Dec 21, last post until after the holiday

FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out! Last Blog until Dec 28

Flagstaff Almanac:  Week: 51/ Day: 356   

Today: H   31°…L -9° Averages: H  ° L °

Records: H   61°(1917)…L -12°(1924)

Wind: ave:   9mph; Gusts:  10mph Today’s ave. humidity:  61%

Quote of the Day:

Today’s Historical Highlights:

103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock—1620

1st crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) printed in NY World—1913

1st feature-length color & sound cartoon premieres (Snow White) —1937

1st feature-length silent film comedy, "Tillie's Punctured Romance" released—1914

1st junior high school established (Berkeley California) —1909

3 white NY teens convicted of manslaughter in death of a black man—1987

City of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control—1995

Fox signs Shirley Temple, 5, to a studio contract—1933

Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, 1st joint movie (Flying Down to Rio) —1932

Geneva Conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict opens—1973

John Jay becomes 1st US secretary of state—1784

NY bound Pan Am jumbo jet explodes over Scotland all 

     258 aboard die-Lockerbie bombing—1988

State of Eire (formerly Irish Free State) declares its independence—1948

Tom Landry accepts coaching job with Dallas Cowboys—1959 

♪  ♪   Happy Birthday To: ♪. ♪   

How many can you identify?…answers in Today’s Birthdays

  Returns after break

Free Rambling Thoughts:   

Sure was cold this morning…stayed inside all day and got ready for my trip…paper stopped, check…mail hold, check…plants watered, check…tickets, check, packed, check. I’ll be leaving about 6am tomorrow and won’t return until the 27^th. Blog will probably start up again on the 28^th. Ready for a great week with my brother and the Chicago in-law family.

 

I hope everyone has a good holiday, with friends and family. I am hoping for more sanity in 2013, less political hoopla, more people caring about people, less hatred, more compromise, and a whole lot more peace in this world.

 

I was in the education field for my whole career. I started teaching when we taught 3R’s, science and social studies. As the years progressed more and more was added to the classroom teacher’s assignments…lessons in character building, lessons in sex education, lessons on family responsibility, drug-free education, counselor and family arbitrator, social service reporter of abuse and family violence, and mountains or paperwork to the front office that show they are teaching and the list just kept growing. Now people who haven’t been in a classroom as anything but a student back in the day are trying to change their responsibility again…by adding being trained in shooting a gun and having one in the classroom to make the children safe. Others are suggesting that administrators receive the training and have them at the ready. At the same time, some of these ‘gun in every classroom’ people were out there just a few weeks ago degrading teacher’s unions and saying that teachers need to be in the classroom teaching and not picketing for better working conditions and better pay packages. From my point of view, teachers and administrators of schools did not go into education to be armed protectors of their students. While not every teacher who enters their first classroom will make it a career, and not every teacher goes into education to be the best teacher in the school, those who stay work long hours and try very hard to help kids prepare for the world out there. One final thought…if the first responders who are called to a school incident do not need to be concerned that any of the staff is carrying a loaded weapon. Their job is difficult enough without adding the scenario that some of the people with guns are also good guys. I sure hope this insanity is stopped in its tracks.

Game  Center: (answers at the end of post)

Duplicate Letter Puzzles New Puzzle when blog returns

Find common words with certain letters duplicated in the given positions. V stands for a duplicated vowel, C stands for a duplicated consonant, L stands for any duplicated letter, and _ stands for any letter

 L _ V C V C L

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Old Saying Explained:

LONG IN THE TOOTH

When a horse grows old its gums recede and if you examine its mouth it looks 'long in the tooth'.

Ok, then?

Movie Theme Songs you may remember:

The Lion King ''Circle of Life''

Read This Headline Carefully!!

In the lobby of a Moscow Hotel, across from a Russian Orthodox Monastery:

YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY, WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY, EXCEPT THURSDAY.

Winter-ish cartoons:

Harper’s Index:         

• Ratio of the value of Obama contributions to Rmoney contributions among education workers: 6 to 1
• Among for-profit education workers: 1 to 4

Unusual Fact of the Day:

Andre Agassi's father represented Iran in boxing in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics.

Found on You Tube: 

• Little Drummer Boy- Harry Simeone Choir

• Bing Crosby - Silent Night

• Littlest Angel
  I listened to this as a child many, many, many times

Joke-of-the-day:

There once was an old man who was about to die. He told his wife to put a bag of money in the attic "When I die I'll get it on my way up." chuckled the old man. Well when the old man died the wife went up to the attic and found that the bag of money was still there. "I knew I should have put that money in the cellar!" said the old woman.  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

MARKETING A NEW PRODUCT

Americans will not buy something they cannot pronounce.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

CHICAGO - Officials at the University of Chicago said an apparent Indiana Jones fan sent a replica movie prop to the school addressed to "Henry Walton Jones Jr." Admissions counselor Grace Chapin said workers were left scratching their heads when no "Henry Walton Jones" could be found in the school directory, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. "We gave it to a student worker, and the kid came back laughing once he Googled it," Chapin said.

