Day 224 - Saturdays lost a little of the magic

Today is the 7th day of the 32nd week, the 12th day of the 8th month, the 224th day of 2023, and:

• Home Sewing Machine Day - after a tumultuous history, and lawsuits over patents, the Singer cast iron treadle machine hit the market after being patented on this day in 1851.  The home sewing machine is deemed one of the most important inventions of the Industrial Revolution 
• IBM PC Day - released in 1981, Model 5150, the least expensive model cost $ 1,565 [that would be about $ 5,253 today] and it was not sold directly to customers, but to retailers ComputerLand and Sears.  They lost the market after about five years, then sold their PC business to Lenovo in 2004.  
• International Youth Day
• Middle Child Day
• Milkman Day - what happens when we forget Murray?  Yes, for those of you who are too young to remember, milk used to get delivered to your porch daily or however many times a month you wanted it.  Indeed, back in the day, it was the only way to get fresh milk and cheeses!  Grandmom Riley used the service for as long as it was offered, and Frank's first job after leaving the band was delivering milk, bread, and other baked goods for his father-in-law's company.  
• National Bowling Day
• National Garage Sale Day
• National Gooey Butter Cake Day - a St Louis delicacy created by accident in the 1930's during the Depression 
• National Julienne Fries Day
• Sea Org Day - celebrating a fraternal religious order for Scientology founded 56 years ago and, no, they aren't kidding about that length of contract
• The Glorious Twelfth
• The Wicket World of Croquet Day
• Vinyl Record Day
• World Elephant Day
• and Voyager 1 is 22h 13m 42s of light travel time from Earth

On this day in:

• 1492 - Christopher Columbus arrives in the Canary Islands
• 1553 - Pope Julius III orders the confiscation and burning of the Jewish Talmud
• 1856 - Anthony Faas, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is granted a second patent [Patent No 15511A] for improvements to the accordion.  
• 1865 - Joseph Lister performed the first antiseptic surgery
• 1869 - Self-proclaimed Emperor Joshua Abraham Norton of the USA issues edict abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties
• 1877 - To his amazement, Thomas Edison records himself reciting "Mary had a little lamb" on his just completed cylinder phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders
• 1883 - The last quagga (zebra subspecies with less slashes) dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
• 1927 "Wings", one of only two silent films - the other being The Artist in 2011 - to win an Oscar for best picture, opens starring Clara Bow (Outstanding Picture 1929)
• 1930 - Clarence Birdseye is granted a patent for method for quick freezing food (patent US 1773079 A)
• 1943 - Alleged date of the first Philadelphia Experiment test on United States Navy ship USS Eldridge.
• 1950 - Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Humani generis
• 1955 - US President Eisenhower raises minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an hour [and that was what I made when I started working 10 years later]
• 1960 - Echo 1, 1st communications satellite, is launched by NASA
• 1962 - for the first time, there are two people in space as Russia launches Vostok 4
• 1976 - first approach and landing test (ALT) of orbiter Enterprise
• 1977 - Space shuttle Enterprise makes 1st atmospheric test flight
• 1978 - International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spacecraft launched - to study solar wind
• 2018 - NASA launches the Parker Space Probe, its first mission to the Sun and its outermost atmosphere, the corona
• 2021 - Bennu Asteroid, size of the Empire State Building, now has 1-in-1,750 chance of hitting Earth in 2182, according to data from NASA's OSIRIS-REX spacecraft

Quote of the day:
"Making cartoons means very hard work at every step of the way, but creating a successful cartoon character is the hardest work of all."

~Joseph Barbera, American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and carton artist 

I always liked Saturdays even though I was not a kid who wanted to run outside and play,   There were no special soccer camps, no special shopping trips, no special movie outings, in my family.  Saturday was when I got cold cereal for breakfast and got to watch cartoons during the morning [and yes, I loved Mighty Mouse].  Saturday afternoon I had to clean my room, after which I could watch old movies and shows, or do a deep dive into my book.  And I got to stay up an hour later, even though we had to get up for mass the next day.

By the time I had kids, the Saturday morning cartoons had changed, but my kids were still happily glued to the TV and watching until it either got  turned to the sports games or turned off.  It's hard for the younger set to understand that TV programming didn't used to be under the user's control - you watched what was broadcast when it was on the air.  The networks all showed cartoons on Saturday mornings, so that was when we watched them.  I am old enough to remember the shock when one network actually showed a cartoon during prime time - and how flummoxed the critics were when it was a hit.  By the 1990's, technology had delivered a knock out blow to the Saturday morning ritual - PCs, VCRs, DVDs, home video games were just more entertaining and immersive.  Certainly my granddaughters do not consider Saturday morning offerings any different than any other day of the week as they can stream what they are interested in whenever they want.  There have been a couple attempts at reviving the Saturday morning cartoon bonanza, but the last one by CW ended in 2018 for lack of viewers.  

Life moves on - that's what they call progress.

I think those of us who remember the Saturday morning ritual miss that sense of it being okay to just veg out and relax for a bit while being entertained.