A Toy Story

A new blonde employee is hired at the Tickle Me Elmo factory, and she reports for her first day promptly at 8 am. By the end of the day, there is a knock at the Personnel Manager’s door.

The Foreman from the assembly line enters and begins to rant about the new employee. He complains that she is incredibly slow, and the whole line is backing up, putting the entire production line behind schedule.

The Personnel Manager decides he should see this for himself, so the two men march down to the factory floor. When they get there, the line is so backed up that there are Tickle Me Elmos all over the factory floor.

At the end of the line stands the new employee surrounded by mountains of Tickle Me Elmos. She has a roll of plush red fabric and a huge bag of small marbles. The two men watch in amazement as she cuts a little piece of fabric, wraps it around two marbles and begins to carefully sew the little package between Elmo’s legs The Personnel Manager bursts into laughter.

After several minutes of hysterics he pulls himself together and approaches the woman.

"I’m sorry," he says to her, barely able to I keep a straight face, "but I think you misunderstood the instructions I gave you this morning. Your job is to give Elmo two test tickles."

Why Norad Tracks Santa on Christmas Eve

From NPR

This Christmas Eve people all over the world will log on to the official Santa Tracker to follow his progress through U.S. military radar.

This all started in 1955, with a misprint in a Colorado Springs newspaper and a call to Col. Harry Shoup's secret hotline at the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD. Shoup's children, Terri Van Keuren, 65, Rick Shoup, 59, and Pam Farrell, 70, recently visited StoryCorps to talk about how the tradition began.

Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. "Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number," she says. "This was the '50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States," Rick says. The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. "And then there was a small voice that just asked, 'Is this Santa Claus?' "

His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying. "And Dad realized that it wasn't a joke," her sister says. "So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho'd and asked if he had been a good boy and, 'May I talk to your mother?' And the mother got on and said, 'You haven't seen the paper yet? There's a phone number to call Santa. It's in the Sears ad.'

Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus." "It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, 'The old man's really flipped his lid this time. We're answering Santa calls,' "

Terri says. "The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,"

Pam says. "And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,"

Rick says. "Dad said, 'What is that?' They say, 'Colonel, we're sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?' Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, 'This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.'

Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, 'Where's Santa now?' "

Terri says. "And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, 'Thank you, Colonel,' for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information," she says. "You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he's known for."

"Yeah," Rick says, "it's probably the thing he was proudest of, too."

The NORAD Santa tracking center

And ever since then on Christmas Eve, NORAD tracks Santa's ride across the earth. These days it is staffed by volunteers.

The True Story of Santa Claus

He's fat, he's jolly, he says "Ho, ho, ho," drives a sleigh and delivers presents chimney to chimney. But who is he really, and where did he come from before he took up his mythical residence at the North Pole? The Santa Claus character is based on a Roman Catholic bishop, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, who was known for his generosity and reputed to have left gifts for children, said Dr. Foster Eich, a retired pediatrician in Florence and author of "The True Story of St. Nicholas, who is also called Santa Claus" (available at Episcopal Book Store for $15.95).

Eich, also an Episcopal priest who serves as priest associate at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Florence, took up the hobby of researching St. Nicholas about 25 years ago. "This is what we should tell children about Santa Claus,"

Eich said. "He was bishop of Myra, in what's eastern Turkey, then the Greek-speaking Roman Empire. He was born in 280 A.D." The name "Claus" derived as a corruption in pronunciation of the name, "Nicholas," Eich said. "Children had a lot of problem saying St. Nicholas," Eich said. "St. Nicholas is a little hard to say. Children started simplifying it to Santa Claus."

The feast day of St. Nicholas, Dec. 6, was celebrated by the Dutch as a gift-giving day when children put out their shoes to be filled with goodies by St. Nick, who had evolved into a mystical gift-giver with a white beard.

The Calvinist Protestants of northern Germany moved the gift-giving to Christmas and dressed St. Nick in fur instead of bishop's robes. The customs began to emigrate to America in the 1600s.

"Dutch children brought the custom to America," Eich said. In Holland to this day gifts are given Dec. 6.

St. Nicholas underwent an image changeover that got its biggest boost from a poem by the biblical scholar Clement Moore, who taught in Episcopal seminaries. Moore's 1822 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," set the tone for the modern Santa story.

"The image, the picture of him we have is from Clement Moore," Eich said. "He had a man working on his farm who was Dutch. The description fits his farmhand. Moore rode down in a sleigh to pick up some things and on the way home he thought up the poem.

The poem is called, 'A Visit from St. Nicholas.' Nowhwere in it does Moore call him Santa Claus. Clearly, we are talking about the same person."

In the 1860s, cartoonist Thomas Nast refined the image of Santa Claus, and in the 1930s Coca-Cola advertising cartoonist Haddon Sundblom helped complete the evolution into a jolly, oversized elf with a kindly face.

Gradually, the religious image was fully transformed into a secular icon. St. Nicholas of Myra was represented in medieval art holding four loaves of bread as a symbol of his generosity.

