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Carol H Tucker
Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial
Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
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back in the day....
Today is the 4th day of the 5th week, the 31st day of the 1st month, the 31st day of 2018, and: - Appreciate Your Social Security Check Day – please note, for those of us who have been paying FICA taxes for over 50 years neither Social Security nor Medicare are an “entitlement”. We invested that money and now that we need it, the gov’t wants to renege.
- Backwards Day
- Brandy Alexander Day
- Eat Brussels Sprouts Day
- Hell is Freeing Over Day -- no idea when this holiday was created or why, but the irony of it being the day after the State of the Union address here in the US is duly noted
- Hug an Economist Day
- Independence Day: Nauru [a tiny island country in Micronesia] from Australia in 1968.
- Inspire Your Heart with Art Day
- National Hot Chocolate Day
- Scotch Tape Day – I had to put a new roll in my dispenser, does that count as celebrating the holiday?
- Street Children Day -- anniversary of the canonisation of John Bosco, the “Father and Teacher of Youth“.
- Tu Bishvat -- a Jewish holiday occurring on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat AKA "New Year of the Trees."
- And today was a super blue blood moon with an eclipse thrown in for good measure.
Yesterday I startled when I opened my mailbox and pulled out a catalog from Montgomery Wards. I stood there blinking at it as a flood of memories swept through me.
HUGE Wards and Sears catalogs used to arrive at the house on Poplar Drive around August or September, huge because they were chockful of Christmas toys to be ordered and fall/winter clothing. I used to spend hours pouring over the pages, deciding what I was going to order for the kids because if I did so before the end of September, there was a discount that took care of all the shipping and handling costs as well as the sales tax. Of course you had to have the order delivered to the store and go and pick it up, but that was a relatively minor nuisance. I would pick out what my daughter would get for her birthday at the end of October, what Santa would bring, what my grandmothers and my father would give them. Of course then there was the issue of hiding all that stuff – fortunately the homeowner before us had unsuccessfully tried to make a room out of what used to be a back porch – cold and gloomy in the winter time, we had boxes in there and I don’t think the kids ever noticed when there were new boxes added to the piles. Wards also had actual stores, and it used to be a place where you could go and buy appliances – the sales folks on the whole were knowledgeable and patient, would listen to what your needs were . In fact, I still have and use the TV that Frank and I bought there back in the late 1980’s although the famed Wards warranty is long expired of course. The catalogs stopped coming after a while and I had to rely on the Sears catalog alone for my Christmas shopping, and then the announcement came that the stores were closing back in 2001. The large retails stores have long ago been re-purposed – and In Baltimore, the 1925 Wards warehouse [an eight-story, 1.3-million-square-foot building at 1800 Washington Blvd southwest of downtown Baltimore] is now known as Montgomery Park and has been restored for office use. It has a green building with a green roof, storm water reutilization systems, and extensive use of recycled building materials and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 as the Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store. But in 2004, catalog marketer Direct Marketing Services Inc [based in Iowa] purchased much of the intellectual property assets of the former Wards, including the "Montgomery Ward" and "Wards" trademarks, for an undisclosed amount of money. The DMSI version of Montgomery Ward was not the same company as the original -- it did not honor obligations of the previous company, such as gift cards and items sold with a lifetime guarantee. Catalog retailer Swiss Colony purchased DMSI in 2008 – and that finally explains why I was looking at the Wards catalog because I have ordered from Swiss colony in the past.
Wards was a venerable old tradition at one time and once the arrival of that catalog was eagerly anticipated; now it is just another piece of junk mail that I tossed into the recycling bin.
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