13 Sep

 

 

Daily Almanac for Flagstaff
Week 38 Day 256 \ Ave. Sky Cover 35% \ Visibility 10 miles Flagstaff Today 76° \58° 
Wind 6mph \ Gusts 9mph  Air Quality Fair
Very Low Risk of fire \ Nearest active fire 257mi \ Nearest Lightning 162mi
Sep Averages for Flagstaff: 74° \ 42° (5days of moisture)

 

Today’s Quote

Weekly Observations

11-17 Be A Mench Week Direct Support Professional Recognition Week Link International Housekeepers Week Link National Assisted Living Week National Security Officer Appreciation Week National Truck Driver Appreciation Week Link

12-17   Line Dance Week

12-18   National Chef Appreciation Week Link   National NeoNatal Nurses Week Link

Daily Observations

Ants On A Log Day  Link 
Bald Is Beautiful Day
Celiac Disease Awareness Day
Defy Superstition Day
Fortune Cookie Day
International Chocolate Day Link
International Programmers Day Link  
Kids Take Over the Kitchen Day
National Celiac Awareness Day
National Peanut Day Link
Positive Thinking Day
Roald Dahl Day
Scooby-Doo Day
Uncle Sam Day  Link

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

The monsoon should bring some moisture later today. The rain came a little earlier than expected and contained pea-sized hail.

Hopefully the Broncos will do well tonight. The CU Buffs lost to Air Force, Cards lost to Chiefs…one of my teams has to win.

I am still learning a lot about British Royalty as each day brings out more about how this succession is slowly happening. Scotland’s Parliament ceremony was very interesting. I can’t imagine our congress having so many parties, with each leader speaking.

AZ is getting a new governor, since the current Governor can’t run due to term limits. The Republican candidate is a full-blown ‘Trump won’ person and a former news reader in Phoenix. The Democrat candidate has refused to debate the Republican, claiming the primary debate on the Republican side was only about who won in 2020. Our state elections are turning into a real circus with way too many clowns on the ballot.

While I was out and about, I stopped at the dealership to figure out how to use the trip calculator. The guy who sold me the car tried, then got an ‘expert’ to figure it out. After about 5 minutes I now understand how it works. The actual trip only shows up on the screen when you scroll through the choices. The mileage on the lower left is the odometer, the milage on the lower left is how many miles until the car is out of gas. The sales guy thanked me for coming in so he could learn too. Live and learn.

Favorite Memes

Random trivia…

  Missing Persons

The FBI designates severe, urgent missing person cases as "endangered or involuntary." Approximately 15 percent of missing person cases are given that classification each year; most of them are applied to children.

In the mid-1980s, milk cartons with photos of missing children on them made their debut. The first child to appear on one of those milk cartons was Etan Patz, a 6-year-old from New York who disappeared walking to the bus stop in May 1975.

According to the U.S. Department of State, there are no statistics that track the number of Americans who go missing in a foreign country in a given year. The United Kingdom does, however. In 2008, 481 British disappeared abroad, an increase from 401 the previous year and 336 in 2006.

In 2008, there were 30 officially documented disappearances on cruise ships in the preceding five years.

Myth Buster

Hitler invented the highway

While the highway is, indeed, a German invention, attributing it to Adolf Hitler is incorrect. The first highway, the Automobil-Verkehrs-und Übung-Strasse (AVUS), opened on September 25, 1921, long before Hitler came to power. The dictator did inaugurate a section of the Autobahn for the first time in 1935, however. These long, straight roads between Frankfurt and Darmstadt were first used to break car speed records, but Hitler saw them as an excellent way to move his troops quickly.

Historical Events

1790 – The US Capitol was moved to New York City from Philadelphia.
1899 – Henry Bliss was the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. Arthur Smith, the driver of the taxicab who struck Bliss, was charged but acquitted.
1814 – Francis Scott Key composed his poem “Defense of Fort McHenry”- which later became The Star-Spangled Banner.
1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC, the first commercial computer to use disk storage, was introduced.
1985 – Super Mario Bros. was released in Japan for the NES.
   1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat signed a historic peace agreement (true), ending centuries of discord in the middle east (not true).

Birthdays Today

@92 – Claudette Colbert, French-American actress (d. 1996)
@88 – Milton S. Hershey, founded The Hershey Company (d. 1945)
@82 – Lucy Goode Brooks, Former American slave; founder of Friends’ Asylum for Colored Orphans (d. 1900)
@74 – Roald Dahl, British novelist, poet,  screenwriter (d. 1990; rare cancer)
“I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.” – Roald Dahl
@73 – Ray Charles, American singer-songwriter, conductor (d. 2015; liver failure)
“I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.”– Ray Charles
@73 – Mel Tormé, American singer-songwriter, and actor (d. 1999; stroke)
@74 – Richard Kiel, American actor and voice artist (d. 2014; heart attack)
78 – Jacqueline Bisset, English actress
@54 – Nell Carter, American actress, singer (d. 2003; heart failure)
71 – Jean Smart, American actress
58 – Tavis Smiley, American talk show host
“I don’t think I’d live anything over, even though I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I have learned how to see failure as a friend. So, I’m not one to live a life of regrets. I try to learn from my mistakes, but I’ll take my life the way it is.”– Tavis Smiley
53 – Tyler Perry, producer, director, actor
@51 – Walter Reed, American physician, biologist (d. 1902; peritonitis)
29 – Niall Horan, Irish singer

 

12 Sep

 

 

