Emmanuel Fonte | Music | Art | Leadership
If music be the food of love, play on. Emmanuel Fonte website is about music, art, real estate, architecture, design and decor. Occasionally, I talk about my other passion, hockey.
Across the world, Christmas is celebrated in a multitude of rich and cherished traditions. Their origins are wonderfully varied, emerging out of cultures and beliefs throughout history. This illustrated timeline, brought to you by Balsam Hill, captures the flow of some of the most popular Christmas traditions and figures and traces their simple lineage from St. Nicholas’ humble beginnings to today.
Click inforgraphic for larger view
Nothing says Christmas like twinkling lights. Nowadays there are plenty of alternatives to traditional holiday lights, including LED and solar-powered strings to make your home merry and bright. Lots of topics here.
Source: SeattlePI
Bloomberg Business Week recently released its rankings for the top 50 cities in America. Seattle came second only to San Francisco, and Portland was fifth.
While rating cities can sometimes feel like comparing apples to oranges and is often a matter of personal taste, Businessweek.com and Bloomberg Rankings teamed up to look at the same data points across the board for 100 of the nation’s largest metro areas — leisure, education, economy, crime, and air quality in addition to major pro sports leagues. Based on these metrics, Seattle’s numbers come out as follows:
Bars: 219
Restaurants: 2,307
Museums: 29
Libraries: 42
Pro sports teams: 4
Park acres per 1,000 residents: 9
Colleges: 8
Percent with graduate degree: 16.8
Median household income: $90,303
Percent unemployed: 7.2
With a population of just over 624,000 and more than its share of rain, Seattle is still considered “the nation’s spiritual home for coffee and personal computing,” according to Business Week.
Is it that many of us recognize a bit of ourselves in Linus’ longing to catch a glimpse of the Great Pumpkin in the Halloween classic “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” that keep us coming back year after year just to be disappointed all over again?
Perhaps you’re not feeling that introspective and just really like Peanuts cartoons, but The FW has a fascinating collection of little-known facts to enrich that twenty-five minutes of nostalgic bliss this time around, but, please, wait for the commercial break.
1. The original ‘Great Pumpkin’ story was actually about religion
‘Peanuts’ creator Charles Schulz’s faith and beliefs often served as a launching point for his comic strip story lines and specials. A Halloween special might not seem like the ideal place for a message about personal beliefs but even The Great Pumpkin had something to say about faith and religion.
Schulz’s ‘Great Pumpkin’ story got its start in his comic strip before finding a permanent place in popular culture on television. According to the book ‘Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography,’ Schulz received a rare complaint letter from a reader asserting that the Great Pumpkin was “sacrilegious.” He wrote a response agreeing with her assessment. He felt that the concept of believing in Santa Claus was just as ridiculous and sacrilegious as the Great Pumpkin and that he was “trying to show this in the Great Pumpkin strips.”
2. The Halloween special came to life because CBS wanted another “blockbuster”
The massive success of the ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ special and its subsequent special ‘Charlie Brown’s All-Stars!’ gave animator Bill Melendez and director Lee Mendelson a lot of leeway with CBS to do another special. All they had to do was promise that it would be a “blockbuster.”
Mendelson wrote in his book ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic’ that CBS network executives wanted another ‘Peanuts’ special but they also wanted a surefire hit. They didn’t just want something they could air once a year. They wanted something they could air year after year to bigger and bigger audiences. Mendelson and Melendez had to promise their third special would be a “blockbuster,” even though they had no idea on the table for another ‘Peanuts’ special.
Full story at The FW
Halloween week is upon us! Many celebrated last weekend with Halloween parties, trips to the bars and lots of fun, but the real holiday is tomorrow! Are you planning to dress up? Halloween might be one of my favorites, but I only ever dress up as a cat, ballerina or French girl (only once).
Families spend an average of $150 on Halloween preparations. This includes costumes, fake blood, and pumpkins! One way to cut down on costs is to think up costumes that use your regular clothes. Lucky for you all, I have three A+ (in my opinion) costumes that may be sitting in your closet or only require a few quick purchases!
My personal favorite, the cat. Grab a cheap pair of kitty ears, draw some whiskers in black eyeliner, throw on a black top and black jeans and step into your favorite black stilettos.
The ballerina. Buy or make a tutu- tule is really easy to work with and extremely inexpensive – wear a black tank top or leotard and some tights. Oh and twirl all night long.
The French girl. A striped shirt, a drawn on mustache and a berret. Voila!
Have a happy and safe Halloween! [Via]
