Tortilla Chip Day is best celebrated on a comfy sofa and a favourite film with a selection of tasty dips! Why not go all out and add some cheese into the mix, grilling or melting it on top to form a stringy, tasty tortilla chip maze!
thanks for some of the vintage ads, helen
Word of the Day
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| Definition: | (noun) A person who shows no gratitude. | ||
| Synonyms: | thankless wretch, ungrateful person | ||
| Usage: | This bird was a godsend to us, and I should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in these pages. | ||
Idiom of the Day
ace (something)— To do exceptionally well in something, especially an exam or other high-pressure situation. |
History
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 | A preeminent figure in American art, Homer was a largely self-taught landscape painter and printmaker. He trained as a lithographer, then became a freelance illustrator. As a correspondent for Harper's Weekly, he won international acclaim for his depictions of the Civil War battlefront. In 1876, he abandoned illustration to devote himself to painting, later settling in coastal Maine, where the local people and seascapes became the focus of his art. | ||
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| George Washington is famous for leading patriot troops in the American Revolution, for being the first president of the newly independent United States . and for having false teeth. | |||
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What Bizarre Relics Tell Us About Presidents’ Lives
For Presidents’ Day, National Geographic investigates why we save such intimate artifacts of Washington and Lincoln.
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1835 - "Siwinowe Kesibwi" (The Shawnee Sun) was issued as the first Indian language monthly publication in the U.S.
1857 - The first shipment of perforated postage stamps was received by the U.S. Government.
1900 - New York City Mayor Van Wyck signed the contract to begin work on New York's first rapid transit tunnel. The tunnel would link Manhattan and Brooklyn. The groundbreaking ceremony was on March 24, 1900.
1912 - Founding of Hadassah: The Women's Zionist Organization of America.
1938 - The first nylon bristled toothbrush was made. It was the first time that nylon yarn had been used commercially.
1987 - An exploding supernova was discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.
1997 - Dick Enberg received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1998 - Elton John was knighted by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.
If You Were Born Today, February 24
Charming, quirky, and outgoing, it might surprise some that you require a lot of time to yourself to recharge and refresh yourself just to get back on track. You are an interesting conversationalist, including as many people as possible in the conversation, and you are extremely versatile as well. You bend over backwards to help those you care about. Your compassionate side is well-developed, but so is your business sense. You have a good head for business, although it may take you some time to choose the right career path for you. Famous people born today: Eddie Murray, Abe Vigoda, Steven Jobs, Paula Zahn.
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Howard Thurston (1869–1936) was a stage magician from Columbus, Ohio. After an unhappy childhood, he ran away to join the circus, where his future partner Harry Kellar also performed. Thurston was deeply impressed after he attended magician Alexander Herrmann's magic show and was determined to equal his work. He eventually became the most famous magician of his time, with a show so large that eight train cars were required to transport it.
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An Exquisite Eye
Photograph by David Liittschwager
Vertebrate eyes—like this eye of a juvenile female southern ground-hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri)—are all variations on the same basic design, which functions much as a camera does.
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Limerick Hat HT09 pattern by Roxi Willoughby
This design came about because I saw a similar hat in a catalog and thought, “I can knit that.” My finished hat is nearly identical to Jean’s Irish Hat. Enjoy.
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Nola's slipper pattern pattern by Nola Miller
Gauge 3 stitches = 1 inch in garter, two strands worked together
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knit, 2 - 10 yrs
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Bright Red Pullover
Any little girl would love such a wonderful sweater like this one. The free knitting patterns offered like this one have a fabulous texture to it. Cables and ribbin...
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Preview by Yahoo
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Wheels Pincushion pattern by Frankie Brown
These little pincushions use small amounts of double knitting weight yarn and are quick to make. The textured tops are based on the wheels in my ‘Wheels wi...
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Preview by Yahoo
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Little Bigfoot Giraffe 2014 pattern by Sharon Ojala
Giraffe stands about 13 inches tall from foot to top of horn
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Spicy Roasted Squash with Feta and Herbs | How Sweet It ...
I'm so ready for a squash eating contest. Let's go. This makes me want to sing Great Balls of Fire… which I think came from belting out “great rings of fire!!!” i...
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CROCKPOT RECIPE
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Slow Cooker Chicken Chile Verde | Slow Cooker Chicken ...
Chicken chile verde made in the slow cooker. This easy crockpot meal is perfect for weeknights or feeding a crowd.
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CRAFTS
Circular Paint Chip Art ~ Use a variety of punches to create beautiful art for your home and/or office. Recycled paint chips make the perfect medium for crafters on a budget.
CHILDREN'S CORNER ...puzzles
lots to figure out
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PUZZLE
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QUOTE
"what is your name?" in Bangubangu (DR Congo) - Zina dyobe ni nani?
CLEVER
You’re brushing with too much toothpaste.
You only need to use a pea-sized amount of toothpaste for effective cleaning. Most ads feature globs of toothpaste the size of the brush because a.) it looks nice and b.) it makes you use up more toothpaste.
