Martin Luther King Jr. Day - January 21, 2019

DIANE'S CORNER ... 

Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. 

Martin Luther King Jr

Do you have a hero? Someone you look up to or admire? Someone who is your role model? For many people across the world, Martin Luther King Jr is just such a man. The way he walked on Washington, how he used words instead of fists to try and solve the problems of his day and age.

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There are some that compare what he did to Gandhi in using the persistent yet peaceful rebellion against the oppression of his people. Martin Luther King Jr Day is the day to celebrate all that he has done for the African American people and the world.

History of Martin Luther King Day

Martin Luther King Jr Day was created by President Reagan in 1983, at least officially. The day of his assassination had remained an important part of American culture since it occurred in 1968. On Martin Luther King Jr Day people gather to celebrate the work he did and the people he elevated through steady, peaceful protests and activism.

The struggles he fought to eliminate were still present in 1983, made evident by the fact that it took until 2000 until it was officially recognized and practiced by every state in the union, in spite of being a presidentally recognized holiday.

Movements are still in motion to elevate Martin Luther King Jr Day to a federal holiday, which would mandate that government offices would close down in recognition of the lengths he went to and the life he gave to promote true equality and freedom. Arguments against this are primarily based on the fact that he never officially held any public office, which is usually a requirement for such recognition.

thanks for the funnies, Shelley

Word of the Day

aubade

MEANING:

noun: Morning song, poem, or music.

USAGE:

“Lovers heard the stern aubade -- the watchman on the tower: ‘Up! Thou rascal, rise, I see the dawning light; the night doth fly.’”
Peter James Merrington; Zebra Crossings; Jacana; 2008.

Idiom of the Day

A Pain in the Neck

If someone is a pain in the neck it means they are very annoying and always disturbing you.

Example: My little sister won't leave me alone. She's a real pain in the neck.

    

Less polite variations! Pain in the butt/ass (American),        Pain in the Arse (British)

This Day in History

1789 - W.H. Brown's "Power of Sympathy" was published. It was the first American novel to be published. The novel is also known as the "Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth". 


1812 - The Y-bridge in Zanesville, OH, was approved for construction. 


1846 - The first issue of the "Daily News," edited by Charles Dickens, was published. 


1853 - Dr. Russell L. Hawes patented the envelope folding machine. 


1908 - In New York City, the Sullivan Ordinance was passed. It made smoking in public places by women illegal. The measure was vetoed by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. two weeks later. 


1927 - The first opera broadcast over a national radio network was presented in Chicago, IL. The opera was "Faust". 

1954 - The Nautilus was launched in Groton, CT. It was the first atomic-powered submarine. U.S. First Lady Mamie Eisenhower broke the traditional bottle of champagne across the bow. 

1970 - The Boeing 747 made its first commercial flight from New York to London for Pan American. 

1977 - U.S. President Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders. 

1982 - B.B. King donated his entire record collection to the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The collection included about 20,000 rare blues records. 

1987 - Aretha Franklin was inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. She was the first woman to be inducted. 

2002 - In London, a 17th century book by Capt. John Smith, founder of the English settlement at Jamestown, was sold at auction for $48,800. "The General History of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles" was published in 1632.

DAILY SQU-EEK

If You Were Born Today, January 21

You are an exceptionally fair person, and others appreciate you for this trait. They know they can count on you to be objective and reasonable. You are charming, talented, and a little moody. Money and security are important to you, and you do appreciate all that is associated with the "good life", but you are never one to ruthlessly pursue these things if it hurts other people. Inventive and original, you are frequently dreaming up new and creative ideas, most of which can be quite profitable. Famous people born today: 

1869 Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk and confidant of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, born in Pokrovskoye, Sibera, Russian Empire (d. 1916)

