~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
December 7, 2013

★~  Today’s Quote:  “You can’t teach creativity; all you can do is let it blossom, and it blossoms in play.” – Kyung-Hee Kim

★~ Letter Writing Day:

Letter writing day marks the death of Marcus Cicero (B.C. 106-B.C. 43), an ancient Roman philosopher and politician. He was admired as the father of the nation in his time, but was politically disadvantaged and forced to flee Rome due to conflict with Julius Caesar and the power elite. Cicero then wrote countless letters while in exile in Greece.

Celebrate today by writing a personal letter to send during the holiday season and reconnect with loved ones. And don’t forget your letter to Santa!

★~  International Civil Aviation Day:

Air travel can be the bane of our very existence, but let’s face it—most times it beats the alternative: days in the car, a slow boat to Europe, and passing on all those long weekends in the Bahamas sitting by the beach and sipping on drinks with little umbrellas in them. So over the holidays, when you’re crammed in the middle of seat of a 737 that’s been circling for three hours, remember: Flying is awesome!

★~ Cotton Candy Day: 

Cotton Candy use to be called Fairy Floss. It was renamed cotton candy in 1920. Today in Greece, Israel, and India, it is often referred to as “old woman’s hair!”  Celebrate Cotton Candy Day by treating yourself to some. If you can’t find the cotton candy man (fresh cotton candy is best), you may be able to pick up some at your local grocery store or the dollar store.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1925 – Swimmer Johnny Weissmuller set a world record in the 150-yard freestyle with a time of 1 minute, 25 and 2/5 seconds — in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Johnny went on to fame swinging from vines as ‘King of the Jungle’, Tarzan, in movies. El Morno friend Carol shares that, Johnny once swam in a lagoon in her little town of Belvidere, Illinois. “There are pictures of him in our museum. I guess he was really a big hit being a movie star and all.”

♥~ 1941 – Pearl Harbor Day.  “A date that will live in infamy,” nearly 200 Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, long considered the US “Gibraltar of the Pacific.” The raid, which lasted little more than one hour, left nearly 3,000 dead. Nearly the entire US Pacific Fleet was at anchor there and few ships escaped damage. Several were sunk or disabled, while 200 US aircraft on the ground were destroyed. The attack on Pearl Harbor forced the United States into WWII, a declaration of war was requested by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and approved by the Congress Dec 8, 1941.

♥~ 1968 – The great grandson of Mr. M. Dodd, who had borrowed a volume on diseases from the University of Cincinnati Medical Library in 1823, was assessed the largest library fine ever — $2,646

♥~ 1973 – Dr. Ronald Alkana of the University of California at Irvine set the world banana eating record by downing 17 4.5-ounce bananas in two minutes.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1932 – Ellen Burstyn (Edna Rae Gilhooley) Academy Award-winning actress: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore [1974]; The Color of Evening, When a Man Loves a Woman, The Cemetery Club, Same Time Next Year, Harry and Tonto, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, The Ellen Burstyn Show, The Doctors

♥~ 1948 – Gary Morris singer: The Wind Beneath My Wings, Baby Bye Bye, I’ll Never Stop Loving You, 100% Chance of Rain, Leave Me Lonely, Making Up For Lost Time [The Dallas Lovers Song] [w/Crystal Gayle], Plain Brown Wrapper, Another World, Bring Him Home;

♥~ 1956 – Basketball Hall of Famer: Boston Celtics: Rookie of the Year [1979-80]; NBA MVP [1984, 1985, 1986], AP Male Athlete of the Year [1986], Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year [1986]

★~ Good to Know: 

★~ Good to Know:

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night will keep the post office from delivering the mail. And neither will chicken scratch.

Each year, the USPS successfully ships over 160 billion packages and letters. Most of that mail—98 percent of it—is swiftly organized by automated sorting machines, which use advanced optical lenses to make out each address. But the machines have their kryptonite. Last year, they failed to read some 2.4 billion pieces of mail—all because of messy handwriting.

If you’re a sloppy scribbler, don’t feel too guilty. Your poor penmanship makes you a job creator! According to The New York Times, more than 700 postal clerks are based in Salt Lake City to decipher America’s most cryptic envelopes. And they mean business. The plant operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each clerk processes about 20 letters per minute (that’s 1200 an hour!). If a clerk wastes over 30 seconds unearthing the address, the letter may get routed to another worker who can do it faster.

When a sorting machine discovers an illegible letter, it scans it and sends a digital image to the plant in Salt Lake. The image pops onto a worker’s computer. With the help of special software—and a lot of geographical knowhow—the clerk punches in whatever legible letters and numbers they can make out. Through a process of elimination, they keep digging for clues until they find a valid address, which the system confirms. Amazingly, the average clerk can crack the code in just three seconds. (Not everyone can keep up. Twenty percent of new hires quit within five weeks, the Wall Street Journal reports.)

But some letters remain a mystery. Each year, 200 million of the most baffling and awfully penned envelopes are handed down to a team of peek-and-poke clerks, a dying breed of postal worker who sorts mail the old-fashioned way—by hand.

If they can’t translate the slipshod script, the letters are christened “nixies.” The mail is sent to the last line of penmanship gurus, the nixie clerks. If they can’t untangle the meaning behind the scribbles, no one can. The mail will end up in one of two “dead letter offices.” Any valuables get auctioned off, and the correspondence lands a date with the office shredder.

Source: New York Times 

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The teen is finally feeling better. Thank  goodness. There is a limit to my nurturing and 5 days is pushing it. Hope the rest of you are fine as frog hair. Odd and Ends  (Click) are in a separate post this week.

Odd Loves Company!