tony Award-winning choreographer: Big Deal [1986], Dancin’ [1978], Sweet Charity [1966], Little Me [1963], Bob Fosse [1959], Damn Yankees [1956], The Pajama Game [1955]; director/choreographer: Pippin [1973]; Emmy Award-winning director: Singer Presents Liza with a ‘Z’ [1972-73]; autobiographical film: All That Jazz

♥~ 1929 – June Carter Cash Grammy Award-winning country singer [w/husband, Johnny Cash]: Jackson, If I were a Carpenter; songwriter: Ring of Fire

♥~ 1941 – Robert Hunter lyricist: group: Grateful Dead: Truckin’, Touch of Grey, Workingman’s Dead, Skulls and Roses, American Beauty

★~ Good to Know:

The pink flamingo lawn ornament was invented in the same decade that polyester pants, pink washing machines, vinyl wallpaper and Naugahyde lounge chairs were cool. Flamingo fans worldwide owe their thanks to a man named Don Featherstone, an employee of a plastics company called Union Products, who designed the first pink flamingo lawn ornament in 1957.

When they first hit stores, the blushing birds cost $2.76 a pair and were an immediate hit in working-class subdivisions from the Redwood Forest to the Gulfstream waters.

The 1960s were a decade of backlash against conformity, false experience, and all things Parental—including, evidently, Mom and Dad’s lawn décor. Hippies rallied against the plastics industry, cultural critics chastised all things “un-natural,” and home and garden magazines pleaded with people to abandon the gnomes, lawn jockeys and flamingos of yesteryear in favor of classier, more natural yard décor. By 1970, even Sears had stopped selling the pink flamingo, replacing the gaping hole in their garden department with natural-looking fountains and rocks, according to pink flamingo historian Jennifer Price.

Happily for flamingo fans, the ‘70s were a carnival of schlock, and by the early part of the decade, the pink flamingo had become so un-cool, it was cool again—this time as a self-conscious symbol of rebellion, outrageousness and all things Bad Taste. By the time John Waters’ movie, Pink Flamingos, hit theaters in 1972, the bird had fully transitioned to the realm of ironic kitsch. Gay bars used them as mascots, transvestites sported them on earrings and platform pumps, and in 1979, students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison planted 1,008 of the two-legged creatures in the grass in front of the dean’s office, earning them—and the bird—a place in Wisconsin’s State Historical Society.

By the 1980s, the pink flamingo had made the ultimate giant leap for mankind: it had, like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup cans, become art. In 1987, the governor of Massachusetts proclaimed the plastic bird “an essential contribution to American folk art,” Price wrote, and new clubs like the Flamingo Fanciers of America and the International Society for the Preservation of Pink Lawn Flamingos sprang into existence in time to celebrate the bird’s thirtieth birthday. In 1998, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles began to sell plastic pink flamingos in its bookstore for $19 a set.

In 2009, in honor of the students’ 1979 prank, the Madison, Wisconsin, city council named the plastic pink flamingo the official bird of the city. And the esteemed lawn ornament lives on in Americana infamy, lending its name to bars, restaurants, casinos and hotels from sea to shining sea. The birds are on sale on Amazon for $8.60, just sayin!

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Little know fact about Katybeth, I use to collect Pink Flamingos. Don’t be a hater, I was living in Florida during this time in my life. I even had a pink shower curtain and still have a few flamingo treasures. In fact, I am considering a pair of flamingos for the front lawn!  While writing about their history, I must have been infected by flamingo fever! Save me please!

Better late than never is El Morn’s fate these days until my summer schedule finds some rhythm and routine. And on that note I’m off to let the campers out and in….

Wishing everyone a just right Sunday!

♥~