EYE OPENER
A History Of Housecats And How They Came to Be
(Semi-) Domesticated
rovingcrafters
About 12,000 years ago humans, some humans, decided to stop wandering around hunting, herding, and moving with every season. They decided it was smarter to stay in one place and grow crops. Those crops had to be harvested and stored and that of course attracts rodents. That’s when the first cat showed up and said “Hey you! Open this door. I want to come in.” Since those cats were offering to kill the rodents, we opened the door.
Now dogs had been domesticated much earlier. They were good hunting companions for us. After all dogs hunt in packs and share the kill just like we do. They were our partners, junior partners, but still partners. As such dogs took an interest in us humans and the things we did and adapted their ways to our ways.
Cats don’t need us to help hunt down a rat. Good thing because our rat hunting skills are pretty substandard. They don’t need other cats to help them hunt down dinner either. Which is why cat’s don’t share. They do fine on their own, thank-you very much. Just let them come and go as they please, sleep wherever they like, and stay out of their way.
And that’s how it probably was for those early domestic settlers. Cats took advantage of our shelters and ate up the rodents that were plaguing us. We left them alone. It was more of a symbiotic relationship then a partnership and it was pretty much on the cat’s terms. We needed them more than they needed us.
The earliest definitive evidence of domesticated cats is 8,000 years old and its in Cyprus. There is some tentative evidence of cats living with humans in the Fertile Crescent as early as 12,000 years ago. But its almost impossible to distinguish between the skeleton of a wild cat and a housecat so we can’t say for certain. Cyprus, however is an island. The cat remains found there point conclusively to humans deliberately bringing cats over to live with them.
Them Cyprians. They started this.
By 3500 BC we find evidence of cat worship in Egypt. Cat mummies are found with human mummies. In 1888 an entombment of 80,000 cat mummies was discovered. Its pillaging and destruction was recorded by the Baron of Arlington. In Egypt, you see, cats were associated with the Goddess Bastet. They were quite special. As this statue demonstrates, they even had their own jewelry.
An ancient Egyptian cat statue dating from 664–332 BC
For the Romans and Greeks cats were associated with freedom, and fertility. If you ever experienced how many kittens an un-spayed female can have, you’d understand the fertility associations. There is some evidence that in Scandinavia, as the Vikings and Russians settled down a bit, they were smart enough to let local wild cats in their homes. For the rest of Europe and for Asia the practice seems to have been imported from the Greek traders and the Phonetician sailors who installed cats on all their cargo ships.
There were many (manymanymany) cultural, mythical and even magical associations with cats as symbols of prosperity and freedom. Today we are more aware of the associations between cats and evil but that all comes from one time period: the Middle Ages. In Europe, particularity in England, cats became associated with witchcraft, with evil, and with the Devil. Black cats got the worst of it.
But all cats suffered. Cats were burned at the stake with their owners. They were accused of witchcraft, of being actual witches, of theft and murder. Even those not gripped by religious fervor, considered cats to be pests. The domestic cat was hunted, tortured for amusement, and killed. (FYI, in the 900’s Hywel the Good in Wales instituted laws to protect cats and those laws survived for centuries until English law replaced Welsh law.) It was this destruction of domestic cat populations that led to the death of half the population of England.
The Bubonic Plague, aka the Black Death, was spread by flea bites. Inflected fleas had traveled the world on the backs of rodents. The disease probably originated in China and every nation had outbreaks. But when the pandemic hit England for the first time in 1348, it was open season because their rat population had reached epic levels. Why was the rat population out of control? Because the dummies had killed off all their cats. Thus a deadly bacteria nearly wiped them out.
And we marvel at housecats’ typical contempt for human intellect.
Elsewhere, cats were faring much better. The “Royal Cats of Siam” are believed to date back to the 1600’s. The modern bred of Russian Blues are said to descend from the cats kept by the Russian Czars. That may or may nor be true but its speaks to the fact that Czars were keeping cats as (very pampered) pets. The first Persian cats were imported as wildly expensive pets from Persia to Italy in the 1600’s. Its safe to assume that if royals were letting cats run tame in their households, everyone else in those societies was doing them same. We humans are always copying celebrities. I’m sure domestic cats in most places were living comfortable lives killing rodents and keeping their human servants (mostly) free from rodent-borne diseases.
These special, exotic breeds didn’t gain any real popularity in England until the late 1800’s, and then it became a thing and all the Victorians had to have the best, most exclusive house cats. After centuries of hatred, scorn, and suspicion, every middle class lady had to have a pure-bred cat sitting around in her drawing room.
Our attitudes towards cats has varied considerably over the centuries. But the cat’s attitude towards us has remained (as far as I can tell) largely the same. We need them more than they need us. If all human beings disappeared tomorrow, cats could get by. If all the cats disappeared, we would be lonely and sad and probably catch the black plague again and die.
hi, pc, our smartest cat ever! mmm
The mystery of the cat!
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