While archbishop of Lycia, Nicholas was supposed to have helped avert a food shortage by persuading several ships traveling from Constantinople to Alexandria to leave a year's supply of grain when they sought refuge in the harbor of Myra during a storm.

According to legend, he told the ship captains their hoppers would still be full of grain when they reached port, and the prediction proved true. The bishop's persuasion saved many from starvation, so the story goes.

Nicholas may have been infused with some of the magical traits of the Norse god with the flowing beard, called Odin or Woden, who galloped through the air on his eight-legged horse.

Reliable historical information about the real St. Nicholas is hard to come by. St. Nicholas was supposed to have been imprisoned and released at the Council of Nicaea, but no record exists of him taking part in that meeting.

"He is not on the records of the Council," Eich said. "That may be because according to the story, he slapped Arias over his heresy and got kicked out."

No written records of Nicholas exist except those dating 200 years after his death. In medieval times, all sorts of legends sprang up surrounding St. Nicholas.

The most famous one is of the man who couldn't afford to pay the dowry for his three daughters to be married. "In those days a girl had to have a certain amount of money to get married," Eich said. "They might have to be sold into slavery into order to have food." Nicholas sneaks in at night and leaves the dowry so the young women can get married. "He tossed bags of gold in their stockings or shoes," Eich said. "I think the story of the three girls is true. It's a very credible story.

"Even as recently as the early 1960s in Europe, the great celebration and the day of gift-giving was Jan. 6, Epiphany, a commemoration of the Magi bringing gifts to Jesus.

The 12-day season of Christmas runs from Dec. 25 to Epiphany. The Americanization of Europe has gradually overshadowed Epiphany with an American-style Christmas.

"I'm reclaiming him as a Christian symbol," Eich said.

Does This Remind You Of Anyone?

Don't Mess With Old People

A little old lady went to buy cat food. She picked up three cans, but was told by the clerk, "I'm sorry, but we can't sell this to you without proof you have a cat. Too many seniors are buying cat foot to eat. Management wants proof that you are buying this for your cat."

So the lady went home, brought in her cat and was sold the cat food. . . .

The next day, she tried to buy two cans of dog food and was again told she couldn't buy them without proof. So the lady went home, brought in her dog and was sold the dog food. . . .

One day later, she brought in a box with a hole in the lid and asked the cashier to stick her finger in the hole. The cashier said, "No, you might have a snake in there."

The lady assured her that there was nothing in the box that would harm her.

So the cashier put her finger into the box, quickly pulled it out and exclaimed, "That smells like crap." . . .

The lady replied, "It is. I want to buy two rolls of toilet paper."

Carrie Nation in Cincinnati

Vine Street was a street of bars.

In 1890, from the Ohio River to McMicken, a 2-mile stretch, there were 136 bars on Vine Street alone. Between 12th & 13th Streets it is said there were 23 bars, saloons, halls, and cafes.

In 1840 Cincinnati had eight breweries for a population of 46,000. 
In 1860 there were 36 breweries for 200,000 people. 
In 1862 there were 38 breweries. 
By 1870 production rose to 656,000 barrels. 
In another ten years it soared to 1,115,000 barrels. 35,700,000 gallons of beer of which a little less than 1/2 was exported.

Naturally, the rest was consumed locally.

In 1879 a reporter for the New York Times wrote an article about the incredible drinking habits of Cincinnatians. "At the Kauffmann brewery the employees consume 18 kegs of beer daily, averaging 35 glasses apiece. The employees at Moerlein's brewery averaged 25 glasses per day. The J. G. Sohn and Co. brewery allowed their employees 5 kegs of beer daily."

"This was a common practice in those days and I don't understand how they actually accomplished their jobs without killing themselves or their fellow workers."

In 1887 there were an amazing 1,837 saloons for a population of 225,000. In 1890 it dropped to only 1,810 for a population of 297,000.

This meant since only adult males used saloons there was, in 1890, 
ONE SALOON FOR EVERY 37 MEN.

In 1890 there were 34 saloons on Court St., 41 on Liberty St., 55 on both Walnut andMain Street. Central Ave. had 100 saloons, but the all-time high was Vine St. with 136. Between 12th & 13th Streets there were 23 saloons. On Fifth St. between Main & Sycamore, for one block, 20 saloons flourished.

A corner location was preferred because it gave the bar the most exposure to potential customers, and if it were illegally selling beer on Sunday, it was easier to spot the police.

The person that is most well known for her hatred of saloons was Carrie Nation.

She arrived in Cincinnati in 1901 with her famous hatchet to wage battle with demon alcohol. Most tavern owners knowing Carrie's propensity for taking her ax to glass windows, ordered new glass ahead of her visit.

Carrie was asked later why she had not broken any windows was heard to say: "My goodness, child, if I had undertaken to break all the windows of all the saloons on your Vine Street I would have dropped from exhaustion before I had gone a block".

Before leaving the Atlantic Garden, a woman lush laid her head on Carrie's shoulder and cried. She then left promising the temperance leader she would mend her ways and lead a better life. Ten minutes later Carrie noticed that her earrings were missing.