1887 Georges Vezina, Canadian ice hockey goalie (Vezina Trophy), born in Chicoutimi, Quebec (d. 1926)

1905 Christian Dior, French fashion designer(New Look), born in Granville, France (d. 1957)

1922 Paul Scofield, English actor (A Man for All Seasons, Train), born in Hurst, England (d. 2008)
1940 Jack Nicklaus, American golfer (18 major titles), born in Columbus, Ohio
1951 Eric Holder, American lawyer and judge (1st African American US Attorney General 2009-2015), born in The Bronx, New York
1953 Paul Allen, American business magnate (co-founder Microsoft, owner Portland Trail Blazers, Seattle Seahawks), born in Seattle, Washington (d. 2018)
1963 Hakeem Olajuwon, Nigerian-American NBAcenter (Houston Rockets, Olympic gold 1996), born in Lagos, Nigeria
1976 Emma Bunton [Baby Spice], English singer (Spice Girls), born in London


READERS INFO

1.

Valrhona Hot Chocolate Festival 2019

Jan 19 - Feb 3 | New York, NY

After the success of last year’s hot chocolate celebration, Valrhona is excited to announce the 4th edition of the Valrhona Hot Chocolate Festival in NYC, Montréal, and Québec City. On January 19 through February 3, Restaurants, Bakeries, and Chocolatiers from New York will be participating in the festival, promoting artisanal and premium hot chocolate and raising money for Food Tank,a non-profit organization that is fighting against food waste and pushing for food system change. Montréal and Québec City proceeds will benefit La Tablée des Chefs, a non-profit organization who feeds families in need and develops future generations culinary education.  

further information: Hot Chocolate Festival

2.

Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships 2019

Jan 21-30, 2019 | Breckenridge, CO 

During the Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships, 16 teams from around the world descend on Breckenridge, Colo. to hand-carve 25-ton blocks of snow into enormous works of art. From blocks of snow, into intricate snow sculptures. Artists are only allowed to use hand tools, creativity, and inspiration to bring their ideas to life. No power tools allowed! Teams sculpt countless hours across five days –the result is a temporary outdoor art gallery in historic downtown Breckenridge.

further information: Town of Breckenridge - International Snow Sculpting Competition

3.

Arizona Wine Growers Grand Wine Festival 2019

Jan 26-27, 2019 | Phoenix, AZ 

Celebrate local flavors and talent at the Arizona Wine Grand Wine Festival, formerly known as the Festival at The Farm, in Chandler, Arizona. The event features wine tastings featuring a diverse range of varietals from over 20 Arizona wineries as well as seminars about recent trends in Arizona winemaking and educational workshops where guests can learn to taste wine critically from cellarmasters. Additional attractions include the peoples choice award and a live auction where attendees can bid on amazing wine, travel and dining packages, with proceeds supporting the Arizona Wine Growers Association.

further information: Arizona Wine Growers Association Grand Festival



Pictures of the day

Lady Standing at a Virginal is a genre painting created by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in about 1670–1672. It depicts a richly dressed woman playing a virginal in a home with a tiled floor, paintings on the wall and some of the locally manufactured Delftware blue and white tiles of a type that appear in other Vermeer works. This work can be related to another Vermeer in the collection, Lady Seated at a Virginal, on a canvas of almost exactly the same size, with which it may form a pair. A recent study has shown that the canvas for the two paintings came from the same bolt. Lady Standing at a Virginal is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery, London.

The Sand-snow river

“The photo was taken on May 23 in Sochi at the ski resort “Rosa Khutor” at an altitude above 1600 m. On this day, there was a storm which had previously passed through the island of Crete, and so on the mountain the snow was covered with sand from the storm.” Rosa Khutor Ski Resort, Sochi, Russia

knit
thanks, Helen

Gimme All The Cables Toque pattern by Andrea Kemper

knit
thanks, Millie

HOODED MAGNUM VEST

http://www.cascadeyarns.com/patternsFree/B103_MagnumVest.pdf

knit

Fake Braids pattern by Alpi Alpenrose

knit
DIGGER JACKET

https://www.craftsinstitute.com/media/22196/Digger-Sweater.pdf
knit

Butterfly Cabled Blanket

crochet
thanks, Anna

Granny Ripple Blanket

crochet, vintage
thanks, Phyllis

Cradle purse - This is a child's purse that turns into a cradle with a little doll in it

crochet
ORIGAMI SWING SWEATER

http://www.redheart.com/files/patterns/pdf/LW5627-Origami-Swing-Sweater-Free-Crochet-Pattern.pdf

crochet

Chemo Hat

crochet

WOVEN LOOKING STRIPED BLANKET

http://com.yarnspirations.pattern-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/Bernat_SofteeChunky_WovenLookStripedBlanket_ENG.en_US.pdf

