~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
November 16, 2012

★~  Todays Quote:  If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button. Sam Levenson

★~ Button Day:

Buttons, offer everyday pleasures. Their little faces turn up agreeably, asking for personality to be impressed upon them. Buttoning oneself up is a slower, contemplative act; unbuttoning someone else, deliciously more so. Pressing buttons still delivers everything we love in the world to us.  The button—with its self-contained roundness and infinite variability—has a quiet perfection to it. More about Buttons down below….

★~ Fast Food Day:

It’s National Fast Food Day! The concept of ready-cooked food for sale can be attributed to the Ancient Romans. In many cities, street stands or “thermopoliums” (small pub-like shops) offered hot sausages, bread, and wine to patrons on-the-go. Thousands of years later, in 1867, the first American fast food restaurant opened in New York. It was a hotdog stand on Coney Island!

Today, fast food is an American staple. There are over 300,000 fast food restaurants in the United States alone, making it nearly impossible to drive down the road without going by at least one fast food chain restaurant.

Need more proof of the popularity of fast food? In 1970, U.S. consumers spent $6 billion on fast food. Thirty years later in 2000, U.S. consumers spent $110 billion! Take part in this American tradition and enjoy National Fast Food Day!  Click for more Fast Food Facts.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1907 – Oklahoma, the Sooner State, was the 46th state to enter the United States of America.

♥~ 1939 – Al Capone was freed from Alcatraz — after having served seven years, six months and fifteen days, and having paid all fines and back taxes.

♥~ 1958 – 6.4 inches of snow fell on Tucson, Arizona, catching autumn golfers by surprise, to be sure…

♥~ 1974 – NBC-TV began a two-night showing of the award-winning motion picture, The Godfather, starring Marlon Brando. The film represented the highest price paid for a movie shown on TV. NBC paid Paramount Pictures $10 million for the showing of the picture, a deal Paramount “…just couldn’t refuse.”

♥~ 1975 – Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears rushed for 105 yards in a game against the San Francisco 49ers. It was Payton’s first game of 100 plus yards. He did it 77 times throughout his career and added two 200-yard games, as well.

♥~ 2010 – A rare pink diamond was auctioned in Switzerland for a record $46,158,674 to London jeweler Laurence Graff.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1916 – Daws Butler cartoon voiceman: Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Elroy Jetson, Beany and Cecil, Captain Crunch; died May 18, 1988

♥~ 1958 – Marg Helgenberger actress: C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, Ryan’s Hope, China Beach, Through the Eyes of a Killer, Fallen Angels, Fire Down Below, Gold Coast, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

♥~ 1967 – Lisa Bonet actress: The Cosby Show, A Different World, Angel Heart, Bank Robber

★~ Did You Know: More about buttons:

Last year I learned that El Morno friends Carol and Julianne both had button collections.  So I thought it would be FUN to explore

♥~The oldest button was found at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley [now Pakistan]. It is made of a curved shell and is about 5000 years old.”

♥~The button became more prominent among the wealthy in the Middle Ages.  “About the middle of the eleventh century,” writes Carl Köhler in A History of Costume, “clothes began to be made so close-fitting that they followed the lines of the body from shoulders to hips like a glove.” Buttons helped that snug fit along. This didn’t mean clothes were cut more sparingly; wealthy people still liked the costly display of excess fabric. But, on both men’s clothes and women’s, buttons helped accentuate lovely lines, of the arm, say, or the bosom.

♥~ The first button-makers guild formed in France in 1250.  Buttons were so prized that sumptuary laws restricted their use.

♥~ The medieval period was the era when wearing lots of buttons meant big money. Franco Jacassi, reputedly the world’s biggest button-collector,describes this as a time when you could pay off a debt by plucking a precious button from your suit. Powerful leaders meet as stanze dei bottoni, “rooms of the buttons.”

♥~ After the Renaissance in Europe, buttons—along with many other things—became increasingly baroque, then rococo. Among the more extreme examples were “habitat” buttons, built to contain keepsakes like dried flowers, hair cuttings or tiny insects under glass. Hollowed-out smuggler buttons allowed thieves to transport jewels and other booty secretly. (This tradition of buttons-for-crime resurfaced in a heroin-smuggling attempt in 2009.)

♥~ Men usually buttoned their own shirts, so their buttons faced right for their convenience. Women with ladies’ maids wore their buttons on the left, to make it easier for the maids to maneuver while facing them.

♥~ George Washington’s 1789 inauguration gave the world its first political button. Made of copper, brass or Sheffield plate, these buttons could close a pair of breeches or a jacket while simultaneously announcing the wearer’s politics. Political buttons took on a more recognizably modern (and less functional) shape during Lincoln’s 1864 re-election campaign. (View 150 years of political buttons here.)

♥~ Poorer folks wore buttons, too, but they had to craft them laboriously by hand. In Colonial America until the early 20th century, working-class families counted themselves lucky if they owned a hand-held button-mold. You heated up the mold in a bed of hot coals, then filled it with molten lead or pewter, which set into a button shape. The sturdy metal buttons could then be covered with fabric or other embellishments.

♥~ As buttons became easier to mass produce, button metaphors began to pop up in everyday speech.  During the late 1800s to the early century;  “To take by the buttons” is to detain someone in conversation; “dash my buttons!” is an epithet of surprised vexation; “to have a soul above buttons” indicated someone employed in a profession unworthy of them; those who “have all their buttons” enjoy sound intellect, while those who are “a button short” do not.

♥~ In the 20th century, button’s started to show their sexier side  Buttons, designate sites of vitality, embarrassment, and thrill. When told that a certain lady wouldn’t hurt a fly, Dorothy Parker retorted, “Not if it was buttoned up.”

♥~ Later in the century, buttons migrated as a metaphor from the mechanical world to the virtual one. Buttons now adorn screens big and small, promising to connect us to marvels with a single click. Steve Jobs said of the buttons on Apple’s touch screens, “We made [them] look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

And now the only questions left is….Who Has the Button??

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Did you catch this TED Talk? It’s good. If you want to catch to chase skip to the 9 minute mark. Thanks El Morno Rachel for the share.

TGIF. Wishing you a fabulous Friday!  How will you spend the day?

Odd Loves Company!