Geography Awareness Week

Thank you very much Mr David Medley. Why Am I thanking him? He was my 9th grade geography teacher, he hounded, nagged, and drove me nuts. When it was the last few days of 9th grade, I gave him this little thing my mom had found. It was a tiny car that had the headlights as pens, the license plate was a pencil sharpener, and other little things on it. He loved it, the last day of school he gave me a card that said *to the only student who gave me both a car and a hard time.*
He gave me an appreciation of maps, and geography, that although I already had, he made me more aware of what is going on around us.
Today, my room is plastered in maps, from all over the world, Japan, Dublin, Australia, and of course various states. And friends have sent me maps of their towns, and pointed out their street.


World Kindness Day
This is a very simple basic idea......can you be kind, nice, generous, to anyone you see? Are we angry, bitter, holding grudges because of preconceived ideas, or slights against us? I remember when I about 7 or 8, my sisters and I were sitting there talking about religion and people in the world, and I commented that I loved everyone. Cathy, one of my foster sisters (my parents were foster parents), argued with me, she said that since I don't KNOW everyone, I can't love everyone. Even then, I knew the difference between deep abiding love for another person, and having a basic love of life, to at least give a tinkers damn about others in this world.
Do we help others, even if we don't know them? Are we willing to stretch our hands and hearts out, to be there for others?
I have honestly known four people in my life that have exemplified that way of life. My mother, my uncle (Don Stewart), my grandfather (Duane Smith) and one of my cousins. Every single one of these people would not only give the shirt off their back for you, but do what they could to help you stand up, and fight. Unfortunately we have lost both Don and my grandfather. But they are in God's heart and memory, and will be given their reward. Whom do you prize in your life, and do they show qualities, that give you strength to be a better person? And can you share those qualities with others?

International Tongue Twister Day
What is your favorite tongue twister?
Mine is (said very quickly to annoy people, my ex HATED when I said this, lol)
"My pulmonary pump palpitates purple peanut butter for you" (basically it means, "ask me if I care")
Jo says hers is "when you get your eye teeth pulled out, and you can't speak splain for sputterin'" LOL I like that one!
Here is a site that is very cool!
http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/

Here are just a few I have found:

A good cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies

I saw a saw that could out saw any other saw I ever saw.

Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said "this butter's bitter! But a bit
of better butter will but make my butter better" So she bought some better
butter, better than the bitter butter, and it made her butter better so 'twas
better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter! - sent in by Nick (warwickschool )


Black bug bit a big black bear. But where is the big black bear that the big black bug bit?

A big bug bit the little beetle but the little beetle bit the big bug back.

Today in History:
1002 - English king Ethelred II launches massacre of Danish settlers
1553 - English Lady Jane Grey/bishop Cranmer accused of high treason
1775 - American Revolutionary forces capture Montreal
1789 - Ben Franklin writes "Nothing . . . certain but death & taxes"
1830 - Oliver Wendell Holmes publishes "Old Ironsides"
1839 - 1st US anti-slavery party, Liberty Party, convenes in NY
1843 - Mt Rainier in Washington State erupts
1849 - Peter Burnett elected 1st governor of California
1851 - 1st meeting of anti-revolutionary "Netherlands & Orange"
1851 - Telegraph connection between London-Paris linked
1865 - 1st US gold certificates issued
1865 - PT Barnum's New American museum opens in Bridgeport
1895 - 1st shipment of canned pineapple from Hawaii
1913 - 1st modern elastic brassiere patented by Mary Phelps Jacob (for all the women who say, it HAD to be a man who invented the bra.....sorry!)
1918 - Monarch Friedrich of Waldeck & Pyrmont abdicates throne
1918 - Russia cancels Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
1921 - US, France, Japan & British Empire sign a Pacific Treaty
1922 - Black Renaissance begins Harlem NY
1927 - NY-NJ Holland Tunnel, 1st twin-tube underwater auto tunnel, opens
1942 - Minimum draft age lowered from 21 to 18
1956 - Supreme Court strikes down segregation of races on public buses
1982 - Vietnam War Memorial dedicated in Washington DC

Births
1809 - John AB Dahlgren, US Union lt adm/inventor (Civil war Dahlgren-cannon)
1814 - Joseph Hooker, Major General (Union volunteers),
1833 - Edwin Thomas Booth, US, US Hall of Fame/actor (Hamlet) (brother to John Wilkes Booth)
1850 - Robert Louis Stevenson, Scotland, author (Treasure Island)
1917 - Robert Sterling, Newcastle PA, actor (George Kirby-Adv of Topper)
1932 - Richard Mulligan, Bronx NY, actor (Soap, Empty's Nest, Big Bus)
1934 - Garry Marshall, NYC, producer (Laverne & Shirley)
1949 - Whoopi Goldberg, [Caryn Johnson], NYC, actress (Color Purple, Burglar)
1956 - Christopher Noth, actor (Jakarta)
1971 - Noah Hathaway, actor (Troll, Neverending Story) (Neverending Story, favorite all time movie!)


Deaths
1779 - Thomas Chippendale, English furniture maker, dies at 61
1974 - Karen Silkwood, killed in a car crash under suspicious circumstances