RECIPE

Awesome English Breakfast Muffins

CROCKPOT RECIPE

thanks, Dana

Slow Cooker Creole Chicken and Sausage

SWEETS

thanks, Jane

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Biscotti

ADULT COLORING

CRAFTS

thanks, Ellie

Decor DIY: Painted Glass Bottles

THE ONE TIME I NEEDED A THREAD and NEEDLE!

CHILDREN'S CORNER ... crafts

thanks, Kitty

Easy Silly Bird Marionette DIY tutorial!

PUZZLE

plant with snail jigsaw puzzle

http://www.jigzone.com/puzzles/daily-jigsaw

WORD SEARCH

abolish admit again agree appal begin cane chore clean course

death declare error fresh garden gore green

human lien member note number prize

rams reason region right select situation social spirit story

tempt thoroughly ties torn trade union verse vital voter

SUDOKU ... very hard

solution: 

QUOTE

thanks, Sylvia

CLEVER

Gel Ice Pack -

You can use different size baggies to make different size ice packs. Fill your baggie with dawn dish soap, squeeze out as much air as you can and seal it. Place it in the freezer for 1 hour or more. The longer it's in there the more solid it will become.

Pull out and use as an ice pack for aches and pains (or in summer, put it in your cooler. If using as an ice pack be sure to place a cloth between the pack and the skin. These are reusable too, so just put it back in the freezer when you're done.

thanks for the joke, Helen

The Black Bra (as told by a woman)

I had lunch with 2 of my unmarried friends.   One is engaged, one is a mistress, and I have been married for 20+ years.
 
We were chatting about our relationships and decided to amaze our men by greeting them at the door wearing a black bra, stiletto heels and a mask over our eyes.   We agreed to meet in a few days to exchange notes.
 
Here's how it all went.........
 
My engaged friend:
The other night when my boyfriend came over he found me with a black leather bodice, tall stilettos and a mask. He saw me and said, 'You are the woman of my dreams...I love you.' Then we made passionate love all night long.
 
The mistress:
Me too! The other night I met my lover at his office and I was wearing a raincoat, under it only the black bra, heels and mask over my eyes.   When I opened the raincoat he didn't say a word, but he started to tremble and we had wild sex all night.
 
Then I had to share my story:
When my husband came home I was wearing the black bra, black stockings, stilettos and a mask over my eyes. When he came in the door and saw me he said...........
 
" What's for dinner, Zorro?"

