Do more of what's ever working for you

If you've just sobered up from you party, here's a simple resolution for 2024:



You know you need to hydrate — drink more water.


Today's gift count (156): you currently have Nine ladies dancing,

16 young woman engaged in the dairy industry (and possibly their union rep. I've also never considered whether or not the cows come with them), 21 Swans making a racket, 24 geese a' laying (check to see if you can make omelets for all those people), 25 golden rings, 24 calling birds, 21 French hens, 16 turtledoves and 9 partridges in their respective pear trees.

The nine ladies dancing represent the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22. These fruits are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.) It's also the feast days of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen, both known as defenders and advocates for the Nicene Creed.



With this many people in the house, I suggest that you invest in more toilet paper and a good plunger.


January 2, 1931 -
Rouben Mamoulian adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, and Rose Hobart opened in NYC on this date.



Mr Hyde's appearance was based on the Neanderthal man. The heavy make up he wore as Hyde almost damaged Fredric March's face.


January 2, 1953 -
NBC-TV premiered The Life of Riley, starring William Bendix on this date.



The Life of Riley started as a radio program starring William Bendix on the Blue Network (ABC) from January 16, 1944 to June 8, 1945 later moving to NBC from September 8, 1945 to June 29, 1951.


January 2, 1955 -
The Bob Cummings' series, The Bob Cummings Show, (AKA Love That Bob in syndication) premiered on NBC TV (later moving to CBS) on this date.



On this show, Robert Cummings plays a womanizing photographer who works with beautiful models. Five years before the show aired, he had starred in a similar role in 1950's The Petty Girl, In which he played a "cheesecake" artist who worked with beautiful models.


January 2, 1971 -
George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, his first album released after the breakup of The Beatles, begins a seven-week run at the top of the US albums chart on this date.



Harrison had Phil Spector produce the album and brought in some outstanding musicians to play on it, including Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Those four formed Derek and the Dominos during the sessions. When they were done with All Things Must Pass, they went to England and started touring and working on their own album, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, which was released around the same time as All Things Must Pass.


January 2, 1978 -
The influential science fiction TV series Blake’s 7 premiered on BBC1 in the UK on this date.



Paul Darrow (Kerr Avon), Michael Keating (Vila Restal) and Jacqueline Pearce (Supreme Commander Servalan) are the only actors to have stayed with the series throughout its entire run.


January 2, 2010 –
Kesha's song Tik Tok hit #1 on the Billboard charts on this date.



When Kesha's producer Dr. Luke telephoned her after hearing a demo to say he'd like to hook up with the then-unknown singer-songwriter, Nicole Richie took the call and hung up on him. At the time, Kesha and her mom were filming an episode of the reality show The Simple Life as the host family to Paris Hilton and Richie. Fortunately, he eventually got Kesha on the phone and the rest was history.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
January 2, 1492 -
(Perhaps drink a Cervezas Alhambra while reading this) After a siege that began in 1491, Abu 'abd-Allah Muhammad XII (also known as Boabdil) surrendered Granada (the last Moorish holdout in Spain) to Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Castile and Aragon, on this date.



The incredibly elaborate ceremony, culminating with the handing over of the keys to the Alhambra, brought to an end over 700 years Muslim rule in Spain.

Legend has it that as the royal party moved south toward exile, they reached a rocky prominence which gave a last view of the city. Muhammad XII reined in his horse and, surveying for the last time the Alhambra and the green valley that spread below, burst into tears. When his mother approached him she said : "Weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man". The spot from which Muhammad XII looked for the last time on Granada is known as "the Moor's last sigh" (el último suspiro del Moro.)


January 2, 1872 -
Brigham Young was arrested on charges of bigamy for having 25 wives on this date.

A cursory look through the Brigham Young Archives reveals that it's the first night he was able to sleep with both eyes closed in years.


January 2, 1882 -
The 28 year old Oscar Wilde arrived in New York City on this date to delver a series of lectures across the U.S.A.

When a customs inspector asked him if he had anything to declare he replied, "Nothing but my genius." A cursory look through the Oscar Wilde Collection does not say whether or not he would submit to a full body cavity search by the TSA.


January 2, 1890 -
Alice Sanger was hired as a stenographer for President Benjamin Harrison on this date.

Sanger was the first woman to work a non-domestic service job in the White House, and her appointment was thought to be an olive branch to the growing suffragist movement.


January 2, 1923 -
A Ku Klux Klan surprise attack on a black residential area of Rosewood, Florida, killed 8 people. A white woman fearful of being caught in an affair, falsely claimed that she was raped and beaten by a black man. Violence exploded as a white mob tried to string up a black man for information on an alleged rape



The all-black town of Rosewood, a north Florida community of 120 people, was burned to the ground. At least 6 blacks and 2 whites died and almost every building was burned.


January 2, 1935 -
Bruno Richard Hauptmann went on trial in Flemington, N.J., on charges of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of aviator Charles A. and Anne Lindbergh on this date.



(He would later be found guilty and executed for that crime that he probably did not committed.)


January 2, 1939 -
Time Magazine published its annual Man of the Year issue on this date for the year 1938. Time had chosen Adolf Hitler as the man who "for better or worse" (as Time founder Henry Luce expressed it) had most influenced events of the preceding year.

The cover picture featured Hitler playing "his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on." This picture was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper, a German Catholic who had fled Hitler's Germany.

Who came in second - Benito Mussolini.


January 2, 1942 -
33 members of a German spy ring headed by Frederick or Fritz Joubert Duquesne were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison.

The Duquesne Spy Ring, as they were known, is the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions.



The 1945 film The House on 92nd Street was also a thinly disguised version of the Duquesne Spy Ring saga of 1941, but differs from historical fact. It won screenwriter Charles G. Booth an Academy Award for the best original motion picture story.


January 2, 1959 -
The Soviet Union launched the satellite Luna 1 on this date, the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon. The plan for Luna 1, (containing two metallic pennants with the Soviet coat of arms to mark its presence there,) had been to conduct in-flight scientific measurements then crash into the moon.



A malfunction in the ground-based control system caused an error in the rocket's burn time and the spacecraft missed the target and flew by the Moon. It was the first man-made object to reach the escape velocity of the Earth.


January 2, 1960 -
U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.



I wonder how that turned out for him.


January 2, 1974 -
President Richard Nixon signed a bill lowering the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo.

Leadfoots everywhere cried out in pain.



And so it goes