Bomb Pop, Astro Pop, Creamsicles & Other Nostalgic Ice Cream Treats in the Atomic Age

ICE CREAM NOSTALGIA and THE COLD WAR

"I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for Ice Cream"
(How perfect was that phrase in the 1950s?)

I was working away on some graphics on my computer recently when I heard a sound that I hadn't heard in decades - The Ice Cream Truck!


By the way - The Ice Cream Truck song is "Turkey in the Straw" for all you whipper snappers out there!

I swear I got as excited as I did when I was a kid, I ran to my purse, grabbed some money and ran outside just like an eight year old, lol. I was hoping the Ice Cream man had some of my favorites from the fifties - Bomb Pops, Creamsicles and my very favorite, the Banana Fudgesicle! I was happy to see they still had a version of the Bomb Pop and the Creamsicle is still a staple in the ice cream aisle as well as on the ice cream truck but, sadly, my wonderful Banana Fudgesicle had become a thing of the past.

As I giddily hugged my nostalgic frozen treats to my chest and raced back to the house to squirrel them away in my freezer I started thinking about some of the names given to treats for kids in the fifties and sixties. I realized we had a lot of candy and goodies with names that stemmed from our so called "atomic age". We had Milky Way Bars, Mars Bars, Moon Pies, Bomb Pops and Astro Pops. Though I never thought about it as a kid, as an adult I think it's kind of interesting that we were eating anything called a "bomb pop"!

During the fifties and sixties the Cold War was a constant issue. We had bomb drills in school (Duck and Cover!), television and newspapers were filled with stories about the "Red Menace" and people were building bomb shelters in their back yards. We were living in a nuclear age and even our childhood treats reflected the ever present threat of total annihilation! We grew up with the very real fear of having our lives, our families and our world blown to smithereens. Our poor little kid psyches were formed in an atmosphere of H-Bombs, radiation poisoning and the threat of "the end of the world".

Have no fear - The League of Sugar Rush Kid Treats is here! Good Humor Man and Candy Man to the rescue! With the sound of a catchy jingle playing from his truck and the help of liquid nitrogen this Good Humor Man would turn our fears into fun with a rocket shaped frozen confection of raspberry, cherry and lime and Candy Man would sooth our nerves with a binkie of pure sugar goodness!

BOMB POP


The Original Bomb Pop®, created by Blue Bunny was an ice cream treat that was a combination of cherry, "blue" raspberry and lime flavors and looked like a rocket ship.

Some people even called them rocket pops because Nestle had a similar frozen confection called Rockets or Triple Rockets®. Popsicle® had their version too called the Firecracker® or the Mega Missile® but the original Bomb Pop was created by "Doc" Abernethy and James S. Merritt in 1955 and is now marketed solely by Blue Bunny. There's even a National Bomb Pop Day celebrated on the last Thursday of June!

ASTRO POP

Sadly, Astro Pops are no longer being manufactured. Spangler Candy of Bryan, Ohio (also the manufacturer of Dum Dums) introduced the candy in the late fifties/early sixties to cash in on our national obsession with astronauts and the space race with this rocket shaped confection.

Astro Pops were yellow, red and green, shaped like a rocket cone and the pointed end was the top with the wide end having the stick. I remember the flavor(s) being kind of a raspberry/cherry combination and I also remember that wax bottom! As kids we loved the darn things and used them as spears or lances, poking each other (and ourselves) with the very sticky pointed end.

In the late 1990s Spangler inverted the shape, putting the pointed end on the stick, reportedly this was a result of a lawsuit that claimed a child had been injured by the pointed candy - which actually comes as no surprise to me knowing what I used to do with them! Shortly after the sales dropped and the candy was discontinued.

I gobbled up my Bomb Pops and Creamsicles in a couple of days (I gave that ice cream man $20, lol!) but I will not be without the flavors of these nostalgic treats again - I have created several Ice Cream and Candy Martinis inspired by some of my all time childhood favorites! The flavor profiles are there but with a bit more sophistication and a little kick from some booze. So feel free to download the Free Candy and Ice Cream Inspired Martini Recipe Cards and enjoy a little updated nostalgia yourself!

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THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM 420 - April 20th is Weed Day!

HAPPY 420!

