Shop Small — Small Business Saturday

First there was Black Friday, dating as far back as the 1930s, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, which features big box retail stores blasting huge sales and savings for Christmas shoppers — a day which has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season in the US, and most major retailers open very early (and more recently during overnight hours) and offer promotional sales. Then came Cyber Monday in November of 2005, persuading people to shop online for huge Christmas savings. This happens on the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving in the United States.

First observed on November 27, 2010, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize small, local brick and mortar businesses, helping increase revenue for the "small guy" and support their local communities. Small Business Saturday is a registered trademark of American Express corporation. The "holiday" was conceived and promoted by American Express via a nationwide radio and television advertising campaign.

Small Business Saturday UK began in the UK in 2013 after the success of Small Business Saturday in America.

• 2010 — Small Business Saturday launched, encouraging people across the country to support small, local businesses.
• 2011 — Governors, mayors, senators, and President Barack Obama all voiced their support for Small Business Saturday. The US Senate officially recognized the day.
• 2012 — 73.9 million people shopped Small Business Saturday.
• 2013 — With continued growth, more individuals and local organizations supported the day as Neighborhood Champions.
• 2014 — An estimated $14.3 billion was spent at Small Businesses across the board.

Hashtags:

• #ShopSmall
• #SmallBizSat
• #SmallBusinessSaturday
• #SmallBizSaturday

Halloween

Halloween (or All Hallows’ Evening), is a celebration observed in a number of countries on October 31, the eve of All Hallows' Day. It begins the 3-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed.

All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain.

Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, and watching horror films.

The word Halloween (or Hallowe'en) dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin, meaning "hallowed evening" or "holy evening". It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows' Eve (the evening before All Hallows' Day). In Scots, the word "eve" is even, and this is contracted to e'en or een. Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en evolved into Halloween. Although the phrase "All Hallows'" is found in Old English, "All Hallows' Eve" derived about 1556.

A Quiet Downtown Hannibal, Missouri

I could not resist getting out this morning on a quiet Labor Day morning and showing a view of Hannibal, Missouri's historic riverfront on the mighty Mississippi River.  This was about 7:00am today, a late summer morning.

Obituary for Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

Knowing when to come in out of the rain;

Why the early bird gets the worm;

Life isn't always fair;

And maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death,

by his parents, Truth and Trust,

by his wife, Discretion,

by his daughter, Responsibility,

and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 5 stepbrothers;

I Know My Rights

I Want It Now

Someone Else Is To Blame

I'm A Victim

Pay me for Doing Nothing

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Anna Mae Dickinson

Anna Mae Dickinson was 8 when she lost her father and narrowly escaped death on the Titanic

She was 11 years old when she lost her Aunt Olivia in the torpedoing of the Lusitania

She was 31 when she lost her cousin Alfred in the Hindenburg explosion

She was 37 when she lost her nephew Thomas in the bombing of Pearl Harbor

And Ms Dickinson was 97 when her apartment was battered by the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Interesting, Obscure Facts

The "YKK" on your zipper stands for “Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha”.

The name Jessica was created by Shakespeare in the play Merchant of Venice.

Russia has a larger surface area than Pluto.

Hippo milk is pink.

The toy Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

The heart of a blue whale is so big, a human can swim through the arteries.

Not once in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme does it mention that he’s an egg.

Armadillos nearly always give birth to identical quadruplets.

The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.

A strawberry isn’t a berry but a banana is.

Mammoths went extinct 1,000 years after the Egyptians finished building the Great Pyramid.

Nintendo was founded as a trading card company back in 1889.

Alaska is simultaneously the most northern, the most western, and the most eastern state in the U.S.

Honey never spoils.

There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth.

And there’s enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of water.

For every human on Earth there are approximately 1.6 million ants. The total weight of all those ants is approximately the same as the total weight of all the humans on Earth.

An octopus has three hearts.

You can’t hum while holding your nose.

It rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.

There are more atoms in a glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans on Earth.

Sand Under Microscope

WD40 Advertisement

Pretty funny advertisement.

The 3rd of June ... Another Sleepy, Dusty Delta Day

Considering today was the 3rd of June, I only felt it befitting to share the story behind one of my favorite songs:

"Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 ode song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller.

The song is a first-person narrative that reveals a Southern Gothic tale in its verses by including the dialog of the narrator's family at dinner time on the day that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

The song begins with the narrator, her brother and her father returning, after morning chores on the farm, to the family house for dinner — on June 3. After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, "Mama" says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," apparently to his death.

At the dinner table, the narrator's father is unsurprised at the news and says, "Well, Billie Joe never had a lick o' sense; pass the biscuits, please" and mentions that there are "five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow." Although her brother seems to be somewhat taken aback ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday.... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), he's not shocked enough to forego a second piece of pie. The brother recalls that while he was with his friends Tom and Billie Joe, they had put a frog down the narrator's back at the Carroll County Picture Show, and that he had seen her and Billie Joe together last Sunday speaking after church.

Late in the song, Mama questions the narrator's complete change of mood ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite") and then recalls a visit earlier that morning by Brother Taylor, the local preacher, who mentioned that he had seen Billie Joe and a girl who looked very much like the narrator herself and they were "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge."

In the song's final verse, a year has passed, during which the narrator's brother has married Becky Thompson, and moved away ("bought a store in Tupelo"). Also, her father died from a viral infection, which has left her mother despondent. ("And now mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything".) The narrator herself now visits Choctaw Ridge often, picking flowers there to drop from the Tallahatchie Bridge into the murky waters flowing beneath.

Questions arose among the listeners: what did Billie Joe and his girlfriend throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did Billie Joe commit suicide? Speculation ran rampant after the song hit the airwaves, and Gentry said in a November 1967 interview that it was the question most asked of her by everyone she met. She named flowers, an engagement ring, a draft card, a bottle of LSD pills, and an aborted baby as the most often guessed items. Although she knew definitely what the item was, she would not reveal it, saying only "Suppose it was a wedding ring." "It's in there for two reasons," she said. "First, it locks up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl telling the story, the girl at the table. Second, the fact that Billie Joe was seen throwing something off the bridge — no matter what it was — provides a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day."

The bridge mentioned in this song collapsed in June 1972. It crossed the Tallahatchie River at Money, about ten miles north of Greenwood, Mississippi, and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967 issue of Life Magazine contained a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge.

(Extracted from Wikipedia.)

Flemish Hunting Deck

The Flemish Hunting Deck is a set of 52 playing cards owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is significant because it is the only complete set of ordinary playing cards from the 15th century. Estimate ranges of manufacture are between 1470 and 1480.

The set of cards is a complete regular set of playing cards, consisting of four suits with a king, queen, jack and ten pip cards. The suits are based on hunting items, consisting of game nooses, hound tethers, horns, and dog collars. The shown figures display fashion of the era, with short jackets, shortly cut hair and pointy shoes.

The cards are in very good condition, indicating they were used very little or not at all. The Dutch name for the set is Hofjaren Jachtpakket which translates as Courtyears hunting set.