~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
December 2, 2012

★~ Today’s Quote: Beware of the young doctor and the old barber. ~ Benjamin Franklin

★~ Safety Shaver Day:

Is it a coincidence that following No Shave November, we are celebrating Safety Shaver Day?  I think not!  Let’s  celebrate today by talking about a couple of great shaving products. First,  I’ll share with you the best shaving cream known to man. Every man I have ever given it to has loved it – Nancy Boy Signature Shaving Cream.  Another idea for a close shave is the Dollar Shave Club. Cole talked me into being a part of the cutting edge and joining the “club” and now razor blades arrive each month in our mail box. Amazing world we live in.  If you would like to sign up for the Dollar Shave Club, please use my link because then I’ll receive a complimentary free month, and then you will be given a link to share with your friends. Good karma! Katybeth Shavers Club Good Karma Link.  And last but by no means least an Odd Share from some years back,  just for giggles. . ..Shave The Underbrush-The Tree Looks Taller.

★~ Apple Fritter Day:

Fritters are delicious fried cakes filled with fruit or meat. They can be served as a snack, side dish, dessert, or even the main course!

There’s actually not much difference between pancake and fritter batter. They are both made with the same ingredients. It is only once fruit or meat is dipped into the raw batter and then fried that it actually becomes a fritter.

The first historical record of the fritter dates back to 1665. Samuel Pepys, an Englishman who served as a Member of Parliament during the English Restoration period, noted in his diary that he would be enjoying some fritters before Lent!

Enjoy eating a fritter today, or perhaps you would rather celebrate by frittering the day away.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1901 – American King Camp Gillette designed the first razor with disposable blades. Up until this time, men shaved with a straight-edge razor that they sharpened on a leather strap.

♥~ 1952 – George Jorgensen, a former G.I. who had gone to Denmark in 1950, prepared to return to the U.S. this day — as Christine Jorgensen. She, er, he, had undergone 2,000 hormone injections and six operations performed by sex change surgeons.

♥~ 1959 – Behind the Great Wall, a truly stinking motion picture, was seen at the Mayfair Theatre in New York City. A somewhat noxious scent was piped through the ceiling vents during certain portions of the show. The effect was called AromaRama. It didn’t catch on…

♥~ 1964 – Student activist Mario Savio made a speech on behalf of the Free Speech Movement that inspired hundreds of students to take over Sproul Hall at U.C.-Berkeley. Savio said, “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies on the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve go to make it stop.” (Police moved in the next day and arrested 780 people, which in turn, prompted a general student strike.

♥~ 1978 – Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond’s You Don’t Bring Me Flowers hit #1 in the U.S.

♥~ 2007 – A 3.3-pound truffle discovered by a dog in Italy brought a record-breaking $330,000 at auction.  Luciano Savini said his truffle dog, Rocco, discovered the highly prized fungus near Pisa. Billionaire Stanley Ho, a Chinese casino tycoon from Macau, outbid British artist Damien Hirst and Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi to win the fungal delicacy, the BBC reported. Savini who donated the proceeds to charity.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1925 – Julie Harris, Emmy Award-winning actress: Hallmark Hall of Fame: Little Moon of Alban [1958-1959], Victoria Regina [1961-1962]; Knots Landing, The Family Hovak, Backstairs at the White House, Carried Away, Scarlett, The Dark Half, Gorillas in the Mist, The Bell Jar, Voyage of the Damned,Harper, A Doll’s House, I Am a Camera, East of Eden, Member of the Wedding

♥~ 1963 –  Ann Patchett, novelist published her first short story in The Paris Review when she was still an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. Critics raved, and the story appeared in lots of anthologies.  After college you faced her first rejection notices and writer’s block. During this time she moved back in with her mom and waited tables at T.G.I. Friday’s in Nashville. To keep herself awake while rolling silverware at two in the morning, she made up a story in her head that became her first published novel, The Patron Saint of Liars (1992).

♥~ 1968 – Lucy Liu actress: Ally McBeal, Bang, Jerry Maguire, Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

♥~ 1981 – Britney Spears dance-pop singer: albums: Baby… One More Time, Oops!… I Did It Again; TV performer: The Mickey Mouse Club, Time Out with Britney Spears, Britney in Hawaii.

★~ Did You Know:

Before the advent of safety razors and sanitation laws, a man risked his life when he decided to clean up with a close shave. Here are three stories of men who met their demise at the hands of a razor.

♥~ Michael F. Farley, 1921:  Michael F. Farley immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1881 when he was 18 years old. He ran a successful liquor business in New York and was elected to Congress in 1915. But Mr. Farley’s Horatio Alger story was cut short after a visit to the barbershop. Little did Mr. Farley know that the badger brush the barber was using to create that nice luxurious lather on his face was contaminated with – I kid you not- anthrax. Farley was infected with the virus and died a few days later. Who knew a barber brush could be a weapon of mass destruction?

♥~ John Henry Taylor, 1911:  John Henry Taylor was a friendly horticulturalist who decided to take a trip on a Red Line cruise ship back in 1911. In between matches of shuffle board, Mr. Taylor felt his beard was getting a little rough and decided to visit the on-board barber. The waves must have been pretty rough that day because the barber gave ol’ John Henry a little nick on the neck. Because small cuts are par for the course when getting a shave, John Henry didn’t think much of it and returned to his cabin. But later that night, his throat began to swell up and fill with fluid. The ship doctor said it was just a case of blood poisoning and told Taylor that it would soon heal itself. Two days later the swelling increased, and Taylor could no longer speak. A week after the initial cut, John Henry Taylor suffocated and died from severe edema.

♥~ John Thoreau, 1841: John Thoreau was the brother of famous American writer and Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau. In the winter of 1841, while taking part in his daily shave, John Thoreau cut himself with his razor. A few days later he came down with lockjaw and died in Henry David’s arms. His brother’s death devastated Thoreau. He didn’t talk to his family or write in his journal for weeks. Thoreau’s good friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, suggested that he go spend some time out in the woods alone near a pond called Walden. Thoreau took this sage advice, and one of America’s greatest essays was born.

These stories all came from the book The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manner for the Modern Man which can also tell you how to get a close shave without killing yourself.

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We did find the perfect “Oh Christmas Tree,” yesterday. I have pictures and stories to show and tell but you’ll have to excuse me right now, because I’ve been invited to a December tea party and must figure out what to wear and try to do something with my hair. How will you spend your Sunday?

Odd Loves Company,

♥~