News Views Blog

fort lauderdale boat parade

this was the hard rock party boat on the fort lauderdale boat parade on the 15th.

christmas in connecticut

Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country’s most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can’t even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?

burl

“Sights and Sounds of the Season” Part 11 of a 36 part Slide-show video with everyone’s favorite Christmas music. The pictures are from around the world just some of the places from the United States are Alaska, California, New York City, New Orleans. The there are those from England, Scotland, Ireland, Fenland, just to name a few. Hope you enjoy the view. Have a Happy and Safe Holiday Season…
.
Please Check out “My Play List” where all of these vids are played seamlessly and in order.

Mother’s Day Poems

Always Mom

You were my fairy tale princess,
So much larger than life.
You were my angel and my witness
Through all my pain and strife.
At times you made me angry,
Great words I would proclaim
How someday you’d be sorry.
You were the one to blame.
But when I needed comforting
You alway found the time.
Your words were more soothing
Than days of childhood sublime.
Now the distance holds us apart,
The boundaries have no end.
I’ll hold the memories in my heart.
You’re my mother, my best friend

Mother’s Day Poems

The Sweetest Mother

Our mother is the sweetest and
Most delicate of all.
She knows more of paradise
Than angels can recall.
She’s not only beautiful
But passionately young,
Playful as a kid, yet wise
As one who has lived long.

Her love is like the rush of life,
A bubbling, laughing spring
That runs through all like liquid light
And makes the mountains sing.

Mother’s Day Messages

 ’Mother’ is that special creation of the Almighty God whom He has gifted with the unique power of giving life to a living being. No one can repay the debt of a mother. But we can certainly honor our mothers and bring smile on their faces by celebrating the special Mother’s Day. Celebrate this mothers day in a unique way. Send your warm message to your mother on this mothers day
 
Mums are like angels they look after you watch you grow but most importantly they love you
M is for the million things she gives me.
O means only that she’s soft to hold.
T for the things she tries to teach me.
H is for her heart of purest gold.
E for her eyes with love light shining.
R means right and right she’ll always be.
God made mothers smile out of sunshine
And he molded her heart out of gold
In her eyes he placed bright shining stars
In her cheek, roses, you see….
God made a wonderful mother
And he gave that dear mother to me
Thanks mom, luv ya lots like jelly tots
I just want to say that my mom is the best, luv u
If the friend is one, who can sense your emotions by sheer instinct.
If a techer is the one, who knows just how to mould you into the best person you can make….Then I am lucky for sure. …Because I have them all in someone, who is truly my own – My Mom
The way you twisted fairy tales, to suit my mood at that time, The way you clubbed two dishes in one, making it my favourite..Mom, I wonder, how you managed to blend your thoughts and efforts with, so much of love. I love the way you love me.
There is no one like a mother and, no mother quite like you. You are so very thoughtful and caring, and I just wanted to thank you mother, for making my life brighter.
“There is no velvet so soft as a mother’s lap, no rose as lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps.”

~ Archibald Thompson
All you love, all your caring ways, all your giving these years are the reasons why my heart thinks of you on Mothers Day with a wish for happiness and a world full of love.
Today is a very special time to let a mother know she is always treasured in the hearts of those who love her so.
Your arms were always open when I needed a hug. Your heart understood when I needed a friend. Your gentle eyes were stern when I needed a lesson. Your strength and love has guided me and gave me wings to fly.

~ Sarah Malin
I love you as my mother. I respect you as a woman. I trust you as my friend. You mean so much to me and I’m so lucky to have you. Happy Mothers Day.
 

April Fools’ Day Dinner

Most historians agree that April Fools’ Day began when the Christian world adopted the new Gregorian calendar. According to the old calendar, the New Year was celebrated in the spring for eight days (the final day of celebration being April First), but because the new calendar was so different, the date of the New Year was changed to January First.

Many of the people who lived in the countryside didn’t know of the change for years, and continued celebrating the New Year during the spring. Those “in the know” thought this was hilarious and started to call the April celebrators “fools.” From then on, these people began to go of their way during this particular season to make friends believe something that was false. And April Fools’ Day was born!