You may not know this but the term 420 is a reference to smoking marijuana - aka weed, grass, Mary Jane, reefer, pot, cannabis, toke, doobie, ganja, joints, hemp, sativa et al. 420 (pronounced like the time 4:20 and not four hundred twenty) has been kind of a widespread "secret code" for decades amongst stoners for getting high on grass.

There are a lot of myths and versions of where the term 420 actually originated, most of them are wrong. Nope, sorry, it is not the police code for a marijuana bust or for someone "under the influence", it is not the day April 20th, it's not the number of active chemicals in marijuana (that is around 300+/- depending on the genus of the actual plant), nor is it derived from National Pot Smoker's Day which was established as April 20th as a result of the term 420.

According to Steven Hager, editor of High Times, the term 420 actually came about from a bunch of kids at San Rafael High in California who called themselves the Waldos. In 1971 the Waldos, a group consisting of Steve, Dave and Patrick (last names not revealed), coined the phrase when they made plans to meet up every day at the statue of Louis Pasteur on the campus and get high at 4:20 pm after school. It then evolved into a "Waldos" code for getting stoned, soon spreading through the school and then practically worldwide over the decades.

To quote one of the Waldos, "We did discover we could talk about getting high in front of our parents without them knowing by using the phrase 420."

Today, nearly 40 years later, 420 has evolved into a hidden symbol and code for cannabis and the counterculture that celebrated it's use. It's kind of like a modern day's counter culture Da Vinci Code - maybe in the year 4545 - if man is still alive - a futuristic android archaeologist will dig up an old stoner's t-shirt or some smoking paraphernalia and wonder just what that "420" means? Hopefully, they'll also find an archive of this blog post. . . .


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I'll take GOOD CHOCOLATE over BAD SEX Any Day!

Get this fun design on posters, tees, aprons, cards & other fun gifts here
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WOULD YOU???
Today I'll be Blogging, Posting and Tweeting
ALL CHOCOLATE - ALL DAY!

I was having a conversation about men and relationships with my friend Debby the other day and in the course of our discussion I told her , "I'd much rather have some good chocolate than bad sex any day!"

Think about it - chocolate releases all sorts of interesting things into your body that stimulate the pleasure centers in your brain and just plain make you feel good:

• Chocolate contains phenylethylamine which is a chemical that is released naturally in the body when you're in love.
• Chocolate contains dopamine and serotonin, both of which alleviate pain and raise pleasure levels.
• Chocolate contains theobromine (also known as xantheose), a chemical stimulant which is a mood elevator. Theobromine is the reason chocolate is toxic to dogs and horses, by the way.
• Theobromine actually translates to "food of the gods." in Greek: theo ("God") and brosi ("food")
• Chocolate does contain caffeine but only about half as much as compared to theobromine and caffeine is another stimulant.

The melting point of chocolate is slightly below human body temperature so it melts in your mouth for an extremely sensual experience. It's sweet, makes you feel good and it never dates your cousin or your best friend! It's available in almost every retail outlet, you can cook with it, make cocktails with it and give it as a gift!

Throughout the history of chocolate people considered it to be an aphrodisiac:

• The Aztecs considered all chocolate an aphrodisiac and all foods made with chocolate were forbidden to women! (Dear God, no wonder their civilization crumbled and disappeared - how stupid do you have to be to deny women chocolate?!?)
• The infamous lover of history, Cassanova, called chocolate his "elixir of love".
• Madame du Barry, famous French courtesan and mistress of King Louis XV, served a "cup of chocolat" to her paramours before adjourning to the boudoir.

For more on the history of chocolate visit my page All About Chocolate.
Get the Chocolate Easter Bunny Martini recipe at The Martini Diva as well as other chocolate martinis (just use the search feature and google chocolate!)
Find out the "20 Reasons Why Chocolate is Better Than Sex" at The Diva of Tiny Foods & get some great chocolate recipes there too!
And don't miss all my Chocolate Tweets all day today!

Want to announce your preference for Chocolate over Sex?
Pick up a Tee, poster or other fun gift with my design:
"I'll take GOOD CHOCOLATE over BAD SEX any day"

or

Check out my Other Fun CHOCOLATE ART
"Get Me Chocolate NOW and Nobody Gets Hurt"
on Posters, Tees, Aprons, Cups, Cards & other Goodies:

HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY! Enjoy my Chocoholic-aThon!

