A Year of Blogging: September 26, 2011

I don't know what September 26 is. One calendar tells me it is Johnny Appleseed day, which can also be celebrated on March 11. Although, in March, one of the calendars told me it was March 18, so that's when I wrote about it. In March, I read that he died on March 18. Today, I read that he was born on September 26 and died on March 11. So anyway, I've already covered Johnny Appleseed. The other calendar, the one that was in the paper on January 1 and started this madness, tells me today is Good Neighbor Day. But www.holidayinsights.com tells me that Good Neighbor Day is always September 28. I'm feeling very confused, and I think it is more than just the fact that my allergies are out of whack from working in the 'lower level' (my boss doesn't like it if we say basement) of our office building today. I always work in the 'lower level' but today was extra special as heavy rains overnight flooded the building. Again. So lets take a look at history and see what happened on this date. On this date in 1960, the first of the Kennedy-Nixon debates took place. It was the first time that a debate between the major party presidential candidates was televised. I'm not really feeling up to giving a communication lecture tonight, so if you don't know about the debates and want to, I'm sure you can find everything you need to know (probably even videos) online. On September 26, 1888 T.S. Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. I don't know that I've ever read any of his works. Perhaps I should add him to my TBR list. That list keeps getting longer and longer! If you prefer visual entertainment, West Side Story premiered on Broadway on September 26, 1957. Did you know that it was originally written as East Side Story? In East Side Story, the star crossed lovers were Catholic and Jewish. I didn't realize this is based on Shakespeare. It's been a very long time since I saw the movie, I've never seen it as a play. I'm not a big fan of musicals, so maybe that's why I remember seeing it, but don't have very strong feelings about it. And if you are more into tv than theater, you might want to sing about that mother with three daughters with hair of gold who married that man named Brady. Yes, on this date in 1969 the Brady Bunch aired. The last episode aired in 1974. Two years before my birth, yet I grew up watching the Brady Bunch. In 1987, we had a huge snowstorm in October, which took out a lot of trees. As luck would have it, it gave us a nice clear path up the mountain, thus giving a satellite dish a clear shot. So Mom and Dad bought a big satellite dish, and we went from getting one channel to an endless supply of channels. We watched a lot of reruns of the Brady Bunch. While we laughed at the hippie fashions, it really wasn't that absurd for us. We had already been watching 50's sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver and Ozzy & Harriet. The Brady Bunch just seemed to be the natural progression. I guess my sister and I were odd because we watched the sitcoms our parents grew up watching. Now, I spend a lot of time watching sitcoms that were on when I was a child or teenager. So when I'm 50, I'll watch the sitcoms that aired in 2011!