EYE OPENER

thanks, Patty

Crater First Known Use:1613 Etymology:At any given moment, an estimated 20 volcanoes are erupting on Earth. The word crater stretches back to ancient Greece, and has a lot more to do with wine than lava. In fact, the Greek kratēr comes from kerannynai, which means “to mix.”  Of Water And Wine There’s a scene in Homer’s Iliad where Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, competes in a footrace. The prizes are fit for royalty. The runner who came in third would walk away with nearly 28 pounds of gold. The second-best runner would receive a fattened ox. And for the winner, the grandest prize of all: “a mixing-bowl, beautifully wrought, of pure silver… and far [exceeding] all others in the whole world for beauty,” crafted by artisans in Sidon and carried across the sea by the Phoenicians. When the runners took off, Odysseus prayed to the goddess Minerva to lighten his feet. He flew across the finish line, and earned the prized vessel. The mixing bowl was called a krater, and the ancient Greeks used it to mix water with wine. Kraters were ubiquitous; take a look at any depiction of a symposium scene—when men gathered to exchange ideas, philosophize, dine, and, of course, drink—and you’ll likely notice an urn with a foot and a large opening positioned prominently in the room. An 1869 depiction of Plato's symposium, with a krater in the foreground to the right. Credit: Anselm Feuerbach via Wikimedia Commons.  Unlike modern varieties, wine in ancient Greece was typically aged in leather or clay containers, resulting in a very acidic taste and spiking the alcohol content to about 16 percent (compared to today’s wine, which typically contains roughly 12 to 13 percent). It was considered “uncivilized” and “barbarian” to drink the wine undiluted, so the Greeks would mix roughly two parts wine with five parts water in the krater before passing around the wine in a communal cup. In fact, in a surviving fragment of a lost play, the 4th century poet Eubulus wrote: “For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health, the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more—it belongs to bad behavior.” Pinpointing exactly why the word expanded and seeped into our everyday language remains a mystery. But eventually krater morphed into crater, and came to describe any bowl-shaped depression like the one in those ancient Greek vessels. The English cleric and traveler Samuel Purchas was the first to apply the word to the mouth of a volcano in his 1613 work Purchas His Pilgrimage, which covers theological and geographical history from Asia to the Americas. Purchas recounts a violent volcanic explosion in Mexico, the ash of which burned the indigenous people’s crops: “The Vulean, Crater, or mouth whence the fire issued, is about halfe a league in compasse.” And it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who first penned a reference to the craters of the moon in his Conduct of Life in 1860: “Every man wishes to see the ring of Saturn, the satellites and belts of Jupiter and Mars, the mountains and craters in the moon: yet how few can buy a telescope!” From Wine To Lava Ancient kraters may have instigated some libated singing, but some volcanic craters make their own music. Jeffrey B. Johnson, associate professor of geophysics at Boise State University, likes to compare volcanoes to enormous musical instruments. Active volcanoes produce a wave phenomenon called infrasound, which reverberates against the boundaries of the crater, creating resonance. The infrasound is too low for the human ear, but instruments can detect them, in some cases from thousands of miles away. Like an enormous pipe organ or trombone, the geometry of the crater shapes the sound it produces, giving each volcano an individual infrasound “voiceprint.” These voiceprints can tell us valuable things about what kinds of rumblings are normal in a volcano—and when things become not normal. Changes in the way each volcano “speaks” could potentially signal an impending eruption.   Volcán Villarrica in 2005. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Consider the case of Volcán Villarrica in Chile, where major eruptions occur about every 30 years. “[For years], Villarrica had been in its happy place, which was just sort of this lava lake bubbling away deep within the crater,” says Johnson. That all changed in 2015, when the volcano erupted catastrophically, resulting in widespread evacuation and major damage. While other typical volcanic indicators were ambiguous, when Johnson and the team of researchers analyzed the infrasound records, they noticed that in the days leading up to the eruption, the volcano’s infrasound changed drastically. “The infrasound changed its tune from being a resonating system with a nice oscillation and sort of a musical tone to being thunk-like,” he says. “So what can cause that?” Images of Villarrica's crater pre- and post-eruption. You can see discharged volcanic material on the eastern side of the volcano. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team and Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The researchers determined that just before the eruption, the volcano’s lava lake—which had been peacefully gurgling down below—was suddenly sitting up high in the crater. As the lava lake crept up, it effectively shortened the length of the “trombone slide,” altering its infrasound. “As you might imagine, when a lava lake starts to move up into the upper section of the conduit for the first time in 30 years, then you should pay attention,” says Johnson. Of course, Johnson and his team made this connection after the fact, and weren’t able to forecast the Villarrica eruption. “It was a case of the right place at the right time,” he says. The team just happened to have already been monitoring the site for a different research project, unknowingly chronicling the lead up to the eruption. Major eruptions like the one at Villarrica don’t happen very often, and researchers can’t camp out everywhere, all the time—but if they were able to respond to the very first indication of volcanic unrest, Johnson says, it might be a step toward using infrasound to forecast eruptions.