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FESS PARKER MEMORIAL - Saying Goodbye to Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone

IN MEMORY OF

FESS PARKER
( Fess Elisha Parker, Jr.)
August 16, 1924 – March 18, 2010

Like many of you I grew up watching Fess Parker on television. First as Davy Crockett in the fifties then as Daniel Boone in the sixties. I wanted an "Authentic Davy Crockett Coonskin Cap" so bad I could taste it! I got a Barbie Doll - my brother got the coonskin cap because "little girls don't dress up like hooligans".

I'm sure my Mother did NOT think Davy Crockett or Fess Parker were hooligans - but in the fifties a little girl who dressed up like an animal skin wearing mountain man was not going to fit in with the sexual stereotypes we were subjected to. My hero worship was limited to watching the TV shows and singing the theme songs. I don't think I missed an episode of either show and I also saw several Davy Crockett/Daniel Boone movies!

Interestingly Davy Crockett was a mini-series! It ran only from 1954 to 1955 while Daniel Boone was on the air for six years from 1964 to 1970. There were 2 Davy Crockett movies: Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955), Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956) and one Daniel Boone movie: Daniel Boone: Frontier Trail Rider (1966).

Fess Parker won the role as Davy Crockett when he showed up to audition for Walt Disney with a guitar and proceeded to sing for him. He won the role over both James Arness (Marshall Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame) and Buddy Ebsen (best known as Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies). Later Buddy Ebsen was hired to play Crockett's sidekick, George Russell.

You may not know this but Fess Parker was nominated for an Emmy in 1954 for Most Outstanding New Personality but lost to George Gobel. He was offered the Ambassadorship to Australia by President Reagan but turned it down. Later, after retiring from show business, he became a vintner with the Fess Parker Family Winery and Vineyards in Los Olivos, California - some of the wine labels included a reference to his days as Davy Crockett:



Fess Parker was a huge figure in my childhood years, he brought to life two legends of the American West for the entire baby boom generation and he will be missed.

One last time, let's all sing it just for Fess:

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,
Greenest state in the land of the free.
Raised in the woods so's he knew every tree,
Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three.

Davy, Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier!

FESS PARKER SINGS DAVY CROCKETT THEME SONG


FESS PARKER SINGS DANIEL BOONE THEME SONG

Fess Parker's Website
Fess Parker on Wikipedia
Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen talk about Davy Crockett

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No Blarney! Facts, Quotes & St. Patrick's Day Fun

Next Wednesday is St. Patrick's Day and, being part Irish, I always celebrate my heritage! My father passed on the Irish gene to me and every year growing up I was reminded by him to wear my green so I wouldn't get pinched and I enjoyed a traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner that he prepared (Mom got the Czech holidays, lol.)

This year is no different - I'm posting St. Patrick's Day Martinis and St. Patrick's Day Appetizers and I designed the Kiss Me, I'm Irish image above and a fun Pop Art Shamrock for my stores. I've already purchased three lovely corned beef briskets - one for a traditional dinner, one for sandwiches and one already used to test out my appetizer recipes above - Dad would be proud (and he would have loved my Irish martinis & appetizers!)

I also dug up some fun facts on St. Patrick's Day, Shamrocks and leprechauns and decided to share them with you to help you get ready to enjoy your share of Irish luck!

Some Fun Irish Facts & Info:

• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest number of leaves found on a clover is 14!
• One estimate suggests that there are about 10 000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover.
• Legend says each leaf of the clover means something: the first for hope, the second for faith, the third for love & the fourth for luck.
• The Irish saying, "Erin Go Braugh", means "Ireland Forever!"
• Ireland is divided into two separate countries; The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
• The harp is the symbol of Ireland. The color green is also commonly associated with Ireland, also known as “the Emerald Isle.”
• 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry, according to the 2003 US Census. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland!
• St. Patrick was born in 385 AD somewhere along the west coast of Britain, possibly in the Welsh town of Banwen. At age 16, he was captured and sold into slavery to a sheep farmer. He escaped when he was 22 and spent the next 12 years in a monastery. In his 30s he returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary. He died at Saul in 461 AD and is buried at Downpatrick.
• St. Patrick’s Day is observed on March 17 because that is the feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
• St Patrick is patron of fishermen in the Loire, where a legend associates him with a blackthorn bush.
• The first St Patrick’s Day parade took place in 1737 in Boston, followed in 1762 by New York.
• According to legend, on the day of Judgement, while Christ judges all other nations, St Patrick will be the judge of the Irish.
• Since 1962, tons of green dye are tipped into the Chicago river on St Patrick’s Day - amount reduced in recent years for environmental reasons.
• The potato crop was traditionally planted in Ireland after March 17
• Here's some more on the history of St. Patrick's Day from History.com.

