~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
March 26, 2014

★~ Today’s Quote: Freedom lies in being bold.” ― Robert Frost

★~ Memorial Day: 

Celebrated annually in May, Memorial Day is an occasion for remembering those who died while serving their country in the United States armed forces.

~ It was originally called Decoration Day: To honor the deceased, soldiers would decorate graves of their fallen comrades with flowers, flags and wreaths. Hence Decoration Day. Although Memorial Day became its official title in the 1880s, the holiday wouldn’t legally become Memorial Day until 1967.

~ It wasn’t always celebrated the last Monday of May: After the Civil War, General John A. Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, called for a holiday commemorating fallen soldiers to be observed every May 30. But due to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which took effect in 1971, Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday of May to ensure long weekends. Some groups, like the veterans’ organization American Legion, have been working to restore the original date to set the day apart and pay proper tribute to the servicemen and women who sacrificed their lives defending the nation.

~ It’s legally required to observe a National Moment of Remembrance: In December 2000, Congress passed a law requiring Americans to pause at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day to remember and honor the fallen.

~ James A. Garfield delivered a speech at the first Memorial Day ceremony:  Garfield was a Civil War General and Republican Congressman, not yet a President. On May 30, 1868, he addressed the several thousand people gathered at Arlington National Cemetery. “If silence is ever golden,” Garfield said, “it must be beside the graves of 15,000 men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung.”

~ Several states observe Confederate Memorial Day: In addition to the national holiday, nine states officially set aside a day to honor those who died fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War: Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Georgia. The days vary, but only Virginia observes Confederate Memorial Day on the last Monday of May, in accordance with the federal observance of Memorial Day.

~ Waterloo, New York is considered the birthplace of Memorial Day: According to the town’s website, in 1966 Congress unanimously passed a resolution to officially recognize Waterloo as the birthplace of the holiday. However, it remains a contentious debate, with other towns, like Boalsburg, Pa., claiming the title of “Birthplace of Memorial Day” as well.

~ More than 36 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home this Memorial Day.

★~ Blueberry Cheesecake Day:

Cheesecake recipes can be traced all the way back to Ancient Greece, however the flavored versions are a fairly recent innovation.

The type of cheese used to make cheesecake has a huge impact on the flavor and texture of this delicious dessert. American cheesecakes are made with cream cheese, Italian cheesecakes are made with ricotta, and German and Polish cheesecakes are made with “quark” cheese, which is a type of curd cheese.

Cheesecake topped with blueberries is one of the most popular cheesecake flavors.

Philadelphia Blueberry-Crown Cheesecake

Easy Blueberry Cheesecake

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1917 – The Seattle Metropolitans, of the Pacific Coast League of Canada, defeated the Montreal Canadiens to become the first U.S. hockey team to win the Stanley Cup. (Hawks won last night! 2013)

♥~ 1936 – The first telescope with a 200-inch-diameter, reflecting mirror was shipped — very, very carefully — from Corning, New York to Mt. Palomar Observatory in California. The lens of the Hale telescope weighed 20 tons. It was dedicated at Mt. Palomar in 1948.

♥~ 1937 – Joe DiMaggio said he’d take Ty Cobb’s advice and use a 36 or 37-ounce baseball bat instead of a 40-ounce stick during that season. The result? ‘Joltin’ Joe’ hit .346 during the season with 46 home runs — the most he ever hit in a single year. In the words of Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen, “How about that!”

♥~ 1969 – Marcus Welby, M.D. Premiered on ABC.

♥~ 1977 – The Human Fly, George Willig, scaled the World Trade Center in New York City, by attaching himself  to the window washer mechanism and walking straight up until  he reached the top! It took Willig three and a half hours to make the climb, and $1.10 in fines – a penny per floor.

♥~ 1979 – Michigan State and Indiana State met in the all-time highest rated basketball telecast. The NBC coverage earned a 24.1 rating. Indiana State’s unprecedented 33 consecutive-win streak came to an end as the Spartans of Michigan State won 75-64. A pair of future NBA Hall of Famers played against each other that night: Larry Bird, later of the Boston Celtics, scored 19 points while Magic Johnson, even later, of the Los Angeles Lakers, scored 24 points

★~Born Today:

♥~ Happy Birthday to my Sweet Mother! I’m so glad I have no other.

