NATIONAL PINK DAY (my favorite color!)

National Pink Day is observed annually on June 23rd. This day is set aside for the color pink and all it represents. First used as a color name in the late 17th century, pink is a pale red color which got its name from a flower of same name. According to surveys in both the United States and Europe with results indicating that the color pink combined with white or pale blue is most commonly associated with femininity, sensitivity, tenderness, childhood and the romantic. Pink, when combined with violet or black is associated with eroticism and seduction. Dating back to the 14th century, “to pink” (the verb) means “to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern.”

It would have been curious to find pink used in fabric or decor during the Middle Ages. Occasionally it was seen in women’s fashion and religious art. In the 13th and 14th century, the Christ child was sometimes portrayed dressed in pink, the color associated with the body of Christ. Pink was mainly used for the flesh color of faces and hands during the Renaissance. The Rococo Period (1720-1777) was the golden age for the color pink. Pastel colors became very fashionable in all the courts of Europe during this time. Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764), the mistress of King Louis XV of France, was known for wearing the color pink, often combined with light blue. At one point in time, Ms. Pompadour had a particular tint of pink made specifically for her. Pink ribbons or decorations were worn by young boys in 19th century England. The men in England wore red uniforms and since boys were considered small men, boys wore pink.

Pink became much bolder, brighter and more assertive in the 20th century and 1931, the color “Shocking Pink” was introduced. As one of the most common colors of flowers, pink serves to attract the insects and birds that are necessary for pollination. ~~~~~~~~~~  In the pink – To be in top form, in good health, in good condition.  To see pink elephants – To hallucinate from alcoholism.  Pink slip – To be given a pink slip means to be fired or dismissed from a job. First recorded in 1915 in the United States.  Pink-collar worker – Persons working in jobs conventionally regarded as “women’s work.”  Pink Money – the pink pound or pink dollar is an economic term which refers to the spending power of the LGBT community.  Tickled pink – means extremely pleased.

Pink Flamingo Day

Pink Flamingo Day was declared in 2007 by Dean Mazzaralla, the mayor of Leominster, Massachusetts. This was done to honor the work of Don Featherstone, creator of the plastic lawn flamingo.

The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo From its start in Massachusetts, of all places, to its inspiration of a John Waters film, the lawn ornament has some staying power. John Waters’ childhood yard was an exercise in good taste. His mother, the president of a local garden club, cultivated burgeoning flowerbeds and precise hedges. In their buttoned-up Maryland suburb, lawn ornaments of any kind, let alone plastic pink flamingos, were anathema. One house down the street had a fake wishing well and that was painful enough.

“I don’t remember ever seeing a pink flamingo where I grew up,” the filmmaker muses. “I think I saw them in East Baltimore.”

In 1972, Waters released the film Pink Flamingos, which was called both an abomination and an instant classic. The movie has almost nothing to do with the tropical fowl that stand sentinel during the opening credits: The plot mostly concerns the exertions of a brazen and voluptuous drag queen intent on preserving her status as “the filthiest person alive.”

“The reason I called it ‘Pink Flamingos’ was because the movie was so outrageous that we wanted to have a very normal title that wasn’t exploitative,” Waters says. “To this day, I’m convinced that people think it’s a movie about Florida.” Waters enjoyed the plastic knickknack’s earnest air: Though his own stylish mom might have disapproved, the day-glo wading birds were, back then, a straightforward attempt at working-class neighborhood beautification. “The only people who had them had them for real, without irony,” Waters says. “My movie wrecked that.” Forty years later, the sculptures have become unlikely fixtures of a certain kind of high-end sensibility, a shorthand for tongue-in-cheek tackiness.

But, for his part, Waters says he has completely OD’d on the flamingos. For one thing, he learned during an ill-fated Floridian photo shoot that he doesn’t like real birds, and they don’t like him. (“You can’t just mosey into a pit of pink flamingos. I have tried.”) For another, the lawn sculptures have become “loaded objects,” classist tools of the well-to-do mocking the taste of the less fortunate. The real plastic flamingo is in a sense extinct, Waters says: “You can’t have anything that innocent anymore.”

First designed in 1957, the fake birds are natives not of Florida but of Leominster, Massachusetts, which bills itself as the Plastics Capital of the World. At a nearby art school, sculptor Don Featherstone was hired by the plastics company Union Products, where his second assignment was to sculpt a pink flamingo. No live models presented themselves, so he unearthed a National Geographicspread. It took about two weeks to model both halves of the bird, brought into the third dimension by then-revolutionary injection-mold technology.

A flamingo-friendly trend was the sameness of post-World War II construction. Units in new subdivisions sometimes looked virtually identical. “You had to mark your house somehow,” Featherstone says. “A woman could pick up a flamingo at the store and come home with a piece of tropical elegance under her arm to change her humdrum house.” Also, “people just thought it was pretty,” adds Featherstone’s wife, Nancy.

That soon changed. Twenty-somethings of the Woodstock era romanticized nature and scorned plastics (à laThe Graduate). Cast in flaming pink polyethylene, the flamingo became an emblem of what Nancy delicately calls the “T-word”—tackiness. Sears eventually dropped the tchotchkes from its catalog.

But then, phoenixlike, the flamingo rose from its ashes (or rather, from its pool of molten plastic: As demonstrated at the finale of Waters’ film, flamingos don’t burn, they melt). As early as the 1960s, pop artists including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg had begun elevating the low brow and embracing mass culture. And then, of course, Waters’ movie came out

International Fairy Day Today is a day for fairy collectors, believers, and artists to celebrate the stories, magic, and history of fairies. Fairies are known throughout Celtic cultures. It is believed that these mythological creatures possess magical powers. They have the ability to fly and cast spells, and they live in the Land of Eternal Youth. In his 1902 novel The Little White Bird, author J.M. Barrie claims that fairies originated from the laughter of an infant. When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and all of the pieces went skipping about in the form of fairies. Have fun and read the book or make your own fairy garden. Use your childhood imagination and enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Basketball Ball – June 25

Although the game of basketball had been played since the late 19th century, there was not a patent for the actual basketball until 1929. G.L. Pierce received the patent for the first official basketball on this day in 1929.

Basketball is built into the fabric of Springfield College. The game was invented by Springfield College instructor and graduate student James Naismith in 1891, and has grown into the worldwide athletic phenomenon we know it to be today.

It was the winter of 1891-1892. Inside a gymnasium at Springfield College (then known as the International YMCA Training School), located in Springfield, Mass., was a group of restless college students. The young men had to be there; they were required to participate in indoor activities to burn off the energy that had been building up since their football season ended. The gymnasium class offered them activities such as marching, calisthenics, and apparatus work, but these were pale substitutes for the more exciting games of football and lacrosse they played in warmer seasons. James Naismith is the person who invented basketball.

Candy Land Day June 26

On this day in 1951, a trademark was registered for a children's game. What was the game? It was Candy Land.

Pull out the game and play with your grandkids and have fun. This was one of our family favorite games.