She Has Calls to Make (Awww Monday), Inspiring Quote of the Week and Poetry Monday, Bamboo

***********************************

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!

Our little Annie is a busy lady, she's got lots of people to talk to and loves playing with this old, non-functional phone.

***********************************

Sparks is the brainchild of Annie of McGuffy's Reader, who wanted us to post something positive and uplifting at the start of the week.  While she no longer blogs, i like to post an Inspiring Quote of the Week in her honor.     

***********************************

Our dear friend Diane is taking a break

accommodations we must make

we miss her poetry and wit

so carry on as Poetry Monday's a hit!

Poetry Monday was started by Diane at On The Alberta/Montana Border.  Charlotte/Mother Owl and i are keeping it going while she takes a blog break, we hope temporarily.  Anyone else is welcome to join in the fun, just let us know!

This week the theme is Bamboo.                       

She planted bamboo

mad at the neighbor

but she got punished

for the behavior.

When she went to sell

she became quite rueful

no one would buy

she'd been bamboozled!

(True story, she planted bamboo to screen her yard from very nice neighbors, then couldn't sell her house unless she paid to remove it.)

Future themes are:

February 2 Bamboo (Today!)

February 9 Carousel

February 16 Plants With Berries

February 23 Doughnut

(All themes are from the 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and Other Arts Facebook group.)

***********************************

It's Groundhog Day/Hedgehog Day/Badger Day -- what animal you looked to in order to predict the weather depended on where you lived.  It's also called Hromnice in the Czech Republic (hrom = thunder, a weather forecasting day).

This year, what will it be?  If you have dark, dreary, wintry weather today and not a shadow cast anywhere, winter is "spending itself out" and things will start to improve in a gradual rise toward spring in just over six weeks.  If you have a beautiful, sunny day today and see your shadow and everything else's shadow, too, wintry weather is going to come roaring back and you will have six more weeks of cold and bluster and storm until spring commences.

At least, that's the theory.

Thanks to Barb Kowalik and The Cat Blogosphere for the event badge.         

***********************************

Today is:

Anniversary of Treaty of Tartu -- Estonia

Bonza Bottler Day™

Candlemas -- Christian -- or Presentation of Our Lord (f/k/a the Purification of the Virgin Mary) - commemorates the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and purification of Mary on the 40th day after the birth of Jesus. Candles have been blessed on this day since the 11th century, and this was the original forecaster, “If Candlemas is fair and clear, there’ll be two winters in the year.”

    Bank Holiday -- Liechtenstein

    Candelaria Festival -- Puno, Peru (Virgen de la Candelaria, through the 16th)

    Dia de la Candelaria/Virgin of Candelaria -- Mexico; Spain

    La Fete de la Chandeleur -- Canada; France

    Matka Boska Gromniczna (Mother of God of the Blessed Thunder Candle) -- Poland

Constitution Day -- Mexico (obs.)

Festival of Juno Februa -- Ancient Roman Calendar (Juno as goddess of motherly and matrimonial love)

Imbolc/Sughnassad -- Pagan/Wiccan (Northern Hemisphere/Southern Hemisphere)

    Brigmid -- Druid Calendar, also called Feast of Imbolc, celebrated later as St. Bridget's Day, but originally a festival for Brigid, (also known as Brighid, Bríde, Brigit, Brìd) goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft.  It is always halfway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, so some years it is on Feb. 1 with St. Brigid's Day

    Disting/Charming of the Plough -- Asatru/Slavic Pagan (a feast of new beginnings and spring)

    Serpent Day -- Celtic (The tradition was that on this day, the Brigmid, snakes or badgers would come out of their winter dens and predict the weather; perhaps a precursor to North America's Groundhog Day.)

    Wives' Feast Day -- Northern England (ancient celebration in association with Imbolc)

Inventors' Day -- Thailand

Lailat al-Bara'ah (Shab Barat) -- Islam (Night of Forgiveness, a preparation for Ramadan; begins at sunset, local custom dates may vary)

Le Jour des Crepes -- France (Crepes Day, as crepes are traditionally served on Candlemas; if you can flip the crepe pan and catch the crepe in it with your right hand, while holding a gold coin in your left, you will become rich this year!)