Carrie forgave the woman for lifting them.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

This song was penned by the Band’s guitarist, Robbie Robertson. In just a few lyrics Robertson sums up the last days of the Civil War and the frustrating life endured by white Southerners “in the winter of ’65…”

Robertson must have done a lot of research to write this song. The original capitol of the Confederate States was Montgomery Alabama, but in 1861 the capitol was moved to Richmond, Virginia. The once sleepy burg was transformed into a bustling metropolis with the Confederate Army coming and going. This was where a hospital for the wounded was set up as well as a prison.

It also became a strategic point for the United States Army to capture. The citizens of Richmond became use to the cannon fire and fighting that went on just outside of the city.

Burned out Richmond

And in the same spirit of the looting of Ferguson, Richmond residents held what they referred to as Starvation Balls. In an effort to use up any food, clothing and provisions Richmond’s citizens took provisions, shoes and clothing in what they believed was a show of Southern patriotism. This mislaid intent left the soldiers and most men, women and children barefoot, wearing rags and starving.

General Robert E. Lee was able to hold back the invaders until the spring of 1865 when the Union Army captured this city on April 3rd of 1865.

George Stoneman

George Stoneman Jr. was a United States Calvary officer. In Chancellorsville, under the command of General Hooker, Stoneman failed in an attempt to penetrate enemy lines.

General Wm Sherman

Later during the war and this time under the command of General Sherman, Stoneman was captured by the Confederacy, but later exchanged for other prisoners. After this incident he led raids into Virginia and destroyed rail road tracks to prevent supplies from reaching the South.

A member of my family lived in Tennessee for many years and found it odd that some of the locals truly believed the South was going to rise again. Those of us that have grown up north of the Mason-Dixon line will never have a clue at the incredible loss suffered by families living in the South.

And even though this occurred over 150 years ago it is still being felt by the ancestors of those killed and injured in the awful Civil War.

We are now living in the midst of such divisiveness that has not been seen since those long ago days. The flames of this fire are being stoked and encouraged by men that are in positions of power and have seemingly not learned from history.

May God have mercy upon us and let us not face another Civil War.

Virgil Kane is the name 

And I served on the Danville train 

'Till Stoneman's cavalry came 

And tore up the tracks again 

In the winter of '65 

We were hungry, just barely alive 

By May the 10th, Richmond had fell

It's a time I remember, oh so well 

The night they drove old Dixie down 

And the bells were ringing 

The night they drove old Dixie down 

And the people were singing 

They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, la" 

Back with my wife in Tennessee 

When one day she called to me

"Virgil, quick, come see,

There goes Robert E. Lee!" 

Now, I don't mind chopping wood

And I don't care if the money's no good

You take what you need 

And you leave the rest 

But they should never

Have taken the very best 

The night they drove old Dixie down 

And the bells were ringing 

The night they drove old Dixie down

And all the people were singing 

They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, la" 

Like my father before me

I will work the land

And like my brother above me

Who took a rebel stand

He was just 18, proud and brave

But a Yankee laid him in his grave

I swear by the mud below my feet 

You can't raise a Kane back up 

When he's in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down

And the bells were ringing 

The night they drove old Dixie down

And all the people were singing 

They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, la" 

 The night they drove old Dixie down 

And all the bells were ringing 

The night they drove old Dixie down

 And the people were singing 

They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, la"

Someone Made A Map of U.K. Towns With Rude Names

Irene Sendler - Never Forget This Lady

Look at this lady - Let us never forget!
The world hasn't just become wicked...it's always been wicked.
The prize doesn't always go to the most deserving.

Irena Sendler 
Died 12 May 2008 (aged 98)
Warsaw, Poland

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a plumbing/sewer specialist.

She had an 'ulterior motive'.

She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews (being German).

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family.

Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was not selected.

President Obama won one year before becoming President for his work as a community organizer for ACORN

and

Al Gore won also --- for a slide show on Global Warming.

In MEMORIAM - 63 YEARS LATER

I'm doing my small part by forwarding this message.

I hope you'll consider doing the same...

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated!

Now, more than ever, with Iran, and others, claiming the HOLOCAUST to be 'a myth'.

It's imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

The Who Concert Tragedy

December 4th Cincinnati Enquirer Front page

Today marks the 35th anniversary of The Who concert tragedy in Cincinnati. This concert was a sellout event with over 18 thousand tickets sold.  Almost 15 thousand were for unassigned general admission, sometimes referred to as "festival seating." Those concert goers who wanted to be as close to the stage as possible could either arrive early and get in line first or push their way to the front.

Some entrances were locked to prevent gate crashing. Prior to the show a sizeable crowd gathered at one of the entrances. They heard The Who perform a late sound check and believed the concert had started. People began pushing their way in to the event. Some were trampled to death and some died of asphyxiation. Eleven people were killed and twenty-three were injured.

From Cincinnati Enquirer

Those killed were Teva Ladd, Walter Adams Jr., James Warmoth, Phillip Snyder, David Heck, Stephan Preston, Peter Bowes, Connie Burns, Bryan Wagner, Karen Morrison and Jacqueline Eckerle. The newspaper photograph above was taken by Ed Riemeke on that terrible evening.

.