Source:

Pope Prays for Peace on Easter Sunday

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI led prayers for peace on the holiest day of the Christian year at a rainy outdoor mass here Easter Sunday, exulting conversions to the faith hours after the Vatican highlighted the baptism of Italy’s most prominent Muslim.
 
Pope Benedict XVI delivered the benediction on Easter Sunday.

In a prayer before thousands of soaking pilgrims and tourists on St. Peter’s Square, the pope noted that the disciples had spread the message of Christ’s resurrection — celebrated on Sunday — and as a result “thousands and thousands of persons converted to Christianity.”

“This is a miracle which renews itself even today,” he said.

Days after Osama bin Laden issued a threat against Europe that mentioned the pope specifically, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born writer protected by Italian bodyguards for his criticism of radical Islam, was baptized by the pope Saturday night and received his first communion. The news about Mr. Allam, a secular Muslim married to a Catholic, was accented by a Vatican press release an hour before the baptism ceremony.

“It was the most beautiful day of my life,” Mr. Allam, 55, a deputy editor at Italy’s largest daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, wrote in a column on Sunday. “The miracle of the resurrection of Christ reverberated in my soul, freeing it from the shadows of a preaching where hate and intolerance toward he who is different, toward he who is condemned as an ‘enemy,’ prevailed over love and respect for your neighbor.”

Mr. Allam said that he would take the new middle name of “Cristiano.”

Easter Sunday culminates the busiest week of the year at the Vatican, with scores of masses and ceremonies marking the days in which Jesus Christ was arrested, crucified and resurrected two days later. Along with Christmas, Easter is a day on which the pope delivers his “Urbi et Orbi” address, to “the city and the world.”

As is tradition, the 80-year-old pope prayed for peace in troubled parts of the world, singling out Darfur in Sudan and Somalia, “the tormented Middle East, especially the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon.” He also mentioned Tibet, a sensitive issue for the Vatican, which is working to improve ties with China, amid unconfirmed reports of direct talks here last week between Chinese and Vatican officials.

“How often relations between individuals, between groups and between peoples are marked not by love but by selfishness, injustice, hatred and violence,” the pope said. “These are the scourges of humanity, open and festering in every corner of the planet, although they are often ignored and sometimes deliberately concealed; wounds that torture the souls and bodies of countless of our brothers and sisters.”

Though it was difficult to hear the pope as the rain thumped off umbrellas and cascaded down from Bernini’s colonnades, the pope, kept dry under a canopy in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, delivered Easter greetings in 63 languages, from Italian to Thai, Esperanto to Latin.

Source:nytimes

Easter Island

Easter Island map showing Terevaka, Poike, Rano Kau, Motu Nui, Orongo, and Mataveri, major Ahus are marked with Moai
Capital Hanga Roa
27°9′S, 109°25.5′W
Official languages Spanish, Rapa Nui
Ethnic groups (2002) Rapanui 60%, Chilean 39%, Amerindian 1%
Demonym Rapa Nui or Pascuense
Government Special territory of Chile[1]
 -  Provincial governor Melania Carolina Hotu Hey (2006-)
 -  Mayor of Hanga Roa Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa

Annexation to Chile 

Treaty signed September 9, 1888 

Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the Rapa Nui language, Isla de Pascua in Spanish), is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. The island is an overseas territory of Chile. Rapa Nui was first visited by Europeans on Easter Sunday of 1722.[2] Easter Island is famous for its monumental statues, called moai pronounced (Mow-eye), created by the Rapanui people. It is a world heritage site with much of the island protected within the Rapa Nui National Park.
European contact

On Easter Sunday, 1722, Easter Island was named by its first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who was searching for Davis or David’s island.[2] The island’s official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, is Spanish for “Easter Island”.

