~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
September 29, 2011

★~ Today’s Quote: “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” J.R.R. Tolkien

★~ Michaelmas Day:

The festival of Michaelmas is a traditional Celtic holiday associated with the autumnal equinox. The festival is named for St. Michael, known as the protector of humanity, who inspires qualities of courage, initiative and steadfastness.  The festival marks the end of harvest time and the turning of the weather and seasons.

The traditional Michaelmas meal  is a roast stubble goose but a any homey, unfussy meal that your family enjoys can be substituted for the goose.  especially if you add a posy of Michaelmas daisies or purple asters to your dinner table. (some countries celebrate today as Goose Day)

Folklore, tell us that when Michael cast the Devil from Heaven, the fallen angel landed on a patch of blackberry brambles and so  the Devil returns every Michaelmas to spit on the plant that tortured him.  In the days prior to Michaelmas blackberries are gathered and used in pies and preserves. On St Michaels day the people would then enjoy Michael’s bannocks, a large, flat scone of oats and barley and rye, baked on a hot griddle and then eaten with butter or honey or a pot of blackberry preserves.

On Michaelmas, we are invited to wonder what resolve we will need as we head into fall. What areas of ourselves do we to need to strengthen? What fears do we need to face, and what initiatives will we begin? How will we celebrate the upcoming holidays with our families in ways that honor the old traditions while creating new ones?

Michaelmas is one of our favorite family festivals. I wrote more about it here: Happy Michaelmas! Courage, Initiative, Steadfastness

★~ National Coffee Day:

The El Morn-o-ers are very picky about their coffee. They don’t like flavored coffee, they do like flavored coffee, they want cream not milk, they want cream but not half-half, they want half-half but not cream. Some believe Starbucks is the best coffee, other prefer Pete’s or Intelligentsia Coffee.

Who knew 20 years ago that we would be waking up to anything other than Folgers in our cups or enjoying the last drop of a French Vanilla Latte as an afternoon pick-me-up instead of Maxwell House?

Celebrate Coffee Day by enjoying a cup of coffee the way you like it best.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1650 – The the first documented dating service began. It was announced in a pamphlet by a man named Henry Robinson who advertised what he called his “Office of Addresses” over on Thread needle Street in London. The pamphlet was essentially a directory of contact information — a sort of precursor to a Yellow Pages or People Pages, back before there were phones, or before houses or businesses were regularly given numbered street addresses. With this valuable resource he compiled, Robinson could answer clients’ questions on things like what jobs or real estate or trade opportunities might be available.

One of the services he provided was “marriage brokerage.” Using his directory of addresses to determine who was single and marriageable and where he or she lived and worked, he would set people up to go on dates. His service cost sixpence — but if you were poor, then it was free.

♥~ 1916 – John D. Rockefeller’s wealth made him the first American billionaire.

♥~ 1960 – My Three Sons was welcomed into U.S. homes on ABC-TV. Fred MacMurray, who was a movie actor, had a difficult time making the adjustment to the small screen. But adjust he did, and My Three Sons endured so well that CBS bought the successful hit for somewhere between seven and ten million dollars in 1965.

♥~ 1963 – The sitcom My Favorite Martian premiered on CBS-TV. It starred Bill Bixby as Tim O’Hara and Ray Walston as the Martian, Martin O’Hara. The show ran through Sep 4, 1966

♥~ 1987 –  Thirtysomething” Day, marking the debut of the popular baby boomer TV series  It starred Ken Olin, Mel Harris, Timothy Busfield, Patricia Wettig, and Melanie Mayron.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1547- Miguel de Cervantes, He’s the author of Don Quixote, written four centuries ago and now considered to be the first modern novel. It’s about a middle-aged landowner named Alonso Quijano who stays awake at night reading books about chivalry. He becomes obsessed with tales, neglects to eat and sleep, and goes mad believing the stories to be true. He laments the demise of chivalry in the modern world and is determined to resurrect chivalry by going on a heroic quest. He sets off on his skinny horse to begin performing heroic and gentlemanly feats. His plans often go awry. He is noble but foolish. He’s quixotic, an adjective — in many languages — to which his character gave rise.

♥~ 1907 – (Orvon) Gene Autry ‘The Singing Cowboy’: actor: 100+ cowboy westerns; singer: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine, The Death of Mother Jones, You are My Sunshine, Mexicali Rose, Back in the Saddle Again; owner: California Angels, Golden West Broadcasting; CMA Hall of Famer; only person to have 5 Hollywood Walk of Fame stars [film, radio, TV, stage, records]; died Oct 2, 1998

♥~ 1923 – Stanley Berenstain and his wife, Jan, created the Berenstain Bears, a series that now has more than 200 books. They wrote the first, calledThe Big Honey Hunt, in 1962.

♥~ 1923 – Bum Phillips football coach: Houston Oilers

♥~ 1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis Rock and Roll Hall of Famer [1986]: singer: Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On, Great Balls of Fire, Breathless; cousin of singer Mickey Gilley, and evangelist Jimmy Swaggart

★~ Did You Know: 

♥~ Coffee is the second most traded commodity on earth. Oil is the first.

♥~ Legend has it that Ethiopian shepherds first noticed the effects of caffeine when they saw their goats appearing to become frisky and dance after eating coffee berries .

♥~ Over 1 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily. Your average coffee drinker will drink 2-3 cups of coffee per day.

♥~ Most people enjoy drinking their coffee black.

♥~ Vincent Van Gogh was a big frequenter of the café society and famously said “I have tried to show the café as a place where one can go mad.”

♥~ There are over 200,000 espresso bars throughout Italy today.

♥~ Legend has it in 1907, a cup of Maxwell House Coffee was served to President Theodore Roosevelt and he was overheard to comment that it was “good to the last drop”. The Cheek-Neal Coffee Company registered the trademark slogan “Maxwell House Good to the last drop” in 1926.

♥~ Contrary to what most people think, espresso coffee actually contains about 1/3 the caffeine level of a normally brewed cup of coffee. This is partially due to the fact that espresso is typically made using top premium arabica beans. Arabica beans have a lower caffeine content than robusta beans found in many coffee blends used for standard brewing.

♥~ “Cup of joe”, refers to a cup of coffee, made popular during WWII. Enlisted men (General Infantry) in the U.S Army were fondly referred to by the slang phrase G.I. Joe, made popular by a comic strip distributed by King Features Syndicate, which first appeared in newspapers in 1942. Coffee was an immensely popular beverage consumed by enlisted men during WWII, hence the establishment of the popular phrase “cup of joe” from G.I. Joe.

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Computer problems made Today’s El Morno–fall into the After noon-o but several cups of coffee later and a fair amount of angst has my puter and me humming along-sort of. . .

Happy Michaelmas!

♥
KB