Weather ~ Mowing Sami ~ Brush Hog Dave ~ Picture of the Day ~ US Post Office ~ Mama Mia's Meatball Bake ~ National Lucky Penny Day

 

 

Good 49º scattered clouds morning.

 

Yesterday son Brian and granddaughter Sami came over to help with mowing. Brian used the hand mower and did the front yard, Sami rode the riding lawnmower and mowed a good size area.... she loved doing this!!! 

 

Yesterday Dave came back and finished the brush hogging in the pastures. 

Our temperature topped at 81º.

 

 

Picture of the Day....shopping at Walmart!

 

 

 

 

Interesting about the US Post Office.....

In 1775, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General, the U.S. Post Office was born. So important was the Postmaster General that in 1829 this position was included among those in the President's Cabinet. As America began to grow and new towns and villages began to appear, so too did the Post Office along with them. The dates and postmarks generated from these places often has provided the historian with a window into a given time and place in question. Each postmark is uniquely distinctive with its own name of state and town, in addition to its distinctive date.

 

Post Offices that existed along railroad lines and at various military posts have their own special historical aspect. Mail and postmarks generated from prisoner of war camps during the Civil War, or from aboard naval ships, each with a U.S. Post Office aboard, can and have offered amazing insights into United States history and are avidly sought after by historians and collectors alike.

 

Between 1874 and 1976 post offices were categorized from first to fourth classes based on the amount of revenue they generated, with first being the highest.

 

Before the introduction of stamps, it was the recipient of mail—not the sender—who generally paid the cost of postage, giving the fee directly to the postman on delivery. The task of collecting money for letter after letter greatly slowed the postman on his route. Moreover, the addressee would at times refuse a piece of mail, which then had to be taken back to the Post Office (post office budgets always allowed for an appreciable volume of unpaid-for mail). Only occasionally did a sender pay delivery costs in advance, an arrangement that usually required a personal visit to the Post Office. To be sure, postmasters allowed some citizens to run charge accounts for their delivered and prepaid mail, but bookkeeping on these constituted another inefficiency.

Postage stamps revolutionized this process, leading to universal prepayment; but a precondition for their issue by a nation was the establishment of standardized rates for delivery throughout the country. If postal fees were to remain (as they were in many lands) a patchwork of many different jurisdictional rates, the use of stamps would only produce limited gains in efficiency, for postal clerks would still have to spend time calculating the rates on many letters: only then would senders know how much postage to put on them.

 

^{Congress finally provided for the issuance of stamps by passing an act on March 3, 1847, and the Postmaster-General immediately let a contract to the New York City engraving firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson. The first stamp issue of the U.S. was offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in New York City, with Boston receiving stamps the following day and other cities thereafter. They consisted of an engraved 5-cent red brown stamp depicting Benjamin Franklin (the first postmaster of the U.S.), and a 10-cent value in black with George Washington. Like all U.S. stamps until 1857, they were imperforate.}

 

^{This is the Terminal Annex Post Office in Los Angeles where my father worked for many years. He was in change of the heating and AC.....}

 

^{And if you want to read a lot more, go here:} 

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_history_of_the_United_States}

 

 

 

From Mr. Food

 

Thanks to a few shortcuts, you can have Mama Mia's Meatball Bake on the table in no time. This is an easy dinner recipe that the whole family will love!

 

• 1 (12- to 16-ounce) frozen garlic bread
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
• 1 (32-ounce) bag frozen meatballs, thawed, cut in half
• 1 cup spaghetti sauce
• 10 slices mozzarella cheese

 

1. Preheat oven to 450º.
2. Place garlic bread open face on baking sheet and bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven and reduce heat to 350 degrees.
3. In a small bowl, combine ricotta cheese and Parmesan cheese and evenly spread on garlic bread. Place meatballs on top of cheese and evenly spoon spaghetti sauce over meatballs.
4. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, or until meatballs are heated through. Top with mozzarella cheese and continue baking 3 to 5 more minutes, or until cheese melts.

 

 

 

Historically this date......

1934 – American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.

1939 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Squalus sinks off the coast of New Hampshire during a test dive, causing the death of 24 sailors and two civilian technicians. The remaining 32 sailors and one civilian naval architect are rescued the following day.

2006 – Alaskan stratovolcano Mount Cleveland erupts.

2010 – Jamaican police begin a manhunt for drug lord Christopher "Dudus" Coke, after the United States requested his extradition, leading to three days of violence during which at least 73 bystanders are killed.

2015 – At least 46 people are killed as a result of floods caused by a tornado in Texas and Oklahoma.

And births this date include...

1883 – Douglas Fairbanks, American actor (d. 1939)

 

1912 – John Payne, American actor (d. 1989)

 

1931 – Barbara Barrie, American actress

 

1933 – Joan Collins, English actress

.... 5 husbands!

 

1958 – Drew Carey, American actor and comedian

 

 

 

All I know. Nuff said. Have a good Monday. Ciao.

xo Sue Mom Bobo

 

On May 23rd, National Lucky Penny Day hopes you’ll have good luck all day long.

See a penny, pick it up. All day long you’ll have good luck.

When you are out and about, look on the ground for pennies.  It just might be your lucky day!

Years ago a penny was able to buy something. (Check out National Taffy Day – to see what we used to get for a penny.) Today, due to inflation, the penny does not buy much of anything. The metal value and cost of minting pennies exceed their face value. Many nations have stopped minting equivalent value coins and efforts are being made to end the routine use of pennies in several countries including the United States.

The United States first issued a one-cent coin produced by a private mint in 1787.  Benjamin Franklin designed it. On one side, it read “Mind Your Business” and the other “We Are One.” This coin was made of 100% copper and was larger than today’s penny. It came to be known as the Fugio cent. However, the first pennies struck in a United States Mint weren’t produced until 1793, but they were also made of copper.

But why are pennies lucky? Well at one time, metals, including copper were precious material. Finding a penny was a valuable find. Sometimes finding a penny had more to do with the daily battle between good and evil. Do you only pick up a penny if it’s head side up? Superstitions carry on from generation to generation. And with some of them the rule that says if you find a penny tail side up, you should flip it over and leave it head side up for the next lucky person to find.

On a wedding day, there’s also a saying that leads people to put a penny in the bride’s shoe. It’s more likely to lead to a blister than to bring good luck in that case.

HOW TO OBSERVE

See how many pennies you can find. It just might be your lucky day!