The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui or “Big Rapa”, was coined by labor immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1870s.[3] However, Thor Heyerdahl has claimed that the naming would have been the opposite, Rapa being the original name of Easter Island, and Rapa Iti was named by its refugees.[4] There are several options for the “original” Polynesian name for Easter Island, including Te pito o te henua, or “The Navel of the World” due to its isolation. Legends claim that the island was first named as Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka, or the “Little piece of land of Hau Maka”.[5]

Location and physical geography
 
Orthographic projection centered on Easter Island.
Easter Island, Sala y Gómez, South America and the islands in betweenEaster Island is one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands. It is 3,600 km (2,237 mi) west of continental Chile and 2,075 km (1,290 mi) east of Pitcairn (Sala y Gómez, 415 kilometres to the east, is closer but uninhabited).It has a latitude close to that of Caldera, Chile, an area of 163.6 km² (63 sq mi), and a maximum altitude of 507 metres. There are three Rano (freshwater crater lakes), at Rano Kau, Rano Raraku and Rano Aroi, near the summit of Terevaka, but no permanent streams or rivers.

Geology

Easter Island is a volcanic high island, consisting of three extinct volcanoes: Terevaka (altitude 507 metres) forms the bulk of the island. Two other volcanoes, Poike and Rano Kau, form the eastern and southern headlands and give the island its approximately triangular shape. There are numerous lesser cones and other volcanic features, including the crater Rano Raraku, the cinder cone Puna Pau and many volcanic caves including lava tubes.

Easter Island and surrounding islets such as Motu Nui, Motu Iti are the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises over two thousand metres from the sea bed. It is part of the Sala y Gómez Ridge, a (mostly submarine) mountain range with dozens of seamounts starting with Pukao and then Moai, two seamounts to the west of Easter Island, and extending 2,700 km (1,700 mi) east to the Nazca Seamount.[2]

Pukao, Moai and Easter Island were formed in the last 750,000 years, with the most recent eruption a little over a hundred thousand years ago. They are the youngest mountains of the Sala y Gómez Ridge, which has been formed by the Nazca Plate floating over the Easter hotspot.[3][6] Only at Easter Island, its surrounding islets and Sala y Gómez does the Sala y Gómez Ridge form dry land.
History

Main article: History of Easter Island

The history of Easter Island is incredibly rich and highly controversial. Its inhabitants have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism, and the crash of their ecosystem; their population has declined precipitously more than once. They have left a cultural legacy that has brought them fame out of all proportion to their numbers.

There are many theories about the cultural composition and history of Easter Island. No two seem to agree. Most scholars consider the island’s culture Polynesian. However, local traditions say the islands original culture consisted of two different races, the Hanau eepe, or long-ears, the original settlers of the island with red hair and fair skin, and the Hanau momoko, or short ears, the Polynesian peoples generally associated with the Pacific.

“There were handsome people among our ancestors.” Pedro Atan, an eleventh generation desendent of Ororoina told Thor Heyerdahl in 1955. “There were two kinds of people on this island: some were dark (Polynesian) and some were quite fair skinned like you from the mainland, and with light hair. Real white people. But they were genuine Easter Islanderes, quite genuine. In our family there were many of the fair type, who were called oho-tea, or the light-haired. My own mother and aunt had [red] hair.”

“There were many of that type in our family, all the way back. We brothers are not like that. But my daughter who was drowned had milk-white skin and completely red hair, and so has my grown up son, Juan. he makes the twelfth generation after Ororoina.”

The fact that the island’s population cosisted of two distinct races was also noted by the first European to visit the island, Jacob Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday, 1722.

“Among the first who came aboard,” Roggeveen noted, “was a white man. He was ornamented with a crown of feathers on his head, which was close shaven.” The islander was then presented with several gifts including “two strings of blue pearls, a small mirror, and a pair of scissors.” What was particulaly striking was the man’s artifically lengthened ears which contained “round white pegs as large as his fist.” The lobes actually hung down to the man’s shoulders. Roggeveen later noted that “masses of the islanders had their ears lengthened in this [same] manner.” And that if their long ears got in the way when working, they simply removed the pegs and lifted the long flap up and over the upper edge of the ear.

