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Sunday, November 18, 2012

November 19, 2012: Four Score and seven years ago...


I took a major butt whipping today. It could be a stomach virus, it could very well be food poisoning, all I know is, I made it through church and came home and collapsed, without going to eat at the Old China Buffet. Do you know how sick I have to be to miss eating at the Old China Buffet on Sunday? Well let me make it even better, my kids went to eat the buffet and Amy Wu sent me a quart of hot and sour soup. Oh the healing power of soup.

I had something I haven’t had in a while, a movie day. Here is what I have watched today: “Cars 2,” “Air Force 1,” “That Thing You Do,” “The Muppet Movie,” and then switching to TV for the evening. It’s a good way to spend a virus/bacteria-ridden day.

Oh, my goodness, I guess I should have remembered this one but from time to time I get caught by surprise. Today is National Blow Bagpipes Day.  We are hill people in Eastern Kentucky and among the musical instruments you associate with hill people are the bagpipes. My wife and I went back to Morehead State University to get our teaching degrees in 1994 and bagpipes are part of the graduation ceremony at Morehead. There is nothing like the plaintive wail of the pipes to bring a tear to this hillbilly’s eye. You should hear “Amazing Grace” on pipes. If you love bagpipes then there is only one thing for you to do at Walt Disney World and that is get to the Canadian Pavilion at EPCOT and check our Off-Kilter, the kilt wearing, rock-n-rolling, bag pipe playing Canadian band that appears at various times throughout the day on the shore of the World Showcase Lagoon.



1965 and breakfast may never be the same. Kellogg’s Pop Tarts were created on this day. We have taken Pop Tarts with us to Walt Disney World and use them as a quick start to the day when we don’t want to have a big breakfast to weigh us down. There have been, and are, a host of flavors to choose from. At one point there was even a Disney Princess Jewelberry flavor. So go to Cinderella Castle or the Princess Meet and Greet at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom and have a Pop Tart while you enjoy a magical day.



I am a little more than one year older than Jodie Foster who was born on this day in 1962. Today she is a well-respected, serious actress with an award-winning, varied career but at one time she was a child actress who starred in several Disney films including: Napoleon and Samantha, One Little Indian, Freaky Friday and Candleshoe. GAF Viewmaster was a major sponsor of Walt Disney World when it opened and this commercial, featuring a very young Jodie Foster, aired on “The Grand Opening of Walt Disney World Special” in 1971. Go to WDW and enjoy today’s version of photographic excellence Disney’s Photopass.




We are really hitting the wayback machine for this next one. In 1905, Eleanor Audley was born in New York City; there are at least three things that would make her an excuse to visit Walt Disney World. First, Eleanor was the voice of Lady Tremaine in Cinderella. We met Lady Tremaine and the wicked stepsisters at Mickey’s Toon Town a few years ago. Second, she was the voice of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, arguably the greatest of all Disney villains. If those are not enough, she is also the original voice for Madam Leota in the Haunted Mansion. Cinderella Castle and Haunted Mansion in the Magic Kingdom, Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios and a host of merchandise locations make Eleanor a perfect excuse to visit Walt Disney World.



On this day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln visited the site of the large battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Lincoln was not the featured speaker that day. Edward Everett delivered a much longer address that is hardly remembered today while President Lincoln’s two minutes and ten sentences are fondly recalled and succinctly portrayed the mood of the country and significance of the day.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

You know where I am sending you, The Hall of Presidents, where you can have your own moment with Mr. Lincoln.


Remember, your best excuse is always: waiting for your dreams to come true.

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