Here's some fun facts on Shamrocks:

• According to legend, St. Patrick used the 3-leafed Shamrock to explain the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to the Irish people.
• The shamrock, also called the "seamroy" by the Celts, was a sacred plant in ancient Ireland because it symbolized the rebirth of spring.
• In Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, people traditionally wear a small bunch of shamrocks on their jackets or caps.
• The Shamrock is registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization as a trademark of the Government of Ireland.
• The OFFICIAL SYMBOL OF IRELAND is the Irish harp - the shamrock is the national flower.
• Many believe that the word "shamrock" was derived from the Gaelic word for the clover, "seamróg."
• Since the 1990s, the Irish Taoiseach usually visits the White House around St. Patrick's Day & presents a shamrock to the President.
• There are 416 calories in the McDonald's SHAMROCK Shake.
• Ireland's SHAMROCK LEGEND

Here's some facts about those unique Irish faerie folk - Leprechauns:

• Leprechaun: Irish Gaelic word “leipreachan,” which means “a kind of aqueous sprite.
• Leprechauns are sometimes called Irish faeries and are very tiny elf-like creatures about 2 – 3 inches tall.
• Leprechauns are usually seen as old men that resemble shoemakers or cobblers and are always male. (then where do NEW Leprechauns come from?)
• There is one gold coin for each year of the leprechaun’s life is in his pot of gold!
• Leprechauns are considered mischief-makers who delight in causing things to move or disappear from around the household of ordinary folk.
• Leprechauns are a class of "faerie folk" - quasi-historical peoples said to have inhabited Ireland before the arrival of the Celts.
• Here's a cute LEPRECHAUN COLORING PAGE 4 Kids of All Ages - Make sure you have green crayons!

And Here are some Irish Quotes, Sayings & Blessings:

• May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow, and may trouble avoid you wherever you go ~ Irish Blessing
• Never iron a four-leaf clover, because you don't want to press your luck. ~Author Unknown
• If you're enough lucky to be Irish, you're lucky enough! ~Irish Saying
• Morning is the time to pity the sober. The way they're feeling then is the best they're going to feel all day - old Irish Saying
• God is good, but never dance in a small boat - Irish Saying
• A best friend is like a four leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have - Irish Saying
• May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields, And until we meet again, May God hold you In the palm of his hand - Irish Blessing
• May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night and a smooth road all the way to your door - Irish Blessing
• An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth - Irish Saying
• Men are like bagpipes: no sound comes from them until they're full - old Irish Saying
• It is better to be a coward for a minute than dead the rest of your life - Irish Proverb
• May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past - Irish Blessing
• Here's to eyes in your heads and none in your spuds - Irish Toast
• God made time, but man made haste - Irish Saying
• What butter and whiskey won't cure, there is no cure for - Irish Saying
• May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live - Irish Blessing

So, my dear friends, until next St. Patrick's Day, I leave you with my favorite of all the Gaelic blessings: Dance as if no one's watching, sing as if no one's listening, and live everyday as if it were your last!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I'll leave you with this wonderful Dennis Morgan rendition of "When Irish Eyes are Smiling"

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Hooray for Hollywood - Some Retro Oscar Fun

This Sunday is the 82nd Annual Academy Awards and, as usual, I am looking forward to the ceremonies. Every year I have a little Oscar Party with a few other fans, serve up my Oscar Martinis and my Oscar Snacks and sit down in front of the old Boob Tube to enjoy a night of vicarious glitz and glamour.

I've been watching the Oscars for decades and have seen some absolutely great television moments during the ceremonies. Some of these still come to mind as I get ready to prepare for this year's festivities and I'd like to share some of them with you - I'm sure many of you remember some of these great Oscar moments starting with my all time favorite:

David Niven and The Streaker

Jack Palance and the One Armed Push Up Acceptance Speech

Billy Crystal's Parody Number on Prince of Tides

Cuba Gooding's Totally Over the Energetic Top Acceptance Speech

Steven Spielberg Finally Getting an Oscar (Schindler's List)

Steven Martin Hosts in 2001

Hugh Jackman's Opening Number in 2009

Here's some interesting Oscar Facts & Trivia for you:

• The official name of the golden statue is the Academy Award of Merit. Bette Davis makes the claim that she named the statuette after her first husband, bandleader Harmon Oscar Nelson.
• You cannot buy an Oscar. The winners or their heirs may not sell the statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for $1. If the winner does not agree to this stipulation the Academy keeps their statuette. Prior to 1950 this stipulation was not in place and Oscars fetched as high as six figures.
• In 1981, the Academy Awards were delayed for one day, due to the shooting of President Ronald Reagan.
• The first televised Academy Awards show was the 25th annual, held on March 19, 1953.
• More Academy Award Trivia from Oscars.org

Classic Acceptance Lines:

• Thank you very much. That makes up for the strip-search. - Woody Allen
• Oh, wow. This is the best drink of water after the longest drought of my life - Steven Spielberg
• Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, 'Wonderful, just have a back-up profession like welding - Robin Williams
• I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me! - Sally Field
• I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else - Jack Nicholson
• This is one night I wish I smoked and drank - Grace Kelly

And, of course, the Classic Non-Acceptance Line of All Time:

• "Marlon Brando very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reason for this being is the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry - Sacheen Littlefeather refusing the Best Actor Award for Marlon Brando in 1972

A live telecast is always an opportunity for classic lines, classic bloopers and some true pop culture in the making and I, for one, eagerly anticipate the possibilities again this year.

As for who's going to win? I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Sandra Bullock as Best Actress, Jeff Bridges for Best Actor and Avatar for Best Picture. Who are you hoping will win?

Meet This Year's Hosts: Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin

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A Strange History Lesson - Railroad Tracks, 2 Horses Asses & The Roman Empire

Railroad Tracks, 2 Horses Asses & The Roman Empire - what do you think these three things have in common?

I got this truly strange and wonderfully entertaining history lesson in an e-mail from a friend - one of those little things that get passed from e-mail box to e-mail box. I have no idea who wrote this or I would be happy to give them credit as it is truly a wonderful little piece of historical pop culture that informs while it entertains! If you happen to know where this came from please pass it on to me in a comment and I will be happy to give credit where credit is due. In the meantime, find out how the Romans, a couple of horse's asses and history still have an impact on your life today:

"The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Well, because that's the way they built them in England , and English engineers designed the first US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England .. You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts..

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything..."

Author Unknown



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Is Valentine's Day a Real "Holyday"? A history of Valentine's Day.

YES, VIRGINIA, THERE REALLY WAS A SAINT VALENTINE!

A History of Valentine's Day.

It seems to be a commonly held believe that Valentine's Day is a made up holiday, created by Corporate America to bilk consumers out of money in the dead holiday zone between Christmas and Easter. While it is obvious that marketers have assuredly hyped February 14th to a level of manufactured frenzy, Valentine's Day is indeed an ancient tradition that celebrated many things, most recently romantic love.

Established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD, it was a date to honor several early Christian martyrs* named Valentine. This was possibly a move to continue the Church's attempt to convert pagan celebrations and holidays to Christian events, Gelasius went on a campaign to eradicate the ancient Roman festival of the Lupercalia, a fertility and purification festival associated with their God Lupercus. Interestingly enough, the Romans themselves had absconded with the holiday because prior to that it was a pre-Roman pastoral festival called Februa (Latin: dies februatus, from februare, "to purify") that was observed from February 13th through the 15th. This is where the month of February gets its name.

The Feast Day of St. Valentine, as it was called by the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints**, is observed by the Catholic Church on February 14th. Within the Church it had no associations with romantic love, romance, hearts, cupids or other modern trappings of February 14th, it was simply a day to honor Saints with the name of Valentine.*

Our modern concept of Valentine's Day most likely became associated with love and romance sometime during the Middles Ages period of courtly love. Some say it can be directly linked to a poem supposedly finished by Geoffrey Chaucer just prior to February 14th, 1383 and called "Parlement of Foules" which guides Cicero through "celestial spheres to Venus temple" to a "parliament at which the birds all choose their mates". The poem was written to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia, thus giving it more associations with love.

During the early Middle Ages courtly love was the bar scene of the day. Romantic intrigues flourished amid the high courts, sexual escapes were the playground of the elite and "love" was rampant. The hi-jinks had become so prolific that in 1400, on Valentine's Day, a High Court of Love was instituted in the Paris courts which established laws for the ritual of courtly love that dealt with love contracts, betrayals, and violence against women. Love and Valentine's Day were now "institutionalized".

