First Day Of 2014

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TODAY IS THE TOMORROW YOU

WORRIED ABOUT YESTERDAY

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Tucson Weather Today

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I have only one New Year's resolution, and that is to clean up this here messy, cluttered apartment, especially picking up and re-shelving all these unsightly books and discarding all these printed notes and foolish half-finished scraps of senseless stories scattered all over the place.

 And do it today.

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Did You Know . . .?

The royal baby could inherit 1,000,000,000 dollars ($1 billion) some day. The wealthiest person in Britain’s royal family is the royal baby’s great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.

Her assets have an estimated worth of $600 million.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

In 45 B.C., New Year's Day was celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar took effect. Celebration of New Year's Day in January fell out of practice during the Middle Ages, and even those who strictly adhered to the Julian calendar did not observe the New Year exactly on January 1. The reason for the latter was that Caesar failed to calculate the correct value for the solar year as 365.242199 days, not 365.25 days. Thus, an 11-minute-a-year error added seven days by the year 1000, and 10 days by the mid-15th century.

The Roman church became aware of this problem, and in the 1570s Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius came up with a new calendar. In 1582, the Gregorian calendar was implemented, omitting 10 days for that year and establishing the new rule that only one of every four centennial years should be a leap year. Since then, people around the world have gathered en masse on January 1 to celebrate the precise arrival of the New Year.

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WORD FOR TODAY

bleb
noun
1.  A small blister or swelling.
2.  A bubble.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Frank A. Langella, Jr.

(born January 1, 1938)

Frank Langella is an American stage and film actor. He has won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Nixon in the play Frost/Nixon and was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the same role in the film, Frost/Nixon (2008).

Sophie Okonedo

(born January 1, 1968)

Sophie Okonedo is a British actress, who has starred in UK and US productions. In 1991, she made her acting debut in the British coming-of-age drama, Young Soul Rebels. She has received an Academy Award nomination for her critically acclaimed role in Hotel Rwanda, a Golden Globe nomination for Tsunami: The Aftermath, and BAFTA nominations for Criminal Justice and Mrs. Mandela. Her other film roles included Aeon Flux, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Dirty Pretty Things, Skin and The Secret Life of Bees.

Verne J. Troyer

(born January 1, 1969)

Verne Troyer is an American actor and stunt performer. Troyer is notable for his height of 2 ft 8 in, the result of cartilage-hair hypoplasia dwarfism, making him one of the shortest men in the world. He is best known for playing Mini-Me in the Austin Powers series of comedy films.

Sarah Anne Wayne Callies

(born June 1, 1977)

Sarah Wayne Callies is an American actress who is best known for her roles as Sara Tancredi in the Fox television series Prison Break and Lori Grimes in AMC's The Walking Dead.

Note:
Today is also the birthday of J.D. Salinger and The Writer's Almanac has a nice salute to the man.

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The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

     

FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

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Tucson Weather Today

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I had an enjoyable New Year's Eve dinner out at Mike and JoAnn's (and Eva's) house.  Tim and Michelle and their two dogs, Cedric and Tycho were there also. Mike fixed his famous Chicken & Noodles and JoAnn baked a special loaf of awesome bread and a dessert she called Berry Skillet Cobbler that was loaded with blueberries and strawberries

JoAnn's Berry Skillet Cobbler

All was delicious. I came home earlier than the others, since I am getting to be an old guy who needs his rest.

No New Year's resolutions this year, except in general to try to do the best job I can do at whatever I set out to do each day after day after day.

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WORD FOR TODAY

redoubt
noun
1. A small, often temporary defensive fortification.
2. A reinforcing earthwork or breastwork within a permanent rampart.
3. A protected place of refuge or defense.

From Wikipedia:
A redoubt is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, though others are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldiers outside the main defensive line and can be a permanent structure or a hastily-constructed temporary fortification. The word means "a place of retreat". Redoubts were a component of the military strategies of most European empires during the colonial era, especially in the outer works of Vauban-style fortresses made popular during the 17th century, although the concept of redoubts has existed since medieval times. A redoubt differs from a redan in that the redan is open in the rear, whereas the redoubt was considered an enclosed work.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


Paul Revere

Born January 1, 1735
Died:   May 10, 1818

Paul Revere was an American silversmith, early industrialist, and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

Paul Revere did not gain immediate fame for his April 1775 "Midnight Ride." In fact, it wasn't until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, which greatly embellished Revere's role, that he became the folk hero we think of today.

Betsy Ross

Born   January 1, 1752
Died  January 30, 1836

Betsy Ross, born Elizabeth Griscom and briefly known by her second and third married names Elizabeth Ashburn and Elizabeth Claypoole, is widely credited with making the first American flag. There is, however, no credible historical evidence that the story is true.

J. Edgar Hoover

Born Jan. 1, 1895
Died May 2, 1972

John Edgar Hooverwas the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972 at age 77. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Late in life and after his death Hoover became a controversial figure, as evidence of his secretive actions became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI. He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders] and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power. Said one journalist in the 1960s, "Hoover does not have to exert pressure, he is pressure".

Rocky Graziano

Born January 1, 1919
Died:   May 22, 1990

Thomas Rocco Barbella, better known as Rocky Graziano, was an American boxer. Graziano was considered one of the greatest knockout artists in boxing history, often displaying the capacity to take his opponent out with a single punch. He was ranked 23rd on The Ring magazine list of the greatest punchers of all time.

Graziano's life story was the basis of the 1956 Oscar-winning drama film Somebody Up There Likes Me, based on his 1955 autobiography of the same title. The film starred Paul Newman and was directed by Robert Wise.


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Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
--Oscar Wilde
  

Happy New Year, 2012

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In the past I have railed about the use (and overuse) of the word very. And it seems that I am not alone in my dislike for that nearly always unnecessary word that has now become totally meaningless.

"Very" is one of those English words that is overused. There are some editors and teachers, I've been told, who routinely eliminate each "very" they come across in an article or paper they are correcting.

Political speakers seem to be addicted to using the word very. A presidential candidate recently stated, "If that were to happen I would be very, very, very surprised." If you are surprised, how can adding multiple repetitions of the word very make you more surprised?

Think about it.

Not long ago I ran across the phrase, "... is a very contemporary novel." Can a novel be very contemporary? I don't think so.

I could be wrong though.

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Baby-back ribs are essentially pork chop bones.

All glammed up for the feast . . .

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After looking back at my earlier blog entries I was struck by the realization of how many of them were born of negativity and unglified by my most judgmental thoughts. If I can keep this in mind, perhaps this trend can be reversed. After all, I am, and always have been, a lover of laughter. But most of my attempts at creating humor have a sharp and cutting edge, and they more often than not bring dark thoughts to the reader, instead of my intended comradely good will.

In this new year, I will try to reverse that trend.

Wish me luck.

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From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.
--Groucho Marx