♥~ 1874 –  Robert Frost four-time Pulitzer prize-winning poet: Birches, Mending Wall, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; read The Gift Outright at inauguration of John F. Kennedy; died Jan 29, 1963

♥~ 1880 – Duncan Hines author, traveler, cake-mix mogul

♥~ 1907 – John Wayne (Marion Morrison) Academy Award-winning actor: True Grit [1969]

♥~ 1940  –  James Caan actor: The Godfather, Rabbit Run, Brian’s Song, Dick Tracy, Rollerball, Alien Nation, For the Boys, Misery, Las Vegas

♥~ 1942 – Erica Jong (Mann) writer: Fear of Flying, Becoming Light, How to Save Your

★~  Good to Know: Duncan Hines

Hines began his career  as a traveling salesman for a printing company. He averaged 40,000-60,000 miles of car travel a year and ate most of his meals in restaurants. He and his wife, Florence, also loved to travel on weekends, which made meals at home even more rare for Hines. All of those restaurant dinners and lunches started to add up, and Hines soon found himself knowledgeable on the best place to get a bite to eat in towns all over the country. Eventually he and Florence had a fun idea: they compiled a list of recommendations of their favorite restaurants in various cities around the country and sent it to friends as Christmas gifts. His friends loved it so much that in 1935 Hines turned his travels into a book, Adventures in Good Eating. Book buyers adored Hines’ opinions as much as his friends did, and in 1938 he released a companion book, Lodging for a Night, that told travelers where to stay when they were seeking out these delicious meals. Hines soon became America’s favorite and most trusted restaurant and hotel critic.

♥~ A 1946 profile in Life noted, “Some of Hines’ correspondents have grown to trust him so much that it makes him nervous.” The story related this anecdote: a New England reader decided he wanted to buy a farm in Kentucky and who better to broker the deal than a trusted native Kentuckian like Hines? The New Englander sent Hines a letter asking him to purchase the farm and enclosed a blank, signed check. Hines sent the check back to the man with a note suggesting he engage a real estate agent to make the deal on the farm.

♥~ First came the ice cream and then the cake. The first product to label Hines was  ice cream. The Lehigh Valley Cooperative Farmers dairy of Allentown, PA, started churning out Hines-branded ice cream in the summer of 1950.

 “The Man Behind the Cake Mix revealed the ice cream’s secret: it was heavier and contained more butterfat than its competitors. (Future Hines-branded snacks would follow the formula of making products that were richer than what was already on the market.) The ice cream was so tasty that it sold briskly even for the relatively expensive price of 43 cents a pint.” Louis Hatchett’s biography Duncan Hines.

♥~ The success of Hines Ice Cream lead Nebraska Consolidated Mills to introduced the first Duncan Hines cake mixes in the summer of 1951. Duncan Hines bread and pancake mix hit supermarkets in 1952, and blueberry muffin mix followed in 1953.

♥~ Hines was a waste not want not business man and held an utter disdain  for anyone who wasted food. In fact, the potential for waste was Hines’ biggest qualm about the restaurant business, particularly when food was in short supply around the world following World War II.Hines had been in the kitchen of a favorite LaCrosse, Wis. restaurant and began tallying wasted food. The damage included 25 pats of butter that diners had used to stub out cigarettes and a bushel basket of unfinished dinner rolls. Hines reportedly said,   that such waste showed a lack of both breeding and patriotism. In other words, you’d better finish that last slice of Duncan Hines cake. Or else.

♥~ Hines favorite adult beverage was a little odd. He has a penchant for drinking neat gin or whiskey, but he also enjoyed “Mrs. Hines’s cocktail.” The ingredients: the juice of a watermelon pickle, a whole egg, cream, gin, grenadine, orange-blossom honey, and lime juice. Cheers.

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Oh boy, do we have a lot to catch up on. The 12th grade play opened and closed to rave reviews and our parent candy concession stand raised over $3,000 which means our 12th graders can go and do much more than they anticipated on their senior trip. Separate post will be forthcoming.

This morno I packed off my teen for two weeks in Maui and bid all the 12th graders Aloha! What an adventure!

And we have one more review to complete! I’ve missed you like crazy, and you know how I miss crazy. Looking forward to playing catch up! El Nighto. See you in the Morno.

Odd Loves Company,