22 Jan

 

January 2023

Daily Almanac for Flagstaff
Week 4 Day 22 \ Ave. Sky Cover 5% \ Visibility 18 miles Flagstaff Today 41° \1°  Wind 3mph \ Gusts 4mph 
Air Quality: Fair \very Low Risk of fire \ Nearest active fire 309mi \ Nearest Lightning 1470mi
Jan Averages for Flagstaff: 44° \ 16° \5 Days of moisture
Sunshine

Today’s Quote

 

Weekly Observations

14-22
International Snowmobile Safety and Awareness Week
17-23
National Fresh Squeezed Juice Week
18-25
Week of Christian Unity
National Soccer Coaches of America Week
19-29
Sundance Film Festival
22-28
Clean Out Your Inbox Week
Data Privacy Week Link
National CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists) Week
National Handwriting Analysis Week
National School Choice Week Link 
Snowcare for Troops Week
Snowcare for Troops Week

Daily Observations

Answer Your Cat's Questions Day

Celebration of Life Day
Chinese New Year

Come in From The Cold Day
Dance of the Seven Veils Day
National Bible Sunday  National Hot Sauce Day
National Polka Dot Day
Roe vs. Wade Day
Sanctity of Human Life Day Link

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

I don’t like shopping on weekends, but it is not snowing so I headed to Sam’s for stuff I need…and some stuff that looked good. While shopping two different people from the Rez stopped to see how I was doing. Nice to be recognized after being retired for over a decade. As I was leaving, a lady checked my receipt. She scanned it and then a few items, as usual. On the 2^nd item she scanned she said it wasn’t paid for. Then she found another and then another. I said, ‘this is crazy, I spent $57 dollars and the only item scanned was a jar of nuts.’ She said ‘Sir, just pull up your receipt on your phone.’ I went to the app and asked her where to find the receipt. She said just hit ‘scan and go’. I said I didn’t use scan and go. Then she said, 'do you have a paper receipt'? I said she had just scanned it. I pulled it out and she rescanned it. Everything worked. She didn’t apologize, and just said her hand-held scanner messed up.  I bit my tongue, so I didn’t say that her scanner needed someone who knew how to use it.

Our town will get more snow on Sunday. Looking at records: Jan 2023 has the 4^th most snow in the month on record with 57”. Jan 2010 is 5^th with 56.4”. 1949 with 104” is number 1, 1980 is 2^nd with 63.4’, 1979 is 3^rd with 59.4”. I’ve seen all those except #1.

I was reading an article about World famous concert halls. The Sydney Opera House, Odeon of Herodes Atticus (Athens), Carnegie Hall, Musikverein (Vienna), Nippon Budokan (Tokyo) were listed. The final one was Red Rocks Amphitheater. Very Cool.            

The Big 5 of Africa…lions, leopards, elephants, African buffalo, & rhinoceroses

Facts…

The New York ball drop has a stunning record only dimmed by World War II. Revelers gathered in Times Square in 1942 and 1943, but no ball drop took place, thanks to wartime blackouts. Instead, the new year was marked by a minute of silence followed by chimes.

Time balls emerged as a timekeeping feature throughout the world, though evidence of them is hard to find today. The U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., installed one in 1845, which would later help history record the precise time of Lincoln’s assassination; it dropped daily through 1936. But the time ball’s reign was short-lived. The devices fell out of fashion by the 1880s, thanks to the availability of self-winding clocks. The concept would eventually be co-opted by The New York Times in 1907, when the newspaper’s formerly explosive New Year’s Eve celebrations were barred from using fireworks. Organizers took a chance by looking back at the time ball’s influence, and decided a lighted midnight drop was the perfect way to honor the occasion. 

Slang Origins

1971: The Man

Meaning: the police; political or societal establishment

In the late ‘60s, the yippie movement grew out of the hippie counterculture. The Youth International Party, founded by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, was anti-establishment, and actively protested the government. “The Man” became shorthand for the government that they wished to replace with their own system, which they deemed more egalitarian.

UNESCO sites…

The Citadel of Aleppo Is Considered the World's Oldest Castle

When you think of castles, medieval structures often come to mind. But there are some fortified structures that predate the Middle Ages by centuries, and one such ancient fortress is distinctively castle-like enough to be widely considered the oldest such structure remaining on the planet. It's the Citadel of Aleppo, a castle fort in the history-rich city of Aleppo, Syria. Use of the castle dates back to 3000 BCE, but much of the current structure was likely built during the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th century. The fortress has weathered centuries of ups and downs (including some significant damage in the ongoing Syrian Civil War) but remains standing to this day. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.

Historical Events

1889 – Columbia Phonograph (Columbia Records) was formed in Washington, D.C.
1946 – Creation of the Central Intelligence Group, now the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).
1947 – KTLA, the first commercial television station west of the Mississippi River, began operation in Hollywood.
1973 – The Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, legalizing elective abortion in all fifty states.

Birthdays Today

@92 – Ann Sothern, American actress, singer (d. 2001)
91 – Piper Laurie, American actress
@77 – John Hurt, English actor (d. 2017; cancer)
If you listen, you learn; if you talk, you don’t.– John Hurt
@65 – Sir Walter Raleigh, English poet, soldier, courtier and explorer (d. 1618; beheaded)
@65 – Francis Bacon, English philosopher, politician (d. 1626; pneumonia)
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.– Francis Bacon
@64 – Malcolm McLaren, English singer-songwriter, manager (d. 2010; mesothelioma)
74 – Steve Perry, American singer-songwriter
64 – Linda Blair, American actress
Its difficult to understand why people don’t realize that pets are gifts to mankind.– Linda Blair
@59 – Bill Bixby, American actor (d. 1993; prostate cancer)
58 – DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ and producer
58 – Diane Lane, American actress
55 – Guy Fieri, American chef, author, and television host
We’re takin’ you on a road rockin’ trip down to Flavortown, where the gravitational force of bacon warps the laws of space and time.– Guy Feiri
@36 – Lord Byron, English influential poet, playwright (d. 1824; fever)
@33 – Sam Cooke, American singer-songwriter (d. 1964; shot)
@30 – Robert E. Howard, American author, creator of Conan The Barbarian (d. 1936; suicide)
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.– Robert E. Howard
25 – Silento, American rapper
You already know what it is!-Silento