“They are a tall, well built people,” he continues, “who, so far as can be judged, are fair skinned [Polynesains] such as we know them in Tahiti, Hawaii and other eastern islands of the south seas. But the population is mixed, some are conspicuous by their darker skins, while others are quite white, like Europeans. A few are also of a reddish tint as if somewhat severely tanned by the sun. Many had beards.”

“Many islanders went about stark naked, but with their entire body artistically tattooed in one continuous pattern of birds and strange figures. Others ware cloaks of bark cloth colored red and yellow. Some have waving crowns of feathers on their heads, and others [ware] queer reed hats. All are friendly, and we saw no weapons of any kind. Curiously there were hardly women to be seen, although the place was swarming with men. But the few women who showed themselves are more than cordial to us, without the men showing the slightest sign of jealousy.”

According to tradition, the first oho-tea, (light-skinned) Hotu Matua, landed on the island’s North-Eastern shore at Anakena Bay sometime around 300 AD. (The remnants of his stone house and fireplace are still in eveidence there with carbon 14 dating of the ashes providing the date.) The two vessels in Hotu Matua’s party were so large they carried several hundred men, and Oroi, Matua’s worst enemy made passage as a stowaway.

A single moai or statue (representig Hotu Matua?) stands on the platform, or ahu, at the beach and was the first of the ancient stone sculptures to be re-erected under the urging of Thor Heyerdahl during his 1955 expedition to the island.

Send an Easter surprise

Welcome to Happy-Easter.com! Our egg-citing new site is packed full of cracking good ideas for the holiday season so roll up, roll up to join in the fun.

There are lots of craft ideas for little fingers to get stuck into as well as traditional recipes for your Easter eggs-travaganza! The origins and traditions of Easter are revealed in our special features and you can find out more with our eggs-traordinary Easter Facts.

Don’t forget the fun with our side splitting Easter Jokes and easy to use Easter Games and you can spread the goodwill of the holiday season by sending cards, greetings and gifts to friends and family.

 Have a Hoppy Easter!
 is a time of springtime festivals. In Christian countries Easter is celebrated as the religious holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the son of God. But the celebrations of Easter have many customs and legends that are pagan in origin and have nothing to do with Christianity.

Scholars, accepting the derivation proposed by the 8th-century English scholar St. Bede, believe the name Easter is thought to come from the Scandinavian “Ostra” and the Teutonic “Ostern” or “Eastre,” both Goddesses of mythology signifying spring and fertility whose festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox.

Traditions associated with the festival survive in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored easter eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring, and used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts.

The Christian celebration of Easter embodies a number of converging traditions with emphasis on the relation of Easter to the Jewish festival of Passover, or Pesach, from which is derived Pasch, another name used by Europeans for Easter. Passover is an important feast in the Jewish calendar which is celebrated for 8 days and commemorates the flight and freedom of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

The early Christians, many of whom were of Jewish origin, were brought up in the Hebrew tradition and regarded Easter as a new feature of the Passover festival, a commemoration of the advent of the Messiah as foretold by the prophets. (For more information please visit our Passover celebration – Passover on the Net).

Easter is observed by the churches of the West on the first Sunday following the full moon that occurs on or following the spring equinox (March 21). So Easter became a “movable” feast which can occur as early as March 22 or as late as April 25.

Christian churches in the East which were closer to the birthplace of the new religion and in which old traditions were strong, observe Easter according to the date of the Passover festival.

Easter is at the end of the Lenten season, which covers a forty-six-day period that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter. The Lenten season itself comprises forty days, as the six Sundays in Lent are not actually a part of Lent. Sundays are considered a commemoration of Easter Sunday and have always been excluded from the Lenten fast. The Lenten season is a period of penitence in preparation for the highest festival of the church year, Easter.

Holy Week, the last week of Lent, begins with the observance of Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday takes its name from Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem where the crowds laid palms at his feet. Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, which was held the evening before the Crucifixion. Friday in Holy Week is the anniversary of the Crufixion, the day that Christ was crucified and died on the cross.

Holy week and the Lenten season end with Easter Sunday, the day of resurrection of Jesus Christ.