There are many historical references to Valentine's Day including this speech by Ophelia in Hamlet:

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes,
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
—William Shakespeare , Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5 (1600)

The beginning of sending written Valentines had it's start when young Roman men would send handwritten missives of love to their intended during the festival of Lupercalia (mentioned above). The earliest known Valentine Card was one sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London.

In 1797 "The Young Man’s Valentine Writer" was published in Britain which gave romantically challenged males stock love poems to send to their beloved. Printers started to produce "mechanical Valentines" - non-handwritten - and by the 1800's printed paper Valentine cards were being mass produced in factories throughout Europe.

In the United States the first mass-produced Valentines, made of embossed paper lace, were produced in 1847 by Esther Howland (1828-1904) of Worcester, Massachusetts. Because she is given credit for creating the first modern day Valentine's Card, the Greeting Card Association has been giving an annual "Esther Howland Award for a Greeting Card Visionary." since 2001.

WHERE DOTH THY HEARTS, RIBBONS AND CUPIDS SPRING FORTH, OH ST. VALENTINE?
(Pardon my corny bad Olde English.)

Cupid*** was the ancient Roman god of erotic love and beauty, son of Venus, the goddess of love, and Mercury, the messenger, hence he became known as the "messenger of love". Cupid was also known as Eros (interestingly an anagram for "rose") in Greek mythology and was usually depicted with wings, a bow and quiver of arrows, often nude and sometimes as a child. Classical paintings have depicted Saint Valentine with cherubs as well. Both of these might have attributed to the emergence of our modern day Cupid as a fat little toddler who aims for the heart.

As for the heart, this organ has long been associated with love, people in ancient times thought the soul resided in the heart. Aristotle stated that the heart was the center of all emotions. The heart beats faster when we are in the presence of a lover - at least in the early stages of courtship. Many of us can actually feel sensation in the chest area during times of emotional stress. But the problem is the heart inside our body does not look like those little red and pink hearts on Valentines and there in lies the mystery.

Glenn Church makes some interesting conjecture regarding the Origins of the Valentine's Day Heart Symbol: , but there is no real historical trail that leads us to the present day heart shape. Oh, sweet mystery of love. . . .and hearts, we may never know where this heart symbol came from.

Ribbon and lace imagery most likely stems from the Middle Ages and the practice of a Lady giving her scarf to the Knight she wishes to win during a jousting tournament. Most of these were silk and lace.

Sometime during the last half of the 20th Century we began to attribute Valentine's Day with additional gifts of chocolates and flowers - traditionally a dozen red roses. Around the late 1970s the diamond industry got in on the act and started to promote engagement rings, which then extended to any type of jewelry, particularly heart shaped and containing red colored gemstones. I suspect all of these associations were generated by modern marketing practices as there is no historical reference to them in any of the research I've done.

Today we have taken Valentine's Day digital with Valentine e-cards and online Valentine Gift websites.

Who knows, maybe in the future we'll be sending Valentine holograms from outer space. One thing is for sure, with the commercialization of Valentine's Day, originally a pagan festival celebrating fertility and purification, hearts and flowers and Cupid will probably be around as long as love survives.

HAPPY SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY!

* Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni.

**The feastday of Saint Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to local or national calendars. "Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14."

*** Cupid, son of Venus and Mercury, married Psyche (soul) and fathered a daughter called Voluptas, or Hedone (pleasure).

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DID YOU FORGET ABOUT VALENTINE'S DAY?

Seriously? You forgot Valentine's Day was a week from tomorrow? Oh dude, you're in trouble BUT have no fear PopArtDiva to the rescue - you can get great Valentine Gifts with all of my fun POP ART HEARTS and get them shipped in time to sweeten up your Valentine for your date on the 14th!

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UH OH!
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Click any design to see all the fun Valentine Gifts available!





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POP ART - POP ARTISTS

These are some of my favorite pop art works from the "Mac Daddies" of the pop art movement - Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Claus Oldenburg & Robert Rauschenberg.

The definition of Pop Art: A form of art that depicts objects or scenes from everyday life and employs techniques of commercial art and popular illustration.

Now you all know why I pop art things like cupcakes, money, & celebrities. The things of everyday life, the pop culture icons, the mundane things we see and use - it's all the stuff of pop art.

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