National Heavenly Hash Day

Nelson Provincial Anniversary Day -- Nelson, New Zealand

Presentation of Christ in the Temple -- Anglican Catholic Christian

Sled Dog Day -- anniversary of the arrival, in 1925, of diphtheria antitoxin in Nome, Alaska; in memory of the sled dogs, especially lead dogs Togo and Balto, who made it possible

St. Cornelius the Centurion's Day (the Cornelius converted by St. Paul in the Book of Acts)

Tu B'Shevat -- Judaism ("New Year of the Trees", began yesterday at sundown, through sunset today)

Veja Diena -- Ancient Latvian Calendar (day of wind, with rituals performed to assure no wind damage next summer)

World Wetlands Day -- UN (the 2026 theme is "Wetlands for our Future: Sustainable Livelihoods 

Anniversaries Today:

Marina Ogilvy (daughter of Princess Alexandra) weds Paull Mowatt, 1990

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) marries Olivia Langdon in Elmira, NY, 1870

Birthdays Today:

Shakira, 1977

Michael T. Weiss, 1962

Christie Brinkley, 1954

Ina Garten, 1948

Farah Fawcett, 1947

Graham Nash, 1942

David Jason, 1940

Tom Smothers, 1937

Les Dawson, 1934

Stan Getz, 1927

Elaine Stritch, 1925

James Dickey, 1923

Liz Smith, 1923

Ayn Rand, 1905

George “Papa Bear” Halas, 1895

William Rose Benét, 1886

James Joyce, 1882

Solomon R. Guggenheim,1861

Toyotomi Hideyoshi,1536 (Japan's second "great unifier")

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"The Rich Little Show"(TV), 1975

"The Midnight Special"(TV), 1973

"And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little"(Play), 1971

"What's My Line?"(TV), 1950

"Le Dame aux Camelias"(Play, Dumas, fils), 1848

"Artaxerxes"(Opera, Thomas Arnes), 1762

Today in History:

Alaric II, eighth king of the Visigoths promulgates The Breviary of Alaric (Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum) a collection of Roman law, 506

Pedro de Mendoza founds Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1536

New Amsterdam (later New York) is incorporated as a city, 1653

The first leopard is exhibited in the US, in Boston (admission 25 cents), 1802

Russian settlers establish the Ft. Ross trading post north of San Francisco, 1811

Jonathan Martin sets York Cathedral afire, does £60,000 damage, 1829

The first Chinese workers arrive in San Francisco, 1848

The first public men's toilet in Britain opens, on Fleet Street in London, 1852

Samuel Clemens uses the pen name Mark Twain for the first time, 1863

James Oliver invents the removable tempered steel plow blade, 1869

The SS Strathleven arrives in London with the first frozen mutton imported from Australia, 1880

The Knights of Columbus forms in New Haven, Connecticut, 1882

The first official Groundhog Day is observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, 1887

The bottle cap with cork seal is patented by William Painter of Baltimore, 1892

The longest boxing match under modern rules takes place in Nameoki, Illinois; 77 rounds between Harry Sharpe and Frank Crosby, 1892

The first movie close-up, of a man sneezing, is made at the Edison Studio in West Orange, NJ, 1893

The Australian Premiers' Conference held in Melbourne decides to locate Australia's capital, Canberra, between Sydney and Melbourne, 1899

Queen Victoria's funeral takes place, 1901

Musher Gunner Kaasan and his sled team, led by Balto, finish the serum run from Nenana to Nome, Alaska, delivering the much needed diphtheria medication (inspiration for the Iditarod), 1925

Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine, 1935

The Groundhog Day gale hits the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada, 1976

F.W. de Klerk allows the African National Congress to function legally and promises to release Nelson Mandela, 1990

Iran launches its first domestically made satellite, Omid, into orbit, 2009

All 955 miners are rescued from the Beatrix gold mine in Welkom town, South Africa, after 2 days underground, 2018

More than 40 mummies from around 323-30 BC are found at a burial site at the Tuna el-Gebel archaeological site south of Cairo, Egypt, 2019

Palindrome Day:  today's date, 02/02/2020, reads the same forward and backward, whether you are putting the order as month/day or day/month; the last time this happened was 11/11/1111, 2020

More than one million Afghans have fled the country for Iran threatening a new migrant crisis, 2022

In Chile's greatest natural disaster since 2010, wildfires begin burning east of Viña del Ma, spreading to Quilpué and Villa Alemana, 2024