National Go Caroling Day

We tried to bring cheer to some folks at the radio station this morning with the help of Santa.  We met with mixed results. Click -  caroling

History 101: December 20, 1879: Thomas Edison demonstrated his incandescent light at Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Music History 101:  December 20, 1973: A five-man surgical team worked for over six hours to repair his damaged heart ofWalden Robert Perciville Cassotto. However, although the surgery was initially successful, he died minutes afterward in the recovery room without regaining consciousness at the age of 37. He was known to the world as Bobby Darin.

The 101 number one song of the day was the first number one for a trio that was one of the most influential of the sixties. As the decade came to close, it would also be their last single.  The three met in Greenwich Village in New York City. One was a former psychology major at Cornell, another was a stand up comedian and the third was a blond who had once been a backup singer for Pete Seeger. The song that would take them to the charts was written by another blond – a young songwriter named John Duchendorf who renamed himself after his favorite city – Denver – it rose to number one on December 20, 1969 for Peter, Paul, and Mary (Leaving on a Jet Plane)

You might want to give your tech-savvy someone the finger this holiday season. Gloves for texting are a hot gift this year. You don’t need to take off the gloves to let your fingers do the talking on smartphones with touch-screens. SmarTouch and Tec Touch gloves have conducting thumbs and index fingers. The techy gloves go for $10 to $40, and are available at a number of nationwide retailers.

A cozy alternative to graffiti is popping up in public places around the world – knitters are dropping “yarn bombs.” Knitted street art has wrapped such odd spots as a “Keep Off Median” sign in Berkeley, California; a parking meter in Seattle and a phone booth in London. A Berkeley knitter calling herself “Streetcolor” is claiming the tagging of a pole outside Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum. Artist Magda Sayeg attached the first yarn bomb five years ago to the door of a boutique she owned in Houston. She wanted to “add some color and fun to the city’s dark, concrete winter landscape,” she said. Sayeg started a club whose members took old, half-finished knitting projects and wrapped them around “urban furniture.” Unsure at first if it was legal, they worked at night.