Daily Almanac for Flagstaff
Week 38 Day 255 \ Ave. Sky Cover 45% \ Visibility 10 miles Flagstaff Today 80° \47° 
Wind 7mph \ Gusts 9mph  Air Quality Fair
Moderate Risk of fire \ Nearest active fire 258mi \ Nearest Lightning 5mi
Sep Averages for Flagstaff: 74° \ 42° (5days of moisture)

 

Today’s Quote

Weekly Observations

11-17 Be A Mench Week Direct Support Professional Recognition Week Link International Housekeepers Week Link National Assisted Living Week National Security Officer Appreciation Week National Truck Driver Appreciation Week Link

12-17   Line Dance Week

12-18   National Chef Appreciation Week Link   National NeoNatal Nurses Week Link

Daily Observations

Chocolate Milkshake Day
International Day for South-South Cooperation Link
National Boss/Employee Exchange Day 
National Day of Encouragement  Link
National Just One Human Family Day  Link
National Police Woman's Day  Link   Link
Report Medicare Fraud Day  Link
Video Games Day

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

It looks like the monsoon returned. Expecting more moisture after looking at the clouds.

Like most Americans, I’m remembering 9-11. I was working at Tuba that day. Many don’t realize what we had to do. After hearing scattered reports, we knew that the twin towers had been hit. About 10:30 the supervisors were called to the principal’s office. At that point we were told the school was shutting down, due to the attack. Our school had over 900 students with about 250 living in the dorms. Most parents did not have phones, and many of the dorm students lived with no running water or electricity. Most parents would not be at home at this time of day. They might be herding sheep; they might have come to town for supplies. For those parents who lived in town, they would not be home either…they might be at work or they too might be out of town, helping relatives or shopping. The school can’t just ‘dump’ the kids off if no one is home. There were 9 bus routes, and the school couldn’t just ‘dump’ the students off at the bus stop.  Thanks to dedicated bus drivers and dorm staff, all the students were home by 4pm, all the other staff were sent home about noon. All the BIA schools closed because the US government had been attacked and no one knew who else might be attacked. We returned to work the next day and continued our responsibilities to the children and community. A day I will never forget.

Today is also my mom’s birthday. She was born in 1919. She lived to 89 years old. She is still missed.

0Favorite Memes

Random trivia…

  Missing Persons

Between 1,800 and 2,000 Americans are reported missing every day. This includes both children and adults. But many of those reports are later cancelled.

When a child goes missing, the first 3 hours are the most crucial in finding the child safely. Approximately 76 percent of abducted children who are murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction.

Unfortunately, it can take over 2 hours to get information about a missing child from a panicked parent.

There are as many as 100,000 active missing persons cases in the U.S. at any given time.

Myth Buster

Albert Einstein was... the father of the atomic bomb

This is the most common myth surrounding the charismatic genius. While Albert Einstein did contribute, somewhat in spite of himself, to the origins of the nuclear bomb, the American secret service eventually dismissed him from the project. A few years earlier, in 1933, physicist Leo Szilard had shared with him his work on a chain reaction capable of causing spectacular explosions, a principle based on Einstein’s own research into the interchangeability of energy and mass. Worried that this discovery would end up in the hands of the Nazis, the two scientists then alerted President Roosevelt. Physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer, considered the true father of the atomic bomb, directed the Manhattan Project from 1942 to 1945.

Historical Events

1910 – Alice Stebbins Wells was hired as America’s 1st actual female police officer, in Los Angeles.

1940 – Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France.

1952 – The Flatwoods Monster was described by several children in Flatwoods, West Virginia. Their mother, Kathleen May also reported seeing a ten-foot creature.

1954 – Lassie premiered on CBS

1959 – The Soviet Union’s Lunik 2 was launched, (purposefully) crash-landing on the moon two days later.

1962 – President Kennedy delivered his “We Choose to go to the Moon” speech at Rice University.

1970 – LSD advocate, Dr. Timothy Leary, escaped from a California prison and fled to Algeria.

1970 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 16 was launched – it landed on the moon, scooped up 101 grams of the lunar surface, and returned to Earth.

1984 – Dwight Gooden set the MLB record for strikeouts in a season by a rookie with 276, previously set by Herb Score with 246 in 1954.

1992- NBC canceled all of their Saturday morning cartoons and opted to air Saved By The Bell, California Dreams, NBA Inside Stuff, Name Your Adventure, and a weekend version of Today. It marked the end of all children’s programming entirely on the network.

2012 – Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 and iOS 6.

Birthdays Today

@83 – Maurice Chevalier, French actor, singer and dancer (d. 1972)
“If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.”– Maurice Chevalier
82 – Linda Gray, American actress
@81 – George Jones, country singer (d. 2013)
@66 – Jesse Owens, American sprinter, long jumper, Gold Medalist (d. 1980; cancer)
@58 – Barry White, American singer-songwriter (d. 2003; stroke)
“We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It’s just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile.”-Barry White
55 – Rachel Ward, English-Australian actress
55 – Louis C.K. [Louis Alfred Székely], American comedian and actor
“‘I’m bored is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘Im bored’.” Louis C. K.
@40 – Paul Walker, American actor (d. 2013; car crash)
“Remember that no matter how cool you think you may be, you are not cool enough to look down on anyone…”– Paul Walker
44 – Ruben Studdard, American R&B and gospel singer
41 – Jennifer Hudson, American singer
“We all have the power to choose how we are going to handle every situation we are faced with throughout our lives. We are in control of the decision we make whether it’s about work, relationships, parenting, or our health.”– Jennifer Hudson