Just Kittens (Awww Monday), Inspiring Quote of the Week, and My Neighbors (Poetry Monday)

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Awww Monday is hosted by Sandee at Comedy Plus.

Join us every Monday for Awww...Mondays.  Post a picture that makes you say Awww... and that's it.

Make sure you get the code from Sandee's site, linked above, and leave a link to your post so we can visit you.  What better way to start the week than with a smile!

Just a couple of sweet kittens at the shelter:

If this kitten could talk, he'd say he doesn't really look this goofy, the lady just doesn't take good pictures!

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Sparks, the brainchild of Annie of McGuffy's Reader, is on hiatus, so here's an Inspiring Quote of the Week in her honor.      

source

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Poetry Monday was started by Diane at On The Alberta/Montana Border.  She and Jenny at Procrastinating Donkey take turns providing a theme each week. Mother Owl  and Merry Mae almost alway participate, too.  This weeks theme is Neighbors.           
                

Your neighbors don't look like you,  

Some unobservant people might say.

My response would be that they

Are bipeds with brains, just as we are.

Each has two eyes, one nose, one mouth,

Two ears, hair, arms, legs, they look just like us.

But, they might argue, the ones over there

Have much darker skin.

And, they might add, the ones on the other side

Are a different religion than most of us.

Also, there are the ones a few doors down

That speak another language as well as English!

My response would be, so what?

It just so happens that i like them that way.

We all get along.  We all have jobs.

We all have kids and lives and loves.

Our kids grew up playing together,
Were on the same neighborhood swim team.

We all have cars that break down,

And we have given each other rides.

All of us have had good times and bad times 

and shared them, graduations and weddings and funerals.

And we are neighbors who like each other and if you don't like it,

Then please don't move here.  Thank you.

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Today is:

Constitution Day -- South Africa (the 1993 Constitution, granting blacks the right to vote, was approved)

Day of Ardvi Sura (Aredvi Sura Anahita), Mother of the Stars -- Ancient Persian Calendar (date approximate)

Dia de la Soberania Nacional -- Argentina (Sovereignty Day)

European Antibiotic Awareness Day -- ECDC (because prudent use of antibiotics can help stop antibiotic resistance)   

Feast of the Virgen de Chiquinquirį -- Maracaibo, Venezuela

Global Entrepreneurship Week begins   

Hap-Dancing and Tiger-Tuning -- Fairy Calendar

Independence Day -- Morocco(1956); Western Saraha(1975)

Lhabab Duechen -- Buddhism (Descending Day of Lord Buddha)

     a public holiday in Bhutan, although the exact day off may vary

Married to a Scorpio Support Day -- remembering those married to Scorpios (like me!) and suffering because of it, and encouraging them too hide the flow charts and assert themselves today; sponsored by Wellcat Holidays

National Day -- Oman (trad.; will be observed Nov. 28)

National French Vichyssoise Day

Ned Ludd Memorial Machine-Smashing Day -- internet generated, but enjoy!  i know i will

Proclamation of the Republic -- Latvia (1918)

Push-Button Phone Day -- launched this day in 1963

Revolution Day -- Mexico (obs.)

St. Odo of Cluny's Day (Patron of needed rain)

Total Disregard for Taste Day -- marking the debut of Howard Stern's radio show on this day in 1985

Vertieres Day -- Haiti (Battle of Vertieres and Army Day)

William Tell Day -- the famed apple-off-his-son's-head-shot was today in 1307

Birthdays Today:

Owen Wilson, 1968

Elizabeth Perkins, 1960

Sinbad, 1956

Katy Sagal, 1956

Kevin Nealn, 1953

Andrea Marcvicci, 1948

Jameson Parker, 1947

Wilma Mankiller, 1945

Susan Sullivan, 1944

Linda Evans, 1942

Brenda Vaccaro, 1939

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, 1939

Mickey Mouse, 1928

Alan Shepard, Jr., 1923

John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer, 1909

Imogene Coca, 1908

George Gallup, 1901

Eugene Ormandy, 1899

Clarence Shepard Day, 1874

Dorothy Dix (Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer), 1861

Ignacy Jan Paderewski, 1860

James Edward Sullivan, 1860

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, 1836

Asa Gray, 1810

Louis-Jacques Daguerre, 1787

Sojourner Truth, 1787

Carl Maria von Weber, 1786

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Star Trek: Generations(Film), 1994

Malcolm X(Film), 1992

Calvin and Hobbes(Comic strip), 1985 (in this first strip, Calvin catches Hobbes in a tiger trap baited with a tuna sandwich)

"See It Now"(TV), 1951

"Skin of Our Teeth"(Wilder play), 1943

Steamboat Willie (a/k/a Mickey Mouse), 1928

US Uniform Time Zone Plan, 1883 (on this date, the railroads adopted the current uniform time zone plan; it wasn't legally mandated until 1918)

Today in History:

Old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated, 326

The Japanese Emperor Kammy relocates the residence of Nara to Kioto, 794

William Tell shoots the apple off his son's head, 1307

The Holland/Zealand dikes break during a storm, resulting in thousands of deaths, 1421

The first English printed book, "Dictes & Sayengis of the Phylosophers", is published, 1477

Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico, 1493

Vasco da Gama reaches the Cape of Good Hope, 1497

The worst earthquake in Massachusetts Bay/Boston area, 1755

The first Unitarian Minister in the US is ordained in Boston, 1787

30 women meet at Mrs Silas Lee's home in Wiscasset Maine, to organize the Female Charitable Society, first woman's club in America, 1805

Mark Twain's story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press, 1865

National Woman's Christian Temperance Union organizes in Cleveland, 1874

Standard time zones are formed by railroads in the US and Canada, 1883

The first newspaper Sunday color comic strip is printed, in the NY World, 1894

Britain flies its first sea plane, 1911

Lincoln Deachey performs the first airplane loop-the-loop, over San Diego, 1913

Sigma Alpha Rho, a Jewish high school fraternity, is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1917

Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, 1928

Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula, 1929

New York City's Mad Bomber places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison, 1940

In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is ratified, 1993

HIP 13044 b, a planet that was formed in another galaxy, is discovered in the Helmi Stream, 2010

Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria becomes the 118th Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, 2012

NASA launches the MAVEN probe to Mars, 2013