"Some of us are in a haze with finals, you know, so he said it was Indiana Jones' name. Then we opened it, and it was very bizarre. There was no explanation as to why it was with us, so we talked about it and decided to put it online."

Workers said they opened the package and discovered an elaborate replica of fictional professor Abner Ravenwood's journal from the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" film. Chapin said Lucasfilm, the studio that made the Indiana Jones films, said it does not know where the journal came from. She said some have theorized the faux postmark on the journal itself may have confused the U.S. Postal Service if it fell out of its original packaging. Chapin said the journal may also be part of an unusual admissions project. "I don't want to get everyone sending us elaborate Indiana Jones creations, though," she said.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Approximately 800 tornadoes are reported in the United States each year, causing eighty fatalities and 1,500 injuries. A tornado can happen in any season and at any hour, from mountains to urban areas.

• Lightning is a leading cause of weather-related injury and even death in the United States. Lightning strikes the Earth more than 5,000 times every minute. Your odds of being struck by lightning in America are 1 in 700,000 in any given year. About 10 percent of lightning-strike victims are killed.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

16-1/5> Christmas Bird Count Week

16-24> Gluten-free Baking Week; Posadas

17-23> Saturnalia

Today Is                                                                      

Crossword Puzzle Day
Forefathers Day
Hamburger Day
Humbug Day
Look At The Bright Side Day
National French Fried Shrimp Day
National Flashlight Day
National Homeless Persons' Remembrance Day
Phileas Fogg Win A Wager Day
Underdog Day
World Peace Day/Winter Solstice

Today’s Events through History  

1st stone arch railroad bridge in US dedicated, Baltimore—1829

1st US skating club formed—1849

2 treaties the Cherokee signed with Return Meigs are sent to the Senate 

     today for consideration. The Cherokee will give up over four million 

     acres for almost $20,000—1804

Cheyennes, Arapho's, Sioux, Fetterman Massacre—1866

Conference covering peace and the resumption of trade is held for the 

     next 8 days between representatives of the British in North Carolina 

     and the Cherokee—1759

Flanders adopts Gregorian calendar, tomorrow is Jan 1 1583—1582

Nepal changes from British protectorate to independent nation—1923

Scientists Pierre & Marie Curie discovers radium—1898

UN General Assembly passes a resolution declaring 1979-Year of Child—1976

Vince Lombardi (Redskins) coaches his last football game, losing—1969

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

In their 80’s

Ed Nelson, New Orleans La, actor (Peyton Place, A Long Came a Spider) is 84

In their 70’s

Phil Donahue, talk show host (Phil Donahue Show) is 77

Jane Fonda, actress (Barbarella, Klute), physically fit is 75

In their 60’s

Samuel L Jackson, Washington DC, actor (Pulp Fiction) is 64

In their 50’s

Jane Kaczmarek, actress: Malcolm in the Middle is 57

Ray Romano , actor (Ray Barone-Everybody Loves Raymond) is 55

In their 40’s

Andy Dick, actor (Matthew-Newsradio) is 47

Remembered for being born today

Florence Griffith Joyner, LA California, runner (Olympic-3 gold-1988) 

     (1959- severe epileptic seizure-1998)

Hermann A J Kees, German Egyptologist (Problems of Egyptology) (1886-1964)

Joe Paterno, football coach (Penn State, SI Sportsman of 1986) (1924-2012)

Donald Regan, White House staffer/US Secretary of Treasury (1918-2003)

Paul Winchell, NYC, ventriloquist (Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smith) (1922-2005)

Frank Zappa, Baltimore, rocker (Mothers of Invention, Catholic Girls) (1940-1993)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Rod Cameron, actor (Santa Fe Passage, Stampede)—1983—at 73

F Scott Fitzgerald, author (Zelda)—heart attack—1940—at 44

Frank Kellogg, US Secretary of State and Nobel laureate—1937—at 80

Richard Long, actor (Nanny & Professor)— several heart attacks—1974—at 47

James Parkinson, English physician, geologist, paleontologist, political

     activist— severe stroke—1824—at 67 

George S Patton, US General (Sicily/Normandy)—car crash—1945—at 60

Dick Schaap, American sports journalist—surgery complications—2001—at 67

Answer: Duplicate Letter Puzzles

 GAINING

Disclaimer: All opinions are mine…feel free to agree or disagree.

All ‘data’ info is from the internet sites and is usually checked with at least one other source, but I have learned that every site has mistakes and sadly once out the information is out there, many sites simply copy it and is therefore difficult to verify. Also for events occurring before the Gregorian calendar was adopted [1582] the dates may not be totally accurate.

§    And That Is All for Now  §